"The Residual" short film up and ready for critique!!

Sen3Films

Sen3Films

Member
Admittedly we shot this a while ago, nonetheless we would love to hear any feedback (positive or negative) you guys might have regarding the short. All constructive criticism is welcome.
Thanks guys and gals we look forward to your feedback!
-The Residual-
Watch "THE RESIDUAL"
 
You asked.

1. The intro was repetitive and I didn't like the juxtaposition for juxtaposition's sake. The house and the running footsteps didn't have anything to do with one another.

This could have been done better by tying the house to the runners initially -- as in you see the ext. house and see figures run past, or you see something that clues you into the story (blood?) outside the house. In other words, the shots of the house were arbitrary, and therefore a waste of my time.

If the action is running through the woods (presumably away from something/someone) then that is your opening sequence. Not a static house that is essentially irrelevant at that point.

2. It appears that the dude is beginning to zombie out. Very cliche, and nothing made that aspect fresh or original.

If, say, they were both running, and then the guy starts frothing at the mouth, spitting it out, but continuing to run. The other guy doesn't notice. The frothing gets worse. Something?

Also, the one guy is holding a gun the whole time. Sort of makes it a fait accompli.

Better: You open on the house / porch, where there's a shotgun lying next to a headless corpse, surrounded by blood.

The two guys are running back, and then they have to race for the shotgun as the one froths out/ zombies up. They arrive at the shotgun simultaneously and have to fight for it. --Just saying there's more ways to do this than you just give the one guy a gun and the other turns zombie, so he has to shoot him.

What if the guy who zombies out is the one with the gun?

3. The guy yelling for him to shoot -- how does he know the situation from that distance? Why can't he let "Danny" back up, return to the house and then see what the other guy does?

The "he had no choice" moment seems contrived and forced.

The one guy is down on the ground. The other guy could simply walk away at that point. The immediate yelling to shoot him is not realistic. How does the guy at the house know the guy didn't just fall down?

4. Then it hits a complete brick wall just when we really need the plot to twist into the middle. A long depressing, and inactive sequence does the opposite of what I would like to see there. If the world is in zombie apocalypse mode, you could certainly have more happening than people sitting around on the kitchen floor.

Even some handheld zombie pov shots approaching the house could have added something. Make it a siege.

5. There are a whole lot of forlorn looks and "Are you okay?" but nobody's trying to do anything. The acting was pretty good as far as these things go, but you haven't given them a goal to strive for, something visible we can get behind.

There's not even a struggle for power, as in Night of the Living Dead (which the premise resembles). The characters are flat and uninteresting.

6. "They're gonna get in." Who? I see a dearth of undead. There's no zombies massed outside when he says this, and so it's almost comical.

The look was good, and the sound too. I think you could do better the next time out with a better script. There are so many (thousands?) of zombie movies that avoiding the obvious is really important. That is one genre we've already "seen it all."
 
We certainly appreciate the criticism, after all extreme sensitivity will only get you so far. However I found many of your suggestions for replacement scenes to be just as 'cliche' if not more so. Perhaps the first misunderstanding was that you took it for a "zombie movie"
Point taken on the opening scene of the house, in retrospect we can certainly see your point. So again, thank you for the critique but we prefer to take advice that is a little less pretentious (fait accompli), we get it... your educated. A simple "hey your movie sucked" would have sufficed.

PS: Sorry to have boondoggled your time, don't you hate it when that happens?
 
I thought the begining Short was well put together, the beginning held my attention, though the inside scene did lose me. I don't agree with the house being an arbitrary shot, they way i processed the story, i though it had purpose. The scene with the character shooting the other, i felt was a bit rushed, but it made sense as the short carried on.

All in all, shots were good, lighting was pretty decent aswell, im sure your lighting will grow as you continue to make films. Audio was great, infact it was the audio from the start that held me in, I WILL NOT watch a film with bad audio.. won't happen..

cheers mate!
 
misunderstanding? It is a zombie movie. Maybe your zombies have some disease, don't like brains, and dont transfer their disease via biting, but they're still clearly zombies, which makes it a "zombie movie".

You may not have intended to make a zombie movie, but you did make one.

Anyway, I thought the intro was long and a bit boring for a ten minute film. I got the point after the second flash back to the house. And I also agree it was weird the guy is yelling "shoot him" even though he's really far away and the only apparent change is a small nosebleed that that guy probably can't see.

The ending was good, though. The last second or two, I mean. Sound and picture worked very well together; what did you do in post to her face? That was cool.
 
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