ANONYMOUS - Anthem78/CineMark

I think this was the first one I got a chance watch yesterday. I loved it, had that "spiderman" feeling to it. The monolouge was great, the shots were crisp and clear.. and him getting that bullet out of his arm? OUCH. That was a pretty realistic wound there. he just kept.. digging haha Loved it
The news. could have been done a little better ( I think it lacked background sounds and um... the hum of the tv or a little static would have been great additions! ) For your first short film? Awesome job :)
 
excellent short. great atmosphere created with good lightning and good camera work.

loved it.
 
i just finished reading the posts, and I think you have received some honest and sincere feedback, much of which I will not reiterate. This is a great start for a first-time film. I cringed when I watched the lead "dig" for bullet in his arm...yikes. This was nice, but the shot could have been shortened - especially for your "weak in the stomach" type of audience! HAHA!

Just wish there was a little more plot to the film. Appeared to be more of a pilot for a future series than a full-circle film. But I guess this can develop with time, right?

You should be proud of your first film. Congratulations.
 
Thanks for the great feedback everyone - I love hearing it. I probably will re-edit at some point with all this in mind. We did our best, but we're still learning.

If there are any questions on anything, please ask.
 
i thought your cinematography, lighting, and color were excellent. i'll bite on the questions offer:

how did your get the 2.35:1 cinemascope aspect ratio? did you crop? use an anamorphic adapter?

did you use much color correction or is the look all lighting and in-camera?

how did you do your credits? where did you get the logos? are they vector files (like eps)?

nice work. i thought it looked great.
 
I have really appreciated this short; very well done...
I'm at my first experience too but I'm very far from your work!

just a question:

how did you shoot the arm-bullet scene??? I need an instruction manual:love4:
 
RDragonFilms said:
I loved it, had that "spiderman" feeling to it.
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Thanks for the compliment. In what way do you mean this had that "spiderman" feeling to it? I'd love to have more of an explanation. But thanks!
 
theloniusjones said:
i thought your cinematography, lighting, and color were excellent. i'll bite on the questions offer:
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Thank you, and I'll be happy to answer.

theloniusjones said:
how did your get the 2.35:1 cinemascope aspect ratio? did you crop? use an anamorphic adapter?
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We shot it all on 16:9 squeeze and then cropped in post. It made it more of a challenge to remember for framing during shooting, but it was worth it. My brother (Anthem78) can explain it better, because he did the editing.

theloniusjones said:
did you use much color correction or is the look all lighting and in-camera?
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we did all the color correction in post. we shot with tungsten lights with no gels or filters, just straight light so that we would have the most original, true footage so we could have a broader range of color to play with, as opposed to getting stuck with a color on tape and then not having as much range to fix it.

theloniusjones said:
how did you do your credits? where did you get the logos? are they vector files (like eps)?
Click to expand...

Again, my brother can answer this better, as he did them. I know he created the credits as a photoshop file and then imported that in FCP and adjusted the scroll time there. As far as the logos, that's what the internet is for. TV is equal to 72dpi, which is the average web resolution for images, as opposed to 300dpi needed for print. So it was no problem to find the images at that lower resolution. Of course we did some photoshop work to clean them up and make sure they were white on black.
But we're both graphic designers during our day jobs, so this kind of stuff was easy for us.

theloniusjones said:
nice work. i thought it looked great.
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I really appreciate that. Thanks.
 
OmaR said:
how did you shoot the arm-bullet scene??? I need an instruction manual:love4:
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What do you mean? I had someone really shoot me in the arm. This is cinema!

No, actually it was a complicated process. I have to leave in a minute, so I will post later tonight the details of how we did it. Latex, more latex, makeup, 3 types of blood, and a bullet.

Thanks.
 
I only watched this one once, but here is what I remember:

Pros - Great feel. Just a neat flow and good use of time. I was intrigued.

Cons - Not too many that I can remember off the top of my head, maybe a little less time listing all the villians who were captured.

Overall - A unique film, and in this day and age of films, I feel that's one of the best compliments I can give.
 
Nicely shot film... well done... the VO was bad at times (some audio pops on certain words) But the images made up for that flaw... I really liked the story, and the look of your film.
 
This film has character.
It gives the impression though that it's a trailer for a big movie.
One thing that I didn't like was that I felt that the whole short is centered around the superdooper "take the bullet out from the hand" effect.
Overall it has nice mood and camera work and colors.
 
