My Short horror film

ericengland33

ericengland33

Active member
What's up guys? I thought I'd post up my short horror film that I shot a few months ago. It was my thesis film for film school. It's a 70's style slasher film about a group of kids playing a prank on a pledge for their fraternity. But, as the night goes on, they find out that they're not the only ones playing a game. This film has actually opened a lot of doors for me as far as features and future work go. So I guess I'm happy about it in that sense.

A little bit about the film, incase anyone was wondering, I wrote 1 draft of the script (that's why the dialogue/story suck terribly) in one night. Pre-Production was about the week before shooting (not my choice, just a little bit of slacking by my other crew members), and all of the shooting was done in 5 days. Sadly, due to complications with the school and crew, we had to build all of our sets the day of shooting. So we'd build for about 5-6 hours and then shoot for about 4-5. Sometimes less. Luckily, I had a great cast/crew. We did end up shooting about 30% of the movie 4 weeks later (for 1 additional day) because my actress was in Hawaii and couldn't make the original days (Our film was pushed back when my school stole my sound stage from me a week before I was originally supposed to shoot).

We shot the film on Super 16mm, Kodak 500T. The camera was an Arri SR2 wit Zeiss T1.3 primes. I didn't want primes, but it actually worked to our advantage because a lot of our stuff wouldn't have exposed had we not had those lenses, and went with the zoom lens that I actually wanted. BUT, on our re-shoots, I did get my zoom lens, so I was happy. If you want the film, you can tell which actress had to be re-shot 4 weeks later due to the zoom :cool:

Oh, and there is brief nudity, so be wary of that.

Anyways, here it is. The 5.1 mix is so much better, but this stereo mix isn't bad.. Thanks for watching!

http://web.me.com/astorek/AdamStorek/Clown_Town.html
 
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This was the classic type slasher film and it was very good. I thought the acting and dialogue was very natural and the story really flowed. The set up was great and so was the tension build up. The only things that didn't work for me was the main actor's acting. It didn't seem to match the moods of the scene. In the beginning his reaction to the whole set up didn't seem natural and at the end when the girl gets her hand. . .well, not to spoil it, but the whole back and forth dialogue with him and the girl was off. Her reaction was not strong enough and his seemed a bit over the top - basically they didn't match each other's intensity. Other than that, I was really impressed and especially after reading the info. you provided about all the headaches you endured. That shows how you made it happen despite everything, but to me this film is so good that you don't even need to preface it by explaining that you could have done so much better if all things had worked out exactly as planned. I mean, the set and some of the spooky shots were so well done, I could have planned it for a month and not done it as well.

Good job!
 
Wow! I really appreciate that review! Thanks, man!

I guess sometimes when you're not 100% satisfied with your work, it's hard to get past all the flaws and look at it with unbiased eyes. I've never been the kind of person to fall in love with my work, so I appreciate those comments. :D
 
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, because I'm the same way. Never really 100% satisfied with my stuff either. It's hard to be objective on something you've made.
 
very cool.

Gotta love S16.. great format to shoot with.

Towards the end when the **** starts hitting the fan, dude isn't really freaked out too much that his buddies head just got lopped off.. really my only complaint.. it was very well done.

good work.
 
The film reminded me of both "Killer Klowns from Outer Space"(1988), and a bit of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"(1920).

On a personal note, I'd rather not have girls who take off their tops and display their attractive attributes taken out of the gene pool...

On more technical items...

I don't really like 4:3 any more than any one else... but with the popularity of 16:9, and 2:1 type framing, some attention to composition seems to be in order. With 'moving characters', the shot has to be set up in such a way, that the actor (or actors) do not fall out of the frame for 'no reason'... Sure, some on gets shoved or ducks, of course. But on several shots it seemed that the actors really where not cognisant of the 'frame'. The 'hitting the mark' also includes not only where one's feet are, but body 'attitude', and facial direction, with attention for the lighting and frame of the shot.

With that in mind, using either non-actors, or actors who have not had much film experience, I'd go a bit wider on the shots so that the talent can move a little bit more without having the frame chop them off.

This is sort of like the 'broadcast safe zones'... which is a pain to honor in this age of digital displays (like who uses analog displays anymore...). But it is dependent on how well the shot has been setup, and how well the talent works in the frame.

Two shots I'll point to with these items in mind. I don't have this downloaded to get a reasonable time line to give locations better...

