Puck. You rock, buddy. Especially for the enthusiasm and energy to put something like this together in a foreign land no less.
It was very cinematic and I really liked that aspect. The moving shots, lighting and grading helping out. Color correction was a little uneven here and there, but it didn't distract too much. If you scroll to just about any random spot and pause it looks like a storyboard or a Movie the tells a story. That's awesome.
I noticed the sky replacement, and it took me out of it a little. ...not totally convincing. I guess a big ugly white sky would have been plain, but maybe splitting the difference would make it more convincing?
I liked how the music moved the piece along well and also supported the bigger cinematic quality. The music itself was very good, but the samples and mixing could be better and make it sound more realistic.
I liked the concept of this mysterious door, and how he was the only one that could open it. And because we knew it would be about this door, it gave us a little head-start to jump into the story. Again, great shots of the door and the glowing keyhole. I'm way into magical stuff like this. However, I wasn't liking her gun-toting approach to get access to that door, and that aspect of the story let me down. I think at the point after you introduce the fact that she wants to get in there, you should tease us more with the, "what's behind the door?". Instead, it was just :kali:Personally, I think when ever you put a gun in a movie just to give a character power, you're cheating. That goes for you Tarts too!
The payoff for the story, where she gets eaten by the dark fog, is quite satisfactory, because she played the hardcore b!tch-type very well, and I wanted to kill her. I thought his acting felt natural and convincing.
Now the sound-- Very good sound. I didn't have any issues that took me out of it. Obviously, you can see that it makes a huge difference to preserve the performances to get clean dialog. Well done.
One thing that was off was the compression. I think it will look better if you shrink the frame size, and de-interlace before compressing. There's some nasty compressed interlace artifacts in there.
In conclusion, the middle of your script was the weakest link in this one for me. The technical side of these was nicely done, and only distracted a couple times, as I mentioned. The strongest aspect was the cinematography. I suspect you were very focused on that and it showed. Overall, I enjoyed it and was impressed with your progress.
Congrats on making it to the finalists. I'm really happy for you!
Sorry if this feels like a cop out but I agree with Tim on most of what he's typed, the conclusion summarizing near-to-exactly how I felt about the short. Albeit I was a bit more distracted than he might have been, and confused, but all in all that's it.
Thanks for sharing, Rodney.
