4 min short on "Great Loss"

M

motodavey

New member
Hey guys,
Here's a short I did for my church when the pastor spoke about going through a "Great Loss". I know the song was ripped off from Iron and Wine, but it's just a filler until I can get something else. I tweaked the colors a ton and desaturated to get it lookin filmy. Let me know what ya'll think!
(shot with the dvx100 of course!)

http://www.hillslide.com/a/videos/great_loss.mov
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

I liked your color and the concept you used throughout of his family vanishing from his life midscene. I also thought the home video look was good in those scenes, but I think it would have benefitted from a more polished, conventional approach in the scenes expressing his grief.

Your actor was pretty melodramatic. I'm not sure whether that was his fault or the fault of the writing, but it was kind of over the top at a number of points. Also, it was just plain too long.

I think a good thing for you to work on next time would be lighting (which you didn't seem to do). You seemed to have some pretty good shots, composition-wise, but they suffered from things like blown-out windows due to your lack of available light. This may have been part of your handheld, home-video look; I don't know.

Also, next time shoot for a much stricter edit. If you were editing to the song, don't. Find a different song that is the right length, write your own song, or edit the song to fit. But for an illustrative spot like that, keeping it short is very key. Don't let people's attention wander.

Finally, speaking as a church employee, how did this go over? Was it effective in getting the pastor's point across?
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

Glass... I agree with a lot of what you said, but I also disagree with what you said about being over the top, maybe the actor could have acted better but I have been put in this position before. It is by far NOT! too over the top. I think it would be very hard to express on film what someone goes through with this type of loss. Cinematically, I personally didn’t like a lot of the handheld. I think the emotion would have been greater with more static shots. I also think some of the handheld help with the feeling. It was just too much. I also would have like some closer shots. ECU.
You hit my cord Moto.... I think you hit your target cinematically or not!
I loved it and thank you for sharing.
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

[quote author=bryster link=board=Clips;num=1100415996;start=0#2 date=11/14/04 at 10:56:42]Glass... I agree with a lot of what you said, but I also disagree with what you said about being over the top, maybe the actor could have acted better but I have been put in this position before. It is by far NOT! too over the top. I think it would be very hard to express on film what someone goes through with this type of loss.[/quote]

I wouldn't argue with someone who has gone through what I haven't, but I wasn't really referring to what the actor was doing. Just the way he did it. Just didn't look natural.
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

I liked the film overall, It captured the emotion well as I recall it (shudder) I think the zooming in and out thing was bad except in the reflection sequences where it should look like home video or film. the shots where we actually observe the effect on this guy realtime should have been more solid IMO. I thought the acting was pretty good,.
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

I have to agree with Glass about the actor, but I wouldn't make it an all encompassing statement. More like he wasn't believable in a couple of scenes. When he kicks over the kids bike and looks up at the sky and yells "why", I just don't believe him. Doesn't seem genuine. But I thought he was great in the rest of it.

On a technical note, overall, it was nicely done. The one thing that bothered me was the "pop" you have going on in the beginning when we're watching the man wash his face in the bathroom. You crossed the 180 degree line there and it was a big pop to me (ie. in one frame he was on the left side of the screen, and then suddenly he's on the right). You can get around that in the editing by cutting away to something else in between the crossing of the line. (ie. insert a flashback sequence between the cut)

Overall nicely done. Good use of color correction and song choice to set the mood.
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

thanks for the comments guys, it will be shown this next sunday, and after watching it more, it definately could be shorter, maybe half as long, so i'll have to edit it down. ya, i should also do less random zooming, with the manual zoom. it's fun, but can be distracting to the viewer
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

Oh that reminded me. Yeah, the zooming was bothersome. Not because the technique is a bad thing so much as I don't think it was used with confidence here. Felt like it didn't zoom in fast enough or like you weren't sure if you were doing it right. Felt more experimental than intentional.
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

Hi Moto

first just saying a nice congrats on you for serving the Lord with your art. here are some of my thoughts

overall - nice, captures some genuine emotion at certain peaks

constructive criticisms
- like a fwe people have mentioned already, zooming didnt seem motivated and was noticeable and took viewers attention away for a second cause it draws attention to itself...and thats usually not good
- I think the way you conveyed grief could be handled a bit more subtlely - like when he was crying "why" - storyteller32 was right - it wasnt believable. and it seems unlikely he would kick the kids tricycle away if he loved his kids. I think more subtle would work better
- the parallel flashback editing was nice at first, but you kept bringing it up everytime and it was too much...try more variety - like for example, switch to some POV flashbacks insted of objective flashbacks

keep it up!
 
Re: 4 min short on "Great Loss"

nice work. ill say congrats to you on serving God with your talent as well. i liked this short ..mainly because i could relate to it. thats would certainly be a great loss. i think you communicated the point effectively. i wouldve liked to see some more of a flash or some sort of transition between the guy alone, and the flashbacks instead of straight cuts, but it worked ok as it is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top