SHORT: Scherzo: Allegro con Brio - from the Nex Best Director!

M

Mr.Clay

New member
Hello guys!
I'm new here. I completed about a month ago this short movie I'm posting here. It was made with budget of 3000 euros. I think the final look it's quite professional and aesthetically beautiful.
It took 6 days of shooting, and a credw of about 15 people. I'd really like your comments.
In addition it was quite experimental cause its all silent, and I made a lot of work in synchronizing the soundtrack (from the Nutcracker) with the images. There are a lot of shooting virtuosities...
so here it is!

 
The color of the film is good. It looks good but in some parts the cam is shaky and tried to follow the action and didn't . Considering this cost roughly 4 grand, and in my opinion, I don't know why it's a silent film, it just doesn't cut it for the money and I don't pretend that my work is any better or could be with money, but honestly I think you could have shot this with a minimal crew and a whole lot less money, with the exception of perhaps the ballet/stage scene. Your sound sync was impeccable, I must admit.
 
It looked good, and like the poster above said it does have some nice color to it, however once again with a budget that deep, I'm not sure how you couldn't have made that with a lot less money and resources.
 
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With sound it would have been much much much much much much much better.

Like the sound of walking..touching.... the sound of the fire, the dog, the phone ringing.....
 
oh, well, thanx anyway for the good comments. i have to say, I know that 3000 euros couls sound a bug amount of money (i did my first short with 75), but I can assure u we cut anywhere it was possibile. The majority of the sum is so divided: nearly 800 € for the cast. 1000 € for the truope (and i mean one assistant director, on director of photography, the costume designer - she even manufactured the costumes for the lady - one key grip). The est of the crew worked out of passion and friendship. Additionally 250 € for a handmade jib, then phone expenses, food and travels (pre production took 2 months). It was no so easy to put everything together, we had to get everything for free (for instance the theatre was conceded by our city for free)...
And i shot with a canon 550d, two lenses and no additional live controls. i made the cameraman too. I know there are some errors and flaws - like some shots out of focus - but believe that given the total indipendent production the short is quite good (i mean on a technical basis).
The thing about the sound, i get it, but it was conceieved as a silent movie where the soundtrack is perfectly synchronized with the images. so it is a try to to a narration just by music and images, like in classical cinema. This was the concpet. but the absence of sound is a stylistic choice, so u may like that or not, but it fits anyway.
 
I don't agree on the comments taht with sound it should look better. I just simply liked it. I watched the full 10 minutes, and, to be honest, I don't always do that! This short just works. Though with a 3000 euro budget you might could have gotten rid of the wobbly movements sometimes by renting a good stabiliser or so.
 
if the abscence of sound was a choise, then it's "ok".

But sometimes...sound is removed because directors only notice that the sound is bad when they hear it true speakers.... But as I say...if it's a choise then it can work indeed.

I don't want to "push" to have always sound... But I have to live also :-p
 
The direction is beautiful. The story flows well and the actor's did their job brilliantly. Also good was blocking and actors hitting their marks in perfect sync with the music. The only place I found it lacking was in the cinematography. Granted there were many moments of good lighting and composition, but in something like this the camera needs to move as a dancer, fluidly and seamlessly hitting all of its marks along with the actors. It needs to reflect the flawless grace of the music being played. Shakiness, especially in the static shots, was a major detractor. In an instance or two you had a problem likely caused by your DP not planning for cropping in post, with one actor framed too high and the other too low.

Anyway, there was a lot of beauty in this and I found the overall aesthetic quality got better as it went on. Everything in the theater was gorgeous. I just can't get down with your decision to use any handheld at all in this. A great filim, but with better camera blocking and movement it could have been so much better.
 
Bad jello in very first shot (00:11)

Rough tilt in second shot and when the tilt is complete the image is still shaky

Zoom out shot of the dog would have been better as a dolly shot. Lighting of the room with the two actors looks more video than cinematic (unless you were going for that look).

