"ANNIVERSARY" a film by Rodney Smith

Interesting film. Almost a one-character film. That help sell the isolation, but maybe it sold it too well. The wife was too conspicuously absent. The cinematography conveyed grittiness and made the viewer as uncomfortable as the main character.

Looking forward to your next one.
 
Well this is a challenging premise. Tough stuff and there's a lot of good work here.

SPOILERS ...

puckthemad said:
... I originally had a voiceover. Now I really wish we also had heard Sara, just to throw everyone off to the fact that she isn't there... Oh well, choices we made... now just gotta fix them.
Click to expand...

Why not even see her. I mean who's perspective is the movie told from? I think that's a question you didn't fully answer and it's the route of
1) why people pick up on it so quickly
2) why the scoring doesn't work

If he's crazy and thinks she's alive. Then there's no reason we shouldn't as well. So really heavy horror scoring doesn't make a lick of sense when his phone rings. To him it would be great news - angry wife is calling me now ... whew fights over. It does make sense to an omnicient eye ... someone that knows all the facts ... but the audience does not have the information that she's dead yet ... so you do not give us enough information to sell that she's alive and you keep selling and reselling that she's dead.

I heard of a writing exercise where the challenge was to put elements in the story that made the outcome inevtiable and impossible or highly unlikely in equal measure. Here you are telling us the whole movie that the outcome is inevitable. And the way to suggest that the actual outcome is impossible or highly unlikely would be to ground the movie in his perspective. So all the scoring should only have to do with what he is feeling, which is not scared when she calls him on his cell for example. And all the shots should be chosen based on his perspective too.

Hitchock walked a fine line with it in Psycho. He did not show us Mom's face, but he made her a presence. Looking out the window, in silhouette in the shower scene. Choices easily justifiable because the shadow seemed to be a noir like / horror convention and unlike your dead character, she was creepy old lady and supposedly a homicidal maniac.

Anyway, I admire the heart you put into this, but think the problem with perspective made it ultimately unsuccessful for me.
 
Thanks for the critique Jack and the eye opening as well. It wasn;t untl you pointed those things out that I finally understood some of what was bugging me. My cmposer had actually done quite a nice subte piece for the intial phone conversation, but I had to go and get too heavy handed on it and insist that he put those changes in to add to the creepiness.

You're right: that kind of omnescience is entirely out of place, especially coming from the story perspecitive. Too much over editing there I guess and a good lesson: sometime your composer, having a different perepective GETS IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! I'm going to have to apologize and buy him a beer or three now. (add to the final budget here)

Thanks for the awesome critique.
 
These kinds of films have to be written really well to work otherwise they can easily fall down. It was very early into the movie that I realized what was happening but I kept thinking there was some kind of a twist coming up. Perhaps his wife was killed (or kidnapped for ironies sake) and now he holds captive a blonde girl which he's stapled a brunette wig to look like her (he could hobble her, Misery style). Then at your dinner scene she's screaming at him and he only sees his wife laughing and sipping wine. And if you still want your neighbor character, cut the blonde girls tongue out.

Maybe you were constricted to two male leads? In that case have the lead think the neighbor's having an affair with his (dead) wife. There's your story with conflict and you can still have the dead twist at the end if you really want.

I think with a stronger script you'll do really well. Good luck.

Ian
 
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