SHORT: Harry Potter And Grindelwald's Demise - Fan fictional Feature film

J

Jardoss

Active member
Hello Dvxuser forum,
We're halfway through making a short-film/feature film about Dumbledore as 19 years old, when he meets Grindelwald for the first time, and loses his sister.
We received 1900 pounds in support from a film distributor in Norway, which makes this a whole lot bigger than we could ever have dreamt of!


The reason to why we're doing this is because Pottermore (2nd October is our launch date as well) is launched in a couple of months, and we're hoping to introduce fan fictional film, not just stories, into the world of Harry Potter. We want Harry Potter to live in films as well, not just in stories and fiction.


We've therefore released a short teaser for all of you to look at:

Here's the teaser/trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6htnZtQdkrM


Looking forward to hear from you,
Jarand
 
I'm a fan of Harry Potter and was a bit hesitant at watching this but I think it's pretty good. Can't wait to see the rest. Releasing fan fictional Harry Potter films is an interesting idea.
 
Completely agree with the above. I was hesitant to open it as well, but it looks to be well done. Looking forward to seeing what you guys do with it.

Kegan
 
First off, let me get something out of the way: I love the Harry Potter movies but I've never read the books.

I watched it all and I have to say that the production value kind of confuses me. My overall opinion? Pretty good idea with some interesting scenes, angles, and effects. However, I feel like a lot of this was marred by things that could have been done a lot better if you had taken the time. I don't know what your production environment was like, so it's hard to say with some things if you could have taken the time to do it right, but here's a breakdown of everything I noticed.

The opening is fantastic, looks great, sounds great, the music even fits well (more on the music later). The helicopter shots are absolutely fantastic, they add a TON to the production value of the film. It really made me feel like "wow, these guys really went all out for this, it should be pretty good!" However, as soon as the actors open their mouths, the production value established with the helicopter shots is thrown out the window. The acting in the first scene and pretty much all of the other scenes feels very forced and cliche. This kind of dialogue is hard, sometimes impossible, even for experienced actors to pull with off with experienced directors guiding them.

Moving on from that scene, the scene in the graveyard. The punch, or smack, or whatever it is, is very fake. That kind of thing needs to be planned better with the camera work and the actors need to get it down better. Also, the camerawork in this scene felt a bit off. When Dumbledore (I believe that's who it is? It's hard to tell) is walking away, he covers up the portion of the frame that you're still focusing on, the other character kneeling at the grave. So all we really get to see for an extended period of time is legs and half a torso walking away.

The following scene once again redeems my hope in the film. The helicopter shot! It's fan-frakkin-tastic and it really is one of those things you don't usually see in this level of film making. The scene on the dock is okay, the acting is better than in previous scenes and I actually kind of like the guy who's playing the informant, or whatever he is. The problem is, he garbles a lot of his words and he's hard to understand sometimes. Were it not for the subtitles I wouldn't have gotten much out of that scene. The scene is also REALLY dark, I feel like it would have been better to shoot this during the day. I'm assuming you don't have lighting available to you since it appears that none of the scenes used anything but available light (minus the green screen stuff).

The next scene with the old man and the gun seems too intentionally cryptic and dramatic. Why does Dumbledore point the gun at the older guy and then proceed to ask advice and talk to him as if they're best friends? The acting here once again felt a bit stiff. The older guy felt like he was projecting his dialogue and emotions a lot. That is, I felt like all his actions and ideas were very forced. Does he come from the stage?

The dream/flashback scene actually seemed okay, not too much to complain about.

The scene in the coffee shop has a few things I noticed. First and foremost, audio...but I have more general things to say about this as a whole that I'll come to later. The framing was off. For most of the scene the older man's head was cut off too much. Move the image down a bit so we can see more of his face. The wide shot felt too low as well, I'd like to see more of the older man's head. The lighting in this scene could have really benefited from some more thought. The actors are exposed okay, but the window is completely blown out.

