Hey this was fun.
Agree on most of the aforementioned criticisms.
I think it was most successful in terms of structure and mood.
It did feel like we were entering some kind of tripped out time warp right from the beginning with the music and the camera angles.
Then structurally you brought us in a circle in at least a couple of ways, which I appreciated on an intellectual level given the concept. BUT ... one circle was too long in one of it's iterations - the opening sequence. Even if it was not repeated later it would just be completely out of proportion structurally. At a minute and a half it would equal your entire first act - 30 minutes or so in a feature. For a short you want your first act to be proportionally even smaller if you even have a first act at all, and here you've given us 90 seconds of openning sequence before your story really starts. Couple that with the fact that it all will repeat and it's just too long for two reasons.
I think you should keep the same placement structurally - the circular nature of it - because that resonates so well, but cut the openning way down. 10 or 20 seconds that suggest most of the cuts we'll see later. No idea if this would work but since you are playing with time a lot, wonder what it would be like to just speed that opening 90 seconds up to 20 seconds or 10, lol. Could be a disaster or could be super cool with the right music / sound design.
Last ding. Don't zoom so much maybe. I'm actually not as zoomaphobic as most filmmakers here. I actually like them sometimes - see ODD Squad and Bone Hand on my site. But zooms are generally not preferred because they're often ugly and artificial and push you out of the experience for those reasons as opposed to a dolly shot, which draws you in. The main difference - a dolly shot helps create the illusion of 3D space because the angular relationships of objects and their size change in disproportionate ways as the camera moves closer to foreground objects and background objects and passes foreground objects. When you zoom you remind the audience that they are looking at a 2D thing that you are trying to fool them into thinking is 3D because the relationship of the objects doesn't change, they only get blown up.
Having said that I like them on occasion. Lots of great 70's films (a Hollywood golden age) use zooms. Rocky and every Dirty Harry movie come to mind immediately. So they have a place I think. Just a limited one. I like to use them for very very subtle push ins done in post sometimes, which looks more like a dolly than a zoom in camera becaus your angle of view doesn't change in the lens. You can even make a push in in posy look more dolly like by playing with the X and Y axises subtly to distort the image slightly.
Final fake dolly technique. Shoot on a tripod without zooming. But pan slightly to moderately. Later, this combined with a push in in post can be more dolly like because you are changing the relationship of the objects with the pan and seeming to move closer with the push in.
Blah blah blah
Anyway the music was cool and a lot of the editing worked well too.
:beer:
Agree on most of the aforementioned criticisms.
I think it was most successful in terms of structure and mood.
It did feel like we were entering some kind of tripped out time warp right from the beginning with the music and the camera angles.
Then structurally you brought us in a circle in at least a couple of ways, which I appreciated on an intellectual level given the concept. BUT ... one circle was too long in one of it's iterations - the opening sequence. Even if it was not repeated later it would just be completely out of proportion structurally. At a minute and a half it would equal your entire first act - 30 minutes or so in a feature. For a short you want your first act to be proportionally even smaller if you even have a first act at all, and here you've given us 90 seconds of openning sequence before your story really starts. Couple that with the fact that it all will repeat and it's just too long for two reasons.
I think you should keep the same placement structurally - the circular nature of it - because that resonates so well, but cut the openning way down. 10 or 20 seconds that suggest most of the cuts we'll see later. No idea if this would work but since you are playing with time a lot, wonder what it would be like to just speed that opening 90 seconds up to 20 seconds or 10, lol. Could be a disaster or could be super cool with the right music / sound design.
Last ding. Don't zoom so much maybe. I'm actually not as zoomaphobic as most filmmakers here. I actually like them sometimes - see ODD Squad and Bone Hand on my site. But zooms are generally not preferred because they're often ugly and artificial and push you out of the experience for those reasons as opposed to a dolly shot, which draws you in. The main difference - a dolly shot helps create the illusion of 3D space because the angular relationships of objects and their size change in disproportionate ways as the camera moves closer to foreground objects and background objects and passes foreground objects. When you zoom you remind the audience that they are looking at a 2D thing that you are trying to fool them into thinking is 3D because the relationship of the objects doesn't change, they only get blown up.
Having said that I like them on occasion. Lots of great 70's films (a Hollywood golden age) use zooms. Rocky and every Dirty Harry movie come to mind immediately. So they have a place I think. Just a limited one. I like to use them for very very subtle push ins done in post sometimes, which looks more like a dolly than a zoom in camera becaus your angle of view doesn't change in the lens. You can even make a push in in posy look more dolly like by playing with the X and Y axises subtly to distort the image slightly.
Final fake dolly technique. Shoot on a tripod without zooming. But pan slightly to moderately. Later, this combined with a push in in post can be more dolly like because you are changing the relationship of the objects with the pan and seeming to move closer with the push in.
Blah blah blah
Anyway the music was cool and a lot of the editing worked well too.
:beer:
