The Dark Princess

XCheck

XCheck

Veteran
Doing as requested... now you guys can go ahead and trash it. :thumbsup:

We were fighting against a whole bunch of unpleasant circumstances (like a lot of other people, so I am not using it as an excuse). I had to go to a funeral in Europe, we lost one weekend to bad weather, the city didn't give us permit to shoot on weekends because our location is used for events and weddings, so we got restricted to Fridays, and finally, my sound equipment got stolen.

As you may recall, I was considering dropping out, but then decided to stick it out and do at least something with the footage...

Well, enough whining. Let me know what you think.

Jerry
 
Hi XCheck!

I've said this in a few other reviews, but my favorite films have been the truly unique ones. I'm not a huge zombie/horror fan, so it grabs my attention when something new is tried, even if it's not 100% successful.

So it's very cool that you went for a combo of horror and fantasy. The tone was reminiscent of Dark Crystal/Legend in a weird way. I'd love to see this idea done with a larger budget and more time. I think you did a very admirable job of putting this together without your ideal coverage - it started out wonderfully but looks like you just didn't have the material needed to close.

I hope you can take it further, or develop the idea into a new direction. Oh, and sorry again about your sound equipment, that really bites.
 
XCheck, aside from the permit issues you had, I was impressed with some of the locations you had in here. Music was good, though it felt a little overly dramatic at times (maybe that fits for fantasy, I'm not sure).

The story seemed like it could be cool, but somewhere in there I got lost & it just didn't make sense to me, even though it stated "To Be Continued".
 
i didn't really liked this one, maybe some had to do with the trouble you ran into. but i didn't find the camera work and shots chosen to be compelling. the music was distracting and sounded horrible, but i know it's hard to get original music i wouldn't even know how i would do it. and at the end you have the smoke effect in front of the camera and it works in the shots were you see her wake up. but then at about 4 min you go back to a 2 shot of the boy and the zombie and you still have the smoke there and it looks so fake, it would help if you got rid of that.

i know this all sounds harsh but i applaud you for doing your thing and entering the competition. i'm sure you've learned from this experience and will have progressed in your next work.
 
XCheck:

I think the strong point of this piece is in the initial hook of it: the story begs to be continued so that we can understand what "and that is why she couldn't help Sergio" actually means. I did find it interesting, though at the end it appears you had trouble either with shooting time or figuring out what to do with it!

The nighttime lighting is very well done! The lighting at other times is troublesome, but given the public spaces you were working with I'm not surprised: quite a challenge! The music is a tad overdone but otherwise well composed. I'd like to have heard some more sound FX work, but you might've been going for a MOS type of effect, in which case that explains it!

The fog and candles looked very cool, perhaps a tad less time spent lingering on it though. The editing at the end appeared choppy: I was dying for a reverse angle shot at the very end where the Princess is walking towards Sergio... we never get to see what Sergio thinks about all this. Terror? Awe? Already gone? Then suddenly he's there and slumping over. A bit abrupt!

This piece also suffered in compression, but that's a problem many will have. Overall a good start that needed more time, I'm sorry you didn't have it!
 
Hey
I thought some of the shots really looked good and really had a movie look to them. I didnt care for the movie or the story but it had some good aspects to it
brian
 
Thanks, everyone. I hope more people will express their opinions.

Yes - to be continued is there because I have much more stuff to cut from. I just didn't have the time to cut it down to five minutes (interestingly, I found that doing less - timewise - takes longer time). So, as it stands now, it looks more like a ten minute movie - at the point where the zombie starts retreating and the gate opens, the story is *really* just beginning. But I am not going to tell you the rest - you guys wouldn't watch it when it's finished (will anyone? :huh: )

About the smoke - absolutely agreed. It doesn't work for me either. Let's say we have dissenting opinions on our post production team - enough said. :evil:

Wesley: as for camera work - since this is where I want to learn most: I think I know what the shortcomings are, but if you could be more specific, I'd appreciate that.

Bischofftep: thanks for the night lighting compliment. This a bit ironic - the park gets much quieter at night (not too many people go take their wedding pictures at midnight :shocked: ), so there was more time and focus on getting the light done. I know about the scene at the gate: we used battery-powered spotlights for that, and we were running both out of time and out of juice. We got distracted somewhat...

The day shots - all I can say: 'God was my gaffer'. I fired the guy and will never use him again :grin: . Seriously, though: shooting in public spaces with a crew of four - just forget it. Controlling light? It's not gonna happen.

Keep the comments coming...
 
Yours was a film with an "anthology series" vibe to it (which is most definitely a good thing.)

I don't know how to describe the feel of this short...so I'll just say what I wrote in my notes after viewing it - and I quote, "Reminds me of something Queen would have loved to score (ala Highlander: The Series)"

Anyway ,I enjoyed watching it. It was like watching a rough-cut of something very, very good. (Which, once again, is a good thing.)
 
The idea was firm and solid. But the execution was off, and when your sound equipment is stolen, it kills alot of your production value.

I loved the dolly shots, you made good use of the camera moves. The transisitons where the girl fades in and out was not good. The composited smoke in the end was really not cool, it drove me nuts.

I feel for your troubles though, I know what a botched shoot does.
 
Jerry,

First off, I commend you for actually submitting the film. It sounds like the odds were against you but you still managed to share something at the end of it all. My style for critiquing films in this fest has been more of a frame by frame or at least scene by scene analysis and I find it works better for me in terms of continuity of thought so I hope you can follow along.

I liked how the film began….one of my favorite techniques for a story setup is to juxtapose two different events taking place in the same time. I liked how you did this and the contrast of the peaceful feeling in the park versus the bustle of the city was nice. Personally, when we see the girl for the second time (the third shot), I would have varied the angle, maybe a medium shot…it didn’t feel right to go back to the exact same angle to me.

The interior shot of the bus is good but when you flip to the exterior shot, it seemed a little long and I was confused at first as to what bus he was on because you showed multiples…then we go back to yet another repeat of the same shot with the girl in the park. I’m yearning for a different camera angle now.

I’m not sure why you decided to cut from the girl facing left to the same shot of her facing right…it was a little disorienting and to me, served no purpose at all.

The following shots of Sergio in the bus seems repetitive although I do like the changing angles of the woman and the dolly movement as she is reading her book. The cuts to the traffic and back to the park seemed awkward, not sure what you were trying to convey there…the contrast of the two environments or Sergio’s frantic efforts to meet her?

The light reflecting on the woman’s face was a nice touch and set up some curiosity in me. Love the low angle shot through the grass. I also loved the hand emerging although I had to freeze it and go frame by frame to actually figure out that it was a hand. The little whimper was cool too.

I didn’t get the whole transition sequence. Why didn’t you just do a straight transition using the same shot? As it is right now, you are having her fade away and it looks like the camera is in a different position for that grass shot so it didn’t really feel like she was fading, it just felt like you were transitioning to another shot somewhere else. The same when she appears again in the princess costume…didn’t feel like she was appearing on the grass because the background was different. Same for the CU when she fades again.

I liked the dolly shot as Sergio is passing the flower beds. In my opinion, you spent way too much time on him searching around…the point could have been made in much less time. You expend 35 seconds of a 5 minute movie on this sequence.

When he wakes up he sees this castle/palace/altar-like place all nicely lit…I was wondering where the line was for dreams and reality for this film but maybe you meant it to be that ambiguous. The shot of him looking from behind the bench is nice…lighting and composition.

The amount of smoke for the medium shot of the woman laying on the slab is excessive, it almost looks like a parody of some vintage horror flick.

You have her sit up and look straight at Sergio first and then look right….at the camera. Was she supposed to be looking at him still because it felt like she was looking at me, the viewer…kind of added to the hokey feeling for me.

So now I’m thinking to myself, what has happened? She was reading a fairy tale, got accosted by some little gremlin and now she’s a zombie??

At this point of the story I got completely lost. The music and visual suggested the old Bela Lugosi movies, particularly when you hung on her shadow when she walked out of the frame. The smoke is, again, excessive…you could have conveyed the same thing more subtly…I was finding myself really distracted by it because I could hardly see what else was going on in the frame.

She begins to back off when you say “This film project is not dead”…hmmm, wonder why? But I did laugh when you said “It is Undead”.

Overall, it was a very confusing experience to watch this film. I liked the general ideas but it seemed to me like the zombie element was really forced…it felt more like a vampire film.

Your cinematography was not bad but some of your framing was off….try to avoid cutting people off at the knees, you did some of that when Sergie was trying to get away from zombie girl.

The music was okay but I think it was used too much. It was overly dramatic in some places although it did play into that vintage horror movie idea in the way everything was exaggerated.

I’m not sure how you could make a feature out of this. It seems to me like there is a lot of work ahead to nail down a solid story. I do understand also that you may have a solid story but because of the problems you had, just didn’t execute it well….

I can't really comment on the quality of the shots because the compression was pretty heavy on your file but overall, it looked pretty consistent.

I would like to see what you can do when not faced with the problems you encountered in this shoot. Keep shooting!
 
I didn't totally get this one. I hope the people who stole your equipment die a horrible death, and I truly think you could have done alot better had your shoot not been so cursed! Good job on turning something in. I look forward to seeing it when it's completed.
 
I liked some of this one and didn't like some of it. I wanted it to feel more fairy tale-ish if that makes sense. Softer edges, warmer tones.

I felt by the end it was rushed and then it was over...maybe the film really needs to be longer than 5 minutes?

Some really interesting choices and nice touches. I would love to see more of this.

Nice work!

Robert
 
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