SHORT: Student Films, feedback requested

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j

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Hey Everyone,

I've got a couple of student films that are in the rough cut stage. The students are going to schedule pickups this weekend but before they do, I'd like to get them some feedback on their rough cuts (so they can figure out if they need to reshoot anything or make any changes)

Right now the audio is bad and they know that (they're not in picture lock yet), so any feedback on story, directing, acting is appreciated.

Please leave feedback here and on the youtube pages so they can see it directly.

Film #1 Gift of Blood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkcqyLX3X-g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Film #2 Jackon's Journey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjc-1ybBmE

Thank you and thanks especially for your patience! ;-)
 
I tried to get through the first one and couldn't. I mean, hey, they're student films.

Tell these folks that:

A story is about ONE main problem, a crisis, a bad thing happening.

Do not try to "hide" what's happening or try to create a "twist ending". That's for amateurs and Shyamalan to obsess about (I guess we are amateurs)...

Gift Of Blood, I lose a sense of what the CRISIS is, the THING THAT THE STORY IS ABOUT. Therefore, I tuned out. Got bored, cause I couldn't figure out fast enuf WHAT THE STORY WAS ABOUT. the filmmakers were trying to hide it, to be clever and "twisty".

Keep the stories "on spine"-- about one thing, one problem, make it OBVIOUS what this problem is, start the story with it, then develop it to get worse (called complications, which can and should be surprising).

I'm not as brave as some here to show my "learning" work, but I know I got that part down. No fat in my short flicks, all bold and clear conflict. They've got other problems.

P.S. If all this stuff was easy we'd all be rich and famous by now. (don't tell students that they may get discouraged)....

I'll try to check out the other ones once I build up my endurance...
 
Last edited:
j said:
Hey Everyone,

I've got a couple of student films that are in the rough cut stage. The students are going to schedule pickups this weekend but before they do, I'd like to get them some feedback on their rough cuts (so they can figure out if they need to reshoot anything or make any changes)
Click to expand...

I was only able to watch for a few minutes each... Not enough time for watching the whole film... but there are two 'most obvious' things for me... all of them somewhat 'suffer' to get going. I say much, much more editing to drop the time down to under 5 minutes... Further, the second seemed 'dialog' heavy, which for me is sort of like 'death' to any reasonable pacing for a short.

Technical issues:

On the first one, "Gift of Blood"... the first shots are so dark, that I really had no idea what was going on, except obviously a 'knife' was involved.

"Jackon's Journey" had a number of pretty static shots, and to me it seemed like the camera was 'high', and 'angled down' to frame rather than placed at say the guy in the wheelchair's height, for example.

For the 3rd short, "Eden", the start is really... really... slow... further on there's some shots of two girls on high on the hill, the other lower... neither is in the frame, the girl up the hill has the frame cut her off at the neck, and the lower girl, 'we see...', just the top of her head... Even in a pulled back shot the girl up the hill is punching out of the frame, while there is still plenty of 'foot room' on the girl lower down that framing could have had both figures fully in the frame.

Some of these things can be corrected with editing, but some shots just need to be evaluated for 'useful' vs. 'good shots', and if they are not absolutely essential... need to be cut.
 
Thanks jClark, excellent feedback. It just goes to show that even if you spend 3k to rent a red and Zeiss primes it's not gonna help you with basic framing!
 
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