00:54 - Shot becomes unbalanced

00:59 - way too much headroom

When they move outside it seems like you weren't prepared for the shift in color temp as it becomes cast in a bluish hue that doesn't seem like an intentional choice.

Shot at 1:26 fixes that color temp problem

1:45 - Focus problem. Starts to go even more out of focus on the arriving vehicle and then it goes to focus

2:17 - nice rotating shot

2:34 - bad jello again

2:39 - actress is out of focus

2:47 - after a very shaky pan upwards, there is a poorly lit shot that looks out of place with what has been seen so far

3:19 - Rack focus on wife as she hugs her husband never actually gets into focus

3:21 - Shaky pan that goes into a shot that feels out of balance (too much headroom for one, actors don't seem to be well-placed)

3:30 - Poor lighting on son and shot is not balanced, should be shifted over more towards the right.

This entire sequence seems to be handheld and is shaky compared to what's been before.

3:40 Scene is too dark and has more of a bluish cast to it than preceeding scenes

3:42 - Because of the hand-held nature, jello becomes noticible at this shot

5:10 - Her pounding her hands against the lover's body should have been in sync with the music, it starts off like that, but then goes off track

5:26 - The flashing green strobe in the apartment seems unnesscary and distracting

5:48 - I'm not sure as to the artistic choice of casting her walking outside in Matrix green

5:52 - Next shoot of outside walking has lost the green hue

7:29 - When the wife is screaming she drops down, but the movement doesn't follow her for a split second

7:36 - too much headroom. camera should have been lowered a bit and shooting directly into them for a better shot since there appears to be a lot of depth to the set

7:50 - too much headroom

8:00 - White text on bright red background: ugh, made my eyes hurt. frankly, there's no reason for any of the colored backgrounds at all and mostly they are two strong to be pleasant to look at.

Credits are boring...you don't need 2 whole minutes of them, especially since so much time is wasted with that colored sequence.

Okay, I'm assuming that the raped teen is the mother? And that is supposed to be the reason she brings a gun to the money drop? But why is there a connection trying to be made between being raped and blackmail? It seems really weak that her experience of being raped would make her freak out and bring a gun to dropping off the cash. The story also seems to try to go for dramatic impact in making her son the obvious result of that rape, but her reaction is no different from any mother who would accidently kill her own child. When you try to tell a story like this without sound you have to keep the motivations as clear and simple as possible. This seems to muddy things up. It would have been understandable for her to arm herself regardless, so this bit of information isn't neccesary.

Also, her happening upon the gun is very strange too. Meeting up with the lover after getting the note is expected, but she's obviously well-to-do in a way that means her husband probably keeps a piece somewhere that she would have access to and that wouldn't be noticed was missing for a while. Having it out in the open in a bag like you do makes it seem like her lover is about to either rob a bank or flee the country. Why does he have a gun out in the open like that?

The opening with the velvet and candles seems very superflous to the story and seems to be there simply because it looks "cool"

Mr.Clay said:
The thing about the sound, i get it, but it was conceieved as a silent movie where the soundtrack is perfectly synchronized with the images. so it is a try to to a narration just by music and images, like in classical cinema. This was the concpet. but the absence of sound is a stylistic choice, so u may like that or not, but it fits anyway.
Click to expand...

It held up well enough except for the moments when the actors were actually speaking lines that you couldn't hear. I would have avoided that completely. Instead, sound should never be overlooked, and I feel that the choice was made primarily because of equipment issues. Had you worked the story to include no DIALOGUE, but otherwise not silent (all of which could have easily been added in post), I think you would have a much stronger short.\

Ultimately, I feel it was a great idea that was merely okay in execution (overall, some parts got it better than others), but could have been so much better given what you had at your disposal. At the very least I'd look into adding foley and perhaps re-editing it on a 720p timeline so that you can fix some shot balance issues. I'd also do away with every color correction filter and start from scratch to keep it more consistent.
 
In 99,99999999999% of the time, sound is removed because people think "sound is only holding a mike...well...it will sure be ok....", untill they hear it true speakers and think "aah, ****...not so good though..."

