SHORT: My Short Film: "Three Corpse Dinner"

[Matt Roberts]

Heya everyone. Just wanted to share a short film I wrote/directed last year (just released on youtube after the Premiere). Thought I'd put it here in case anyone was interested. It's a little zombie comedy film made in Australia. We don't celebrate Halloween much over here... but I wish we did - I LOVE it!!

Here it is... Hope you enjoy

THREE CORPSE DINNER

Incidentally, it was shot on a Sony FS-100.

 

[Egg Born Son]

Haha, noice! I enjoyed that. Good subject for getting a great deal of production value for cheap while at the same time excusing any cheapness. Performances were solid, script was tight and timing was good. While there were some moments that had some localised nuances (like the play on the 'blokes sharing their feelings' trope) they still work on levels a wider audience can relate to (inclusive not exclusive local references). When they were both watching the film the tears were a nice touch.

If I had to search for a criticism that isn't simply down to personal taste, it would be that of all the technical aspects the lighting was the only one that stood out as amateur. With more attention payed to fill, contrast ratio in the scene and sculpting of the background lighting it would look a lot more professional. You're crafting the light but you need to craft the shadows too. The backlit scene of the zombie leaving the graveyard is close (my favourite shot in the movie but still a bit too bright in the foreground). In your defence high contrast 'horror' lighting is going to expose inexperience and I'm guessing you had a pretty limited selection of lights available. I suspect you did the best you had with what you had available but I would look at getting more and different types of light sources as a priority for the next effort.

A related criticism concerns separation of your subject from the background. While the closeups do a little better than the wider shots, the actors are still not being pulled off the background as much as they could. Adding hair lights and a shallower DOF (subtle or extreme) would be a good first place to look at in achieving this. Aside from separation of subject and background, combining these techniques with better lighting of the scene will also increase the sense of depth in your shot.

But telling a good story (even a simple one) framed well with entertaining performances will always help to overlook any technical issues (except maybe sound) and this was enjoyable. Well done.