Jon Jacob Schmidt - by Hoz

I especially enjoyed the choir too. I feel the story dragged a bit in the beginning. Good effort; especially with two films.
 
I liked the concept. I followed the story without a problem and it was intriguing until the end.

Were you directing and acting? I don't see how anyone can do this.

The best shot IMO, was at the parking lot when we saw the 3-4 kids for the first time and you had that wide shot with the huge brown wall in the background. I liked the framing there. Otherwise, I thought most of the shots were a little bland, and/or had technical problems, like blown out windows and highlights.

One thing that came to mind was, "If he wanted to be famous, and craved the attention, why was he so afraid of it?"

The way you built up to the climax, with all the people pounding on the windows and stuff was great. Good sense of an overall dynamic.

The end was a little cliche, but at least you had the "tag" of her singing that shoved in the twilighty-ness.

Nice work.
 
Cute play on the song. I could see this oddity of a film being a creative vision candidate. The church scene was especially fun. It marked the turning point where it was suddenly a zombie film. Nice and creative. At first I wasn’t digging the music, but it ended up playing a nice contrast to the humor of the film.

I’m sure you’ve heard, but I was hearing a lot of background noise in the audio.
 
yeehaanow said:
I liked the concept. I followed the story without a problem and it was intriguing until the end.

Were you directing and acting? I don't see how anyone can do this.

The best shot IMO, was at the parking lot when we saw the 3-4 kids for the first time and you had that wide shot with the huge brown wall in the background. I liked the framing there. Otherwise, I thought most of the shots were a little bland, and/or had technical problems, like blown out windows and highlights.

One thing that came to mind was, "If he wanted to be famous, and craved the attention, why was he so afraid of it?"

The way you built up to the climax, with all the people pounding on the windows and stuff was great. Good sense of an overall dynamic.

The end was a little cliche, but at least you had the "tag" of her singing that shoved in the twilighty-ness.

Nice work.
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thanks for the great comment!

yeah one can act and direct and etc. etc. etc. its possible when when you work with the best people. i got a lot of help with this flick from a whole variety of people who were so gracious to offer their time and energy.

i've made so many cool new friends from doing this...

interesting comment on the framing of the giant store wall with the kids, this is the shot i wasn't all that pleased with, it looked a little too cold for my liking, i really wished to film this right in the middle of the nearby quaint village but due to sound impossibilities ( ha! i didn't get the best sound anyway!) and to the fear that there would be too many unknown people milling around ( hard enough to have kids act much less kids in front of many many strangers ) i used what you see.

i thought the other shots were good though, that is outside of certain tech problems - like blown out windows- i filmed quickly in spots because certain places i used during break hours or down time hours - i didnt have the requisite time to properly dress the places. so i figured, better to go with the story and show as many people and places as i can and sacrifice the perfect look. that said i am totally cool with your opinion and very much appreciate it:) gotta do better next time!

your question is such a good one too about jon wanting fame and then immediately running away from it, i ran out of time! 6 minutes killed me! i had to cut 4 minutes. but i can think about setting up act 2 a whole lot stronger by having the deli scene play out differently. problem is i didn't want to dwell there any longer than i had to. i got ideas though... a remake is a possibility here, i think i can make this a lot better.

glad you liked the ending! thanks so much!
 
Bryce A said:
Cute play on the song. I could see this oddity of a film being a creative vision candidate. The church scene was especially fun. It marked the turning point where it was suddenly a zombie film. Nice and creative. At first I wasn’t digging the music, but it ended up playing a nice contrast to the humor of the film.

I’m sure you’ve heard, but I was hearing a lot of background noise in the audio.
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thank you much for the kind words! we worked hard to bring out as many zany looks as we could to "haunt" jon jacob. the church scene originally was supposed to be the end of film where jon gets married to the one girl who doesn't sing his song when she sees him. obviously 6 minutes doesnt even begin to cover this story arc. cut that out! completely! although that did lead to me doing "the devil inside" . Stacey Kiel was to play Jon's bride. the scene was to show jon walking down the aisle to her where many people would be singing the song while he did.
anyways- Stacey's role was cut out. so i wanted to come up with a story for her and her wedding dress... and so we filmed devil inside. if you have the time please comment on that film too!

thanks again!
 
I agree with the above posts that your story really picked up toward the end. It was quite funny and well played. The cinematography and lighting didn't do too much for me but you cut your footage well and kept me watching. With that said, there were some shots that worked well... the wide of kids by brick wall (as mentioned in post above) and the secretaries at the docs office (camera felt well placed). Good job!

:beer:
 
stinkpot said:
I agree with the above posts that your story really picked up toward the end. It was quite funny and well played. The cinematography and lighting didn't do too much for me but you cut your footage well and kept me watching. With that said, there were some shots that worked well... the wide of kids by brick wall (as mentioned in post above) and the secretaries at the docs office (camera felt well placed). Good job!

