Indie Feature Trailer - "All the Wrong Ways"

C

capcom1701

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I've shot a feature length indie with some friends of mine, and we've just released our trailer. Follow this link to view, All The Wrong Ways Entire project shot on a DVX-100 A. BTW, there are two women in the trailer in lingerie, and some coarse humor (the movie is a lowbrow romantic comedy... emphasis on low) use your own judgement please.

The production company for the film is Whipsaw Productions

Let us know what you think of the trailer. Criticism and Comments welcome and appreciated.

Jon
 
okay, I don't know what kind of trailer this is (is it to show off the cinematography for instance?), but if it's the official movie trailer, you need to recut it. This is a comedy right? Then rework the trailer to sell that aspect of the film. This is like... some footage, then a really long rock song clip montange/video, then a voice over with some guy who really isn't saying anything that funny, mainly because it's out of context (we don't know what his role is because the storyline was never explained).

My recommendation would be let a professional or someone who cuts trailers cut it, independent of your input. They'll be more focused on coming up with a coherent storyline for the trailer, and make it quicker and punchier (yes, that's a word now). It's a comedy so it has to move fast, make people laugh, and let the audience know what it's about. I don't think this trailer does any of those things.

That's not to say that you don't have something here. You may have the funniest movie ever in the history of the world. But this trailer doesn't show that. I mean even bad movies have well put together trailers. Take a look at the worst of the worst (the trailer for "Fun With Dick and Jane") and you still at least have a sense of what it's about.

Anyway, that's enough whining from me. I may sound bitter but it's just tough love. I envy you for making a film (factor that into my harsh critique)
 
Yea I agree with C.G.; also was that guy in the bar riding on the dolly? If so, that was cool shot. Where was this film shot at because some of those locations looked familiar.
 
i think it looks good. Acting is so so from what i saw, they seemed a little too camera conscious. I always find commedy in truth, and some of them played the natural commedian, going for the punch. Lighting was good, framing was fine, music suited it well, i loved the dolly shot in the bar.

Could use some CC though. Not to dramatically alter your footage, but every single shot had the same emotion and feeling behind it. For a feature length film, i dont know if that i ssomething you really want to go for. Example, the shot of your main guy sitting on the railing by the beach, that had the same colour temp, tone, and dramatic effect as every other scene. Change it up a bit :) have some fun.
 
Hey, thanks for the input folks. It's nice to hear opinions from people who have some distance from the material. This trailer was intended to be a first teaser. We really needed to have something to show to companies that had helped us out, as well as our cast. One of the producers was also taking a trip out to DV Expo, and we wanted to send something out with him. We're planning on at least one recut.

C.G. We've had a couple other people comment that it doesn't explain enough of the story. We're really trying to balance it, I think we wanted to avoid giving too much away... maybe we were too cautious. We also didn't have the time to sweeten audio, of foley anything, so we avoided our sound as much as possible. We're definitely trying to come up with unique ways to explain our characters and our story without giving too much away. (We've also got some notes coming from the production company that loaned us cameras, audio gear, lights, etc. and from what they've told me, their notes address the same concerns.)

Shooter, Yeah, we had our actor riding the dolly, I took an auteur course that surveyed Spike Lee when I was at the [url="http://www.arizona.edu]U of A[/url]. Lee has actors riding the dolly in just about every film he's ever made. Figured I'd throw in the nod. (did you see the nod to "Apocalypse Now"? and there was also one to "Dr. Strangelove" in the trailer... a huge one.) We shot the entire project in Orlando, Florida. Most of the exteriors were downtown, with the exception of the stuff at the beach. Funny story, after we picked our lead actress, we asked her if she had any food preferences or other issues we should know about. She did. She was a piscatorian (sp?) meaning she's vegetarian, but eats fish once a week. And she was allergic to sunlight. Let me tell you how stoked we were after making it through our beach shoot without killing her.

PaPa, actually, it's good that you say that it all looks similar in mood. About half of the footage we used for this trailer comes from two montages. So the mood in those two bits should be similar. Never fear, we've got some tricks in the bag. One section of our film is black and white. As of yet, we haven't done any color correction, so all of the footage in this trailer was cut as shot.

