Friends For Life - RELEASED

richke

richke

Well-known member
Hello all. I have release the final version of "Friends For Life." This was shot with a GS300 handheld, Rode NS1 mic w/ boom and hand made Softbox with 300 Watt bulb and other 100w surronding lights($45 total) So it is not high budget but we did what we could. Also another Side note Steve Barnett(who plays the therapist) has appeared on "3rd Rock From the Sun," "News Radio" and the film "Virtuosity."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1fG1IzuV-Q

Details
Runtime: 8:53
Drama

Logline
A family's move to a new neighborhood brings change they weren't looking for.


Cast
Nolan Oakes
Nicholas Kruger
Kim Perdue
Abe Jensen
Steve Barnett
RJ Decker
Daniel Oakes

Audio/Lighting
Abe Jensen
BJ Eaglesfield

Music
Kevin MacLeod

Color Correction
Abe Jensen

Written By
Paul J. Williams

Directed/Edited By
Richard Thomas Keel


Any Feed back would be awesome.
 
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Bump - Hoping one person will leave some sort of good feedback...positive or negative on this film.
thanks,
Rich
 
I liked your story overall, and the acting was enjoyable. I know its hard to work with kids and they werent perfect, but i think overall you got the job done. Acting seems tighter near the end, maybe they got a bit more comfortable as the shoot went on?

My biggest complaint however wasnt the writing, or the acting, its the overall look and feel. I guess it has more to do with limitations of your camera, and equipment, but many shots (especially out doors) were over exposed. I think some of your cuts were a little jarring as well. You open on an extreme wide shot and go straight into a close up, id like a medium in there somewhere maybe with a little camera movement. Some of those shots really could have benefitted from a thin DOF, like one where therapist is behind a mostly plain wall and doorway, etc... I also found sometimes your composition seemed off. One shot where Dr hands Mother a picture, she is looking toward left of the screen, but shes also mostly on the left side of the frame leaving all this head space behind her head and very little in front.

I think maybe editing could be a little tighter but nothing to bad. A good 60-90 seconds trimmed of this could really make it flow a little nicer. Intro is very cool, but for a short, i found it running a little long, and i was somewhat close to giving up on it before it even started. (Your first shot isnt til about 1:20)

I enjoyed the piece, i think it was a little slow to come to the revelation, but in the end I enjoyed it. Good job, keep it coming.
 
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Thanks for the input!!!! Yeah when I was cutting I realized just how bland everything was in the background of the characters. With white and grey walls in our house it really made the scene look more drab(which I wanted because of the tone of the movie) but it was far more drab and boring than intended after everything was said and done.

The outside shots were intentionally de-saturated...if that's what you were referring to. Overexposed? I guess I don;t know what that means. :) As for the shots wide-med-close. I haven't taken any classes and did not know there was a progression shot scheme, if you will. It makes sense but I was unaware of that all-together. I will deffinately keep that in mind next time out!

Thanks for the constructive critism - maybe someday I will have a better camera and lighting :)
 
Oh and on the Open with Extreme Wide to close up...that was a result of my bad decision on a shot. During the shoot I saw a football and thought "Hey I would like Rob's character to be bouncing it the air while talking." To give it a little more. Cut it and really liked. I didn;t even have the extreme shot and just had medium, then close back to medium and so on. It was not until after I finished my whole 1st version of the cut and let 10 or so people watch did someone come to me and say. "Why is Rob bouncing the football in the treehouse...before they go into the house and get the football." DAMN!!!!!! So I had to recut with the same footage and make the football disappear. So I did not get to use any of the shots I planned for.
 
I watched this one a few days ago and thought I'd left a comment, but I guess I forgot. This was a nice short and very professionally done. The acting was pretty good as were many of the camera angles. I did also enjoy the story, however I was a little confused about the conversation the mom was having with the therapist.

SPOILERS!!!!
I was confused about the mom and the therapist's conversation. It seemed they were talking about her son in the present tense and not the past tense or did I miss something? I was only able to watch it once. Was that whole ordeal something that happened in the past and the guy and the little boy at the end were moving into the house where the other family lived until their son died?

Anyway, good job here. Looks like there was definitely alot of work put into this.
 
SPOILER and answer for MARLON

The Therapist was Jake's(coloring kid) Therapist before he died. The main family moved to the new house. Jake was lonely and then started playing with an imaginery friend - but the imaginery friend was actually Rob who drowned years ago. So the therapist brings drawings that Jake had done when he was alive to help the parents cope with the loss of their child. You find out Rob drowned...then you found out Jake died right at the end...Rob scared him and he fell from the platform. That was the whole..."I told you would it would only hurt for a second." Rob did this because he was lonely and wanted a "Friend For Life." Jake starts drawing his parents because he misses them and then sort of passes on...i think :) - the neighhbors are the new family. With Jake now gone from Rob, Rob wants another friend...hence neighbor boy is next victim.

It is shot to make you think Jake is alive in present time. Then reveal Rob is dead...then Reveal Jake died from falling...by Rob.

Thanks for checking it out and I hope this explination helped out :) Might be worth another watch :)
 
anyone else want to give their input? I am happy to watch anything you have in return.
thanks,
Rich
 
I thought it was a well made short.

The good:
I liked the story and the revelation ending. Very Sixth Sense-y. And I actually really enjoyed the opening credits. It was more creative than just putting the names over shots and went well with the story. The acting was pretty good all around and it's hard to get a good performance out of amateur kids, so that was excellent. I liked some of the shots and camera movements, although I think they would've really benefitted from some equipment to smooth them out, like dollies and sliders.

