Recently Completed Award Winning Short Shot on the DVX-100

A

adamblakecarver

Member
So DVXuser.com has been my late night entertainment for quite a while now and now it's my turn to share my work. The following link is directed towards a download site where you can view the trailer for my film, Rising Water. I posted some grabs earlier in the year but I finally just cut a trailer for a festival we won. The download will take approx 4 min but i would really appreciate a critique. If enough people show interest i would love to post the whole film as well. I've currently completed 4 productions on the DVX and absolutely love it. Please comment. Just click on the link and then Rising Water Film Trailer. Also, if anyone else has any suggestions for fast online media posting. I normally get discouraged about approaching my web designer.

http://ia108607.us.archive.org/2/items/AdamBlakeCarverRisingWater/Rising_Water_Trailer

sorry about the wait
 
jpbankesmercer said:
Man you better sort that out before John catches you...hehe...it does not work...server probs...
Click to expand...
lol

"Boys, you better get this crap cleaned up before Dad gets home. If he sees this mess, he's going to kill you!"
 
adamblakecarver,

got to be honest with you, the movie may be great and it looks like it has potential (the parents look to turn in some good performances) and MAJOR kudos for the festival news (!), but this trailer just doesnt work for me, as is.

i can tell there are good emotional moments here, they just aren't conveyed very well in your trailer. here's a couple of ideas:

- when people are talking (i learned this lesson myself) its not a good idea to show that in trailers if you aren't going to have audible dialogue. you have music playing throughout and people talking for extended periods of time and its distracting to try and figure out what they are saying. i recommend either only fading the music in at certain moments for emotional emphasis or cutting all the dialogue parts from the trailer (unless its someone screaming or something, that stuff people can figure out).

- showing that many credits at the beginning of a trailer i think should only be done if you have big name talent. i didnt recognize any of those names, so other than a director's credit i don't think any of them need to appear up front. you can list them all together at the end on a B/W info screen.

- its too long. both points above would help that. but some shorts were unnecessarily lengthy. cut out all the dry spots that aren't showing anything. remember its just a trailer, you want to get people's interest quickly without lingering too much. the kid coming outside the house and standing in the doorway for awhile with the flowers in the foreground stands out in my mind as a good example of this.

i think you can improve this trailer a lot, if you feel like revisiting it. if you do, please repost, i would like to see it.

also don't get discouraged if people don't give a lot of feedback within a few hours of your initail post. a lot of people seem to be drawn to a certain type of clip but i am confident they will come around for you here. it's a great forum. just be patient.

also please check out some other people's work here and leave your comments, that way people will get to know you and recognize your name and maybe be more willing to look at your trailer. not saying you are doing this, but personally i get a bit annoyed when i see people only posting about their own work and not commenting on others'.
 
thanks for commenting

thanks for commenting

thanks for the commenting im going to start replying more to other peoples threads as of now.

now let me let you know that i'm a sixteen year old director.

www.tandafilms.com/risingwater

the purpose of making this film was really to teach myself the ABC's of filmmaking and show how I could work on a project with a USC grad Director of Photography. This ended up being a success as 'Rising Water' picked up the Best Drama Award and Audience choice award at a paul newman sponsored film festival in CT and will be screened at America's Biggest student film festival on july 31st. The trailer is supposed to be used to show visuals and not give away the film. It's a short and yes I know it's long. Thanks for your comments and I wont be worrying about cutting another trailer as it's just for a short film. After dropping my screenplay by a couple of guys who ran the festival I was also able to pull in funding for a feature length film. Once again thanks for your comments and I promise to continue supporting dvxuser.com
 
My browser just hangs on a blank page... could be me my problem I suppose, but a 'view source' on the target at your link shows just a blank page.

EDIT: Got it. Right-click save as does it -- there's no file extension in the url so that confused my browser.
 
try to download the file to your desktop.. let me know if the problem persists. the actual trailer will be up on the films official website within the week.
 
i agree with the lions den, it does have potential but you should check into the points he makes about the trailer. looking forward to seeing the whole piece though
 
I pretty much agree with the above comments (that's a lot of names I don't recognize / the kid at the door is quite long) but I think I see your reasoning behind why you did the things you did. It looks like the names are in there so you can cut the trailer in that style (short clip / cut to card / short clip / cut to card / etc). Maybe you could put some catchy tag lines or something there in lieu of names.

As far as the dialogue being overpowered by the music, in most cases I'd be annoyed. However, I think that given your subject matter it could be used in this trailer to convey what is building up inside your character (dialogue we hear but don't comprehend + overpowering music could = a way to show things boiling over to push this person to suicide). I may be way off, and there was no intent to this, and it's just an unintentional case of music killing off the dialogue -- but if you need and excuse for keeping it that way then there ya go!

This could be tightened up though. We see a lot of the same shots repeatedly (girl on bed, kids surrounding another kid, parents fighting). For all I know that's all there is to the movie, but if so then it seems like you'd want to shorten it so we don't feel like we're watching a longer version of a trailer once we see the actual film. If there are additional scenes, maybe consider teasing us with clips from those even if we don't understand exactly what's happening in them.

Just my $0.02
 
I am agreeing with Lyons on all points. That being said:

It looks really sharp; and age considering wow impressive. "Check out the big brain on Brad."

What festival did this win?
 
thanks for the comments. and owen i will be purchasing a couple of your dvd's shortly. As for the music overpowering the diologue you hit the nail right on the head. For more information on the film please visit www.tandafilms.com/risingwater. The film picked up the dramatic choice award and audience award at paul newmans film festival in CT and was just seleected for Best Fest America Film Festival where the film will be screened on July 31st. Im still waiting to here from NYIIFVF, San Diego Film Festival and two others. The site will be updated with screenings and such in the near future. Thanks for your time and i'm looking forward to being a more active member of dvxuser.com!
 
I also agree that the titles are a bit much, but this trailer was cut for a festival in san diego where myself and Robert are known well as well as the talent. Most of the talent is active in theatre and film in san diego and as an act of appreciation I'm willing to advertise their name as a sort of thank you to their agents and managers.
 
* Didn't get thru the whole download*
Nice opening compostions. As a trailor, eh, not catchy. As opening credits, great! Let's see a tighter edit. Hope you made a point about our generation's "over- the- counter" craze. Mucho grande problemo here in the States.
 
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