Short Film I Wrote/Directed-- Crits Please

Daniel Skubal

Daniel Skubal

Veteran
So I took a class last semester that was a Directing/Film Production class at Purdue and was hoping I could get a few pairs of eyes to take a look at it and hopefully tear it apart. The entire class was based in groups of 4 where each person was given the task for each person's film to either Write/Direct, Sound/Edit, Produce, and Film. My teacher finally posted them online. Mine is titled "The Hustler And The Blind Man" and it was shot on a jvc-hd110 (Gross, I know :() with my redrock adapter. Oh, and we were only allowed 10 hours to film each short-- which became the biggest challenge of all.

Here's the link to the film:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8j4nqYhgdUA

and for the list of the entire class's projects that is http://ca.youtube.com/user/PurdueFVS

The other films I worked on were The Bet (producer), The Shelter (Cinematographer), and Wallflower (Sound/Editing). I'd appreciate comments if you have any. I entered the film into an Indiana-based short film festival so we'll see how that turns out.

Thank you in advance, and please be ruthless, I want to get better. :) :dankk2:
 
I just watched your film, I really liked the overall story, and the production quality was extremely high given the time you had to shoot. I loved the color grading that golden feel looks really nice.

I don't know what you were using for your audio rig, but there were several places where I found some harsh differences in dialogue, nothing major just nit picky stuff.

Some of your footage is a bit shaky, like when the guy is running away. Some shake is great it heightens the fact he is running away, but I feel there may have been a little to much...

Overall I watched the whole video, and enjoyed watching it! Congratulations on a very nice piece.

BTW I loved your Titles at the start, did you storyboard that?
 
Xylon Media said:
I just watched your film, I really liked the overall story, and the production quality was extremely high given the time you had to shoot. I loved the color grading that golden feel looks really nice.

I don't know what you were using for your audio rig, but there were several places where I found some harsh differences in dialogue, nothing major just nit picky stuff.

Some of your footage is a bit shaky, like when the guy is running away. Some shake is great it heightens the fact he is running away, but I feel there may have been a little to much...

Overall I watched the whole video, and enjoyed watching it! Congratulations on a very nice piece.

BTW I loved your Titles at the start, did you storyboard that?
Click to expand...

Xylon,

Thank you so much for taking a look at it!

The audio was probably the roughest part, simply because we had no time for ADR, so we had to go with nat sound and do the best we could. My day of shooting unfortunately was extremely windy and we had freezing rain the entire time we were outside. It's hard telling that from first watching it but the conditions weren't exactly perfect for filming. That's sort of the reason some of the camera and sound work was a little shakey on the outside stuff.

As for the title sequence, it was in the original script with several bits of dialogue that the hustler is supposed to say. That sequence was the last thing we shot for the day and we had about 25 minutes to grab everything, and the rain had just picked up so we scrambled to get what we had but it turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted it to. I think it was the best way to introduce the character and set up the story around it. Showing, rather than telling.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to watch and critique! :)
 
I did like this film. I thought the acting was excellent and the production quality top-notch. I also liked the atmosphere and mood of the story and the editing seemed right on. The only thing I was ify about was the length. I liked the point you were trying to relay with the story, but it seemed as if we could see where the story was heading, but it was just taking it's time getting there. And I don't know if that some of the dialogue was unnecessary or not. Overall good job and very professional.
 
i love the opening, great catch. like the dude above me said, i pretty much knew what was gonna happen before it ended. keep up the good work
 
I liked it. A simple story, somewhat predictable but good overall. The blind guy could've toned it down a bit. The Black actor was very good. Generally well-acted and well-directed. The camera work was good, so was the editing. Good short movie subject, not much more you could do with it unfortunately. I say forget it and move on; you have more potential -- write and make a feature length movie and go for broke. You can do it.
 
Good job. I must say I rarely comment on shorts, but this is better than 90% of the shorts I see online.
I liked the change in your character from the beginning to the end. It gave meaning to the film. Also your lead actor was very believable.

As far as constructive criticism goes...
The blind man was a bit over the top. Less is more.

A bit too much dialogue for my taste. You did good job at the beginning of "showing not telling". Yet then you started to lose me. It felt like the last two scenes were "written around the dialogue" Less is more with dialogue as well.

Those were my thoughts....but great job!
 
I think of 'shorts' as 'condensed', and as such, while there may be reason for 9 minutes, I think most people who do 'shorts' tend to go longer than needed.

I'll give an example of where one can look for tightening up the time.

When the huckster is told to disappear, the shop owner on the phone, there's a somewhat longish sequence of the Huckster running along the building. I think you could have 'start run', turn corner locating the action near the 'blind man', then you're rather static shot of the blind man sitting, and being passed by the Huckster.

I realize that tightening that may only eliminate 5 seconds or so, but just think about that through out the rest of the film... it adds up...

I don't usually watch the various shorts initially with sound, and so I tend to see the 'talking head' syndrome more often than not. For me, a short needs to have dialog minimized, and the visuals maximized to convey the story.

If there was a minimum time... say 3 minutes... 4, then I'd tend to edit down to that... think about a commerical... with in 15, 30, or 60 seconds you the viewer are supposed to know The Story, and it is done in such a manner than The Story, especially the Product Name and Use, stick in your brain.
 
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