Two girls are sitting on a bench. The shot shows from their knees to just a little above their heads.

The next shot, apparently from the girls' POV, is of two guys, one in white teeshirt/sweater and the other with dark, closely cut hair... The close up on the forward guy to me is not particularlly 'motivated' by the POV from the girls, and the literal 'talking head' of the guy to the rear is visually 'disturbing' to me. Ok, if you whated that forward guy that way in the shot, but then put the camera up a hair higher, and a little angle down to get at least a shoulders shot of the guy in back.

But back to the girls, they are really tight in their framed compartment, and when they start moving they pop out the top of the frame. As they get up and leave, for several seconds the only the lips of one girl are showing. The other girl exits the shot pretty quickly, so that doesn't seem as bad as the hanging on the second girl.

As for the theme... I think there is something to be said to use 'formulas' at some point in development. I've thought about using scenes from 'classic' films, or 'cult', or whatever, and attempt to match the original. The point of these exercises to me are learning the craft of making a film...

I think the film was pretty good, and just have a few notes on certain visual elements that I've been seeing of late...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
The film reminded me of both "Killer Klowns from Outer Space"(1988), and a bit of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"(1920).

On a personal note, I'd rather not have girls who take off their tops and display their attractive attributes taken out of the gene pool...

On more technical items...

I don't really like 4:3 any more than any one else... but with the popularity of 16:9, and 2:1 type framing, some attention to composition seems to be in order. With 'moving characters', the shot has to be set up in such a way, that the actor (or actors) do not fall out of the frame for 'no reason'... Sure, some on gets shoved or ducks, of course. But on several shots it seemed that the actors really where not cognisant of the 'frame'. The 'hitting the mark' also includes not only where one's feet are, but body 'attitude', and facial direction, with attention for the lighting and frame of the shot.

With that in mind, using either non-actors, or actors who have not had much film experience, I'd go a bit wider on the shots so that the talent can move a little bit more without having the frame chop them off.

This is sort of like the 'broadcast safe zones'... which is a pain to honor in this age of digital displays (like who uses analog displays anymore...). But it is dependent on how well the shot has been setup, and how well the talent works in the frame.

Two shots I'll point to with these items in mind. I don't have this downloaded to get a reasonable time line to give locations better...

Two girls are sitting on a bench. The shot shows from their knees to just a little above their heads.

The next shot, apparently from the girls' POV, is of two guys, one in white teeshirt/sweater and the other with dark, closely cut hair... The close up on the forward guy to me is not particularlly 'motivated' by the POV from the girls, and the literal 'talking head' of the guy to the rear is visually 'disturbing' to me. Ok, if you whated that forward guy that way in the shot, but then put the camera up a hair higher, and a little angle down to get at least a shoulders shot of the guy in back.

But back to the girls, they are really tight in their framed compartment, and when they start moving they pop out the top of the frame. As they get up and leave, for several seconds the only the lips of one girl are showing. The other girl exits the shot pretty quickly, so that doesn't seem as bad as the hanging on the second girl.

As for the theme... I think there is something to be said to use 'formulas' at some point in development. I've thought about using scenes from 'classic' films, or 'cult', or whatever, and attempt to match the original. The point of these exercises to me are learning the craft of making a film...

I think the film was pretty good, and just have a few notes on certain visual elements that I've been seeing of late...
Click to expand...

I completely agreee. Part of why I'm not happy with this film is larely due to the composition/framing. I'm from the school of Sergio Leone where every image needs to be a painting. But that wasn't the case in this film. A lot of what you were talking about was due to our spaces. We were shooting on Prime lenses, inside of a van. We couldn't move, we were on our widest lens (a 12mm, I believe), and we couldn't remove the seats or anything. The actors couldn't move. And I kid you not, about 25% of the shots that you see in this film, if you were to look behind the camera man, you would see a security guard, and myself, talking while the shot was happening and I was trying to stall him and finish my scene.

So yes, technically, the film isn't anything to phone home about. Some shots are ok, but for the most part, it was garbage. This reason is also why you see some nice dolly shots, then later, you see hand held. Because we just didn't have time to get great shots. It was either film something, or get nothing.

But I agree. I've made it my personal goal on my features that I have coming up to get nothing but what I want. But, it's film school. Some people aren't as passionate as you, and you can't make a movie by yourself.
 
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