Envision & 235 Studios - "R.E.M."

This could have been called "Nightmare on Alicia Street" Where was Freddy?

The actress was good looking. The camera setups were kind of boring. I would have liked to have seen more altered view points, and more interesting movement from the camera. The blue lighting and smoke looked nice. I just would have been more terrified if I were the victim. You can't pull something this major on a person and then let them drift back into the story with a level head. "wake up alicia". It would have been better to have watched her screaming and panic stricken. Is getting attacked by a dream monster/spirit a routine for her?

The score was very useful in the action moments. The arpeggiated piano and string movements seemed out of place. I would have liked to have heard less melodrama and about the same amount of action cues. Perhaps go in and design freakier sounds and let that drive the score ala Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Overall, good job. I think this effort was superior to your hero film. It was far more simplistic and charming.
 
Nice job on REM. Overall, I think it was a success. The reactions to the first few sets of noises got my heart going and put me in her shoes right away (or, uh bare feet).

Camera motion and framing were technically great... I don't know if it is from being behind a camera too much or not, but a couple of the shots reminded me that there was a camera there. IE the POV pan across the kitchen and the dolly down the hall. The sequence up the stairs was beyond great and everything else worked.

Lighting was good. The kitchen was a little bland. Not necessarily unnatural. Maybe some flags to break up the white would have done the trick, not sure. Lighting for the Hallway, stairs, bedroom, etc worked fine. The blue light and fog might have benefited from being toned down a little, but it still worked.

Editing was clean. It was a relief to watch something with some flow. The cuts appeared to be based on frames (as they should be).

Sound, great. Again the initial noises helped pull me in and got my heart going.

Score... Justin, you are the man. How many scores did you crank out for this fest. I sure hope you want some more work.... :)

I thought the story was great. Perfect storyline for a short. I think a few mentioned the fact that she ran upstairs and not out of the house... I didn't give it a second thought.

I think Rebecca did a great job. Oh, and it has been stated, but.. wow, beautiful.

Kudos for doing this in such a short amount of time. Nice work!
 
Noct & snodart, thanks for the kudos. Rebecca will especially like all the props on her performance from everyone.

We had a mini-horror fest jam with her & her husband, David, over here tonight. Saw some good films & can't wait to comment on them (when I'm not so freakin' tired). Look forward to watching THE SEEING today (Sunday).
:beer:
 
Envision said:
Noct & snodart, thanks for the kudos. Rebecca will especially like all the props on her performance from everyone.
Click to expand...

Yes, thank you all so much for the feedback. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed watching more of these films and am impressed with what else I've seen out there. :thumbsup:
 
This was a very safe little film, not meant to push boundaries or
break any film language rules, ideas, originality and it shows. I
could not enjoy this becuase of that. It felt tiresome, very direct
and benign. This is not to say that it's a bad film. Just my opinion.

I have to say though, when under the gun one has the decision
to make, for better or for worse, when to drive into oncoming
traffic... figuratively. Why not take a chance and do something
different? Why not film something odd or experimental? If you do not
take the chance now, while your career is young, when will you?
Judging from John Hudson's comments I feel that your not challenging
yourself with safe titles such as this. I'd like to be there when
you put your creative side to the test instead of following the
textbooks and familiar conventions of the past. The basics are
covered. Get out there and give us something new!

I seriously subscribe to the idea of not being able to please
everyone and that one should do what pleases him or herself. What
I can't justify is a lack of imagination or originality. We live
in a world where the amount of knowledge available to us can be used
to metamorph ideas into just about anything we damn well please.
Consider this with your next fest entry and I mean it with all the
upmost sincerity!
 
Inexistence said:
This was a very safe little film, not meant to push boundaries or break any film language rules, ideas, originality... !
Click to expand...

