The Perfect Heist - A Totite Films Production

Great comments above, so no need to repeat. Learn from them and keep making films.
You are on the right path and I look forward to your future entries!
 
Story: This needed more story and less betrayal. There are plenty of good writers here so I would start there.

Acting: Not great. I have huge problems finding good actors so I feel your pain. Still, it wasn't all their fault. Some of the dialogue was way too on the nose.

Technical: Lots to go over but I won't say too much. More coverage would be good. Get a sound guy! Sound is half the picture. The music was way too heavy and too moody for me.

it's tough to film on your own with friends helping out, I'm a one man crew myself. Keep at it though. I hope to see you next fest and I'm sure you will learn a lot from this one.

Good for you for making it happen.

MAH
 
New to filmmaking? Pretty good for a new filmmaker, if you are.

Story was pretty good. The acting was okay. Actors are sometimes hard to find. I believe someone mentioned craigslist. Also try meetup.com and see if you have any film or acting meet ups around your area. Yahoo groups has some good film and acting groups. See what you can find and improve your films.

I see this has been mentioned about the audio so I'll skip that, but do work on it more next time. You'll get there. I believe just about all laptops these days come with a microphone installed on it, good for something cheap to start with. I also want to say something as cheap as an xbox/ps3 headset can do something.

I noticed a lot of pizza boxes and diet coke in the background. Watch your continuity and logos.
 
Congratulations on entering your first dvxfest.

My favorite part of this was the last twist. I really didn't see that coming and it was so perfect (just like your title) for the three of them to end up dead in that hotel room together.
 
I like your detailed and constructive feedback. This short film is actually the end of a feature script that I wrote. If you want to know why the girl got killed, please wait for my feature film :violin: The second guy didn't notice about the bathroom because he was too occupied with making sure if the first guy was dead or not. The girl never told the second guy about what she planned to do so he had no idea that it would be poison. The second guy drank the poison just out of spontaneity and he wanted to say good bye to the girl :happy:

MrSeth said:
My critique for The Perfect Heist
The story:
I liked the story and when you told it through flashbacks I understood it better. Liked the concept that everyone dies in the end. A couple things I didn't get. What was the motivation for the first lead actor to kill the girl? When he did kill her, he left the door open, so wouldn't the 2nd guy see her instead of going to the bedroom first? or maybe he was just checking if there was anyone else in that hotel. And lastly I didn't get why he would pick up the drink... it seemed like there should be more of a motivation for him to do that? If it was a careful thought out plan, she would've told him that she is poisoning him and he wouldn't have even touched the drink.. which leads me to interpret that maybe SHE betrayed him as well? lol anyhow I like how I'm thinking about all these things - it just means you told your story with the intent for us to think about these things. Good job!

The acting:
I think acting could have been improved but I was still convinced by the characters all the cast played.

The camerawork:
You did marvelous with the hv20! Good job.. loved how you made it seem so real.

The editing:
Some of the cuts could have been shortened. Again, I liked how you introduced us with the action and then later explained everything that lead up to it. Good job

The sound and music:
Honestly, I believe the dialogue editing could be improved a little. The noise could be heard and I could tell when someone was about to talk when the hiss begin. For some reason the audio didn't sync well with the picture (1 or 2 seconds ahead). It may just be my computer.

Overall impression:
Simple and sweet. Thanks!

My favorite shot:
screenshot20100307at100.png
Click to expand...
 
congrats on your first dvxuser.com film!

wow- carnage! i would love to have seen the cops walk into that mess! all 3 perps dead with the cash laying right there in broad daylight.

kudos for cramming in so much in 6 minutes! i think the acting will get better with a smoother script. keep at it!!!
 
I don't know if can add to the critiques that have already been made, but i can say that I liked how the 'drink' twist worked out, and as someone else said, the flashbacks were the strongest part of your film.

Congrats on entering your first dvxfest, and might I say, that's one hell of a rig! My advice from here on out is to stick around. (i think this is my 8th fest ... i can't quit you DVXuser!) There's a lot to be learned around here!
 
Defcon said:
Don, i liked the story, and i give an overall thumbs up.

i mean this a very positive light:

The acting, dialogue, lighting, color correction; most everything technical,
needed some improvement. But everything was serviceable. The ONLY
thing really hurting you was the bad sound recording, but you have addressed that already.

The good news is, i really liked your story. I loved that the guy at the end drank the poisoned vodka. i wrote a very similar story with the same ending so maybe im partial to it.

bottomline, you have some room to grow so keep making shorts and you'll hammer out some of the technical problems as time goes on. congrats on the entry!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouraging feedback. I didn't have a good team for this short. My friends are all noob about film making. The sound guy didn't even know how to hold the boom. But the noise interference came from a junk cable that I have. I already ordered a better one for my next project :happy:
 
Ben Sliker said:
I don't know if can add to the critiques that have already been made, but i can say that I liked how the 'drink' twist worked out, and as someone else said, the flashbacks were the strongest part of your film.

Congrats on entering your first dvxfest, and might I say, that's one hell of a rig! My advice from here on out is to stick around. (i think this is my 8th fest ... i can't quit you DVXuser!) There's a lot to be learned around here!
Click to expand...

This fest is actually not my first fest. It's my second or third. I can't remember now :happy:. I've been lurking around and definitely learned a lot of cool things from this site. It looks like you have a really good team, which is the best thing that I learned from all the fests "good team = good movie"
 
The story was decent, the only thing I thought odd was why were they coming to the hotel in the first place if the guy was in such a rush to leave it because the cops were coming?