I think that the main criticism here is that the take-the-bullet-out-from-the-arm scene is too long...

I absolutely disagree with this opinion: we need this kind of scene in order to understand the physical pain of the main character; it isn't just for understand what happened to him, but to feel how he feels...

I don't know if it's clear, my english has to be improved :)
 
best of the festival imo. you guys didn't try to do too much in the five minutes allotted, just set up a cool character around a cool FX set piece (bullet extraction) and it really worked for me. many of these films seem to be trying to cram in as much story as possible, and it seems that more than a few will have extended cuts out shortly. i'm all for story, but i find i'm having trouble following the plots of a lot of these films. this was what it was, a tight little short with some great cinematography and a character i'd like to see more of.

it's not totally clear what happened to the guy's family, or who was responsible, but it doesn't really matter. i still dig it.

a+ you guys!
 
Again, thanks everybody.

Omar, to answer your earlier question about the bullet wound, here's what we did:

1. Used a latex "prosthetic" of a bullet wound as the base, and glued that to my arm with spirit gum (note: you nave to use 'spirit gum remover' to get it off). I also had to shave my arm hair in that spot for it to adhere properly.

2. Applied liquid latex to blend in the edges of the prosthetic. We applied it with a sponge, dried it with a hairdryer (thoroughly), applied a second coat and dried it again.

3. Blended it into my skin (color) with some Matte makeup. This is the only area where I wish we did something a little different. We used a commercial women's makeup (maybelline dream matte mousse), because it was the best i could find with a good match to my skin color. Next time I would use a professional fx makeup, something like aquacolors or an item from Ben Nye. These are more of a paint than a makeup and would have worked much better, but I would have had to order online and didn't know the exact match for my skin. The makeup we used really soaked in to the latex and was hard to get right, but we made it work.

4. Next we applied 3 different types of blood: Ben Nye Fresh Scab, which is very very thick and provided a good base inside the wound as well as for the "dried blood" areas on the arm; Cinema Secrets Blood Gel which was very thick and gooey, but not real runny, we used that as a second layer in areas; and then FXwarehouse stage blood, which was very red and runny, and provided the blood used for the drip and the overall top layer. It was a combination of the last two bloods that was used to stain the shirt.

5. As far as the bullets, we bought a box of 9mm bullets, actually just the component, the part of the bullet that actually gets fired. I cut a few in half with a Dremel and then just wedged the back half into the wound until the end was just under the edge of the wound, covered it with blood, and started shooting. We had to be VERY careful putting the bullet into the wound, because it was an extremely tight fit. But it worked.
 
CineMark said:
Again, thanks everybody.

Omar, to answer your earlier question about the bullet wound, here's what we did:

1. Used a latex "prosthetic" of a bullet wound as the base, and glued that to my arm with spirit gum (note: you nave to use 'spirit gum remover' to get it off). I also had to shave my arm hair in that spot for it to adhere properly.

2. Applied liquid latex to blend in the edges of the prosthetic. We applied it with a sponge, dried it with a hairdryer (thoroughly), applied a second coat and dried it again.

3. Blended it into my skin (color) with some Matte makeup. This is the only area where I wish we did something a little different. We used a commercial women's makeup (maybelline dream matte mousse), because it was the best i could find with a good match to my skin color. Next time I would use a professional fx makeup, something like aquacolors or an item from Ben Nye. These are more of a paint than a makeup and would have worked much better, but I would have had to order online and didn't know the exact match for my skin. The makeup we used really soaked in to the latex and was hard to get right, but we made it work.

4. Next we applied 3 different types of blood: Ben Nye Fresh Scab, which is very very thick and provided a good base inside the wound as well as for the "dried blood" areas on the arm; Cinema Secrets Blood Gel which was very thick and gooey, but not real runny, we used that as a second layer in areas; and then FXwarehouse stage blood, which was very red and runny, and provided the blood used for the drip and the overall top layer. It was a combination of the last two bloods that was used to stain the shirt.