The following woods scene is just really hard to watch. The lighting is REALLY poor, it's hard to tell anything that's going on and once again the audio is pretty much unusable.

The next scene in the field is obviously green screened. It's actually composited okay, there's no green fringing or anything. But the one angle and the way it's shot and is very clearly a green screen in a small space. The audio is a dead giveaway as well. It's very easy to hear the audio bouncing off the walls of the room, something you wouldn't hear in a wideopen field. Also, you cut the audio in strange ways. Sometimes it sounded like you'd cut it in the middle of a word or at the end of a sentence just a bit too soon. Sometimes it seemed as if the mouths were moving but we couldn't hear anything.

The continuation of this scene in the field needs a lot of work. There really is no audio other than music, this is a huge detractor. And mostly what we do hear is wind blowing in the microphone. Also, once again it's very, very dark and hard to see. The effects here aren't too shabby, and all the extras add a lot to production value. The explosion effect with the gun seemed a bit too effecty. Also, the girl, who was that??

The final scene on the mountain, same comments as before.

Okay, so the audio. That's definitely the biggest downfall of this film. Get a shotgun microphone (if you don't already have one) and put it on a nice long pole and get someone to hold it above your actors, it will make a world of difference. Having a shotgun microphone sitting on the camera is only SLIGHTLY better than using an onboard mic. In these situations, you might as well not have it at all if you're mounting it on the camera. I have a hard time believing that if you can rent helicopters and get all the extras that you can't find a person to hold your microphone. You could have at least done ADR for a lot of the scenes. Also in regards to the music, it was often times WAY too loud. Were it not for the subtitles I wouldn't have been able to get the dialogue. And, the usage of the Dark Knight soundtrack for a bit was really jarring, I don't think it fit the tone at all. Having an original score would have helped.

Which all brings me to what I said before about the production values being confusing. How did you have the money/resources to rent a helicopter and get the extras for the final scene but you couldn't do some of the other stuff better? The audio being the biggest problem, and the lighting and acting being the next biggest problem. If you took the time to do all the other visual stuff, then why not take the time to at least go back and rerecord dialogue in post? The acting isn't great, but it's passable. The lighting often times isn't great, and some cases is downright bad, but it would be bearable if you had great sound design. Also in regards to lighting and the image, I felt like the color correction was a bit too strong, but that may be personal.

All in all, don't take this EXTENSIVE review to mean I hate your film. I watched it all, which I wouldn't do if I hated it. I did enjoy some parts of it, but I feel like you maybe bit off a bit more than you should have for what seems to be your first film. Maybe you've done others? I'm not sure. But, I think you have a ton of potential and desire to make good movies with stories that really compel you. I'm certainly looking forward to your future films :) I hope that this was helpful and constructive, that's all I'm trying to do. Keep making movies!
 
First off, let me start by saying: We're only 16 years old, we live in Norway, and this is our first "big" project. It's all self-learned, and we've never had any kind of teaching :) Even the actors are all first time on screen, and the crew is random people who wanted to join :)

But wow, thank you for a great review! Learned a lot, although I agree on more or less everything you said, but disagree as well.

Then the film:
Naturally, the last scenes we filmed were also the first scenes shown in the film. We learned SO MUCH on this project- the learning curve was enormous. Therefore we are aware that the first shots are fantastic, but some parts in the middle we hate so much that we almost want to rip it away from the film, but the story forced us to keep them.