My only suggestion in the future would be to shoot more coverage for dialog so you can spice up the shots a bit. Even with that mirror there with the way your actors were standing you could have angled them and gotten coverage I believe.

Anyway, congrats on submitting!
 
- I guess the first shots were meant to introduce it's a hotel room ?
They could be skipped I think. The first shot were I knew it's a hotelroom
was were the boy and girl came in.

- I hear you've done ADR. Watch out for "proximity effect". It sounds to clean, to close in mike.
Better was to have more distance to the mice. Also watch out not to cut in lines to abruptly.
And watch out for lipsync.
Watch out for dialogue levels.
And the acting was less... I can hear they're reading there text. (Am I right ?)

- It's great you've added sound effects (closing door, opening door), but also here watch out for proximity effect. The closing of the door sounded "to clean, to near".

- Around 01:13 I have a feeling that the girl will betrayal the boy (or inverse).
In a way it can be good... Because I want to see if I'm right.

- Banks coming in the bathroom with a pillow that moves a small thing.. I can't hear it. I didn't notice it in
sound.. Better was to let it fall down

- sound effect of the gun wasn't that good (wrong kind of gunshot). But I hear that you've compressed sound of the entire short to reduce space ?

- I hear sound of closing the bag, I don't hear sound of opening the bag and putting the gun in it.
Also taking bags makes some sound.

- Banks is a few feets away from us (around 2:57) but we here him to close.

- the gunshot is better, but to long... the second "gunshotsound" could be removed (the echo)

- the acting is less... but that's because the first time doing ADR I guess.

- Sirene sound.... also from the internet ? :p it sounds to close...

In general.. it's good you've done ADR, foley and sound effets. But take care of using the good sound effects. Watch out for proximity effect, and watch to make sound effects sound "logical". A door 54 feets away can sound like it's 54 feets away. Don't skip sound effects (like putting away the gun in the bag).

The story is a little to long....
 
Good story and you did a great job with the HV20!
The acting felt a bit flat... or maybe it was the ADR?
The score also seemed a bit out of place.

Great job getting a film done and entered. Keep making them!
Congratulations to cast & crew.
 
Well... :)

I don't know if it is polite to say this, but man, ADR made me laugh so much in this one :)
It made it one of my favorite movies on this fest! For all the wrong reasons, I know!

The violin score near the end was totally off. Second actors monologue + violin score mood made it a comedy. "Fodka, f**k..." the gulp sound, his "explainable dying" and the police car inside the room didn't help :)

Story was good, acting... I don't know, ADR made a mess there, oh, and the second actor reminded me a lot of Ryan Stiles :)

Nevertheless, one of my favorites on the fest!
 
Jaime V said:
The story was decent, the only thing I thought odd was why were they coming to the hotel in the first place if the guy was in such a rush to leave it because the cops were coming?

My only suggestion in the future would be to shoot more coverage for dialog so you can spice up the shots a bit. Even with that mirror there with the way your actors were standing you could have angled them and gotten coverage I believe.

Anyway, congrats on submitting!
Click to expand...

The hotel in this movie is their rendezvous after the heist. In the feature script, they stay at another hotel before the heist :happy: I had a list of scenes to shoot on the filming day. The list had about 60 scenes but my friend who was supposed to check the list just didn't know what to do and totally forgot about checking the list :embarasse I was filming, directing, setting up the set and fixing issues in a 4 hour time frame and was so tired that I also forgot about the list at the end. I'm still amazed about the fact that I actually got a film out of all the mess on that day.
 
dre83 said:
- I guess the first shots were meant to introduce it's a hotel room ?
They could be skipped I think. The first shot were I knew it's a hotelroom
was were the boy and girl came in.

- I hear you've done ADR. Watch out for "proximity effect". It sounds to clean, to close in mike.
Better was to have more distance to the mice. Also watch out not to cut in lines to abruptly.
And watch out for lipsync.
Watch out for dialogue levels.
And the acting was less... I can hear they're reading there text. (Am I right ?)

- It's great you've added sound effects (closing door, opening door), but also here watch out for proximity effect. The closing of the door sounded "to clean, to near".

- Around 01:13 I have a feeling that the girl will betrayal the boy (or inverse).
In a way it can be good... Because I want to see if I'm right.

- Banks coming in the bathroom with a pillow that moves a small thing.. I can't hear it. I didn't notice it in
sound.. Better was to let it fall down

- sound effect of the gun wasn't that good (wrong kind of gunshot). But I hear that you've compressed sound of the entire short to reduce space ?

- I hear sound of closing the bag, I don't hear sound of opening the bag and putting the gun in it.
Also taking bags makes some sound.

- Banks is a few feets away from us (around 2:57) but we here him to close.

- the gunshot is better, but to long... the second "gunshotsound" could be removed (the echo)

- the acting is less... but that's because the first time doing ADR I guess.

- Sirene sound.... also from the internet ? :p it sounds to close...

In general.. it's good you've done ADR, foley and sound effets. But take care of using the good sound effects. Watch out for proximity effect, and watch to make sound effects sound "logical". A door 54 feets away can sound like it's 54 feets away. Don't skip sound effects (like putting away the gun in the bag).

The story is a little to long....
Click to expand...

It's nice to have a sound guy commenting on my film :laugh: I fixed some of the problems that you mentioned in this Youtube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TND3trEif_4
 
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