Thank you for the review, and you are right. From initial idea to end of filming was 2 weeks. We were not attempting to break any barriers with this film. That said, I think what we did accomplish in such a short time was worth it. :)
 
John_Hudson said:
I have never been satisifed with anything I have ever done and wonder if I ever will be.

:( :huh: :zombie_smiley:
Click to expand...

You can have a son! This one always works!
 
Yeah, I agree. I've never been satisfied with what I've accomplished. The journey satisfies me. I definitely agree with pushing the bounderies on the creative side of things. With respect to the lighting...definitely agree with toning down on the blue. Should have considered putting some ND filters on my projector. The fog seemed overdone...I wish I had fog juice instead of smoke juice. I was not satisfied with the last scene with the "ring light" effect...it was late and we didn't have time/equipment to play with the location of the lights :( The scene in the kitchen...if I had a chance to do it again, I would have swapped all the floods in the ceiling with a lower wattage task-focusing bulb and made it a bit darker. Due to time constraints, I was just supplementing the existing kitchen lights. There also was not enough cinefoil available to control the lights from each ceiling fixture. The scene in the bedroom...lighting was to simulate moon light...if I had a chance to redo that one, I'd love to have the lights on beams from the outside of the windows. This would have been cool to allow more camera angles and to cast window frame shadows on the bed.

With respect to cinematography, love the running up the stairs movement.
Scene through the rails was too tight in focus...but we didn't have the lenses to narrow the focus range and to blur out the rails to focus on her running.
I would have preferred a shaky hand held feel when we had the POV shot...it looked like a robotic security camera rather than her POV.
Last scene, if we had more rails, I would have like to try to have the camera go through the doors and literally hit her tonsils...in a shaky sort of way like it was POV of the monster.
Being a still photographer, working with Ryan was a pleasure.

thanks for the criticisms...I feel the same way about
my work :)

Now back to my day job...
 
I have got to agree with Rebecca and John - kids rock!

Two daughters here though both of mine are now young adults. A bit of a challenge raising them in So Cal, but I have been lucky, they are both so much better behaved than I was at that age.
 
Geeez Norm your shorts always look soo good ...For a last minute short it was good ..liked the dream story line you took ( we all had those ) then to find it's not a dream...that was what we fear most I think .

I guess I'm way behind in viewing and have a lot of catching up to do ..dam this work thing..lol

Nicely done
Ian
 
Thanks Ian! I've got a BUNCH I need to watch tonight as well to catch up.

Not sure how this got onto the subject of having kids, but they are totally worth it. My three remind me of that every day.

Regarding your comment John of not ever being satisfied with your work, I'm right there with you. I will say that with regards to this short we achieved nearly everything we set out to do. Even looking at it tonight however with the 5.1 surround mix & on the big screen, I see things I wish could have been improved ....

I don't think I'll ever be TOTALLY satisfied with anything I do, as I'll at the very least learned enough through the process that I'll know I can do even better next time. But I do have a sense of peace with this short, which is nice. It's not something that's hanging over us any longer, is totally done (even have the cast/crew DVD's already packaged & ready to hand out), but still turned out fairly well for our expectations, considering the short amount of time we had, and limited resources we put into it.

Could we have done things differently & done even better? Absolutely. But do we feel good about what we DID do with what we had & set out to do? Yep, and that can be a hard thing to achieve at times.
 
GOOD CONCEPT. good actor....very good actor and fine looking......but i was waiting for a good scream. the hallway was a tad longer than i would have liked. but that's all that was questionable...the rest was good! your shorts are just improving more and more Norm! GREAT WORK!
 
kimko said:
GOOD CONCEPT. good actor....very good actor and fine looking......but i was waiting for a good scream. the hallway was a tad longer than i would have liked. but that's all that was questionable...the rest was good! your shorts are just improving more and more Norm! GREAT WORK!
Click to expand...

Thank you! I agree, the hallway was a tad longer than I liked as well. I have the bruises and rug burns to prove it. LOL. Thanks for the review. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top