As far as the acting... I think our actors were really solid although some of them were new to the whole scene. So acting issues are probably a result of unrefined editing. Was there any shot in particular where you felt the acting was camera conscious? I'd like to know what made it feel that way so I can keep that in mind as we cut.

Again, thanks for your opinions. We've been buried in this story for the last six months, like I said, it's great to hear some thoughts from people who haven't seen any of it. For those who are interested in that sort of thing, we shot 145 pages in 24 days, at a cost of around 10K. 1/3 of our budget was insurance. (In Orlando, once you're insured, you can permit within the city limits for free) About 30 pages of the script took place in Scruffy Murphy's Irish Pub. We shot all of those pages in 2 nights sundown to sunup. (one of our producer/director and our Script Sup went 72 hours without sleep during that period.) A lot of the story takes place in the main characters' apartment... location provided by, you guessed it, the producers. If we do another one, soundstage baby! The day after we wrapped, none of us could face the mess our apartment had become. I think we all slept for about 15 hours, then left for the rest of the day.

[url="http://www.jonpainter.com]jon[/url]
 
I think this would make a great feature, and I look forward to seeing it... You do have funny moments in the trailer in my opinion even though they may be subtle. You can tighten it up and make it even better. Great job guys... I think your buddy characters are great too. Good luck with it.

SmithHouse
 
I think I'll echo what has already been said. It's very rough. And the mistakes are not uncommon to those of us who have made our first or second features. The problem with not wanting to give away too much is that you end up not giving away enough. And there is a distinction. No, you don't have to give away whether or not boy gets girl. But you need to do more than give us a montage of shots because it doesn't necessarily give us a story to follow either.

My advice would be to try to cut a trailer that gives the viewer a sense of the story without the titles. Titles sort of cheat. We get that it's a boy meets girl picture...and if has any sense of drama (even in a comedy) there's no doubt that boy loses girl too. So show us this.

You have this girl appear and there's just music. Doesn't anyone talk about her in the script? You can show the same shot with dialogue in the story to explain who she is. I'm sure in a story like this there's always a character that says, "This girl is amazing...she's cute and funny and blah blah blah." I'm definitely sure that there's probably a character that gives the boy advice. You play any of that under what's being shown. And give us a sense of what kind of movie this is going to be.

You have to do stuff like this throughout your trailer/teaser to show us who the characters are, what they want, maybe even tell us how they're going to get what they want. A minute and a half or two minutes tops.

Good luck.
 
capcom1701 said:
For those who are interested in that sort of thing, we shot 145 pages in 24 days, at a cost of around 10K. 1/3 of our budget was insurance. (In Orlando, once you're insured, you can permit within the city limits for free)
[url="http://www.jonpainter.com]jon[/url]
Click to expand...
Hey do you live in Orlando, FL or you just came here to make that film? I am also from Orlando, FL and getting ready to start my own movie road. Just wanted to know more about insurance that you had? How much really it coasted? Where to get it and etc...


Thanks for any help.
 
We live in Orlando. I recall our insurance coming in around $2700, but you could get it for less. We got it from a company in California that specializes in short-term productions/indie stuff. Can't remember the name off the top of my head. Our insurance was high because we had to split our shoot into two segments. We lost an actor to another job before we started principal photography, so we rearranged all of his scenes into a second shoot week that worked with his schedule. So our insurance had to cover 20-some days of production that were separated by 4 weeks. (then the bastard bailed on us. But we found someone better as a result.)

Check out the Orlando Film Commission. They can help out quite a bit. They got us through all of our permitting, but they aren't really geared for indie productions. They provide a lot of commercial services, so you have to do your homework, and know how to avoid paying for stuff. It also helps to shoot between March and August. It's out of season for commercial shoots, so people have more time to pay attention to you, and there's just more stuff available in town. (Exactly how we planned it, but we still ended up downtown, three blocks from the Larry the Cable Guy shoot.)

Jon
 
The sound was really off, hopefully you'll be able to clean it up for the final edit. The trailer wasn't very good as a "trailer" as others said, but I do have interest in seeing it, so I guess it succeeded in that respect. Good luck and clean up that sound! Tim
 
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