First Fest Entry Ever: SECOND CHANCES

I enjoyed your film. I thought the actors did a very good job and I liked the arc of your story.

Lastly, I especially liked the song that you used at the end. I thought it fit in with the mood of the film perfectly.
 
I looked great. The audio issues didn't take away from the story. I loved the grading. I don't like the soft stuff but it worked so well here.

And it ended perfectly with an amazing song. Great film.
The actress is beautiful.
 
The masked figures are the symbols of temptations which the character has to deal with right before his time on this purgatory place...

Thanks everyone for watching and commenting on the film, it means so much to me!
 
nice but...

nice but...

this film was nicely shot. The framing felt clean, but I'm guessing you didn't have a dolly because there was some pretty bad camera movement going on. BUt overall the look of the film was great. The audio however killed it. You should check out some lynda.com tips for fixing your audio, it woul've helped a lot. Your dbs was way to high on the treble side it was insane. I could hear every S sound that your actors spoke, but it would come tearing into my ears. Extremely distracting. Where'd you get the car with the smashed up windshield? And who wrote your music? If you don't mind me asking?
 
Okay, so I just had a chance to watch this one, and really enjoyed a great deal about it.

Some GREAT editing choices, and camera work (rough crane work, especially at the cemetery gate, but otherwise SOLID on much of the angle choices). The audio I felt was the weakest part of this film, causing me to wonder if there was ADR, or if the whole thing was just a few frames off? There was enough background/mic noise that I can't imagine it was ADR, but not sure what it was about the audio that was throwing me off.

Some super strong moments from both leads, my favorites being the non-chalant, smaller movements ... where their faces said more than their words.

I had to work JUST a tad to pull together some of the story elements such as the maked women kissing, etc., and then the very ending, as far as her being sure if he wants to commit to her in such a way, that she had been fine without him up to that point, etc. But I still loved the story concept of them fighting & dying together in the car wreck, and still spending eternity together. Very cool. :)
 
Norm: thank you so much for the comments and yes, audio was our biggest problem as the location was right in the middle of busy city... we had someone to clean up the sound the best he could but obviously not best... I thought about ADR it but I was afraid to lose the solid delivering that the cast did on the set... oh well, lesson learned.

Thanks again and it meant so much to me that you enjoyed it.
 
Oh, and BTW, is this your 1st entry, or actually your 1st film ever? If it's your first film, you are going to ROCK THE HOUSE soon! My first film STUNK, lol, and I'm on my 8th short film now, I think.

ADR can be a VERY tricky thing, so I understand your hesitation ... but done well, no one would ever be the wiser, and would HOPEFULLY take them out of the story less so than intrusive bad audio would.
 
This was my 1st entry... and 5th short film... my 1st short is unwatchable :-) well... so was the 2nd...

Thanks for the advice on the ADR... yeah, definitely something I'd remember that!
 
When it came to it being in production, audio was definitely the limiting factor. The rest of the production had to be catered around the audio, becuase, like how Vu was saying, we were in the middle of the city, the worst being the jets overhead.
 
Thanks tpludow for your comments and advice... it meant so much to me and sorry I didn't reply any sooner...

We actually went to a junk yard and bought a cracked windshield and just put on top of the "actual" windshield of the car and shot through it.

The score was composed by Jared Kraft and the song at the end was from the talented Justin Ewart.

Thanks again for checking it out.

tpludow said:
this film was nicely shot. The framing felt clean, but I'm guessing you didn't have a dolly because there was some pretty bad camera movement going on. BUt overall the look of the film was great. The audio however killed it. You should check out some lynda.com tips for fixing your audio, it woul've helped a lot. Your dbs was way to high on the treble side it was insane. I could hear every S sound that your actors spoke, but it would come tearing into my ears. Extremely distracting. Where'd you get the car with the smashed up windshield? And who wrote your music? If you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...
 
Hmm, something to consider in the future ... a REALLY good shotgun mic that's very directional with a good boom operator, and you may be able to help cut out a lot of the harsh city/jet noises. Or, since you only had two actors, perhaps LAV mics on each of them would have worked even better?

Not sure if you shot using a shotgun, or a hyper, etc. so just thought I'd throw those out there for future stuff.
 
Norm: great advice...thanks! yeah... we used a shot gun mic, actually had two and used one for each day :-) on the first day we used one and ran the audio into a dvx, then on the 2nd day, our guy fell through and no dvx so we used the other shotgun to run audio straight into the hv30... and the mics had a huge deadcat on it... and still, the road and air traffic was really killing us...
 
yeah for this i would have gone with two lavs, and a boom, as well as recording plenty of room tone (city-tone).

well done besides that. very moving story.
 
If it hadn't been for the extremely bouncy crane shots and the sloppy audio, this would have been more or less perfect. The acting was great, and pretty much every shot was simply awesome. The shallow DOF look really fit this film.

Great stuff!
 
Maybe I'm paranoid but I swore that the facial expression on the demon masks was changing! Nice. Really good short and well told story. Everybody's already mentioned the minor issues but I think you did a great job of putting across without being heavy-handed. There was a subtlety to the cinematography and the actor's performances which kept the film from becoming hackneyed. I enjoyed it!
 
I LOVED this. I'm really impressed with the story and the production value you got. I have an HV20 and I've been looking for a 35mm adaptor for some time, and the Handy35 really caught my attention with this short.

What problems were you having with your diy dolly?
 
Not really much to say that hasn't already been covered. Like most I'm sure, I watched all these entries in order and I have to say you set the bar pretty damn high. It's a shame the crane shot didn't work out perfectly but great job with the cinematography and casting! I enjoy the story board pictures you posted, really shows the work you put into this. Great job overall!
 
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