Proxy

Jared,

Good job on your film. The entire thing opened up with the dialog being present. I liked your camera movements and lighting. Especially on the operating room table. The dead flower motif was neat too.

The one thing that slightly bothered me was the actor who played the doctor. He just seemed too obviously inexperienced as an actor. That's no big deal though. Overall you did a very good job at putting this flick together. I'd say it's in my top 5 as well.

-Aaron
 
Thanks everyone for the continued feedback!

It seems that a few different people really liked the little girl who played Emily :)
She sure is a cute kid, and she'll get a kick out of hearing that she has some fans.

The kind words are appreciated, as are the very helpful critiques.

Thanks again for the tracks, Aaron. Glad you enjoyed the short.
 
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One of the best...you know that.

I have one general coment and one nit-pickey one. Then a question.

This short was poorly cast. You needed some age in there to round thing out. The girl, little girl and the main guy were right the rest could have been better. I only say this because youre short was near perfect otherwise.

Why the extreme dutch angle on the little girl on the floor? Just curious. Hit me a bit funny...like it was supposed to. So why that choice?

What if any extra gear did you use for the shoot...ie lens adapters etc and how did you do the CC?

Near the top for me. With two good older actors in there you'de be #1

Thanks for the hard work I enjoyed it....It's definatly a multiple watcher for me.

Kip Kubin
 
Thanks Kip! I'm thrilled that you liked it.

Your comment about the casting falls in line with what others have been saying. I will tell you- only the young woman who played Jane has had any acting experience before.

As this is my first DVX project, first semi-seriously attempted project period, I was nervous to seek out the local professional actors. It's kind of a Catch-22. I don't expect actors to give me their time and energy for free (and I really can't pay anyone at this point) when I don't have an impressive body of work to show them to give them some guarantee that their efforts won't be wasted, but how do you get that body of work without using professional actors???

The people you see in "PROXY" are all good friends and family. We had a great time making the film. But even they have said after watching it: Jared, you better get some real actors next time around. So, that's defnitely something I'm going to focus more energy on for the next project.

The extreme dutch angle was supposed to show you, or at least hint at, the little girl from Jane's perspective, who is lying on the floor after having been shot. It was supposed to be jarring, but more because Jane was seeing that her daughter had been hidden in that room all along. I was hoping the off-kilter angle would make sense in terms of Jane being sideways on the ground.

I didn't use many accessories. A 10x macro lens for the eye closeup, A few lights here and there but mostly available light. We used a few white reflector cards for the hillside scenes. It was actually daylight for almost the whole shoot so we had to put roofing paper over all of the windows.

For color correction I used the 3-way visual corrector in FCP. There was a huge amount of color correction to do, and some very drastic, as we had had some white balancing issues :) Fancy way of saying that I forgot to at one point. The fluorescent lights in the shack didn't make things very fun either....I had green, yellow, red, and purple faces to match. You can see some pretty strong differences as it is now, but I think the whole things's pretty much in the same ballpark.

I wanted it really dark and contrasty in any case, so the whole thing is shot with Master Pedestal at -15. Which I think also accounted a little bit for some of the strange flesh tones.

Thanks for watching, Kip!

Jared
 
Hey, I liked this one a lot. One of the most professional-looking shorts I've seen here. The lighting was generally really impressive, though it got a little *too* dark, to my eyes, during the gun fight. Quite liked the plot, though I think the script in general could've used a little work. Also, generally very nice effects. I think the guns could've been a bit more convincing, and the sound in general may be your weakest point in terms of production (as I'm sure you realize given the trouble you mentioned with dialogue.) Very nice, though, good work.
 
Hi Jared,

First, let me say the story was a bit over my head... I didn't quite get what was going on.

Your lighting was good... and I loved your use of color... it had that "dark" look that really can create a sense of tension... but my criticism goes more to the editing. It seemed to be paced a bit "off" in the sense I didn't always feel that sense of tension you seemed to be trying to create. It LOOKED edgy, or like it should be filled with suspense, but I didn't alwasy FEEL that edginess or suspense.

The only cinematography criticism I'd have was during the gun scene... I do think I understand why you went handheld... but it was just a bit TOO shakey... I found it a little disorienting to watch.

I can totally appreciate your acting limitations, and given that you did very well. And the little girl... she was actually VERY good.

Thanks for sharing your film!
 
Thanks EditPhish! Hey, I haven't asked anyone else this yet, but would you mind telling me what you DID undertand in the story? I realize that it's very confusing....But I wanted to know what the viewer can come away with as it stands.

If you could explain to me what it's about from your perspective, to the best of your ability, that would help me see where it's especially confusing. :)
 
What I came away with was this:

there is an organization that, for whatever reaosn, intends to use this soldier as a puppet. He's been brainwashed, with his "trigger" being this flower. When he sees the flower, he beleives he has to rescue a child, so he goes toa specific location. This belief was actually created by kidnapping the child of one of the medical techs working at this location and using the scenario created. This scenario was then wiped from the tech's mind and she continued to work there. The soldier figures this out and tells her; she begins to rebel. As this happens, the government shows up, presumably having traced the soldier. They kill the doctors working there and free the soldier and the child. However, the doctors have already finished implanting a new command. The child (presumably brainwashed herself) then triggers this command with the same sequence again.

Mind you, I watched this a couple days ago now, so I may be remembering a bit off. But that's how I followed it.
 
Z B Brox, thank you!

You understood it perfectly. That is pretty impressive. Wow. You didn't miss a single beat! Bonus points for you, man.

Hmm....so where does that leave me. Is this short just confusing for some and understandable for others?

What could I do to make it clear to a higher percentage of viewers? :)

Seriously, Z B, how did you come up with that?? It's like you were looking at my story treatment or something. Crazy stuff. I honestly didn't have hopes that anyone would be able to summarize the entire story without missing anything, let alone 2 days after watching it. You're awesome.
 
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Wow, good to hear! Like I said, I liked the plot. ;) I thought it was just complex enough to work in this time frame, and it was clear enough to be understood without explicitly stating everything. And, y'know, everyone is going to find that balance in a different place, so I understand why some would be confused. But feel free to stamp that summary on the back of your DVD box one day ;)
 
The sound wasn't all that good but the picture was clear I still noticed the jerkiness (which I have in alot of the films). Initially the speech didn't match with the lips.

It's true what they say about doctors getting younger everyday. I thought the doctor, didn't look like a doctor at all.
Although the little girls acting was very good, I didn't understand what she was saying.[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
 
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