SHORT: Strangers

A

AbcAbcwebd

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFZ_SDk4hYw

This is a first-person/home-movie-style short film I just finished. It's intended to have a very surreal feel. Like walking in the night when something weird is happening, like in the video.
It's my first first-person movie, which I enjoyed doing. Though I believe that style only works for certain projects, I think it can be benneficial to many movies.
From a technical standpoint it was very different. Things that might normally require a lot of preperation, like lighting, tri-pods/dolly ECT were much more straitford on this project. However in their place came other complications. Compositing 3D onto shaking camera work, for instance. None of the footage was shot with camera tracking, so it proved too time consuming to composite the longer shots frame by frame (or close to it). Instead I froze a frame from the general shot, composited the 3D onto it, and then turned in back to shaky/hand held footage in After Effects.
 
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Another thing different about the first person style was the longer shots. These were easier from an editing standpoint, but were obviously much harder to film. Especially for the volunteer actors.
 
Since we didn't use any artificial light, it was very difficult to get the night scenes lit right. In the final video, only the opening scene is actually filmed at night. The others were filmed during the day and then processed in post to look like night. This ended up contributing to the stylized/surreal feel of the film.
 
Not to be harsh. , because I always feel that anyone creating deserves credit. But I have to be honest here, I didn't understnd what was going on. I made out that the little girl found something, and she wanted to show you. But that was about it. I saw a flash of an alien. then some electricity. Then it ended. hmmmm, anyone else able to make sense of this piece.

So I watched again, I was able to put it together a bit more the second time. So here's what worked and what didn't work from a viewers point of view.

1. The story ending needs work. It ended so abruptly, I expected there to be more.
2. The audio was not synched correctly, plus it was all over as far as levels go. The dialogue got a bit hoakey in the middle.
3. The day for night doesn't look right. The highlights are way clipped. And the night filter makes it look under exposed if that makes sense. I guesss im saying, the moonlight is not so blue, and it usually doesn't reflect enough light to blow highlights that bad, So it's a dead give away.
4. The car scene looked strange. The mini car, almost looked cartoonish for some reason.
5. The ending really needs work. It looks like the guy got zapped by an alien. But it looked really fake. Now if thats what your going for you hit the mark, but if this is a serious piece, then you should rework the things I listed to improve the production value.
 
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Thanks for your advice, MaranFilms.
Firstly about the sound being synced: that got messed up when I uploaded it to YouTube. Sorry. I should've checked. A new version is up now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFZ_SDk4hYw
As far as the night for day thing, it wasn't really intended to look realistic. It was supposed to look stylized, but if it looks like a mistake then I guess it didn't work.
As far as the plot, I didn't mean for it to be clear what was going on. It was supposed to be intriguely vague, but based on you and screenforme's comments, I guess it just came across as bad story telling. I wrote and shot another two minute scene that was supposed to be scene 1. Kind of an explanation of the rest of the movie, however I was advised by someone else working on the movie that it was unnecesary, and so I cut it last minute, but perhaps we'd all become too close to the project.
As far as the audio levels, are you refering to how quiet the voices were at times? I meant them to be quiet to give it a surreal quality, but once again if it just comes across as bad filmmaking then I ought to change it.
And it's true that some of the effects came across as un-realistic.

Anyone have any ideas how the ending could be drawn out/completly changed? I take it that it wasn't clear what actually happened in the end?

Thanks again for the advice,
Abc
 
I figured it was a Paranormal Activity type ending where the girl got changed into an alien or something by the electricity, and it ends with her slowly approaching the abandoned video camera.
 
I thought the story was vague as well.

However you did create a creepy atmosphere. I personally dont like the handycam blair witch, cloverfield, paranormal activity style, but as far as that style goes, you seemed strong in it.

I would have liked to see more writing and effects were not great, BUT hell not everyone is a CGI expert.
 
Thanks for you comments. Dave has about the right idea, I think, although I've never actually seen Paranormal Activity.
I would agree that the effects were a problem, but frankly it's hard to do Hollywood standard effects on a no budget movie. Even if I did have the technical knowledge and practice to do a District 9 alien, I don't have the computing power. Even with these rudimentary effects my computer was crashing every few minutes for the bigger models.
 
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