"Bits and Pieces" by: Justin R. Durban

This was a rather touching film. The banishing of the "liar" girl whose face is badly scarred works as an excellent catalyst for the story's moral thread. The film generates a comfortable intimacy between the monster and the girl. It's interesting to see a "monster" film twist the genre to develop grounds for solidarity between the protagonist and the monster. This has been done in a vast number of films, but your take on it is very gentle and affectionate. The film also works as a social commentary on the stigmatization of those who don't quite measure up to idealized beauty or high, often-times unattainable levels of "moral" values promulgated by overly devout theists who lose their sense of humanity over banal sacred rituals and codes.

As I digress, I should really get back to the film itself. The cinematography is very strong. I like the soft, not too blatant contrast between the cold, isolated atmosphere of the orphanage attic and the warm, inviting monster's den. There are small things I could "nitpick," but it really would end up being just a difference in aesthetic taste. I really thought the film looked wonderful.

There are times when the acting dips into stiffness and rises into exaggerated performance, but as a whole, the performances were very believable. The young girl did a fine job carrying her weighted scenes and the woman was very cold and menacing. The monster was performed very well physically, and even though I understand and sort of agree that the voice might resemble pop-icon characters, we must remember that this film is certainly geared toward children. They would definitely respond well to the voice.

The sound design was very solid. Levels were mixed well and I didn't catch anything that really stood out; nothing that I thought shouldn't really be there. For the kind of film you shot, things just made sense.

The last portion of the film was quite shocking. Not entirely sure what I think of it. I'm pretty tired and since the ending left me with a lot to say, I'll just leave that for another time.

anyway, really strong film. Enjoyable viewing. :thumbsup:
 
Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention the make-up/wardrobe! Really excellent work there. A tremendous amount of detail was attached to the monster. The girl's scars were quite natural as well.
 
That was wonderful... And, as expected, the music was perfectly suited for the production. I am not sure if anyone caught it, but "Solider's Orphange" was interesting... Did you mean "Soldier's Orphanage"?

You need to know that the possible misspelling in no way detracted from the film... but I would correct it before sending it to any festivals. Also, next time you may want to consider blocking light from a window from the outside of the window and not with a black cloth folded and attached inside. I noticed it as an unnatural addition to the room of the little girl.

I am VERY impressed by your lighting. Wow! Acting from the little girl was great!

Top three for sure!
 
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I'm wondering what your thoughts on the 7d are after making this film. I'd love to see a less compressed version, but even at <50MB it still looks gorgeous. What are your thoughts on the workflow and how the camera performed?
 
and the music if anyone would like to have a full mp3 copy :)

"Bits and Pieces - OST"
http://www.edgenmusic.com/edgen_bits_and_pieces.mp3



Scott, in terms of workflow on the 7d.. the .mov files straight from the 7d were choppy as hell. We had to convert them to avi's.. I can't remember the conversion tool we used, but it gave it a more washed out color. I prefer the sharper original versions but editing was a beast. I'm not about to spend another 4k for an expense paper weight with FinalCut.

Otherwise, John knew his camera in and out and was whipping through iso's and apatures. i tried to keep up, but gave up and focused on other things.


i'm curious everyone that's seen the film... It seems the 'montage' sequence was a weak moment for many of you. Was it just jarring to come out of nowhere, the over the top disney music, or... Too many fades and dissolves? what could make this transistion better? We are going to put a few more scenes in the final that we had to cut for time constraints so i'm curious to see if those will make a difference.

Thoughts or suggestions?

cheers!
/j
 
Edgen said:
i'm curious everyone that's seen the film... It seems the 'montage' sequence was a weak moment for many of you. Was it just jarring to come out of nowhere, the over the top disney music, or... Too many fades and dissolves? what could make this transistion better? We are going to put a few more scenes in the final that we had to cut for time constraints so i'm curious to see if those will make a difference.

Thoughts or suggestions?

cheers!
/j
Click to expand...

