"Classified Intelligence": Take 2--My Undead film...

Hawk Teflon said:
What I didn't like as much: A couple of shots I think that could have been pulled, but that's nitpicking. It was also a little hard to hear Penny when the radio was on. I also don't like that this was exhibition only.
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Good to hear some feedback so soon. We had different versions of the radio in authenticity, but finally resorted back to an almost original where we needed to hear what the radio was saying, thus, loosening the car radio speaker effect and giving more low and high fqy back. Glad you enjoyed this. We, too, wanted this to be more than exhibition.
 
REVIEW!

Wow this one got my heart racing once things started to really develop.

What I loved - I just LOVE the fact that you are able to sell this complete story, with a car, an old camera, and good costuming, very very well done. Your wide shots were stunning, and your story was good overall. I also REALLY liked the shots in the rearview mirror, very well done. The radio broadcast and what we see of the alien(s) was very cool.

What I didn't like as much - I really only had two faults with this one and neither are huge/ or even bad. First, the ADR seemed just a tad off to me. I am however very critical when it comes to this stuff, and I really only noticed it in the beginning dialogue for the most part. Second, I loved being able to watch it in the timeframe that it was, but I really think you have something longer than 6 minutes and I would really like to see this thing developed a little more. Obviously that isn't really a bad thing, I just want/feel like there should be more.

As with some other people I'm bummed this was exhibition, but this was really well done and I enjoyed it a ton!
 
Truly appreciate the feedback guys. I will comment on the comments after I've watched everybody's films.

Bottom line: It's full of flaws but my ambition was to evoke a time and a place, and feel like the story takes you somewhere. I really wish I was able to put on the beret and be a better performance director. Doing the rebel without a crew thing kinda cost me my ability to focus on nuances when I was racing to get so many things shot before it was dark.
 
So glad to hear you guys didn't want this as an exhibition. Again, the rules clearly state the film has to be shot within the time frame of the festival. We had to use shots from last year. Elton and I are adhering to this festival rule.

We will be re-editing this short next week for film festivals. It will be about 7-8 minutes long, so we do understand it felt too short but we were adhering to the 6 minute rule even though we were exhibition.

Please be detailed in your feedback in all aspects because we will be taking note of consistent irks on the film. If we can fix it in post, we will. We will have a different leader, different intro to music, longer 2nd act & 3rd act.

So please, feel free to NIT PICK. This is very important to us. Thank you guys so much.
 
I think the chit chat was a little flat and the whole secret agent thing seemed to come from a different time period as the car and the mannerisms. I guess that is probably hard to nail down. Loved the UFO and even the glimpse of creature. I'm wondering if you thought of tossing some of its shadow over the girl when she screams? Overall nice job.
 
Time piece - ambitious for a short. Liked the way he checked out her butt - real. Sound muffled - Lavs? Good color.
Nice crane as the car drives away. The radio shouldn't cut on/off by itself. Car antenna modern short. What was on the trunk - appeared wet?
It's light out and he's using a flashlight? Radical lighting change on boom shot down on her then to him. Whoa, whoa. He didn't notice the spaceship in the light?
Cool CGI BTW. Darker yet at the car. Looks like we went from 4pm to midnight. Cool monster legs and crane shot at him.
Fun flick. Needed explanation how he knew where and why. I didn't see secret agent - everyone used to dress like him.
A bit more story would have made this really fun. Good job.
 
thetvirus513 said:
What I didn't like as much - I really only had two faults with this one and neither are huge/ or even bad. First, the ADR seemed just a tad off to me. I am however very critical when it comes to this stuff, and I really only noticed it in the beginning dialogue for the most part.!
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Thanks for the review! Actually, there is very little ADR. The entire driving scenes are with a mic mounted in different spots in the car, and me riding in back filming, and trying to monitor audio at the same time. I think there may have been a slip of sync by a frame or two from the encoding. Don't know why, but I did notice a slight drift that I wasn't sure how to fix. The master file and Blu-ray don't have the issue. What IS a problem is the low end rumble ambience from the motor, which there wasn't enough to time to properly 'fix it in post'. Working on that now.

Audio clarity certainly was an issue and I plan to iron it out before screening at a local fest.


@ Chris--Yeah, I don't think I pulled off the dialog as well as I should've. I am also looking to cut certain shots. I think it may feel more interesting if I don't show anything at all to do with Penny's abduction. Thanks for the critique!

@ Sunk--Lots of work to do on sound. It simply needed far more than we had time to do. Also needs a proper color correction treatment to deal with exposure issues. (another thing I am looking for help on. Not my specialty) This was a problem I had shooting so much of it with fading light. I really only had one or two takes on a majority of shots, and nobody to tell me when I'm screwing up. Had a ton of help from Jeremy who fixed some embarrassing things I tried as practical effects on a few shots. That guy is a phenomenal compositor.

Didn't want to explain much, and I know I probably blew it in the suspense department. Still learning.

