SHORT: Act of Fate - a martial arts action short (2011)

T

tehfaiz

New member
Hi everyone. I'm relatively new to posting on these boards but I've been a long time lurker. My group and I recently finished a short that we hope to get accepted in the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival.

I hope you guys enjoy the movie, we worked hard on it, and we'd like to thank you for watching.

 
I really really liked this. The fight choreography was very very good. I'm guessing that some of the fight sequences from Kill Bill were studied?? I can see that a lot of effort was put into this. Well done and I personally think that it is well worthy of getting into that film festival.
 
I thought the opposite from the above poster, to me the fight scene's were pretty weak, but mostly due to the audio, or lack there of. I think a good sound design would have added ten fold. something to look into before entering. The broken frame with multiple boxes was distracting as well. I thought it was fine for the opening sequence, but after that I would have eighty six'd it. The color temps changed in the begining pretty drastic on a couple clips. Overall I thought it was decent, and with some of the details straightned out, I think it can be much better. good luck with your entry, let us know how you do.
 
Thank you for watching - and you guys can see that this is relatively a no budget and learning experience for me. As for the choreography, I've been a kung fu practitioner all my life and I've always wanted to be a fight choreographer, and my aim was to take traditional styles and modernize them without it looking like a Shaw Brothers movie. All of the choreography was made from scratch by me to which we've practiced weeks prior to shooting.

I do agree with Maran that audio is what really kills the whole short. Going in this project, I learned a whole lot more that I expected to, and sadly not being able to fix some stuff while shouldering all the work and expenses of making even a tiny short like this. Well, hopefully next time I can make a better short, yeah?

Thanks again for taking the time to watch it. For all of it's flaws, I really am proud of making this and really happy that you guys watch it.
 
Hey for what it's worth you have some great potential here as a fight choregrapher. I think once you work out sound and sound effects you will bring production to another level. editing is great and camera movement is good as well. the kill bill style seems to be a little over done to me at times but hey just my opinion. Other wise not bad at all.
 
the idea of a fight scene

the idea of a fight scene

I was working on another short a while back that we never finished but we did salvage the fight scene as my stunt group's saving grace for all that work.

I'd just like to know if you guys would prefer a fight like this over the ones that you saw on Act of Fate. I'm trying to get an idea or a concept of a fight scene that's easily and universally accepted by the masses, despite culture or knowledge of specific "martial arts."


Oh, and this was shot with my DVX-100 with a SGM-100x boom mic.
 
The girl hit the one guy many times in the face, yet no blood on her hand? Then gives a palm blow to the other guys's face, but no blood on him. Not trying to pick it apart, since it is not too bad, but being the father of a martial artist some of the fight scenes are missing realism.

Dave
 
I thought this was a good short. I really liked the boxes and the cinematography was excellent. The things that were not as great were the acting and the fight scenes. I thought the fight choreography was great, but you needed better sound effects and the scenes seemed staged. Staged as in choreographed. I would say speed up the action and that would help quite a bit. Bump it up to about 115% to 125% on some shots and you'll see a major difference. One other thing I would work on are the hits. People have to know how to take a hit like it's real and throw a punch with bad intentions like it's real. These things will really sell the fight. The choreography is the hard part though and you really have that down to a science. Throw in the other elements and you'll really have something even better. Good work and keep them coming!
 
is it a cricket sound of about 10 seconds always repeating... I think the cricket is a little to loud...

Leave some wind sound to cover the "suddenly wind in the suddenly dialogue".

The sirene sounds a bit cheap... low quality... I think there are better ones on freesound.org

The shot of opening the door fade to white and then the sound of the shot with the body falling is nice. (the idea)

I would let the hartbeat start more quiet... and then raise up in volume. But it's more annoying... So..delete it.

electrical sound = to loud.....make it less "present", maybe some small reverb on it to make it sound like in a parking.

also the sound of the "hits and smashes" is to present. It "fight's with the real sound (sound captured during filming). So using some reverb and EQ (low cut) could help maybe.

the dialogue starting at 12:20 is out of sync... the sound about 4 frames to the right. (so the sound is to early)
 
Thank you for all of your input, I will take all the advice you guys have given me and work on it. I really appreciate the time you guys took to watch it!
 
I liked it. I thought the fighting was good, but I have low expectations when I see a female fighter on a low budget, because they're usually not good. This lady was, but her finishing moves didn't look so good until the final sword swipe, but her fighting was real nice. Overall I liked the general production and the cool shots at the beginning. I would like to know who did your title? I need something like that for my film.

-Nate
 
I have to agree that the camera work needed some work. While I understand the want to use a high f-stop for it's beauty, it throws things off for the fight scenes.
For instance, you had way too many close range shots in many of the fights. Such as the parking lot. It made sense for the staircase, to give the claustrophobic feel, but a parking lot is large and spacious, so the shots should've reflected that accordingly. In a nutshell, lower the f-stop and use more wide angle lenses. UNLESS the call for feeling cramped is needed for the theme of the scene, like a "Bourne" movie.

Secondly, my issue has to do w/ the fight direction. It's fast paced, and that's awesome. But, much of it didn't make sense.
For instance, why in the hell did a guy randomly have a WC sword on him, only for the girl to pick it up and not use it to draw blood? It made the tool pointless up until the very end. Additionally, the first "death" was due to a semi-claw grab to the throat, but no blood? Also, using Wing Chun alone becomes repetitive if your entire focus will be fight scenes. Ip Man and Wing Chun (w/ Michelle Yeoh) are great examples of how to make something repetitive appear to have more variations.

I'm a huge HUGE fan of HK Cinema; die hard Gordon Lau, Donnie Yen, Ng See Yuen fan, dude. So I see where you were going with this. But, I think the fights need to tell the story more, ala Corey Yuen's style, instead of just being actiony fodder like "Chocolate", that doesn't push the story anywhere other than for some oooohs and aaaahs.

Great effort though. And good imagery, especially in the multi-panel work.
 
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I would echo Marion Ladd's words. But I think it was very impressive how those fight scenes turned out in real time and without too much camera movement. Yeah maybe you could've done a little bit better with sound but a lot of filmmakers tend to do that initially. All in all I thought it was very good. I think one of the earlier posters missed the point about the multiscreen effect. Seemed to me like you were trying to imitate a comic book style. I thought this worked very well when the big black guy turned up at the end, some nice shots.

I hope the positive comments keep coming for this as it is a very enjoyable not too many frills film that doesn't rely on silly effects to get the point across. Best of luck with it whatever you choose to do. The best 15 minutes of my day so far!

Ray
 
I really enjoyed the fighting in the second clip you posted...I did feel like some of the fighting in the first clip seemed too "telegraphed"...like "ok, and now I'm gonna move left and wait for this punch"...plus..I think a lot of it had to do with the faces the two were making while fighting....some of the time they looked like two people sparring and not like people trying to out last the other in a fight to the death..other than that, awesome job!
 
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