Looking for Constructive Criticism
- Thread starter trey
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NoFatClips
Member
Jon Starr
Veteran
Interesting film. Some great shots there.
Alright, now first of all, the main problem with the film was the story. It had a bit of an identity crisis. What's it about? Who's it about? Is it from the perspective of the two guys? It stayed on them for quite some time, then took a shift and switched over to the wildmen's perspective leaving the stupid men's story alone. It was a bit unexpected. If you wanted to do both stories, maybe cut back and forth from them, and for a reason? Or just stick with one perspective, the wildmen are just wildmen attacking these two hikers and it's a horror. Or make it a comedy about the wildmen complaining about how many men they're going to eat.
The other identity crisis was what genre was this? what were you going for? At times it seemed serious (maybe even trying to be scary), and times it seemed cheesy (on purpose?) and at times it was a little funny "What did whitecrane say?" I'm not saying that you can't mix things up, try things out, but this film was a bit everywhere and it didn't have anything to hold it together. It's difficult for me to place it.
Now pacing also needs to be worked on. At the begining it just takes too long. The opening title, the walking, the so-so conversations between the characters. Takes a while to go anywhere. If you want to build up a background for the characters, make it interesting. This is why some stories start off with a bang, or some have really fun and interesting, even funny characters to keep people watching their interactions. These guys weren't all too interesting.
All thruought it just dragged. It shouldn't have been 16 minutes, could have been 10 easily, maybe even less.
Small things stood out for me. First of all, the old man when he spoke of the wildmen, was that meant to be cheesy? He did a classic "turn away from the person you're speaking to" pose and told a story with "heart" and "passion" about strange events and people. Just couldn't help but laugh, was that intentional? Seemed a bit serious...
Secondly, they take a trail called wildmen was it? They expect something fun and interesting... what exactly are they expecting? They're hiking, are they expecting more treacherous ground? Then when they jump the fence the terrain doesn't seem all too interesting, yet the guy runs around saying "this is more like it!" Am I missing something? What's so interesting about that trail?
Then there's the reactions of the two men to the wildmen. The guy sees a painted man and freaks and runs? Guess he relates it to the story, but just seemed a bit unrealistic. A lot of the directions seemed a bit unrealistic.
Anyways, the major problem was the script. The shooting was solid, loved jib shot pulling away when the wildmen surrounded one of the guys. Although it was kind of obvious what was going to happen, so we didn't need to cut to the actual hit. Would have had more impact if we just fade to black at that point with a big musical que. Some of the editing could have been tightened up a bit, but overall it was okay.
Anyways, hope that wasn't too much, lol.
Alright, now first of all, the main problem with the film was the story. It had a bit of an identity crisis. What's it about? Who's it about? Is it from the perspective of the two guys? It stayed on them for quite some time, then took a shift and switched over to the wildmen's perspective leaving the stupid men's story alone. It was a bit unexpected. If you wanted to do both stories, maybe cut back and forth from them, and for a reason? Or just stick with one perspective, the wildmen are just wildmen attacking these two hikers and it's a horror. Or make it a comedy about the wildmen complaining about how many men they're going to eat.
The other identity crisis was what genre was this? what were you going for? At times it seemed serious (maybe even trying to be scary), and times it seemed cheesy (on purpose?) and at times it was a little funny "What did whitecrane say?" I'm not saying that you can't mix things up, try things out, but this film was a bit everywhere and it didn't have anything to hold it together. It's difficult for me to place it.
Now pacing also needs to be worked on. At the begining it just takes too long. The opening title, the walking, the so-so conversations between the characters. Takes a while to go anywhere. If you want to build up a background for the characters, make it interesting. This is why some stories start off with a bang, or some have really fun and interesting, even funny characters to keep people watching their interactions. These guys weren't all too interesting.
All thruought it just dragged. It shouldn't have been 16 minutes, could have been 10 easily, maybe even less.
Small things stood out for me. First of all, the old man when he spoke of the wildmen, was that meant to be cheesy? He did a classic "turn away from the person you're speaking to" pose and told a story with "heart" and "passion" about strange events and people. Just couldn't help but laugh, was that intentional? Seemed a bit serious...
Secondly, they take a trail called wildmen was it? They expect something fun and interesting... what exactly are they expecting? They're hiking, are they expecting more treacherous ground? Then when they jump the fence the terrain doesn't seem all too interesting, yet the guy runs around saying "this is more like it!" Am I missing something? What's so interesting about that trail?
Then there's the reactions of the two men to the wildmen. The guy sees a painted man and freaks and runs? Guess he relates it to the story, but just seemed a bit unrealistic. A lot of the directions seemed a bit unrealistic.
Anyways, the major problem was the script. The shooting was solid, loved jib shot pulling away when the wildmen surrounded one of the guys. Although it was kind of obvious what was going to happen, so we didn't need to cut to the actual hit. Would have had more impact if we just fade to black at that point with a big musical que. Some of the editing could have been tightened up a bit, but overall it was okay.
Anyways, hope that wasn't too much, lol.
A very credible first effort. congratulations.
personal opinions -
Waay too long - needs a lot more cutting.
