In The Machine

This entry held my interest. The beginning action sequence was pretty sweet, although i was a little confused by the double-take before the credits.

i like the camera work and the action.

the interlacing was a bit distracting.

oh, and i think the audio needs much work.

but as it's been said this is a work in progress.

i'd be interested in seeing a finished product sometime.

kudos!
 
Thanks aravance, I'm getting closer to a finished product. Mostly done CCing then I'll shave a few frames off the fight sequence and clean up the audio, among other things.
 
This was yet another beautifully lit entry. Maybe some of the best acting in this fest, every actor was absolutely convincing. I'm assuming these actors are professionals? Their deliveries were perfect, I could have been watching Law & Order or some big TV production. Good dialogue, too, good script.

A couple of negatives: I was glad to see audio that wasn't obviously ADR'd, but at times it was hard to hear the dialogue. The other thing, and this has nothing to do with the film itself, is that the compression leaves much to be desired - it was jaggy/interlaced for me. No other shorts have suffered from this, so I'll assume it has to do with the codec you used?

Anyways, great short, great atmosphere, and using lights as part of the scene was very clever.
 
wow, thanks garriel, made my day.

I'll definately tell my mates you thought the acting was great. The only actor in their was the older guy. The rest of the dudes are mates or friends of friends. They only had a week or in a couple of cases one day or the day of filming to 'prepare' so they all did great.

I'll let you know when I have a final version of the film.
 
My Thoughts:

hehehe I thought that guy was having a herina. :) I wasn't a big fan of the zooms and the action sequences needed a little more work to make them believable. For instance.. the guy is holding his nose with a gun and the duct taped dude stands up and uses his elbow to swangle the gun away. It just seemed like they were just playing in a basement with a video camera.

Acting. ouch. I did however dig the Pirate guy.. "Hello Bobby.." Thought he was bout to to say.. "Ehhllloo poppet.." :)

Sound.. GIVE Those guns some UMPH! Crank it up right up with the music and that last scene would have been sold.

looking forward to seeing your next entry.

cheers!
/j
 
tmnt, I only read the posts on this page, and saw immediately that this is still a work in progress, so I understand that many of the things I'm going to address may already be fixed in your edit, or are going to be addressed ... that said, I'll still give you my impressions after just watching this.

Oh, and I see the opinion on the acting is WILDLY different, as one person is raving about the performances (every actor in it), while others not to much. Wow, this stuff is sooo subjective!

This film has SO MUCH FREAKING POTENTIAL!! The premise is great, and the story/script didn't seem too bad either. But the acting absolutely killed it for me, followed up by the editing. The best actor by far (and actually pretty good) was the older man, who appeared to be the leader. The other, however (including when we didn't see him & it was only his VO) needed serious work, sorry.

The editing could have REALLY increased things here. Aside from the distracting interlaced issues that have already been noted, look at BATMAN BEGINS for examples on how to make a fight scene extremely visceral. Don't show us the entire fight move unless it is EXTREMELY spot on & professional. If you DO show it, then try speeding it up 20% or more in post ... not enough to make it unrealistic, but enough to speed up to look quick & agile. Another cool thing you could have done was to really play with the velocity here ... just as he goes to make a move, CRANK the speed up to 500% or something, and then as he's in the middle of the move (or near finishing it), SLAM it over the course of one frame back to half speed, etc. This will make the action pop that much more & make some of the moves more believable, aside from just really cool to watch.

The double thing at the beginning also bugged me, as I thought something was wrong with the player. I also didn't understand that we saw him escape in the beginning, but then he's caught again? So was the beginning actually the end? But if so, why is he in cuffs again, and this time with tape over his mouth?

Lastly, the CC ... seemed too washed out for me. If you're still going to CC, see about doing a 24P conversion to this (or even 30P), just to see if you can get rid of the distracting interlaced issue.

Again, STRONG potential with this ... very strong.
 
