My short "The Van Job" Crime, suspens, action

A

aithendodge

Member
Howdy folks, I just finished shooting and editing this short. I'll hope you'll take a look and share your thoughts with me. The Van Job was shot 80% with an HMC-150, and the other 20% was an XH-A1. I figure the Panasonic is the important one, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ATOnpH22J8

I should put some pics here -
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I liked it, how long did it take you to shoot this?

Any setup shots? What did you use for audio, lighting?

What type of grading did you do?

I think music hurt you some. I really liked it in the beginning, but the music at hte end had a sort of cheesy 80's tv show kinda feel.

The fight scenes were good, but i didnt like the multiple angle kick things. I felt it took me out of hte story and should only be used in fantastic like things like the Matrix, where its like super human performance. to me to be used in a more realistic gritty moment took me out of the intensity of what was going on.

I liked your actors, i think you could possibly tighten up the editing, probably a good 30 secs to a min off the begining.

Oh and your title production company sequence is WAY to long. Your film doesnt even start till like 35 seconds into it, i would shorten that to maybe 5 secs at the max.
 
The car SOUNDS from the left and comes from the front... that's weird for viewers...

Dialogue under the music is too silent.. some compression might help (or level it up). Or turn off the music completely. Both would be the best.

The doors of the van go open.. but are closed ???? Putting a "van door close suddenly sound" could be a solution.

I miss some "movement sounds" and "mmmmm" sounds of the girl in the van (at the parking lot)

Is the music there to hide "sound mistakes" and because of missing ambiance sounds ? Or is it there because you liked it to be there ? (to much music I find)
 
Thanks for watching, and thanks for your comments!

jonE5 - It took 8 actual shooting days of between 3-6 hours. All the shots were setup, storyboarded beforehand. As for grading, I don't really know what I'm doing there, some of the movie has slight color correction, other scenes are unchanged. The final fight scene in the shop had no color correction done to the HMC-150 footage, but I did color correct the XH-A1 footage to match the HMC. It's still a bit off, I can always see the Canon shots.

I love the music. It think that cheezy 70's, or 80's thing that it reminisces helps the movie to end on a lighter note. Most everyone doesn't like the multiple kick thing, but I thought the fight was way too short without it, and I like it.

I agree completely about tightening up the editing a bit. The more I watch it the more I see the need for economy that way. The beginning certainly could be trimmed. and the opening sequence is a bit long... When we saw it in the theater though, it was awesome!


dre83 - I tried compression and adjusting levels on the audio - I'm no expert in that arena. The only scene I thought was really bad was the first one with the driver, but I got it the best I could. The music had to be there for the scene to work for me.

Van doors opening - it's hard to see, but when she kicks them open, they start to close again, when he slams on the brakes, they close. There is a door closing sound, just can't hear it under the music...

The music isn't to hide anything at all. All of the music is there because I wanted it there, and I enjoy all the music in the movie. Thanks for watching dre83!
 
If you like I can do a sort of "remixing".....

And do you enjoy the music, because it's your own music ? Or because you like that type of music ?

The say: Kill your darlings... Which is very important

To be honest (which I'm always) I still find it to much a videoclip
 
dre, to "remix," I must say no, but thank you for the offer. While I understand the piece has it's flaws, it is my first short film, and I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I like the music, I didn't make it, but I'm more than happy with it. It creates the feel I was going for, and enhances the scene very nicely. That is of course my opinion, and I understand about the "kill your darlings" philosophy.
 
Oh man. Very nice. I liked the actress, good fighting, I think it could've been edited tighter in terms of the fighting but other than that it was good. And watching her fight was fun. I enjoyed the acting too. You had great heavies. The overall productions was slick.

-Nate
 
Well if you're happy with it...that's important.

Maybe it's also a kind of "subjective" thing I have.... But anyway... for a first movie it's very well done.
 
I like the opening couple of shots. The opening credits though it became very obvious when the camera car got stuck at a red light. I think it would've been better edit those bits out so we're just focused on the van.

180 rule. Live it. Love it.

Not sure if this was intentional, but I like the combination of framing and wardrobe at 4:22 where you can only see her face and shoulders. Obviously she has a top on, but still appears very vulnerable. The intercutting of tripod and rather shaky handheld in the scene didn't work too well for me though (granted on early film's without steadicams or dollies it's hard to compromise between dynamic shots and consistency in a scene, with a bigger budget the you'd likely want tripod and dolly shots so the entire scene was consistently smooth).

Van tracking shot at 5:22 = awesome.

Overall, I like many aspects of it. The thing that bugs me is that i really like the characters in the film, but none of them really commit to their character. The actors look like guys having fun with lines rather than really believing what they're saying and focusing their energy. My suggestion is grabbing a copy of Judith Weston's "Directing Actors" and you can get some really helpful tips to push your actors further.

For a first effort this is very impressive and I'm very curious to see your future work.
 
it took 2 full minutes before the film started.. thats an entire short film. Lose the credits and use that time more effectively.

The scene in the, I guess it would be an interrogation room is a complete mess. The eye lines are completely wrong. You establish the scene in an over the shoulder shot.. then switch sides at one point.. You cross the 'axis' several times.. and thus mess up all your eye lines. It makes for a very disjointed scene. You have a lot of coverage there it seems from amount of shots you cut too.. its a bit of overkill for that scene.

The problem with bad eye lines:
comparison.jpg


Who's looking at who?

The music in this ain't helping.. unless cheese was the end goal, I guess mission accomplished. It just sounds bad.

The acting is bordering on soap opera cheesy.. Not much you can do after the fact.. but getting better music would certainly change the feel... again.. unless cheese was the end goal... the acting is poor in this pretty much across the board.

The lighting ok in some spots and really poor in others. If you're showing blood, and want to put emphasis on by placing bloody tools on a white sheet, generally not the greatest idea to light that scene in a wash of red.. makes seeing the red blood rather difficult.

this is at most... a 8 minute film... padded out with 7 minutes of credits.. thats ridiculous. Credits in a short film should be IMO short.

I actually think the core idea is interesting.. but your execution is lacking a great deal.

Kudos for getting it made.

My 0.02 (CAD) cents.
 
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