"The Letter" - short film on the 7D

Sorry for the bump, but we're just 3 "likes" away from 200*, and 500 views from 13K*, if you wouldn't mind helping out a brother!

*Yes, these are totally arbitrary milestones, but we didn't think we'd break 200 total views, so I just want to see the # roll over! :)
 
wha?

I guess something must be wrong with me cause this is getting high marks from everyone.

I disliked it very much. thought it was obvious, over-acted and had a bad ending.

I did like some of the shots- the interview w nurse/Dr was nice. very well shot. But I guess I put more stock into story than HOW anything is shot. I understand you were testing the camera out, but we as filmmakers need to always remember to put story first. I'd rather watch an intelligent script be shot on a flip HD than a bad script be shot on 35mm.

But huge kudos for finishing this. that's the true first goal. excellend on that point. I just disliked the obvious and overdone story line.
 
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Damn... lets hope that HealthCare reform bill gets passed!

Great job. The only thing I have to agree on is the scene with him in the car. It looked very different and could have been broken up a bit with alternate angles or something.
 
sonic freak said:
I guess something must be wrong with me cause this is getting high marks from everyone.
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Obviously, something is wrong with you. ;)

Seriously, I don't expect everyone to like this or anything else. Thanks for watching it though and giving your feedback.
 
beeble,
thanks for understanding that everything can't be loved by all, and that maybe sometimes you can learn from negative feedback. if i came off mean spirited and personal, i apologize. i didn't mean that. anyway. good luck on your next project.
 
Yeah it's very well done, so much so that it actually has me involved in the story and not concentrating a lot on the hardware and technique. So...

I understand this is like a wish fulfillment thing, but is there really a good reason the insurance guy had to be murdered?

Isn't that just reinforcing that the only way to "earn" for yourself is to ruthlessly crush people you see as beneath you?

What's a real person suppose to do? How can they apply the information and emotion presented in this movie to real life?
 
brownpaperbagproductions said:
Yeah it's very well done, so much so that it actually has me involved in the story and not concentrating a lot on the hardware and technique. So...
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Thanks!!

I understand this is like a wish fulfillment thing, but is there really a good reason the insurance guy had to be murdered?
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In his mind, the insurance agent is guilty of killing hundreds of innocent people by denying them coverage for health procedures they can't otherwise afford.

Their latest victim is himself. So before he goes, he's going to take all of them with him.

What's a real person suppose to do? How can they apply the information and emotion presented in this movie to real life?
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No idea, dude. :) The film is certainly not a recommendation for a course of action, but an expression of this guy's raw emotion and how HE deals with it.
 
His motivations are clear, I just can't get along with it and the whole "he's going to take all of them with him" bit if it's presented with a straight face and were so supposed to be cheering him on the whole way. Because isn't that the reasoning and action of a terrorist, isn't that the 'frustration with a unjust establishment turned violent because he had no other alternative and that's all he knew' that motivated Tim McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City Federal Building?

I really respect that you want give people a release from their stress and don't want to preach to people an "action plan for how to cure the health care system" (how could you even if you wanted to in 3 mins!) but if you're going to expand this story you should seriously consider the scenario of what got us here and not give blind rage and ignorance anymore fuel and justification then they already have. Inglourious Basterds is a good example of being honest about our savagery, stimulating it, but knowing it's limits.

My guess is that you wanted people to feel more in control about their situation, you wanted them to blow of some of the built up frustration, and as a 3 min short it does the job grandly, but for an extended story I would hate to see this 3 min short played out 5 times with the only elements in it changing is the size of the house and the size of the sleezy subhuman skinsack that gets shot in the head.
 
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brown, (co-director here) this short is really the first part of a revenge story. Like all revenge stories, we're supposed to be with the protagonist, even when we don't condone what he does. I think it was Paul Schrader who said "everyone understands revenge". So we don't support revenge killing, but we understand this guy's motivation. If we had the screen time, we'd certainly explore the issue more completely.