The bad:
There's nothing really BAD to say about the short. A couple of the edits were kind of abrupt, like around 1:29 and 1:42. Like I said before, the downward shot at 1:26 and the trucking shot at 4:11 would have definitely benefitted from a slider or dolly. You might have also been able to do a bit of editing to cut down on some of the run time and make the story flow together a little better, like introducing the new neighbors into everything.

All in all, good job! Keep up the good work.
 
Thanks for checking it out WTD and thanks for the input! I don't have any dollies or anything since I have no real good equipment. But I have seen some good DIY dollies and rigs that I plan on trying to make this winter!!!!

Let me know if you have anything you would like me to check out.
Thanks,
Rich
 
there's no feel that it's a MOVIE, why? Because you were shooting it on consumer zoom lens camcorder.. You credited someone for sound/light. I can't hear sound and don't see lighting done. If you want to start getting that "film look", stop using zoom lenses and camcorders, get yourself DSLR camera, any with a video function in it and start shooting with it, recording sound separately and then syncing it in post. Just to give you example what I am talking about, look at this guy's work from Spain who only used 7D with 2 lenses and Zoom H4N

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15788&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
 
I list lighting and audio because there is lighting and audio for what my skill set and price point is for equipment. Trust me you would tell a huge difference if I were using the on-board mic vs the mic I am using. Can't hear sound???? Did you have your PC muted? Same goes for the lighting - sure it is a cheap setup but you can tell the difference between lighting and no lighting...Did you even watch it or did you just saw I wrote I used a "Panasonic GS300?" and thought..."There's no feel..."

I do what I can with what I have and I stated that in the description. So how about some feedback on the less obvious things besides..."Consumer lenses suck." Thanks Einstein I hope you didn't waste your time and money to get taught that. People like you who jump to that right away bring the whole idea of film making un-enjoyable.
thanks.
 
galapagos said:
there's no feel that it's a MOVIE, why? Because you were shooting it on consumer zoom lens camcorder.. You credited someone for sound/light. I can't hear sound and don't see lighting done. If you want to start getting that "film look", stop using zoom lenses and camcorders, get yourself DSLR camera, any with a video function in it and start shooting with it, recording sound separately and then syncing it in post. Just to give you example what I am talking about, look at this guy's work from Spain who only used 7D with 2 lenses and Zoom H4N

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15788&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Click to expand...

I will have to disagree with this. I shot two of the best shorts I've ever done on a consumer camcorder, the Canon HF S 10. It's not really all about what you have, but rather how you use it. You can have the best camera, but not know a thing about lighting and your footage will not look very good. On the other hand, you can have a standard definition camera and light it right and you'll have great quality.
 
Richke,

Here's my take on what you could do to improve this story, and others going forward. Making movies is a constant learning process, and only when we hear the problem and honestly address them can we improve as filmmakers. Please don't take any of these observations as personal attacks, because they aren't meant to be.

And, of course, all films are subjective, so these are things that I caught initially that bothered me. Some people may actually find some of the things I observe as being a negative as being a positive. With that out of the way...

I thought the opening credits were too long. Cute approach, but ultimatly the draw-on effect just wasted time in my opinion. You could just cut between the fully-drawn cards. And front-loading a short with too many credits is a great way to make people's eyes glaze over, which probably isn't how you want to start a short film.

The kids dialog often wasn't age appropriate. Sometimes they sounded like adults pretending they were kids. The kid with glasses was irritatingly mechanical in most of his speech. The other kid was better.

The kids playing while the guy rakes felt really forced and unnatural. Felt staged, not authentic play.

Some of the angles felt really foreign and bizarre. Also, a lot of the framing was odd.

We didn't really need to see so many cuts back and forth of the shrink and the dad, seeing the shrink in his car, pull up, get out, react outside, react again inside. The shrink could have been covered well enough with maybe 2 exterior shots.

The actress at 3:23 was overacting when she explained her kids behavior.

The audio queue at 3:50 was bizarre. I expected to see the kid with a big butcher knife behind his back, not just getting frustrated.

Sorry, didn't get all of the relationships about dead kids and imaginary friends that you've had to explain to people. Take that to mean they weren't conveyed well enough. This, my friend, is the hardest part for me with making films. You don't want to cross the line of subtly, but sometimes you have to. We all hope to make intelligent films, but its really hard to pull off well.

2:00 is too long for final credits on a short. I'd personally double the crawl rate. And when you bring up the image the credits are too washed out to read. The video after the credits I felt was pointless. And the "Thanks for Watching" yells "I'm a home movie".

Congratulations on creating a short, wrangling people to cast, and completing the edit. You've established yourself as more dedicated and motivated than most people who post things here in the forum. Looking forward to seeing more from you.
 
Thanks for the review. The end credits thing is something I do in all my movies...So I was just following the pattern I did. You;ve made a lot of great points and though I don't really get the framing and angles simple because I get an idea of how I want the shot to look like and roll with it...I don't over analyze that part.

But I do agree with a lot of the things you said and will make a concious effort in the future to correct these things. But it's funny you never see them until someone points them out - LOL - I thought the credits would help the story some but yeah 1:35 for intro credits - 6 minute film - 2 minute outro(which in all honesty I didn't think people would watch the end credits so I was doing my own thing and added a shot I liked that didn;t make it into the film) :)

Thanks for checking it out. Let me know if you have anything you would like me to watch.
Rich
 
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