To me, the biggest problem faced by this sequence is a result of such a constrained time limit. It's difficult to pack a story with as many deep currents as yours into such a small window of time, especially when you want to show the two growing as friends and enjoying time together. At this point, there are very few options besides doing a simple dissolve montage to show time passing and their friendship growing. I suppose you could single out just a few occasions and just do some elliptical cutting with a little extra dialogue and shoot the scene from more objective POVs; to sort of establish that time has passed and they've begun participating in activities together. The activities and dialogue could eventually lead into the monster's "decision" to take her to a better place.

Just an initial thought. It really is a time issue that must be dealt with. The "disney" music you mention does sit a little heavy after ingestion. And during my review, I mentioned that it felt like a children's film, but the brutal element toward the end does seem to negate this notion a little.

It's a tough call.
 
I heard great things about this little short and I had a bit of time, so I took a look at it. Absolutely fantastic. I was drawn into the story and I think you produced a beautiful piece of work.

Congratulations,

Kegan
 
Lawsuit_Boy said:
To me, the biggest problem faced by this sequence is a result of such a constrained time limit. It's difficult to pack a story with as many deep currents as yours into such a small window of time, especially when you want to show the two growing as friends and enjoying time together. At this point, there are very few options besides doing a simple dissolve montage to show time passing and their friendship growing. I suppose you could single out just a few occasions and just do some elliptical cutting with a little extra dialogue and shoot the scene from more objective POVs; to sort of establish that time has passed and they've begun participating in activities together. The activities and dialogue could eventually lead into the monster's "decision" to take her to a better place.

Just an initial thought. It really is a time issue that must be dealt with. The "disney" music you mention does sit a little heavy after ingestion. And during my review, I mentioned that it felt like a children's film, but the brutal element toward the end does seem to negate this notion a little.

It's a tough call.
Click to expand...

Thank you Jon... Definitely some stuff to consider for the longer cut. Maybe gradually bring the dissolve fades in and not force to much too soon. Maybe one long cut of them developing their relationship, and slowly bring in scene after scene.

We'll see. it's Just a pain to go back and re-score/sound FX a 'un-locked' cut of a film. It drives me nuts when directors change picture after i've scored their film. The software is just not conducive or perhaps there's just too many other things to worry about and to do.

Keep the crits coming folks.. I appreciate you all stopping in and watching our film.

Cheers!
/j
 
Thought it looked good, and you pulled a good performance out of the child actor. But to be honest the story kind of lost me once the dialogue got going. But from a technical and direction standpoint, great work.
 
I like your film. A very touching story. Especially I love how the monster was created and that the monster has emotions.

Susanne
 
Edgen said:
Scott, in terms of workflow on the 7d.. the .mov files straight from the 7d were choppy as hell. We had to convert them to avi's.. I can't remember the conversion tool we used, but it gave it a more washed out color. I prefer the sharper original versions but editing was a beast. I'm not about to spend another 4k for an expense paper weight with FinalCut.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I followed the last part. Are you saying you didn't use FCP, but if you had a computer with it you wouldn't have had the choppy *.mov files?
 
Yes, Final Cut Pro could easily handle the files on a mac. But, the PC just couldn't keep up. yes, yes.. laugh up you mac people. But, once we converted the files to .avi, it worked just fine.

I edited the film in Vegas9, but we are having issues exporting at 32bit, so we may have to re-edit the film with premiere just for the CC purposes. uggg.
 
re: http://www.edgenmusic.com/edgen_bits_and_pieces.mp3

An emotional piece and really was an integral part of the viewing experience.

I was wondering if you have any personal songs outside of scoring?
Something you've written specifically to stand as a solo work?

I checked your website. Impressive. Obviously soundtracks are your ticket.

