the crimson comedy

W

Wrathborne

Active member
the first of hopefully three episodes(thats a minimum)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q3v5Etwi-E

My goal is to follow the little story concept of peopel who are doomed to die regardless of what chocie they make. So one action has three seperate outcomes, all fatal.

Had The actres shere not been so unavailible after filming this would have some mroe audio to it rather than just music. Oh well, hopefully the second episode will work otu better.

Had a lot of little isses here, mainly in the third segment. But thats ok I got most of what I wanted here and am pretty happy with that. so we'll just have to wait and see how things go from here.

Hope to get some good feeback from you gents and gentles.
 
Hmm, well it was okay. I'm going to assume this is a first attempt? There were a few things wrong with it. I'll be honest.

First of all, I didn't really find any of the deaths funny, and I'm assuming they were supposed to be from the title "The Crimson Comedy". It has to do with the music. It's all dramatic and a piano hitting a note, and that's about it.

The titles were very unimpressive. Most beginners (in design or any path along that) make a fatal mistake about fonts. They think it's not important. It's very very important. Anytime you have text, font is by far the most important thing. The font you chose looks bulky and amateur. Make it nice, sleek, make sure it works with whatever theme/style you're going for. Anything seriff (with those little lines) is usually more of a old/elegant style, whereas sans-seriff (without lines, like on these forums) is more modern and new. You used seriff, and it didn't work at all.

Now for the story and pacing. The deaths were all too planned out and obvious. And we know whats going to happen almost right at the beginning, yet you drag on with the set up, making it even more and more obvious. If you look at movies like, say, Final Destination, what they did with the deaths was not only do you see what could kill them, but every time it shows something that could kill them, it's very dramatic, but you're never sure, as there's another thing that can kill them, and then another thing, and another, and you're not sure what will kill them, if anything. Then you begin to panic, and wonder, and worry, and then it all falls into a domino effect and does something completely unexpected. I'm not saying to do something eccentric like Final Destination, but be creative, don't make it obvious till the last second, and introduce several ways of dying to leave use wondering and wanting to find out. So that way it won't feel like it's dragging us to the obvious. To be honest, because of this I jumped ahead a few times.

The cinematography was okay. I find that shooting in 3:4 is harder to pull off in terms of cinematography, which is why I shoot widescreen. A lot of shots looked basic, but the way you showed the deaths were pretty well done. Try to be more creative with your shots.

What camera did you use? I know it's not about the camera you shoot with, it's the content, but that camera was very low quality. Looked like back when I learned on those big VHS cams at school, lol.

Sounds... where are they? You had a sound for each death, but that's it? Pay attention to a soundtrack of a film. You may zone it out, but there are several sounds going on even at the quietest of moments in any movie. This is real life and it helps make a movie sound more realistic and very proffesional. I thought it was a silent movie untill I heard the random sound of her falling. Put in ambient and isolated sounds. Her footsteps, the hum of the lights or refrigerator, the kids playing outside in a distance, the birds, the wind, the cars passing by, the car engine, the parking brake clicks, anytime she puts something onto a surface, they all make sounds. It makes a movie far more proffesional.

A lot of small things here and there, but it comes with time. Those are the major issues. I may sound like I'm being harsh, but these are things to work on and they will improve your movies.
 
I may sound like I'm being harsh, but these are things to work on and they will improve your movies

Actually you're being harshe in a lot of ways, but I also know that you mean well so I'm not gonna flip out and curse and scream at you.
:badputer:

Being that the target audience isnt really us 'filmies' here I was went along with my little plan, and that was to keep it simple.

I actually filmed everything here at 4 hrs and 15 minutes or so. This little series here is all for me to improve a lot of little issues I've had with my filming techniques as well as helping my memory.

As a somewhat scatterbrained dyslexic one of my biggest issues is keeping track of where I am when I film as well as well as keeping a good shooting pace. I've been trying to speed up my shooting technique for some time now and I havent had as much luck with it as I've wanted.

What you're seeing here isnt storyboarded at all, its just from my mind. I normally storyboard about everything, but I wanted to try to rely on my mind for a change. For the most part it worked out quite well, I had issues getting a lot of shots I wanted but thats par for the course.

This is an experimental project as I'm trying to do more with less. I'm using primarily natural lighting, and the camera I'm using obviously isnt very high quality, but its a reliable and quick to use Digi cam, also the version on the web, is the low res version :P. Thats why the video quality isnt quite as good as it could be. It's only about 1/4th of the high quality clip I have.

As for the tone of the short it IS a dark comedy. I opted to use the darker music to give the viewer the impression that things arent going to work out well. Which they dont.

The deaths arent quite suppossed to be funny so much as they are odd. The reason I call this 'the crimson comedy' is mainly the natural 'B'(cheesy) feel to it. No tto mention the dark comments following each death.

I purposely telegraphed the deaths for a reason. If someone just dies at random/randomly say by ...falling spike from the sky, yes its a bit of a shock. but there's not much leading up to it. So with the deaths I chose here I could immediatelly forshadow what was going to happen and just let the viewer sit back and watch how its going to happen. Initially I was going to add in more suspence, but I thought I might have been milking it a little too much.

As for how the deaths were filmed I humble accept your praise there, the biggest reason there isnt as much variety to how they're filmed though, is after I filmeed all this the actress kind of bailed on me due to Real life as well as probably just not wanting to get back in front of the camera(her first time doing this)

I actually wanted tp spend a good 2 more hours or so re-shooting a few bits as well as looping the dialogue. Thats one reason why this has ended up being a bit more of a silent movie than anything.

SHooting at 3:4 is difficult, but when its at a smaller scale as well as just being meant for the web only I can cope pretty easy. I alo sneed to snag a new tripod, thats one of the reasons for the majority of the shakey cam, its not a choice by my trusty tripod I've had for about 3 years now broke before I filmed this. I was able to get a good number of still shots, but not enough to satisfy me. Being more of a Hitchcok fan when it comes to how to show whats going on I prefer the camera niec and steady.

Oh I used a dumpy polaroid digicam with 3.2 mega pixels. Its fast, gets the job done. Granted I do agree the quality as well as the lack of a wide screen capability does hurt, but that leaves it up to me as a director to compensate.

Yeah I had some limited sound options, and I thoght about it. I figured that the only real sound effect I wanted to stick out in peoples minds was the splatter sound effect.

It simplified the project further and even though I'm still not quite happy with the fact its just a modernized silent film, it does maintain some charm.

The audio I agree with you though some ambience in the background would have been a pretty big help and added some more quality.

Should I get fortunate enough to get another girl in front of the camera for the next episode I look forward to adding 'more' to the next episode.
 
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Oh before I forget, thanks for responding Jon. Not being sarcastic, I'm thankful you took the time to take a look at my work and give me a critique.:dankk2:
 
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