A little background might help. Our friend came up with the basic idea, which he is trying to make into a feature, and this actually happened to him (minus the kill-crazy rampage). He got cancer, was dropped, had to sue, won, and luckily had the money to pay for treatment in the meantime. If he hadn't, he would've died. From our friend's perspective, his insurance company tried to kill him, or at least it signed a contract to save his life and when the time came chose not to honor the contract, knowing full well that he would have no other option other than to pay for treatment out of pocket or die. Anyway, that's where the idea came from. What if the insurance company did the same thing but to a professional hitman with nothing left to lose?
 
brownpaperbagproductions said:
My guess is that you wanted people to feel more in control about their situation, you wanted them to blow of some of the built up frustration, and as a 3 min short it does the job grandly, but for an extended story I would hate to see this 3 min short played out 5 times with the only elements in it changing is the size of the house and the size of the sleezy subhuman skinsack that gets shot in the head.
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That wouldn't be particularly interesting to me either, the same scenario simply replayed to fill a 90 minute movie. Certainly the idea is to add more characters that represent different aspects of the moral perspectives surrounding the issue. Once the initial thrill of the revenge killing has subsided, are we still with the protagonist, or do we start to see him for what he really is, do we start to question his methods, and do we see that his solution isn't really viable in any productive way?
 
StanrickKubley said:
brown, (co-director here) this short is really the first part of a revenge story. Like all revenge stories, we're supposed to be with the protagonist, even when we don't condone what he does. I think it was Paul Schrader who said "everyone understands revenge". So we don't support revenge killing, but we understand this guy's motivation. If we had the screen time, we'd certainly explore the issue more completely.

A little background might help. Our friend came up with the basic idea, which he is trying to make into a feature, and this actually happened to him (minus the kill-crazy rampage). He got cancer, was dropped, had to sue, won, and luckily had the money to pay for treatment in the meantime. If he hadn't, he would've died. From our friend's perspective, his insurance company tried to kill him, or at least it signed a contract to save his life and when the time came chose not to honor the contract, knowing full well that he would have no other option other than to pay for treatment out of pocket or die. Anyway, that's where the idea came from. What if the insurance company did the same thing but to a professional hitman with nothing left to lose?
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That little bit of background helps a lot actually, it changes my whole approach to the movie; and all my concerns are mainly about an extended story.
It's, in a way, good/unfortunate, you guys have first hand experience with this subject so you have knowledge and respect for it and aren't just being opportunistic. I'm genuinely concerned about this sort of thing since it seems such an inevitability that the insurance company is going to screw me that I'd be surprised if they don't. And why is that? I don't have any direct contact with this scenario, so it's mostly through movies and other media, so I'm approaching you're movie as someone whose learning what to do in a situation like this so as not to loose my head, or be tricked, and hear the "coulda, woulda, shouldas" that might help. And, totally not judgmentally, that seems to be a different movie from the one you guys want to make.

Probably as it should be, your movie seems more directed towards a more specific audience of people who have already been through that particular hell and meant as a sort of, -because I can't think of a better example right now- a serious Office Space, where it has much more of an impact if you actually work in an office, it's still entertaining if you don't but it doesn't have that same "laugh with it because it's so true" release of frustration aspect. I don't know what the drama equivalent would be Platoon, Rambo?

So now that I have a clearer picture of what you guys are aiming for I'll let off on the ivory tower interrogation, I just wanted to forewarn of certain possible misreadings from an outsiders perspective whose already afraid listening to all the rabble rousing that insurance companies are evil. A hitman may not be the hero I need, that doesn't mean he's not the one you need.
 
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Abaddon said:
Looks really good. I didn't notice any aliasing. Did you use anything to get around that?
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Thanks, Abaddon. It's not something we consciously avoided. I don't know if we just got lucky in our shots or if that particular flaw is a little overstated, but we didn't do anything to overcome it.
 
Nice stuff. Just out of curiosity what was your lighting setup for the very first scene? Particularly the one with the guy holding the gun?
 
mastermind said:
Nice stuff. Just out of curiosity what was your lighting setup for the very first scene? Particularly the one with the guy holding the gun?
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Thanks!

We had a blue-gelled 1K out the window and a white reflector card below him, basically right next to the camera, bouncing light to his face.
 
First, I like the concept a lot. Very current. I keep expecting this to happen in real life (gulp!). Story and character are more important to me than anything, so props there.

It looked nice, wasn't overly color corrected. I saw no jellocam, and no aliasing.

Sound was very good. Music didn't always match to me, but it was underdone if anything, which is a good thing.

Overall, very good. I easily watched it to the very end, mostly because of the good concept and story.
 
After the insurance guy said "Please just let me go buddy" the hitman should have looked like he was going to let him go for a split second, then said something along the lines of "well, in a perfect world, I would just wave a magic wand...." echoing what the guy told him earlier.
 
Daniel Moore said:
After the insurance guy said "Please just let me go buddy" the hitman should have looked like he was going to let him go for a split second, then said something along the lines of "well, in a perfect world, I would just wave a magic wand...." echoing what the guy told him earlier.
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Nice! Okay if we steal that? :D
 
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