"RPDM" by Two Bears One Cup

Mark, this was fantastic. I really enjoyed the overall look and feel. It flowed very nicely from start to finish. I thought the score was excellent. To find fault anywhere youd really have to nitpick so I gave it my best shot :P

The start of the voiceover sounded a tad like a sales pitch.
At 0.34 the out of focus shot then runs to them in focus, was great and a great editing choice, then the shot looks a tad flat - conversely to the cat in the next shot which is great, and a great cutaway.
At 1.10 theres a window as they are going for it, but the window doesnt seem to motivate the light quite correctly. Then at 1.18 the window seems to have swapped sides. Or you have crossed the line. Beautiful slo mo and lighting there btw. Then at 1.27 your back at original positions and the line is crossed again. Personally I would just flip the shot in the edit and all is well.
This is just an opinion on the set design in that room, junkies are pretty messy beasts. Seemed a bit clean. As I said just an opinion. Then theres this amazing corpse and blood. I dunno the rubbish on the floor to me would, when shes talking about love etc when they are in the throws of passion, have made a good contrast to her perceived reality and the true reality.
At 3.36 the dialogue is a bit quiet.
At 3.57 you create essentially a 2p set up which would put the line parallel to her facing herself, but the prior shot was on a different line. Again not enough recognisable in the shot so a flip in edit would work again.
When he ingests the drug, and I understand why you did it the way you did with time constraint, seemed to quick to hit. Drug goes to stomach then bloodstream as opposed to injected straight into the blood stream.

As I said I loved this short and all of the above is just picking and inane in reality.

Great, great story to watch.
 
Last edited:
Noel Evans said:
Then at 1.18 the window seems to have swapped sides. Or you have crossed the line. Beautiful slo mo and lighting there btw.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noticed the lighting change, but just shot it that way to intensify the action (orgasm shota), but you're totally right.

Damn you for noticing.:cry::cry::cry::2vrolijk_08::2vrolijk_08::2vrolijk_08:
 
Noel Evans said:
Mark, this was fantastic. I really enjoyed the overall look and feel. It flowed very nicely from start to finish. I thought the score was excellent. To find fault anywhere youd really have to nitpick so I gave it my best shot :P

The start of the voiceover sounded a tad like a sales pitch.
At 0.34 the out of focus shot then runs to them in focus, was great and a great editing choice, then the shot looks a tad flat - conversely to the cat in the next shot which is great, and a great cutaway.
At 1.10 theres a window as they are going for it, but the window doesnt seem to motivate the light quite correctly. Then at 1.18 the window seems to have swapped sides. Or you have crossed the line. Beautiful slo mo and lighting there btw. Then at 1.27 your back at original positions and the line is crossed again. Personally I would just flip the shot in the edit and all is well.
Click to expand...

This is just an opinion on the set design in that room, junkies are pretty messy beasts. Seemed a bit clean. As I said just an opinion. Then theres this amazing corpse and blood. I dunno the rubbish on the floor to me would, when shes talking about love etc when they are in the throws of passion, have made a good contrast to her perceived reality and the true reality.
Click to expand...
yeah, I guess I wasn't being completely clear here. I didn't want them to come off as junkies, so much as young kids in love. So the room is intentionally bare to try to indicate that they jsut don't care about material stuff. I remembered being that young and idealistic once, living in seattle, completely unburdened by junk. Its also why I wanted the bed on the floor without a frame.

But good eye on that stuff.

At 3.57 you create essentially a 2p set up which would put the line parallel to her facing herself, but the prior shot was on a different line. Again not enough recognisable in the shot so a flip in edit would work again.
Click to expand...

Wait, are you saying when she's in the bathroom, going from spitting on the tab to standing?

When he ingests the drug, and I understand why you did it the way you did with time constraint, seemed to quick to hit. Drug goes to stomach then bloodstream as opposed to injected straight into the blood stream.
Click to expand...

Others have said the same. My girlfriend said, if it hits him that fast, it should be working on her through her skin as well. Which might have been interesting, but yeah, it's done for time.

One thing that got cut was in the scene where she finds him at the party, we have him interacting with another girl, and trying to impress her with his comic books. then she disses him. We were hoping to give the idea that though he is some kind of weird drug lord, he can't get laid, so was soooo willing to go with this coked up black widow.

As I said I loved this short and all of the above is just picking and inane in reality.

Great, great story to watch.
Click to expand...

Noel, thanks sooooo much. this is the kind of detailed critique I love to see, very specific and right on point. Again, thanks soooooo much.

You can blame that unmotivated light on Joe. I'll take the hit for the rest :)

Glad you came to check it out.
 
Last edited:
Mark and Joe,

This was incredible. A really good script based on a brilliant idea, played by utterly convincing actors. But what really got me was the cinematography and the editing, how they fuse together, how you really need to watch closely to see where one ends and the other starts. And then how you have fulfilled the theme of time so well, not just in the storyline but in the craft of film making - ramped speeds, slow motion, fast motion that I don't know whether really to call jump cuts or dropped frames, cut aways that flash across the frame... This is a film to study and learn from, frame by frame.

Jason
 
thanks Jason.

joe shot it, I cut it and then he did the CC.

One thing I really wanted to work hard on in this was representing the time element visually, thus hopefully viscerally.

I thought some of the time-remapping came out a hair wonky. We were shooting pretty fast and if you get any motion blur in the footage, that remapping is dead. Doing this again, I would try to get my hands on a high-speed camera, or at least a RED that does 120.
 
Last edited:
Wow. Just, f'ing wow. This completely blew me away. As soon as I finished it, I pushed 'play' again. Utterly amazing.