The graveyeard
I do think the graveyard scene is good though. I agree with the "kneeling character part", but in whole the scene feels "flowing" which was what I was trying to accomplish. This is btw a great "moment" in the books, which some fans have appreciated, but people who's only been seen the films have a hard time to understand :P Just some geeky-stuff. But, as you mentioned, the punch could be better ^^

haha, yeah, we kinda fell in love with that helicopter as well.

the bar:
As you may have noticed, we're not professional at all. We basically used what we had, and made it into a harry potter movie. The reason the window is so over-exposed is because theres a highway on the other side :P
Old man was cut too much? I'll keep that in mind. Thanks :)
the gun scene:
Nope, no actors at all. Just people we know ;)
However I agree, but as a film on this level, we simply have to accept a decent performance, which is way more than we could have hoped for. Since we're Norwegians and managed to find some englishmen ^^
The woods scene
Two words: Hate it. This is one of those scene where we kind of want to disappear. We were really unlucky with the money, time and everything at that shoot. Everything went just really wrong, but had to use it. Once again: story and deadline.
In the fields:
This scene isn't greenscreened. Believe it or not, this is real footage from a location ;) oh, the sound is terrible. Really bad. (more on that later)
But I do like the dialogue and somewhat acting at this scene. Not professional acting, but good to be first time on screen.

The kind-of-explanation-thingie
The reason some parts are really good, and some so sloppy is: Deadline/school
We live in Norway, which makes everything a bit smaller. in every way. We basically sat a date, postponed it with one month, and then had a show at a theater.
Our sound people are basically people we know, who almost doesn't know what a microphone is. Therefore, accidents happened all the time on set.
We simply didn't have the time to fix everything or reshoot anything. School started after summer vacation, and we had to forget film, and focus on education.
The acting however has received so many different points of view. Some people love it, and were blown away. Some people hate it, and some people think its okay etc. etc.
I'm not going to blame anyone, or protect my film in any way. Because i know what I did right, and I know what I did wrong. This is film was just an intense learning experience which has helped me a lot.
And reading serious reviews written by people like you, is great. I learn so much more than just: Good and bad.

The goal with this movie was to find serious people who's just as passionate as Jens and me in filmmaking in our area. That we can also work with on with later projects (which hopefully means: good sound etc.).
I appreciate what you said you liked about the film. Which I said, was also the last scenes we shot ^^
That's the level we're on at this moment.

Once again, thank you.
if you want to see our other shortfilms, check out: youtube.com/JARANDandJENS
Jarand Breian Herdal
 
I agree with most of what you said up there. I generally didn't have a problem with the flow of the film in terms of pacing and such, I just felt for me (having not read the books) the story was somewhat hard to follow. Was it all canon or did you write any of it yourself? The part about the fourth Deathly Hallows seemed a bit strange to me, but I have no idea what's in the books :P

Also I should say, don't take anything I say as gospel because I said it. If there's one thing that I absolutely hate, it's coming on a forum with my movie and some no-name internet forum member gives me a list of criticisms and if I try to even ask questions about their criticisms, they get pissed because I didn't accept their opinion as the all-inclusive objective truth.

All that to say, great work for a first big project at 16 years old. I'm only four years removed from that and it's amazing how far I've in that short time come because as you said, everything is a learning experience. If you learned a lot on this project then it was totally worth it and congrats! I'm glad I could be of some help to you in the process as well :) I'll check out your other films.
 
tommygdawg said:
I agree with most of what you said up there. I generally didn't have a problem with the flow of the film in terms of pacing and such, I just felt for me (having not read the books) the story was somewhat hard to follow. Was it all canon or did you write any of it yourself? The part about the fourth Deathly Hallows seemed a bit strange to me, but I have no idea what's in the books :P

Also I should say, don't take anything I say as gospel because I said it. If there's one thing that I absolutely hate, it's coming on a forum with my movie and some no-name internet forum member gives me a list of criticisms and if I try to even ask questions about their criticisms, they get pissed because I didn't accept their opinion as the all-inclusive objective truth.

All that to say, great work for a first big project at 16 years old. I'm only four years removed from that and it's amazing how far I've in that short time come because as you said, everything is a learning experience. If you learned a lot on this project then it was totally worth it and congrats! I'm glad I could be of some help to you in the process as well :) I'll check out your other films.
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Thanks :) Much appreciated!

Jarand
 
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