So they remove the sound that is the raison Hollywood films always sounds great (it's because of the "stupid" sounds like walking, sound of clothes moving, sound of the wind...the chickens at the farm...the mowing cow...., the sound of the brunch breaking, the sound of hitting the button...that makes it "alive"). Well, most is added in foley because of technical and focusing on dialogues isues....

But to go back to the subject. I think in this case it was a choise of not having sound because the main goal was to edit it on the music ?
 
Here I am. Sorry for the absence, I was away. So, let's start answering one by one, leaving subtleinspiration for last (as they say, last but not least :D).
to hjrt and HBlack, mainly about camera blocking:
ur maybe right, could have done a bit better, but we has no equipment, and I couldn't find. I had to arrange every aspect, talking with costume designer, production designer, finding locations and even moving the furnishing... I mean, there are some things we couldn't achieve, and this is the camera equipment, which would have been very very expensive (maybe 150€ that's about 200$ per day). the budget we had was collected doing a great pool party with about 600 ppl, and asking sponsor to the commercial activities in our city, and it wasn't enough anyway. What i want to say, is that ur all right, the camera work could have worked a lot better, but I had no control equipment for that, it was just my hand (and im not a camera operator). So I tried to compensate with the aesthetics INSIDE the frames, and the frames themselves are not perfect, I know. I hope in the next works Im doing (Im to direct a videoclip for a hiphop singer from my city. it's a tiny thing, but Im trying to make it "gorgeous").
btw, HBlack, Im really thankful for ur hyperkind words!

to subtleinspiration.
ur review is very precise and clever, and ur right on every point u made out. As i said before, there are errors which im aware of, even filming, but we had so little time, a very tight schedule, I had to make some difficult decisions, preferring getting some not perfect shots, instead of getting any :)
I dont agree on hte opening sequence. Maybe its not necessary in the narration but is more aesthetic in a sort of "saul bass" way. I love art titles. besides, there is a lot of symbolism in that. it is a sort of burial mound with elements reprising the story: like white petals - white rose is even a symbol of mournig, and of innocence in another way. so the scene of the lover breaking the rose means also broken innocence, which represents the rape and also a premonition of the son's death. Also the fire is a very symblic element, maybe too much symbolic :D, the nails either. so synthetically, the title sequence is a sort of symbloic summary of all the story.

about ur concerns about the story. the woman has passed through an intense drama when she was young, and after that we see she gained a very balanced life. she has also an affair, and maybe that seems incoherent but that can be interpreted as she trying to live some youth adventure she couldnt have before, or even "using" a man, as she was used in a very different way years before. in addition she is very bound to her family, and as the story enters its climax we see she is dispoded to do anything to protect that family, even killikng the blackmailer who threatens to wreck it. so she sees a gun and takes it with her to the warehouse. she doesnt know exactly what to do, and the scene should suggest that she fires unintentionally. but she is afraid, she recalls the man who raped her, that ruined her youth, and know this new man is trying to ruin her life now. she doesnt accept that and she can fire it it necessary. she is strong but at tha same time very fragile. I know that all this things are not easy to catch immediatley, but i thought a lot on the script, on the character. the only problem is that I had to follow the music, stay in thye music flow, so, some scene are dilated, and others (especally in the end) are shortened. but i think the overall sensation that the short gives is good, I looked for a good drama, with contrasting emotions (the end is very contrasting: a triumphant music and a tragedy parallel to an applause).
Even in the camera movements, i tried to be very virtous, beyond our technical possibilities.

About the sound, I already said it was a stylistic choice, and at the same time it got me the pro of no sound issues. and acting issues. You know how is difficult to find good and convincing actors? in that way (silent) it's a lot better, audience concentrates on the images, and just that, it is what i wanted. besides i want to be a director, my field is images. when i will be able to take a very good sound, i'll do.
so, ad uglychicken said, the main goal was to edit it on the music, and I can say I accomplished that really well :D.
 
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