"ACT II" a film by Flyin' Monkey Films

i'll be honest. i loved the look and your composition, but I found the repetition tedious, especially because it didn't pay off to anything meaningful... just more repetition and hard slams on the sound track. would love to see your frames in a linear narrative approach to storytelling next time.
 
catch me on the re-shoot where we can actually shoot it as it was intended. For right now, for the film that WAS entered, I completely agree with your points. There was one edit I wished i had made in hindsight though and it was for the last repition, just have her say "**** off" and end there...

oh well... I kinda woke up in the middle of the night after I had uploaded, with that realization....
 
Totally lost me.

At least one mix-up with the goggles, where they are up when the man approaches, but down when he arrives. it come across as a blooper, but maybe it was intended??

Otherwise, cinematically strong.

alex
 
I'm not sure I got it, but I was entertained up to the end. And the end I'm left feeling a little "Huh?" The tension built really well into what I was expecting to be a payoff, but I'm not sure I got said payoff. You've certainly got me thinking with this entry.
 
One of the guys in The Quetzalcoatlus explained the whole theory of time travel quite nicely (before he contradicted it of course) in the fact that time is constant and that what we do in the past becomes part of the time stream anyway. The moment of choice to change something is part of that stream and it has already happened.

**SPOILER ALERT**
This movie in its present form happened because we didn't shoot everything we needed (i.e: the entire PLOT) so there was a gaping hole where plot should have been. What you've seen is actually the END of the movie after she's already gone back. With this re-edit using long takes that were shot only as cut-aways and not presented as intended (hence some of the color changes and the goggles moving up and down) we tried to come up with a different way of telling the story without the whole of it.
** END SPOILER **

So right now I guess we're trying to focus on the fact that she makes the same choice and always comes back to the same spot, and the only way to move on is to take the advice her future self gave and to tell the guy to "f**k off". If I could go back and change one thing that may have helped the understanding of this story, it would have been to edit the last cut like that...
 
I'm not sure I got it, but I was entertained up to the end. And the end I'm left feeling a little "Huh?" The tension built really well into what I was expecting to be a payoff, but I'm not sure I got said payoff. You've certainly got me thinking with this entry.

glad I could at least entertain you and hit some of those points I was aiming for. Thanks.
 
The composition, colours and acting were all really great. Your leading lady has something special about her. It didn't really work for me as a short, but as it seems this is an unfinished project, I say keep at it and the final film could be very good.
 
I liked this film for the level of intrigue and cinematic excellence it concieved, but the way the story was portrayed left me a little...confused. After watching I had no idea what I had seen other than a well shot, well scored and well edited piece with a good pace to it. My best assumption was that the main character kept reliving the same expirience over and over again and some woman was being attacked. Reading your synopsis, I didn't get any of that from watching it.

It was definitly well done, but I think the story could have been developed better especially since you only used half the time limit. I agree too that the repetitions should have lead to something monumental rather than an end which left me thinking "I love what I just watched, but what the hell was it?"

The goggles were fantastic, by the way! :grin:
 
I liked the cinematography, was confused by the story and felt the cussing detracted. I am interested to see what this would be when it is finished.
 
Well that's what I get for editing one minute of footage into three minutes... some things you can pull off gracefully through editing, and others...

We're definitely makign plans to do the reshoot with the same actress. She has been very well received and I do think she adds a certain "something" to the role, so I'm going to resist my urge to shoot here in Toronto, and plan for the reshoot in Atlanta in 2 weeks. I've actually got 2 of my main crew helping out this time around (advance notice helps), so we should be firing on all cylinders.

And then we will all see the "why" of the goggles....
 
Hey,

Just caught the filck. I'll comment on what's there and pray that I get (we all get) to see the final product.

Before that though, I'm sorry to read about all the mishaps. 'Tis a shame cause I think this would have been quite nice (so long as the whole thing would have been akin to what's here).

I really enjoyed the compositions, the looks, the pacing of the beginning. The rest is good too but a bit distracting with all of the re-use of what you had. Some dock to camera shaking here and there but overall the look is great for my money.

I also really enjoyed what I saw. I can sense the whole 12 Monkeys elements coming out here. Very cool. Audio's a bit wonky (willy wonka-y???HAHAHAHAHA sorry. I'm an idiot. I'll shut up now). Not sure if you got to work on that or not but the cuts are rather apparent.

I liked the lead. She was good. The OS guy's deliver didn't work for me but I liked her.

Overall I liked this film. Also having been a part of an unfinished project, I feel for you. All the more so cause this looks like it was going to be a fun, hard-hitting and very interesting piece. Can't wait to see the final.

Thanks for not chucking the whole thing and sharing what you had. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.
 
Thanks for not chucking the whole thing and sharing what you had. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.

Thanks for that comment. I can't tell you how many times I actually did go to chuck it all and go drink beer instead (51) especially when the edit turned out not as ideal... but still oddly compelling.

All in all I'm glad I didn't chuck it and now I get to do the reshoot on my HVX and Redrock system which I'll be purchasing this week, so I'm all excited.
 
Well I thought you did a good job overall... after reading a bit in your thread, I am even more impressed. I like the feel and I like the look. I am very interested in seeing where you go with the final product. Good job!
 
I loved the shots and the acting but I didn't get the story at all. It felt like I was watching dailies from a scene. I haven't read the posts but from what Marks response above I am probably missing something you mention about your flick.
 
yeah sorry about the "plot" thing. You're kinda right about watching the dailies feel.. that's what kind of triggered the idea of trying to tell some part of the story with what we had, becasue this was literally all of the shots we got in the can before the whole shoot went to hell. we got a good solid crew and schedule shaping up so the second-go-round shouldn't be as sloppy as this turned out to be.
 
Well from what you have I can tell when you get rolling you will have a very nice piece. I loved the guy in the background fishing also even though I wasn't sure someone would tell someone else they were about to die with a person fishing that close. Hope the next fest works out for you cause I'm waiting to see what you come up with.
 
Good work for all the pain you had to go through! My only crit is that the pan at :24 isn't level.

Looking forward to the reshoot.
 
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