Check out my new short

I'm a little late to the party, but I want to commend you on a beautiful story, well executed.

If I were in her shoes, I'd probably just overdose on sleeping pills. Less painful, but much less dramatic, too.

The camera shake in the last scene bothered me a little, too. Just wondering why you chose to shoot it handheld.
 
Great piece HuckLBerry and as Sam said this reminds us why we love the art form.

A very touching story and presented and cut with care.

Thanks
 
Powerful. simply powerful. My favorite scene was when she was telling him to leave and he wouldn't his delivery of those one word answers and the framing on that was dope. Great job. I felt that one. The acting was spot on. and the long takes worked. I do a lot of those. again. great job.
 
lots of great things
HOWEVER
I felt there were too many "basics" of cinematography missing: lighting was bad in some scenes, either too dark, or shot against the window (an absolute no-no as far as I know), lack of angles (one fixed camera angle for nearly the entire scene), unsteady handheld feel to the camera at times, and I wasn't crazy about the captions (it made it look like a TV commercial)...they were effective, but overused.
The story had its flaws too....the man ends up killing his loved one? I'm sorry but that didn't seem like a romantic or humane ending to me....
 
Could you elaborate on that?

As far as the story goes.... it just didn't "move me". But that's just one viewer's opinion. People react differently to films.
The cinematographic flaws though, were too obvious to call this "a masterpiece".
The badly lit scenes did not look good, in a documentary....maybe could be forgiven, but in a short film, especially if a DP was hired, badly lit scenes are unacceptable.
 
Very nice.

The only critiques I have is that I don't believe anyone who is in love would kill their partner in that way (for christs sakes give her some tranquilizers before strangling her to death) as I don't think it could be done with the kind of calmness displayed here - that's a story issue.

On the technical side - the subtitles really bugged me. They need to be lowered, you need to use a better font, and they need to cut on and off not fade. They were very distracting in the sense of "look at me I have a NLE and here are my titles" and I am petty certain you don't want to indtend that. I think they should be minimalized.

other than that - really great work all around.

I agree that the lighting was not great but I think that could pass as almost intended because of the handheld shakey feel you gave it. The overblown window could represent the overblown situation .
 
Thanks so much for the kind words. I've taken on all your comments and feedback onboard and I've pushed for the director to reshoot the end shot (with the violent camera movement). So we are going to try, and see how it comes out.
 
so daniel craig is not too busy filming the next james bond flick i take it? you have friends in high places my man. :)

seriously though, your actors are great. makes all the difference in the world.
 
Hi everyone

Just wanted to let you know that Love won the Gijon Film Festival for Best Short while making its premiere!

The film now qualifies for Academy Award consideration which is a really great bonus!

Thanks so much for all you guys who contributed praise and critism that helped when it came to polishing and reshooting.

Thanks again!
 
Blackout said:
On the technical side - the subtitles really bugged me. They need to be lowered, you need to use a better font, and they need to cut on and off not fade. They were very distracting in the sense of "look at me I have a NLE and here are my titles" and I am petty certain you don't want to indtend that. I think they should be minimalized.
Click to expand...
I disagree... I think the subtitles were a GREAT use of a basic tool. I loved the fades.

BEAUTIFUL short... and congrats on the win! It's inspiring to see such great work...
 
HVX200 (as is). Lighting is very simple we used a china ball on a boom pole in a few shots and some 500W (yellow work lights) with tuffspun and blackwrap for the night-time wide shot and for the scene where they argue.
 
Hi,

I've watched your short film and have some comments. First of Great Film! Amazing actors (or at least from my perspective), the lead man bears an uncanny resemblance to Daniel Craig.

Picture:

Amazing choice of set/set design/set decoration, beautiful stuff. Makes the wider visuals look very good. (The only thing is the 3 guitars and a huge red painting) distracted me from the actors/action on the couch.

Looks like you have 3 colors going through the film. "Blue tint", "Yellow Tint" and "Green/Brown"

Where green is the wheelchair and "learning of sickness".
Yellow/Warm is the happy past.
Blue/Cold is now or unhappy.

Superb idea, and works well to tell the story through the picture.

Only suggestion I would have is, in the daytime (Blue/Cold) shots you have clipping highlighs on everything that is white. Windows, pillows, even the white bag on the talents face.

The other two color schemes look under-exposed and under-lit, in a way where you cannot "push" them in color correction.

The blue daytime CU and Medium shots of the "first-attempt" have color/hue traveling, I think from clouds moving or the DP rolling the f-stop on the camera.

Overall I love the way you put the picture together.

Framing/Coverage:

One thing I've experienced with the stock HVX is that it is almost impossible to get a "handheld" look without the shot just being shaky past a certain zoom level. You've done a good job at keeping the frame steady, but some motion tracking may need to be a applied to a few seconds here or there.

The "final-kill" shot lacks coverage in my belief, you've shot only 1 size from two different angles. So even though the frame is moving, it becomes "stiff"/"idle" for a bit.

I feel that the out-of-focus for the 2nd angle in the "warm/bedroom" scene - cut to a 3d an in-focus - sharp shot (tallents faces) throws me off balance, as one is very fast moving and erratic, the other is steady as is the 1st with the pillow case.

Other than that you/your DP had a good eye for framing and choosing sizes/angles.

Sound:

I can audibly hear manual gate applied to certain words and then fade out into silence. It's noticeable on near-field monitors, it's more noticeable in headphones. With on-location sound that is your going to get that background room. Leave it in, clone it or loop it to remove ambulances, cars and other artifacts in places where your talent is not speaking.

I know it sounds great when it's over music. But when music is not there you need "something"
you can record another room, and layer it over to mask for the manual gate and then gate everything, where you don't have background score.

Other than this your source material sounds splendid, I hear the actors, I can hear what they are saying and all the intricate inflections/emotions they are saying it with. When the female is yelling, it's not clipped out so great job overall.


If your really want impeccable sound, you'll need to ADR the entire film. Then, you'll need to put in all of the FX sounds that will naturally be missing. (This is not an easy feat. It's easy to say ADR, very hard to do on a budget.) A track with room, a quality noise reduction plug-in and an EQ and soft knee compressor in this situation may sound better and will not take a week or two to do.

---

Over-All I am impressed. I don't know the size of your crew but I'd guess at 2-3 people. Great job!

The set is gorgeous, the story is great, the shots help the story telling, the actors are spot-on (no dead pans or theatrics). Lovely short film!

Thank you for sharing it with us!
 
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