I agree that their is a lot of potential here but also agree that the acting with the exception of the older gentleman, the sound, and the interlacing were all highly problematic for me.

Also confused on the double take thing at the beginning. If that is supposed to be what he imagens happening and then what actually happens then you need some sound design and clearer understanding / implementation of the vocaubulary that tells us that someone is just imagining what we just saw - namely you have to begin and end with a medium or cloesup of the imaginer ... if you just cut back and loop the sequence again beginning with the shot of the guy saying "you broke my nose" you don't give us any clue there as to what is going on. But if you cut back to the main guys closeup or POV then we know it is something he saw or is imagining ... it might help to push into him a bit before the whole sequence starts to further suggest that it is in his head. Depending on how far you want to go there are also flash dissolves and swoosh sound design FX that can assist you as well.

I liked the raw lighting look and flares and with some CC pushing the blacks down into black (which will help the noise as well) or even crushing the blacks, then you will have an exceptional looking piece.

Gotta get that interlacing outta there. I saw you shot on an HVX and I'm curious as to how you managed it actually. Did you shoot 60i? If you post back with what you are editing on and what mode you shot in I can maybe direct you towards some plugins and stuff for the interlacing and CC.

But mostly I appreciated the gritty feel here and enjoyed the ride.

Thanks for screening this bad boy :beer:
 
Hey thanks guys, everything you've mentioned I'm working on.

Edgen, good call with the pirate line, that's exactly what I thought.

Hey Norm, really dig you sig. I'm working on a little speed ramping but there's not much speeding up I can do as the action just won't register with the viewer. I did chop a few frames out the fight scene.

Keystoned, I shot 1080 24pa but the interlaced is nothing more than bad, bad compression, I just ran out of time to do it again.

I've mostly finished CC'ing now. I darkened it a bit with contrast/brightness controls in edius and have given it a slight green tinge, I shoulda went with a clean white/blue but alas, I've come too far.

Looking forward to showing you all the final cut.
 
Thanks a lot Como. The CC could have been much better though as I only started playing with curves after I finished it.
 
liked the cinempotography but the sound needs some major work..... at almost every cut i could hear the audio cut or pop out... it was really distracting and took away a lot from the atmosphere that you were tying to create. all you need is some room tone and cross fades and it should fix the audio problem....

some of the action shots were SICK! but most of the action shots seemed really slow and unrealistic, take for example at the end when he shows that he got the handcuffs off... when they reach for the guns it looks like they are casually looking for the guns... it was missing the urgency that i feel would be present in that kind of situation....

the acting was sub par....

but i did really like the shots an rack focuses
 
Hey man, good to see you got this one made! :beer:

I like the story. Good job with the script. The only performance, acting wise, that bothered me was the one guy who said, "You broke my nose!" The older guy did a good job and the lead wasn't too bad.

The things that I would work on is lighting and sound, but that's been mentioned. Is this your first short or no?
 
It's my first short with the hvx and was more of a test than anything. It's my 3rd short overall (the others were years ago). Just wish I could get some motivation and keep going. Maybe doing a lovefest entry so I'll see what happens.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
 
Some really great shot in this one! Some really nice "WOW" moments. I would speed up a few of the action shots and clean up the audio a tad. Definitely a winner.

Loved the transition near the beginning as well.

Nice work!

Mike
 
The fighting shots all seemed way to slow and casual. They seemed really well choreographed, so it would have been exciting if they were fast and frenetic. But instead it feels more like watching a slowed down rehearsal of a good fight scene. When they throw punches, have your actors really try and hurt the air when they punch. I think the shot when the main guy slides his arm up around the other guys gun arm and slams him into the door frame would have been really cool if the movements were fast and the actors didn't look like they were trying not to hurt each other. Do your next action movie faster and you'll get a lot of praise I think.

P.S. in the beginning when the big guy with the baton gets hit, he looks like he's just standing there waiting for it. He should look like he wants to hurt the other guy, or at least like he's trying to block the hit, but just isn't fast enough.
 
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