Sound passable, but notably weak in spots
Color all over the board
volunteer at gate scene was best dialogue of film -set stage well. Aboriginal tongue with subtitles a nice touch.
emotions - fear, dissent in tribe, etc way too muted
aboriginals would have starved to death if that bad at hunting. Suspense/stalking/terror angle never really develops.
religious overtone hinted at but also never develops. Was this supposed to be divine intervention?
Nice titling.
Overall not really really terrible - which puts you in the top 2% of first efforts. Be sure to keep this to look back on as your career develops.
Thanks for sharing :beer:
personal opinions -
Waay too long - needs a lot more cutting.
Sound passable, but notably weak in spots
Color all over the board
volunteer at gate scene was best dialogue of film -set stage well. Aboriginal tongue with subtitles a nice touch.
emotions - fear, dissent in tribe, etc way too muted
aboriginals would have starved to death if that bad at hunting. Suspense/stalking/terror angle never really develops.
religious overtone hinted at but also never develops. Was this supposed to be divine intervention?
Nice titling.
Overall not really really terrible - which puts you in the top 2% of first efforts. Be sure to keep this to look back on as your career develops.
Thanks for sharing :beer:
Jon Starr
Veteran
Have to agree with pixelated. For a first attempt it's very good.
Also, I think he's referring to the acting. They need to emote what they are feeling, or rather, act. You may not have been working with professional actors, but a good director can always get something out of anyone.
Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see how you develop. You already have a great additude towards criticism.
Also, I think he's referring to the acting. They need to emote what they are feeling, or rather, act. You may not have been working with professional actors, but a good director can always get something out of anyone.
Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see how you develop. You already have a great additude towards criticism.
Anyone else?
Anyone else?
http://vimeo.com/1880203
Here's the link again for anyone who's interested.
Trey
Anyone else?
http://vimeo.com/1880203
Here's the link again for anyone who's interested.
Trey
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I watched the film, without sound. I would recommend watching 'short' films without sound, as it clearifies how well the Story comes across.
Others have commented on various aspects, so I'll note, much of the filming is 'running'. Running is essentially boring, and needs to be motivated. In the quintessential running film... 'Marathon Man'(1976), the Dustin Hoffman character runs initially for 'exercise'... later he 'runs' because some thing is after him... I have not watched the film in quite a while, and didn't have a stop watch... but modern editing practice is about 3-5 seconds per shot (at the most), and during action involving fight, confrontation, etc. that shot duration drops to sub seconds.
So, if you chopped down the walking (before the detour into the 'wild' woods), as well as much of the chase running, you can tighten up the action and not have long passages of panning through cluttered back grounds. Since it is shot in the day time, and you didn't do a 'Day for Night' type presentation, quite a bit of the potential for 'spookiness' is lost as well.
On specific cinematography issues. There are a number of cuts that have the actors going on direction on screen, cutting to a shot where the path is reversed, with no motivation for those reversals.
The only shot that came up that seemed like such a motivation, occur around 5:50, where the actors are running initially from screen left to screen right, they round a bend in the path an exit the frame going towards the left.
This sort of 'setup' is required to give the audience a reason to accept the zig-zagging of the actors across the screen.
Again because of the daylight shoot, the primitives don't look particularly 'scary'...
An example of a 'daylight' chase in the 'jungle' is to be found in second installment of 'Pirates of the Caribbean', note the intercutting of the ones being chased, with the pursuers, in addition the fight between the 'pirates'... there is never a 15 second long shot of anyone 'just running'...
Obviously a 'reshoot' is not possible, but you may try several ideas,
1) edit down to fast intercut running-persuit sequences. (even if originally you didn't shoot with close on the heels pursuit, one of the beauties of editing is that you can cut from one boys running shot to natives running shot, intercut the two sequences, and eh wala... the viewer things the savages are hot on the heels of the boys.
2) Experiment with filters to give a more 'grainy' look. I don't usually recommend this sort of thing, but it may help give the overall look of the film a more 'live news' look. Or on the deciding moments, where you have gone to BW, make those more 'unreal', by grain, high contrast, etc.
Oh, one more thing. On some of the shots, especially when the actors are predominantly static, one can preceive a slight camera motion. My guess is that this was shot mostly in 'hand held Mode'. So, again ways to cover that are quick edits back and forth, or use FCP-AfterEffects to remove the motion, so when the actors are static, the camera view is static as well...
Thanks for the feedback, JClark. I really appreciate it.
You're right about the handheld stuff. I just recently got my first tripod.
You mentioned grain. How do you feel about the grain feature that is offered in Apple's Color? Do you like it? Do you think it looks like film grain?
In terms of filters, what types did you have in mind?
Trey
You're right about the handheld stuff. I just recently got my first tripod.
You mentioned grain. How do you feel about the grain feature that is offered in Apple's Color? Do you like it? Do you think it looks like film grain?
In terms of filters, what types did you have in mind?
Trey
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I don't have the Apple packages, and would use AfterEffects. I tend not to use various effects, like grain. But I have experimented with AE and some of the grain effects to see if I can upscale SD to something higher. The idea is to hide the 'low res' in the grain noise...
It was just an idea, and would require experimentation to see if it does any 'good'.
The idea is to give your film a more 'moody' look.
I don't know if you've seen the 'Planet Terror' and 'Death Proof', the story lines are junk... but if you watch, perhaps 'samples' on YouTube... you could get an idea for how 'grain' can work. Then its a matter of seeing if the tools you have, can get that look.