short film for your consideration

Re: short film for your consideration

I don't know about anyone else but I thought it was interesting (the concept of going back in time to save a friend), but I'm a sci fi kid and always find that stuff interesting. Didn't like the title much..
 
Re: short film for your consideration

I did like the title, and the way it was presented.  The story wasn't exactly original, but it was at least presented in an original way.  And who doesn't wish they had a time machine in their Pelican case?

Other than that, it looked a bit washed out and the truck perspective didn't work at all. I had to watch it twice to figure out that the truck was supposed to have hit the guy, when it was just sitting there.

But I was amused. I like time travel stuff, so that's always worth a few notches.
 
Re: short film for your consideration

is this supposed to be funny? i thought it was. but my wife didnt think so, she said its serious.. then i thought maybe im just stupid. would be cool to have one a bit longer.. was hard to really get into anything from the length, but was entertaining anyway. :)
 
Re: short film for your consideration

Loved the ultra wide angle frame on this. Anamorphic adapter or digital squeeze? Cropped using cleaner?

Anyway, as far as the story goes:
I wouldn't have known that it was a time travel story without the caption box telling me so.

I'm guessing that what's really being said here is that our time traveling savior is the real reason his friend was killed because it's his phone call that made him stop still in the middle of the street? If that's the case, then the story would have been made more interesting by ending it with the beginning again. This would show that the characters are stuck in a never ending "ground hog day" time loop.

About the storytelling:
I agree with David about the truck, but only that you should have cut out the still shot. It was sold enough that the truck was going to hit him with the focus pull shot and you should have just cut to the next scene from there. Or just cutting to a close up of his reaction as he turns to face the truck without actually seeing the truck in the background would have had more impact (ie. what we don't see is more frightening than what we do see).

I know it was a 28 second film festival, but precious seconds could have been used better by cutting out the long strobe effect or the title box at the end and better clarifying the time travel aspect.
All in all, it's a fun little film though. A lot of these comments are hind sight suggestions though. Not an easy thing to come up with in advance if you had no time to work up a story. How long did you guys have to conceive it for the festival?
 
Re: short film for your consideration

Thanks for the feedback you guys. I agree with many things you've pointed out, partucularly the need for some "reaction" shot to setup the truck impact better, and some additional story clarification.

Shooting the truck was hard. We had a guy drive his truck out during the brief lull's in traffic. We coordinated with some 2-way radios. Dart and I would run out and get in front of the oncoming truck. I tried to do the classic Hitchkock Dolly in/zoom out but with all the REAL traffic coming at us just behind our buddy in his truck we had trouble getting it right.

In the shot where Dart is walking out into the crosswalk and looking the wrong way he did come pretty close to some cars who weren't sympathetic to his mid-crosswalk antics. We all know better then to involve the unsupsecting public in gurilla film-making but with less then 1 hour to shoot all the exteriors, it seemed the best option to run and gun.

It is supposed to be funny. The music in my cut really changes the feel. The film we submitted didn't have any music. Dart and I went back and fourth on that element because it made it serious and it seemed to obscure the idea that I was directly responsible for him being hit.

After adding music to my own cut, I thought the humor of the film came from how it took itself seriously. In my film, I only get the laugh at the end when the title hits. It's always interesting to see how subtle changes can really affect the message and the take-away.

We want it to be clear that it's something of a paradox (nothing new there) in which the time traveling savior is responsible for the event happening. So it's good that you pinged on that. But your wife wasn't wrong either, because I wanted the film to keep the viewer in limbo, guessing if it was supposed to be funny or dramatic, until the very end.

I'm not sure how long it took Dart to write up the idea. I'm guessing not long. He's an improv actor primarily so he thinks in terms of skits. He brought the film idea up to me and we shot it the next day, edited it that evening.

For 28 seconds, we made a ton of mistakes! It was great to learn so much from such a compressed production schedule on a low-stakes project.

I shot in standard 4:3, but used some 16:9 guides that i'd drawn onto a thin plastic PDA screen guard for framing. Then I cropped in post using Vegas.

Some of you might be interested in a project Dart and I are involved in. We do a live stage show in which about 12 improv actors and 3-4 film makers take an audience suggestion and/or object and make a 1 hour improvised film. The idea started in New York and has started gaining momentum in Seattle, Chicago and a few other cities.

http://www.seattleneutrino.com (Our group)
http://www.neutrinonation.com (NY group)

Thanks for the feedback everyone,
Tristan
 
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