Robot Dreams Short Film

The little effect on deactivation wasn't too great, and a lot of the dialog came out unnatural, I assume because it was taken from the source material overly directly. But it was well done overall, I liked it.
 
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A small nitpick but if he is not to "hear us" how can he know when she later says his name? Is that directly from Asimov?
 
Hi Christian,

I think this looks really good!!

There's some issues with ambient noise when changing planes (not sure if it's said this way in Enlish). I suppose they're different mic sets or are they on-camera mics?)

I like the color grading, but maybe the shadows could be a bit darker IMHO.

Is the credits sequence from this tutorial? http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/glass_orbs/

Greetings!
 
Ive been a big Asimov fan for a while. I liked this story, and the way you implemented it. The young girl while attractive was a little unconvincing to me at times, and a little overly apologetic.

The susan calvin character though was spot on, heck she even looked like how I imagined susan calvin looking when i read those novels (lol, how did you do that?!)

I think you did a pretty good job of getting varied shots throughout to keep us interested even though you stayed in the same small half of a room, but that said I would have liked to see a few more locations. The robot actor did a pretty good job as well.

I think this would have benefitted a lot from getting some shots of him in the dream, but i guess you didnt because of time or money constraints.

Some small things that really made a positive impact for me were, the badges, the tool S. Calvin has (nice touch), and the barcode. These small attention to detail, really helped imerse me in the film, nice touches.

keep it comming.
 
Nice job...You could of done so much more with that story. I thought in the end the whole thing was his dream...and he was going to protect himself. Was the blockbuter in Magic bullet looks??
 
leepback said:
A small nitpick but if he is not to "hear us" how can he know when she later says his name? Is that directly from Asimov?
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Because that's how robots work. He listens for a certain word, but doesn't write to memory any others and thus doesn't hear anything else. It never happened as far as he's concerned.
 
It's awesome to see something that isn't just action pieces, this and the Tales of Ordinary Madness are both adaptations and way way more interesting and entertaining, for me at least.

In terms of getting across complex emotions and ethical/moral themes with amateur actors and a low production budget, some make the argument that you shouldn't risk over-reaching your skill set- but neither of these feel pretentious and they both preserve and get the essence of the source work across.

Sure the seams are visible in a lot ways, but still it's impressive to me that you can throw three people in a room and have this dilemma play out and feel a sincere interest on a deeper level than just "Oh snap! That dude jus got ****ed up!" Which is fun, but I feel it's over represented on dvxuser sometimes.

That said, I agree that the line readings were a little off at times, mainly between the head Doc and the younger one, it's just kinda vague and flat-not horrible though, but things always got interesting when the robot started talking.
 
Cassius said:
Because that's how robots work. He listens for a certain word, but doesn't write to memory any others and thus doesn't hear anything else. It never happened as far as he's concerned.
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...yes but if you're worried about his future actions and his being subservient then what's to say he doesn't record it???? Still seems illogical to this human brain at least.
 
I haven't finished it yet, but here are some thoughts.

The color grading didn't do it for me. Maybe if you made the blacks blacker it would, though. I liked the color in the robots eyes. I also thought that there was too much make-up on the younger scientist. Lastly I thought that there was not enough movement. Why tell this story visually when the people are just standing around the whole time? Perhaps that is how it happens in Asimov's story, but I think if you are translating it to film there needs to be something visual in it. There isn't any reason so far in the film I couldn't just listen to the audio track and understand the whole story.

That said, I'm really enjoying it. I'm a sucker for sci-fi!
 
You should get a composer instead of using real movie soundtracks, im sure you can find someone to do it for you here on dvxuser.
 
Very Well Done.

I'm particularely impressed with the guy playing the robot, and the opening credits.

To give you some constructive criticism, here are a few things I would like to have seen differently:
The dialogue acting and editing felt a bit starwars prequel/star trek TNG. In other words, two people standing straight, looking forward, saying lines. Switching closeup-closeup-closeup etc.

Give the actors something to do while they speak other than just talk. Generally it's hard for people to listen to what people are saying in dialogue driven shorts, especially if they're posted online. If this was on TV or played as a short at a festival it would be a different matter, but online people's attention span is much shorter.

As an example, you didn't have to have the thing laying on the table. She could have gone and fetched it, and the young girl could have followed and you could have kept the same dialogue.

But don't think of this as nitpicking, I really, really liked that short and Cyberpunk is a big deal for me.
 
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