Stretched - Betrayal Fest

My critique for Stretched
The story:
I loved the dialogue and the narration was very poetic. Great job!

The acting:
Both of the actors were completely professional and did the story justice. You can feel for the lead actor a lot.

The camerawork:
Amazing.. The colors were really cool (reminded me of The Road). The tights and inserts were very visually appealing.

The editing:
Smooth and subtle = AWESOME.

The sound and music:
The ADR threw me off a little but eventually redeemed itself at the end. Great sound design job!

Overall impression:
Make this a feature please!! lol I really enjoyed it

My favorite shot:
screenshot20100307at508.png
 
Thanks for the support guys. We had a blast shooting it, as for a feature.. I think this one is best kept right around 6 minutes. Maybe extend work from the writer in the near future though... Cheers!
 
wow....everytime i write a comment about how good it is i watch another and its just as good if not better. Yours belongs up there man. I felt for this guy just like every guy that has lost a girl that he wishes he could have back. The angles were spot on, the actors rocked the F'n show and everything fit perfect right where it should be. Thank you for that 6 minutes!
 
A few people have mentioned the word "poetic" and I would agree. This was lovely - a poem to lost love. The actors were wonderful. The cinematography beautiful. One of my favorites so far.
 
ok. justifiably so, there is a lot of criticism on the film threads about technical aspects of film making...sound design, lighting, camera movement so on and so forth....... f dat noise! When it comes to what films and film makers that I like, its about the story. You freakin nailed it and I have this film rated the highest so far (though I've only done about ten). this film will be hard to beat for me personally. AWESOME JOB!
 
This film was a nice change of pace from most of the others I've watched so far, so I'm excited about that (although – side note – I've been really impressed with the huge variety of genres, tones, etc that I've been seeing from everyone. HUUUUUGE reason why I think a theme like "betrayal" is so much richer and more interesting than something like HorrorFest with a specific genre.)

Okay, back to your film, sorry. :)

It started off a little rocky, to be honest. The initial audio didn't grab me – the performances in that offscreen dialogue felt stilted and inorganic, and since it was clear from frame 1 that you were doing a character piece, I was extremely worried about what I was about to (maybe) sit through.

So the good news is that it got a LOT better from there. The actual performances between the actors once they're in the scene were far, far better and the thought "I'm gonna skip this one" never occurred to me again. I really appreciated how understated the tone was – how you almost avoided addressing any sort of plot entirely, really! That's hard to pull off without good acting and writing, and you carried it.

I have really mixed feelings on the voiceover, though. Sometimes voiceover is an intrinsic part of the story, the tone, the whole approach. And sometimes it's an after-the-fact kludge that you call in in post to save an edit that's not working. I'll be completely honest: I'm not 100% sure which one this was. It was well written – used to illuminate character rather than strictly story – and generally well performed, but there's something about the way it fit into the movie that just wasn't entirely natural. After the movie was over I found myself wondering what it would have been like if you had just had confidence in the scene to get across everything that was said in the voiceover. It feels like your actors could have done it. Maybe that was never your intent, and maybe it wouldn't work as well – but it's a thought that I had and I think it'd be incomplete not to share that.

The visuals were striking (although maybe sometimes a little too much so – the jarring extreme closeups on his lips, smoking). But the snowflakes drifting slowly down? Lovely. A perfect note for the film.

Your sound could use a lot of work. As much credit as I give the characters, the actors, it was all undermined by continuous distraction in the audio. Even just a continuous layer of room tone throughout would do a TREMENDOUS amount of good in this respect. And that's an easy fix.

In any case, congrats! This is one of the good ones. I appreciate the minimalism – makes a nice contrast to films like, well, mine. ;)
 
Thanks for watching and responding guys. I am going to write up a post about our intentions in making the film to hopefully answer some questions, but I am going to wait a few days so that I don't accidentally influence anyone who hasn't seen it.

Otherwise thank you all for watching and taking the time to give your thoughts. We appreciate all of it.
 
Very nice. Loved the lighting, the cinematography, the acting, the script, sound, score, it all tied together pretty nicely. I really liked your opening.
+1 for use of the word poetic to describe this film, I’ll throw that in too. For the most part I liked the narration a lot, and there were some very good moments in it.

Acting was extremely solid. Very professional actors, very convincing performances. Some lines came across very naturalistic, there were a few good moments of real honesty in there.

Loved the score to this, very nice job. Extremely suitable, goes with the visuals so well. Just great.

Memorable Moment
A few, but one that struck me was things you did like “She has a beautiful mouth”, then right away “Like the snake?”, back to the conversation...that played very nicely I thought. Was cool. Of course the ending was very memorable to me as well, with the score, the great V.O “and it ends”. Great.

Very striking visuals at 5:22. I agree with Dougspice about the change of pace, I too was happy to see a film like this after watching so many others with guns, loud score, epic betrayals, etc. Not that those things are bad at all, just was refreshing at the time. I think you did a very impressive job, I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do next.
 
Thanks for the kind words Chris. I'm really happy with the score, especially considering Nathan did it in a few hours before the deadline. He really transformed the feel of the piece.

The actors were really great to work with. I've known them for a while but hadn't had a chance to work with them in this style of a piece so it was great. They literally read the script that morning so it's impressive what they were able to pull off a few hours later.

I'm happy you liked the change of pace, it was really a change of style for us as filmmakers as well. We approached it differently then we had any past piece so it's great to hear that people are enjoying it.
 
Story: Such a nice change of pace. So few have gone this route this Fest. Very compelling. Now this is what I wish many had done with the theme.

Acting: Great acting! Never even thought about it after the first few moments.

Technical: Superb all around. Very professional looking. Great sound, music, editing, it's all there. There's really nothing else I can say.

Very nice work indeed.

MAH
 
congrats on creating a very engaging conversation between two people. your insert shots were bad ass and the intercut snow functioned very well for the whole story.

I'm flip-flopping back and forth on whether the Male's V.O. throughout the story helped or hindered. At times it was spot on, but at others, I felt like what he said could have been better served in spoken dialogue or even just a look or expression on his face.

I really, really enjoyed the way your female lead delivered the snake story, very genuine.

some very good filmmaking here.
 
Zak Forsman said:
Wooooooow. I like. Quite a bit.
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Thanks Zak, we figured this one might be up your alley.

As for the voice over, this piece was really intended to be a memory piece and have a strong sense of POV. We originally tried writing the piece without the VO, but we felt like something was missing so we ended up inserting our favorite parts of the short story's prose as the VO. Our intention was to really give the piece the feeling that this was a memory, being reiterated in the fragments and moments that stuck out in the main characters brain.

I hope that sheds some light on our choices. Thanks again for all the comments and compliments. It's great to have such active viewers.
 
smashedburrito said:
Our intention was to really give the piece the feeling that this was a memory, being reiterated in the fragments and moments that stuck out in the main characters brain.

I hope that sheds some light on our choices. Thanks again for all the comments and compliments. It's great to have such active viewers.
Click to expand...

When I think about it this way, all of the choices really fit. esp. the incongruous inserts. great work.
 
The acting was believable, I will give you that, but I found the setting claustrophobic and the pacing very slow. The actors were your strong suit in this one.
 
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