:beer:
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thanks for the comments! glad you liked the story. as i left on your thread, i enjoyed your movie as well...
 
Hey,

Just caught the flick. I liked what you were doing with and I really though the idea was a fun one. I thought the acting worked and was amazed at the number of locations as extras you managed to pull together for this. Very nice work in selling th e world of your story.

I thought the pacing was a bit slow for a comedy and that there just weren't as many laughable moments as I would have liked. This joke tends to get old kind of quick and it seems that most of what happens is he goes somewhere and gets confronted with the joke. So for me, that aspect of it grew stale relatively quickly.

Some different shots in the bedroom would have been nice and maybe some CC to sharpen the image. The audio was weak and sounded like it needed a boost. Otherwise, it seemed fine to me.

So I liked the idea here, I just wish there was more ways to spice it up than what you showed. Can't really think of something now, but it would have helped. Keep it up and thanks so much for showing.
 
Hmmm hmm hmm hmm hmh hm hm hmmmmm... great little song!

Oh wow! You wrote directed and acted in this! Really well done. This kept me interested all the way through. And congrats on using all those locations, really well done, it added quite a bit to the short.
 
Danielleus said:
Hey,

Just caught the flick. I liked what you were doing with and I really though the idea was a fun one. I thought the acting worked and was amazed at the number of locations as extras you managed to pull together for this. Very nice work in selling th e world of your story.

I thought the pacing was a bit slow for a comedy and that there just weren't as many laughable moments as I would have liked. This joke tends to get old kind of quick and it seems that most of what happens is he goes somewhere and gets confronted with the joke. So for me, that aspect of it grew stale relatively quickly.

Some different shots in the bedroom would have been nice and maybe some CC to sharpen the image. The audio was weak and sounded like it needed a boost. Otherwise, it seemed fine to me.

So I liked the idea here, I just wish there was more ways to spice it up than what you showed. Can't really think of something now, but it would have helped. Keep it up and thanks so much for showing.
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thanks for the in depth comments! i think i know how to improve some of the story, don't know if i will, but i would like to. i actually wrote out a history which would explain why jon jacob schmidt became a song in the first place, but scrapped it due to script constraints.
 
gabrielflorit said:
Hmmm hmm hmm hmm hmh hm hm hmmmmm... great little song!

Oh wow! You wrote directed and acted in this! Really well done. This kept me interested all the way through. And congrats on using all those locations, really well done, it added quite a bit to the short.
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thanks for comments! really glad you liked it. this short had to have as many locations as possible. besides it was fun to go out and hunt for new places to shoot. i had three other places in mind too. i wanted hundreds of people if possible. i may yet try, anything is possible, this short showed me that much...

for instance, i didn't have any actors lined up to shoot the deli. i did have the gracious consent of the owner but that was it. i had a couple of actors, but they canceled. with the deadline approaching, i winged it. i went to the deli with a tripod and hoped that there would be a couple of strangers there who'd be willing to participate. the guy who i used didn't even know anything about jon jacob schmidt... its not easy to explain to an adult what that song is about, really, its like WTF... well, it did make it easy for him to act like he did though. he was a great sport. so was the woman, she went on and on about the days when she was a PA in manhattan. some cool stories. never know who you going to meet.
 
Hey Hoz...You got a lot accomplished with this flick. Lots of extras and locations...put in a lot of work. There defeinately was a Twilight Zone spirit to this as I seem to recall many episodes that dealt with vanity and hubris. It felt very familiar in that sense.

The acting came across well and outside of the audio being a little quiet in some spots, everything came together well. I liked you main actress performance. Fun flick. Good job man!
 
Watched and voted, now for late comments:
I liked the story and compliments on all the locations and different people you managed to rope in on this. I know that changing location frequently and dealing with a lot of actors/extras makes it much more difficult to keep the quality up, but you did have some problems here. A lot of the photography was burnt out in the highlights or rather flat: a bit more attention to lighting (especially some fill) would have helped. A lot of the framing was also rather uninteresting. Some monologue was unnecessary (e.g. at 4:10: "What am I going to do" etc. - we already understand that he's thinking that). Fun story though, it kept me interested and it had me smiling.
Jason
 
Horncastle said:
Watched and voted, now for late comments:
I liked the story and compliments on all the locations and different people you managed to rope in on this. I know that changing location frequently and dealing with a lot of actors/extras makes it much more difficult to keep the quality up, but you did have some problems here. A lot of the photography was burnt out in the highlights or rather flat: a bit more attention to lighting (especially some fill) would have helped. A lot of the framing was also rather uninteresting. Some monologue was unnecessary (e.g. at 4:10: "What am I going to do" etc. - we already understand that he's thinking that). Fun story though, it kept me interested and it had me smiling.
Jason
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thanks for the comments, especially for pointing out what i need to work on, most helpful !:thumbup:

also a big thanks to Champloo and SparkyZa :beer:glad you liked it.
 
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