Shortfilm "The Wild"

sollthar

sollthar

Member
This is my first entry into this forum. Hello everyone! I'd like to present my latest shortfilm "Wild" as an introduction.

poster.jpg


Mark and Sara spend some time in the wild swiss mountainside.
On the way, they meet Laura, a friend of Sara's.
And three is definately one too many.


Quicktime (80 mb)
http://www.nightcast.net/thewild.mov

Flashvideo:
www.nightcast.net/permanent/wild/flash/index.html


Duration: 17.30 minutes
language: swiss with english subtitles
equipment: sony FX-1


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Good stuff and welcome!

Here we like to give constructive crit (or at least I do :) ) to help with future projects.

It's an interesting story.

A few of the translations didn't work too well. At one point you say "save" when it's "safe." Also some lines, like "my fire is only as good as your wood" or "now you can cook your sausage" Now not really sure if it was meant to, but those are very clear sexual innuendos (and weirdly worded). If it's on purpose it feels a bit weird and out of place, if not, then perhaps you should word it differently. "Moaning" is also used a bit too often, and I usually see it more as a sexual thing, a woman moaning in ecstasy. You should have used is "groaning" or "whining."

Now the thing that bugged me the most is that it all felt a little too fake. Lines that don't fit (maybe poorly translated, but they also felt out of place and poorly delivered). The performances were off, and it felt like the problem was a mix of the big three, acting, directing and writing. Also sometimes the lines just showed up out of nowhere, or they didn't flow from one another. Then there was also the stiff blocking.

Cinematography was pretty good. We'll shot for sure, and editing was pretty good, even though the pacing of the whole film was a bit slow. Just depends your preference I suppose.

One of the problems was the writing in whole. Now while it's an interesting idea, there are a few things that were just... strange or out of place. First of all, in the first 5 minutes or so I just kept wondering "what is this about?" "where is this going?", and I was tempted to just stop watching, but I kept going.

Then a few places were just weird, for example, the kiss, it just came out of nowhere. I didn't see any chemistry between them, but at the same time, I saw it coming a mile away. The girlfriend leaves (for quite a long time despite only needing to fill up her water bottle), they put up their tents, then she wipes a smudge off his face and they kiss. I was thinking "where did this come from!?"

Then we have the girlfriend holding a knife open as if she's ready to stab the guy, but nothing. It's as if she was getting ready to cut the bridge rope even though they weren't even near it. It didn't make sense, not even at the end.

Anyways, good job.
 
Thanks for the welcome and the critique. :)

Translation is always a difficult thing and always loses stuff. So I'm glad for any info on that side. :)
The sexual innuendos are indeed very intended, seeing I'm not a native english speaker I wouldn't know whether the wording is weird or not.

The film has been mainly watched by an audience familiar with the language so I'm intrigued to figure out of your comment on the lines that don't fit and poor delivery or missing chemistry will be repeated, as that's the first time I've read it. Interesting stuff!

The pacing is indeed calm. I usually direct that way, heh. :)

Thanks for watching and commenting!
 
Well I would mostly have to agree with Jon. The cinematography wasn't to bad, probably the best part of the piece. Some of the shots I didn't believe but I am not sure how else you would pull them off in that environment, (Day for night, CGI bridge). It was also pretty predictable but still a good twist on the ending.

As far as pacing goes, there is a difference between a calm pacing and slow pacing. You may have tried to have calm pacing but it really just turned out to be slow pacing, which makes a movie very hard to sit through. You can probably cut out about 5 minutes of the piece and that would help. Also I would tried to figure out a way to re-shoot the night scene. Put them at a location at dusk and get yourself a gaffer to help light it for you, I think it would add a lot to the piece.

Not to bad. Good luck with the rest of your work.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome and th comments!

I'm not going to do any reshoots since it was mainly a "let's do that fur fun" kinda project, but I'm perfectly open to re-edits or changes in that respect.

I'm always looking for "critic" eg comments on what an audience thinks. I find that very interesting and obviously, it helps me understand an audiences mind and hence develop my own filmmaking.

I find the whole pacing thing incredibly fascinating. I must definately investigate further how much of this is down to the language or narrative culture of a respective country the critic comes from, as the comments regarding pacing differ wildly depending on where the film gets reviewed and so far, people not familiar with the language and especially those coming from outside Europe seem to find it too long, while Mid-Europeans find it okay or sometimes even too fast. Hehe, I like that.


Might have another play with the dusk-filter then (obviously, I wasn't trying to go for actual day-for-night rather then a dusky blueish feeling).

Any thoughts are more then welcome and I'm thankful for anyone who spends the time watching and commenting the film.

Thanks again!


PS: As to how the bridge scene was done: We looked for a cliff and the bridge as well as the guy are 3D and composited in later. The closeup shots are greenscreen (a terrible portable greenscreen for that matter, hence the edges are somewhat broken in places)
 
Alrighty, I tried to make the whole thing faster. So the current cut is 2 minutes less. Hopefully, that's improved the pacing.
 
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