I would seriously love to see this expanded. I love how you paced it and narrated it within the six minutes, but I think it has a lot of potential for a longer work. The slow-mo shots to show time dilation were just awesome. Especially when he gets shot -- extremely well-done. The song at the end was perfect.

My single gripe is that I didn't understand until the end that the time frames she was referring to were her perceptions, not literal time. I'm sitting there thinking, "Holy ****, two months? Did they eat?" I don't know if I'm the only one who thought that since I haven't read this whole thread, but one extra line of voice-over could have remedied that. It wasn't a huge deal, because in the final scene when she said he had a year to die before they came in, all was made clear.

Amazing stuff.
 
Last edited:
Duff said:
Wow. Just, f'ing wow. This completely blew me away. As soon as I finished it, I pushed 'play' again. Utterly amazing.

I would seriously love to see this expanded. I love how you paced it and narrated it within the six minutes, but I think it has a lot of potential for a longer work. The slow-mo shots to show time dilation were just awesome. Especially when he gets shot -- extremely well-done. The song at the end was perfect.

My single gripe is that I didn't understand until the end that the time frames she was referring to were her perceptions, not literal time. I'm sitting there thinking, "Holy shi*, two months? Did they eat?" I don't know if I'm the only one who thought that since I haven't read this whole thread, but one extra line of voice-over could have remedied that. It wasn't a huge deal, because in the final scene when she said he had a year to die before they came it, all was made clear.

Amazing stuff.
Click to expand...

What you never had sex for two months? :)

Good, thanks for the comment about the time thing. So far, you are the first to mention it, but I will defintely keep eyes open on it. I often try to under-write things, in the hopes of staying away from the obvious. But that often gets me into trouble by not being clear enough.

I am mapping out a feature version of this right now. There is a lot more I would like to do with the idea, for sure.
 
Wow, I didnt look once at the timer during your flick. Enjoyed it start to finish. No real problems with the story from me. The intro took me right in. Im big on good intro's and you really have a good one. The time element written in coupled with the time remapping works well. Congrats on another kickass film.

Joe, you da man. HPX500 bare? Love the color choice on lighting and CC.

You guys are a great team. Definitely, one of the best this fest.
 
really great job guys! definitely my favorite of the festival. A really stellar lead performance, tight story, and I just loved the camera, lighting, and CC work. Awesome.
 
Damn dude.

I don't really have any large criticisms. My favorite film of yours so far and really great in it's own light. The film works and works well because you are committed to putting honest performances in front of the lens and committed to / realize the importance of capturing in shooting and revealing in editing those moments which allow for connection and empathy.

It's not that I particularly liked this character and felt FOR her (sympathy) but I could feel what she was feeling at times (empathy), the horror of the tragedy, the satisfaction of her act at the end.

The Military line sticks out just a bit to me and I had trouble hearing the "reverse engineered" line which is pretty crucial.

Maybe a little confused about which side of her face the blood is on once we see where the body is etc.

Don't like those flat open white walls in the bedroom scene. A post vignette could do wonders.

Hate the art direction on that white shiny rope. Don't think a rope like that would be practical either, too slippery. Hate it when I see that same rope in any short used for mischief, never seen it in a feature, but it pops up in shorts all the time and always pushes me out a bit. A piano wire would have been oh so elegant. If not, then at least a dingier, not so super white rope.

So that's really all I can find to comment negatively and clearly I had to pick nits to do so.

Got a chill at the end when she is all mad and **** in slow mo doing that thing to him which I am being vague about to not post a spoiler.

Really strong and compelling with a unique voice that was there in your previous works but asserts itself with great confidence, clarity and polish in RPDM.
 
Really cool idea and great lighting,

I liked the drug aspect being used to give the effect of time being slowed down to incredible lengths and that its used for pleasure, pain, and a satisfactory revenge at the end, you definitely used a full spectrum of emotions.
 
By the way, you dudes... before I actually get into a real review tonight I want to say that I saw more than boobies. Well, actually I didn't see boobies because I covered my eyes.

ANYWAY.

I'm glad that you invested the time in creating the science to go with the fiction. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you spent quite a lot of time developing the mechanics of RP and probably spent more time there than actually writing. I may be wrong, just feels like a lot of energy went into the Science, and it's GREATLY appreciated.

I'll be back.
 
Well if that isn't a back-handed compliment if i ever heard one....

:)

Yeah, I did a ton of research about this. It started, as I said a few pages back, with research into drugs that are actually in development for enhancing memory. Then that led into study of dopamine in the brain, internal clocks, people experimenting with slowing their own time through dopamine maipulation, reports of people "losing time" through stokes and the like.

And I actually did read about one man's acid trip where he lived two months in the space of four hours. He clearly remembered going to work, eating, drinking, sleeping, walking his dog, 60 days and d60 nights, in that trip. So that is where the idea came from.

Looking forward to hearing more from you later.
 
Mark Harris said:
Well if that isn't a back-handed compliment if i ever heard one....

:)

Yeah, I did a ton of research about this. It started, as I said a few pages back, with research into drugs that are actually in development for enhancing memory. Then that led into study of dopamine in the brain, internal clocks, people experimenting with slowing their own time through dopamine maipulation, reports of people "losing time" through stokes and the like.

And I actually did read about one man's acid trip where he lived two months in the space of four hours. He clearly remembered going to work, eating, drinking, sleeping, walking his dog, 60 days and d60 nights, in that trip. So that is where the idea came from.

Looking forward to hearing more from you later.
Click to expand...

Nah, not backhanded. Just meant that it probably took you longer to research than to actually write it. Sure plenty of writing time went into it, I know how it is. MANY drafts deep.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top