5. As far as the bullets, we bought a box of 9mm bullets, actually just the component, the part of the bullet that actually gets fired. I cut a few in half with a Dremel and then just wedged the back half into the wound until the end was just under the edge of the wound, covered it with blood, and started shooting. We had to be VERY careful putting the bullet into the wound, because it was an extremely tight fit. But it worked.
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Thank you for taking the time to give us an awesome bullet tutorial! I learned a lot. Great Lighting in your film!!! :)
 
To address the comments about the bullet scene taking too long:

If you think it took too long, we're sorry to dissappoint. We felt that it was important to show that this guy could dig into his arm with a pair of tweezers and pull out the bullet he was shot with. It contributed to 1) his strength and resilience to pain, and 2) to the fact that this guy lives a life of loneliness and can't go to a doctor or a hospital to get fixed up.

Also, if you notice he never stitched himself up because the wound will heal itself, he just needed to take out the foreign object.

Another point to notice is that there were more bullets in the tin on the table — so he's done this before. It was important to us to relay that even though he can stop bullets, he can't stop everything, he's not perfect. Also, bullets don't just bounce off him as they do Superman. It was also hinted at in the voiceover, "sometimes i think about letting those bullets through", leading us to believe that maybe he let's one through once in a while to see if he can feel something finally, or to satisfy a darker side of himself — like a someone cutting their own arms to feel the pain and see the blood.


Again, our main message in this story was that this guy lives a life of solitude and loneliness. There's no glory in being a superhero, no Wayne Manor, no Mary Jane or Lois Lane, just a lonely life hiding your identity. It was our take on a modern day super hero, in a world where there are no superheroes. There's no acceptance of anyone who is different.
It's along those same thoughts that we wrote the cop's lines —*we wanted him to just be dumbfounded and bewildered. He didn't care what he said to the news reporter; he didn't know what to say. He had never seen anything like it, it was a phenomenon.


Anyway, I'm glad everyone seems to like it so far. And thank you so much for some really good honest feedback. These are al things we may go back and fix or at least keep in mind for our next film.

And we REALLY appreciate the good remarks on cinematography and lighting, as this is what we love to do and want to get really really good at.

Briceman, thanks for the feedback on the voiceover. I will see if I can fix those pops. Again, this is our first film, so it was our very first time ever working with sound, so we were learning as we went along. I hope the next time our sound will have no issues.

Soffcore — you rock! Thanks for the awesome comments. You seem to feel the same way we do. We wrote this specifically to be 5 minutes long, no longer. We wanted to respect the viewer's time and slow down the pace so they could really understand our character. And it seems that it worked for you. About 85 more posts and you can vote, so please keep at it!!


AWESOME GUYS!!! Thanks so much. We love it.
 
If this was your first film, what were you doing before? I honestly think it's the best cinematography in the fest.

And yeah, it's hard to balance the plot in a five minute short. We were trying to get our film down to five minutes and couldn't even come close; it's pushing 20 min.

But your film isn't about a specific story other than your main character's personal one.

1 down, 84 to go, I guess!!
 
CineMark said:
1. Used a latex "prosthetic" of a bullet wound as the base, and glued that to my arm with spirit gum (note: you nave to use 'spirit gum remover' to get it off). I also had to shave my arm hair in that spot for it to adhere properly.

2. Applied liquid latex to blend in the edges of the prosthetic. We applied it with a sponge, dried it with a hairdryer (thoroughly), applied a second coat and dried it again.

3. Blended it into my skin (color) with some Matte makeup. This is the only area where I wish we did something a little different. We used a commercial women's makeup (maybelline dream matte mousse), because it was the best i could find with a good match to my skin color. Next time I would use a professional fx makeup, something like aquacolors or an item from Ben Nye. These are more of a paint than a makeup and would have worked much better, but I would have had to order online and didn't know the exact match for my skin. The makeup we used really soaked in to the latex and was hard to get right, but we made it work.

4. Next we applied 3 different types of blood: Ben Nye Fresh Scab, which is very very thick and provided a good base inside the wound as well as for the "dried blood" areas on the arm; Cinema Secrets Blood Gel which was very thick and gooey, but not real runny, we used that as a second layer in areas; and then FXwarehouse stage blood, which was very red and runny, and provided the blood used for the drip and the overall top layer. It was a combination of the last two bloods that was used to stain the shirt.

5. As far as the bullets, we bought a box of 9mm bullets, actually just the component, the part of the bullet that actually gets fired. I cut a few in half with a Dremel and then just wedged the back half into the wound until the end was just under the edge of the wound, covered it with blood, and started shooting. We had to be VERY careful putting the bullet into the wound, because it was an extremely tight fit. But it worked.
Click to expand...
Very helpful! :dankk2:
 
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