Ben Sliker
Pain In The Ass 2.0
ken k and shawneous.
we were worried that if we released one of these with criticism built into it that it would be completely misunderstood. That's awesome that you worked really hard on your short. we all did. that really has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, effort doesn't automatically equal an awesome film. I worked really hard on my first few shorts too, and let me tell you ... they sucked.
We did a detailed analysis (in real time) of EXACTLY what we thought of your film. If you didn't want to hear what we thought about your movie, you shouldn't have started a thread.
perhaps you didn't like the format of our criticism and some of it's built-in facetiousness and sarcasm. cause, in fact, it is constructive. Our session is by no means what you SHOULD have done, or that what you did was wrong, but what we would have liked to have seen in your short, or thought could have made it better.
So ... to paraphrase ... constructively.
In the beginning, We believe the fades in the beginning of the guy moving across the screen are WAY too fast, perhaps eliminating one would have better served the shot. (for the 6 minute constraint).
There's lots of walking in the beginning of this movie. A lot that doesn't really say much to us. Also, we felt there's not really any motivation for the fade in from black and fade out to black in these shots.
We thought your costumes were great. But in order to really sell the medieval look to it, we thought the two characters needed to look a little dirtier, a little grittier and their clothes a little more worn, especially the male lead.
I think the next point I explained in depth enough. You have all these great locations and chose a fairly ordinary forest to have the meat of the conversation. But i was wrong about the insert, she is looking up at the trees (remember this was in real time), but i'm still not a fan of the spinning trees overlay.
All of your shots, standing alone, look great, but put together, feel a little forced, with some fade transitions to hold them together. Especially between 3:24 and 3:42, it's a little messy. And when I say "these shots don't mean anything to me", i wanna know why. Why is he walking down this awesome path, why does his sword have blood on it, why is he covering his face, why does he need to find this waterfall and cave? There seems like there's no struggle in his quest, he just walks around until he finds it.
The last shot. I felt that your two characters look more like part of the scenery than part of the story. It's not complimenting them, they are complimenting it. It looks great, it just doesn't make me feel anything for your characters, more "That's some great scenery".
I thought your shots suffered from having to be squished into a 720x360 frame and from washed out compression. I'd love to see an HD or even 2k version of this, I'm sure i'd be more awestruck by the locations.
Shawneous also said that he set out to make an experimental film. From what I've seen, it looks fairly conventional (which IS NOT a bad thing). I would like him to explain more which elements he thought were experimental. Of course, these are all mostly technical quibbles as well. And of course, this is all our opinion, you are fully entitled to say "i don't give a spit what you think" and that would be that. My hope is that perhaps one of our ideas makes you think about Aetas in a different way.
And like I said before, there's a lot of stuff in this movie that f-ing rocked, but you already know these parts, cause when you played it back on set, you looked at each other, and said ... "that f-ing rocked", or "that was sex", or "we're going to blow the DVXusers away" (and so did we upon viewing it). So pat yourself on the back for that sh*t, it f-ing rocked.
Which officially ends the longest review we've given to someone in Timefest.
OR I can give you this kind of review.
DUDE!!! Your locations were awesome, the RED is such a great camera, way to make the most of it! Look forward to seeing more of what you guys do in the future.
Which, if having to decide between the two, would say that the latter is in poor taste.
Last edited:
We're all good now, though. :beer:
