SHORT: Road To The Sale (password protected viewing for festival submission)

M

midnightblues

Member
Hi,

I am posting my short film, Road To The Sale. shot in Rockford, IL. I have been a member of this site for two years now. I think this is the first short that I really want the community to see because I've always felt that I am not going to post just a bunch of test footage. If I post a film on this board, it's because it's ready to be critiqued and solid content for viewing.

Anyways, if you click the link, have no expectations but it's not gonna suck.


Road To The Sale

A late submission to the 48 hour film project 2010. This was originally a mockumentary about used cars sales set similar to The Office. The expanded cut is more like a film within a film, where the documentary and the fiction styles are integrated throughout as our 3 characters move in and out of these films.




http://vimeo.com/14759392

password: film

Most of the team never went to film school. I never went and this is my first directing effort. Making films is our film school. We all have creative writing backgrounds so that's our strength. I was able to recruit some great actors and an outstanding cinematographer who brought his EX-1 to shoot with because I was always honest to the fact that we weren't hotshot filmmakers that knew everything. I think that openess really helped, create a team atmosphere, instead of a bunch of individuals looking out for themselves. And it worked.



It is password protected viewing because we are submitting the film for festival consideration. Let me know if you agree/disagree that it's film festival-worthy.

If you click the link and watch the film, thank you.

Mark
 
A very valiant effort. You did have some pretty strong actors and that always helps a ton with indie projects. There were two things that stood out as something to try and fix. The guy salesman - the first time he went to help the customer outside the audio was bad. The traffic noise almost blocked out everything they were saying. If you could throw more VoiceOver over that it would fix it. Then when the lady was talking to the female customer, it looked like daytime when she approached and then on the closeup shots it was night time. Other than that I though it was pretty good, especially for a 48 hour thing and great for being a first time director.
 
I liked it, it was very well done and the acting was superb and convincing. Only thing I don't like is that it's basically a The Office rip off, not in an overly bad way because it actually stands up to it quite well but what I mean is that it just feels to me very much deliberately taken from the Office like you just took their whole concept and applied it to Car Sales instead of Paper Sales. But that's happening a lot now and I've already seen several concepts here on dvxuser alone that do the same exact thing so I guess it's only natural that everyone jumps to replicate their favorite and most successful t.v. show. But all in all it was very well done. I just felt there was a few fussups with the editing that I couldn't understand but all that can be fixed to make it a tighter narrative structure.
 
thanks for the comments, guys.


just wondering... did the editing from "documentary" footage that's letterboxed at 2.35:1 w/ timecode embedded to the normal 16x9 footy distract at all? Or was it clear that one was raw footage from the film within the film and the other is the film?

or should I have left everything at 1 aspect ratio without the timecode?

either way...yeah...we're still operating within The Office style, despite my deliberate effort to make it look different.

Homunculus, let me know what were the fuss ups. if you can send me a pm, thanks.

Thanks again. This community rocks.

Mark
 
just want to asy again that this is really good I watched it again. You captured the vernacular so well, especially the boss how he speaks. "Broom 'em. They're rats." LMAO! This stuff was great. "Launch 'em." LOL.... very good.

The sales manager reminds me a lot of Jeff Garlin from Larry David's Curb your Enthusiasm.
By the way careful at 6:15, huge rolling shutter from the quick pan.

As for the editing 'fuss ups' I spoke of before, I think I just wasn't understanding things properly, I didn't get the cut backs to the sales mgr where he keeps talking to the camera, I thought it was random and weird but now I get it that it truly is like the office type of thing where the cameraman "interviews" him. I just felt perhaps the timing of those cuts to him were slightly strange.
For example the cut back to him at 6:47 popping his mouth is a bit random and awkward, I felt that didn't work, same with 7:01 where it cuts back to him playing Farmville or whatever it is. I feel it's a tad too 'quick' and pointless where it shows him for only a second or two. I don't know I guess it's a personal choice thing but those quick cutbacks just didn't work for me.
Really good actors though, the trio are just all very good although I feel some of the main salesman's (the bald one) actions are a little heavy handed in terms of what's presumably written into the script. Just a personal choice again but I felt like some of the things are just a little too forced like calling the customer "Ethel" when he already calls her Tabatha several times, perhaps calling her something wrong but that sounds a little more like Tabatha and the way he delivers "Of course it is" without any hint of feigning embarrassment or regret. Perhaps that's the way you wanted the character so once again it's just a personal choice for me but I just felt like he seems a little TOO jaded and irreverent towards the customers in some of the scenes where I would have preferred a slightly more subtle approach but like I said that's just personal choice and is just my own opinion in terms of the written treatment. But he does act very well as do the rest.
 
I went back and made some changes. It's still at the same link. Thanks.

There's nothing much I can do. hopefully, this is a bit tighter edit.
 
just watched it again. really good still one of the best offerings i've ever seen here on dvx. very professional and all actors in there are extremely top notch and natural.
 
I thought it was okay. Decently made, I likely viewed it after you mentioned changes were made (for your reference). The biggest drawback is that it is so similar to "The Office" and I can't really say anything constructive about the festival chances because you never know.

I'll say that it likely isn't a typical festival selection. You might have more success at festivals geared toward mockumentary content, etc.

I liked the actors fine, they did a decent job. However, overall it doesn't really "break out" of many shorts that I've seen that use a similar style.

My brief thoughts.

-M
 
Made one last pass at editing, it is a bit longer.

There's a scene where the 2 female characters are outdoors.
It was very difficult to cut together because the type of shots
that I had were all in one takes where 1 person talked, camera pan then, the
next person talks. It is tough to cut these takes together, especially
because the cars in the backgrounds. Gave me a headache.

So when I originally edited, I just tried to cut through the scene as quickly as possible.

Now this scene has been drastically improved. Also did some color correcting so that the changes
in lighting during sunset won't look so drastic from shot to shot.

Overall, I like this cut.
 
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