The Salt Run - a short film I made

K

Kent OGP

Active member
Travis just overdosed on heroin, an injection of salt-water might bring him back except...THERE'S NO SALT!

I made this for something called Campus Movie Fest, which is a student film festival that goes to different college campuses and lends them equipment for a week to make a movie.

At our school level The Salt Run won Best Drama for USC, which is funny because I thought of it as more of a dark comedy. We then went on to regionals in San Fransisco against 16 other colleges from the western US, where we won an award for best editing.

This was my first time editing in Final Cut, and as a long time (happy) Premiere user, I would kill to own a Mac now. Such a nice program.

Keep in mind this was shot on a crappy little handheld HD camera and filmed in 3 days between classes. Totally a run and gun operation.

Also, the acting is intentionally humorous.

Here's the link, please watch in HD!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghbsMSQYqXI
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys! The runtime limit was 5 minutes, so I just tried to pack as much entertainment and action into 5 minutes as I could. I ended up having to cut about 2 minutes from the movie, which really gave it a lightning pace I think.
 
EXCELLENT work. One of the better shorts i have seen on dvx in a while. In fact i enjoyed it so much i showed it to my gf, and a few of my crew members im working on my next short with to let them see what a good example of a work at that length.

The pacing was great, of course i can see why you got recognition for the editing, first rate job.

The opening sequence was incredible, as a writer as well i can really, really appreciate the dialogue at the beginning. I liked it it suddenly changes gears (imo) at the point where the blonde guy screams (sort of exaggerated).

I also loved the humor sprinkled in, it totally broke up the tension at all the right parts.

The "we have a meal plan" line, "late for class", and the bike were all well done.

What did you record sound with? What camera? What did you do lighting with?

My only minor gripe was somewhat shaky on the running bits, but im not even sure if you can really say that, cause some might argue that the shake added to the intensity and urgency of the situation.

I totally see the dark comedy direction you were going for.

Well done, please keep doing more.

jon
 
Thanks so much Jon!
jonE5 said:
The opening sequence was incredible, as a writer as well i can really, really appreciate the dialogue at the beginning.
Click to expand...
I'm glad you liked the penny monologue, it's something I actually believe in myself. I stopped telling people about it though because apparently it's weird not to enjoy the simple pleasure of picking up pennies :shocked: But at least it made for a good movie bit.
jonE5 said:
What did you record sound with? What camera? What did you do lighting with?
Click to expand...
They gave us a Panasonic HDC-HS100, a tripod, and a small mic like the Sennheiser MKE400 (although I'm not sure if it was that exact mic), and an Apple laptop with FCP to edit. That was literally all I had to make this with because the rest of my equipment is back home in Virginia. Most of the time the mic was just mounted on the camera, except for the penny monologue, where I held it just out of frame.

The lighting was all practicals and natural sunlight. I was able to adjust the white balance and aperture on the Panasonic camera to get a blue, bleek look for the interiors, and a really bright vibrant look for the exteriors. I also did some pretty heavy color grading in FCP.

Overall though I was very impressed with the audio quality that little mic was able to give me, and the video quality from the little camera.

jonE5 said:
My only minor gripe was somewhat shaky on the running bits, but im not even sure if you can really say that, cause some might argue that the shake added to the intensity and urgency of the situation.
Click to expand...

Haha, yea it was intentionally shaky, but I didn't really have a choice anyway! For some of the (slightly) smoother tracking shots I was simply holding the camera while riding my bike parallel to Chris, who was the main actor. I played the guy who stays in the room looking after the overdosed dude.

One of the trickiest parts of making this was filming the shots in the room because we didn't have a cameraman, so I just framed the shots so that no more than 2 of us would have to be in any given shot, and the third guy would hold the camera :grin:

Glad you enjoyed it though, and sometime within the next week I'll be posting a short film called A-Wake that I spent all of last summer on. So keep an eye out!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top