Any personal projects though, songs that you can share?
PM is fine if they aren't something you want to share publicly. Knowing musicians the way I do, I find it hard to believe you wouldn't have some solo songs/projects/experiments tucked away somewhere. I'd really love to hear some of your solo ideas if your willing to share them, privately or publicly.

Thanks.
 
Raptor365 said:
re: http://www.edgenmusic.com/edgen_bits_and_pieces.mp3

An emotional piece and really was an integral part of the viewing experience.

I was wondering if you have any personal songs outside of scoring?
Something you've written specifically to stand as a solo work?

I checked your website. Impressive. Obviously soundtracks are your ticket.

Any personal projects though, songs that you can share?
PM is fine if they aren't something you want to share publicly. Knowing musicians the way I do, I find it hard to believe you wouldn't have some solo songs/projects/experiments tucked away somewhere. I'd really love to hear some of your solo ideas if your willing to share them, privately or publicly.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Sure! I've done quite a bit of solo stuff. you can check out my albums at www.edgen.com/music/albums.html
http://www.edgen.com/christmas is my christmas Album.. :)
"Discovery", "A Better Place", "Winter Solitude"etc. are all solo projects. Another big is music for my Kings and Kingdoms project. www.kingsandkingdomsmovie.com (just don't quite have all the 50-60+million for those yet)

cheers!
/j
 
Mate you are one talented guy. Is there anything you dont do?

TO bits and pieces. WOW a monster story with a strong message!!!! Awesome, I really appreciate what you did with it and I thought it played out very nicely.

A lot of really strong shots and composition.

Small nitpick, sometimes seemed over acted and dialogue was a bit stiff.

All in all great work here. Well done.
 
Scott Lovejoy said:
I'm wondering what your thoughts on the 7d are after making this film. I'd love to see a less compressed version, but even at <50MB it still looks gorgeous. What are your thoughts on the workflow and how the camera performed?
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. We do have a 340MB 1280x720p version which looks great but I am not sure if we can give out that link or not. I will PM it to you after I check with Justin.

The h 264 codec for 7d footage is very smooth in playback but not good for editing native since it's an intraframe compression algorithm on cuts it stutters to catch up. It is workable but very much recommended to either change timeline to prores 422 and render intermeditate files (or use mpeg streamclip to batch convert to 422) when using Final Cut. If you use Premiere or Vegas I would recommend useing cineform Neoscene which is what we used.

I was blown away at how the camera picked up the lighting, The less light we used, the better the image was. It was a blast to film with as the HDMI output on an external monitor was EXACTLY how I envisioned the final color corrected footage to be. In fact only 4-5 shot have a mild color correction and the rest is untouched.
 
Edgen said:
and the music if anyone would like to have a full mp3 copy :)

"Bits and Pieces - OST"
http://www.edgenmusic.com/edgen_bits_and_pieces.mp3



Scott, in terms of workflow on the 7d.. the .mov files straight from the 7d were choppy as hell. We had to convert them to avi's.. I can't remember the conversion tool we used, but it gave it a more washed out color. I prefer the sharper original versions but editing was a beast. I'm not about to spend another 4k for an expense paper weight with FinalCut.
/j
Click to expand...

We used cineform neoscene to convert them to a 4:2:2 intermeditate and edit them. It worked great but it is a step that is not needed when using final cut as prores 4:2:2 is pretty much equivalent.

The cineform neoscene codec applied a more subdued gamma curve to bring back a lot of detail in the shadows. I VERY much perfer the lower contrast look and if you look at recent major cinema you will notice that they too use a lowered contrast look. The highlights are not quite as sharp indeed but to me that is a big part of the difference in look of film vs video.

Since Vegas would crash when rendering 32bit we had to do a very limited color correct 8bit which SEVERELY limited in what I could do in post and I am looking forward to re-doing it in Premeire or FCP. I'd like to tweak the blacks a little darker and rework the beginning shots.
 
Just wanted everyone to know we made it in the top 13 finalist! Yayae! :)

congrats to all the other finalists as well!
/j
 
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