Living Boys-Critique welcome

Reminds me of my own unfinished (though already on tape) short.

I was interested and stayed interested.

Did you do rehearsals on the acting? If yes, how long/many?


Jasper
 
Actually..this was so hard to pull together, we didn't have time to rehearse. But I did want to have two rehearsals to rough block and bring the camera along to rough out the shots from the shot list. If they did happen I would say about two hours for each.

Fortunately the two brothers are long time friends of mine and also have had acting experience.. They know how I work so getting into it there wasn't too difficult. Under the circumstances I was happy with everyone involved.
 
I like the pace, and the script is interesting. The acting was a little rough, but they pulled off the deadpan pretty well. So...

1) Clean your lens. The shot walking through the attic room showed tons of stuff on the glass.

2) Get some ND gel rolls and knock that skylight down. The blown out spot on the sofa/floor was distracting.

3) Around 1:40, the ambience fades completely out, then cuts back in. Then at 1:47-ish, it increases in volume. Smooth that stuff out to avoid distraction.

4) The overall noise floor, plus the production audio (non-dialog), was amateur-ish. Lots of that stuff could have been Foley'd in (toothbrush, refrigerator door, things dropping, floor creaks, etc.). Which brings me to...

5) Eliminate as much extraneous noise as possible. Turn the AC, ceiling fan, and refrigerator off. Even if you have to do it for short bursts due to summer heat, the less noise floor you have under dialog, the easier it is to re-create things for items #3 and #4 and to blend it with dialog. It will also be easier to edit dialog from the two or three angles.

6) The shot at 6:02, both the handheld work and the zoom, breaks the rhythm. It's out of place. And that angle, again, reveals crud on the lens. Another out-of-place zoom at 6:44.

7) All existing/ambient light? Looks like it, which creates some darkness and grain that could be avoided, plus awkward shadows. And even though there are shadows, overall it just looks unnaturally flat. Rent, create, think outside the box if you have to. Get a little extra light in there.

8) Tripod: level your shots. This was especially noticeable on the exterior wide of the houses. The image isn't vertically aligned. This can be corrected in post, at the cost of just a little resolution.

Even an 8-minute short is not the easiest thing in the world to pull off. And considering lack of rehearsal/blocking, I think you pulled it off remarkably well. Looking forward to see what happens with the feature-length!
 
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C2V

I really appreciate the critique. I'll definitely take it all into consideration.

I can't say much more, other than I need to work on being aware of every detail and not to make the same mistake twice. I'm ashamed to have a dirty lens in the video along with unleveled shots.

There are also a few shots that weren't as focused as they could have been.

The excuse of limited time could be given, but I think the idea is no matter what the circumstances, you should have things like keeping the shot level, focused and white balanced as an instinct. It needs to be automatic, so that it is the least of your worries.

For lighting, I did have some clamp lights, not the most powerful, but I will definitely work on making it a priority. The biggest issue really was time for this shot. We had 6 hours to do it and it took a month to synchronize our schedules. The way of indie filmmaking, I know. Just gotta work at making it happen.
 
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