New DVX short

D

dstevens

Well-known member
My gang of defectives and I did this short comedy. It's currently on ifilm, titled 'The Party'.

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2700933?htv=12&htv=12


It was shot on a DVX100A. I think most of the shots are fairly conventional, there are some odd looking cuts, mostly due to a dolly that turned out to be not overly stable.

It's 7 minutes 21 seconds... it's sort of a 'slice of life' piece, the entire backstory isn't completely explained, I deliberately leave up to the viewer to read in whatever you want.

Anyway, you can watch, nitpick, praise, as you wish!
 
hmmm you broke the 360 degree rule a couple times it seemed like, but i still liked it.
 
I didn't find it funny at all.. but I dunno... perhaps I am missing some of it...

about the actual work itself, it really had an ADD style of editing going on at times. Just watching it, it looked like you had way more coverage of any particular scene than you needed. The edits really stand out as well because of this.

The framing on your shot choice felt very odd, which might have been the reason it felt like there were so many cuts to me. Your OTS shots were way too similar to your TWO SHOTS. example, when the two girls are talking in the entrance way, your establishing shot is basically a profile two shot, then you cut to an OTS of the blonde girl, but the angle hasn't changed enough so it looks more like a jump cut than anything else.

I think it could have used a little more thought towards the choices of shots.

Wasn't bad, I just didn't find it particularly funny.
 
did you have a ND filter on? the whole film had this glazed over hazy look on it. the cuts were weird, so were some of the camera shots. i dont' really know what i think of this.
 
I didn't have an ND filter on, I just used all the default settings on F6. Actually I had filmed the same script previously, and the framing was all wrong and the composition was all flat.

So this time I tried to play around with the lighting - there are lamps with red gels in two corners, and the other rooms you see between the women have different colored gels in them. There are regular lights as well, so hopefully they don't overwhelm the picture.

I thought of it as a party of weird, off-kilter people, so weird, off-kilter angles seemed appropriate :)
 
Yeah, I knew I was breaking the 360 rule, but I felt like all I had was 2 or 3 people standing around talking. So I felt like jump cutting around would keep people from falling asleep at their computers.
 
I generally don't have problems with lacking technical aspects if the story is somewhwat compelling.

I felt like the script could have been shaped a lot more. Like, rather than having the story kind of drift from bit to bit, pick out a specific point to make with each beat. Then move on to the next beat and make the next point. Does that make sense? I think if the script had had more specificity, the movie would have been much shorter and tighter.

Also, I could swear I know that red head. I didn't recognize her name, but...
 
stevens, i understand where you were trying to go with the awkward angles and cuts representing the characters at the party, but i think it could have been better represented with extreme close ups on faces and music representing each character. but hey, it's your vision, i'm not here to direct you on your directing.

also, in the future, i'd shy away from using any red lighting/gels while shooting on miniDV. reds have never been picked up well for video format, and it actually doesn't work that well on movies either. you'll have a lot of pixelation within the shot, unless that's a look you are going for, watch out!
 
Yeah, I was leery of how the red would look, but I shot some test footage with that setup, and I don't know, I found I liked it. Did you see pixelation?

The red-headed woman is Gina, she lives in Boston, where she does a lot of dancing (like musical theater), modeling and stage acting. I know she's been down to NYC a couple times in different shows. So who knows, maybe you have met her.

If you watch Country Music Television, she was on this reality show called 'Cowboy U'.
 
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