Thanks guys!
 
Alan here on the post side of things.

Time was literally up against us to the last minute and even well past the deadline. My first pass of the dialogue isolation from the low rumble of the engine was detailed and done precisely to not interfere with the body of the dialogue. If I actually upload this version and have everyone drop it into their timeline, you'll hear what I'm talking about. The engine was literally removed almost completely for dialogue editorial. You would have thought the entire movie was ADR'ed, but we decided it wasn't fitting in correctly and had to loosen up the engine removal roughly 20% all the while letting the engine kick in 80% of the time. The dialogue was muffled due to the engine and I did my best to mix it for clarity, but had to roll back yet again for other decisive purposes.

I noticed that the last shot with the alien swooping up the main character was off-sync. This was probably due to lots of picture changes during editorial. Roughly 5 or 6 cuts were made and the last 3 minutes of the film were delivered to be edited Friday morning w/o VFX included. The VFX sequences looked wonderful, but had a different time position than the original cut thus moving my alien sequence ahead of time by a second or two.

The off-sync with the dialogue must have been a Premier thing. I work with a couple of editors whose primary NLE is Premier and every time there's a sync drift. Both Elton and I chatted regarding this and hopefully wouldn't come up, but I guess it managed to creep its way out.

The radio was originally edited to sound very authentic to the way you would hear in an old car speaker system, but I was told that the message couldn't be interpreted and had to roll back more of the lows and highs to keep the message delivered to the audience. I wanted to cut a sound of the radio being turned off by either Penny or Richard because it was already awkward to have the radio come up and go out suddenly during mid-conversation, but none of the visuals provided that kind of cue or establishment.

Everything was shot beautifully and wished this was an entry of competition. Law-abiding filmmakers.
 
"Law-abiding filmmakers."

Yeah you guys shoulda just lied and said you reshot everything. :) No, I'm kidding. It's just good that you entered, even at non-compete level.
My full review is coming up soon.

I just wanted to tell Alan that, as a sound guy myself, I know you've been juggling a lot this fest
and i read your whole post, i feel for you man. If I make any comments about sound in my review,
they are to be taken as "ideas", not criticism.

The good thing is that this fest is just the beginning
for y'all and you can always make changes in the weeks to come for your festival run, which I am
sure you guys are going to do well in.
 
No worries Matt.

I felt that Elton had a lot more pressure than I did since he was the Captain steering our ship. Any comments, criticism, ideas are all welcome.
 
We'll turn off the radio during our next pass at editing. We'll also speed up the speedometer. My son is a car buff and he said, "Mom, the car isn't moving" -- but it was, albeit slowly, so the speedometer looks like it's at zero. Only a car buff would catch that.

Thanks for the comments and keep them coming. Only way we'll know what to fix in post.
 
Interesting story but I had some issues with it.
They're newlyweds, we get it. Between all the marriage stuff it was over a minute until we started getting to the good stuff. Not a big deal but if I was watching on the web, I may have tuned out.

The radio got me interested. Good stuff. The fact that he left the trunk open seemed oddly careless. Was this done by accident? If so, I would prefer a shot of him closing it, walking away, and seeing it click open just a little. I honestly thought he didn't close it on purpose.

Put down the camera! He's already told you not to film him and to stay in the car. I'm fine with her getting out, she's bored. But to grab the camera too? She's just trying to aggravate the guy at this point and he seems to have a short fuse.

Loved the look of this film. Sound was spotty in a few places but the look and feel of this was great!
Nice edit too.

Not sure where the green light came from but I'll assume it was cast off from the alien creature.

It still felt slightly unfinished. You guys have been working on this for a while so maybe I expected more.
It's good, don't get me wrong. But fine tune this baby up and move on.

I want to see the finished version. That's a good thing.
 
I think in another shot she went back to the back of the trunk, that was cut out. The longer version will be in more detail. Glad you want to see more, MAH, always a good sign.
 
It's not that. I don't need to see her going back to the trunk. I need to see him closing it. Or at least what looks like a real attempt to close it.
As is it really looks like he's leaving it open. On purpose.

It can be fixed I'm sure.

Cheers,
 
I like this one. The period, the clothes, the cars. You put a lot of thought and time into the look and it paid off.
The acting seemed a little stiff, not horrible, but it could have been better. The performances were hurt by the mix in the car. It sounds dubbed, not like they are actually in the car talking.
I know you only have six minutes, but it seemed odd that this guy would make a quick stop on his honeymoon to check out a UFO. As it stands, it seems like two stories in one with neither really connecting.
I loved the shots, the lighting, the landscapes. Nice use of the crane.
The shot of the UFO was a little hard to make out. This may be due to the compression but my wife didn't get it and I had to watch it twice before I could really make out the disk and see what it really was. I'd like to see this shot up a little longer. The flashlight playing on it was great, but I ended up watching the light and missing the UFO.

Overall a real solid entry and one of my favorites.
 
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