SHORT: There and Back Again - Short Film by Jonathan David Damborg

J

JonathanDamborg

New member
My name is Jonathan David Damborg and I've just completed my new short film called "There and Back Again".

It has nothing to do with middle earth, but is about a boy and a girl who wake up on the fields of Elysium - on there way to heaven.
Can they overcome death and return to life before it's too late? Well, you can watch for yourself right here :) https://vimeo.com/43119465

the film was shot on a canon 550D and edited in sony vegas, after effects and various plug-ins.

If you have any questions about the production (or post-production) feel free to ask me and I will do my best to answer.

ps. Im looking for critique, so don't hold yourself back!

Thank you in advance
Jonathan
 
JonathanDamborg said:
My name is Jonathan David Damborg and I've just completed my new short film called "There and Back Again".

It has nothing to do with middle earth, but is about a boy and a girl who wake up on the fields of Elysium - on there way to heaven.
Can they overcome death and return to life before it's too late? Well, you can watch for yourself right here :) https://vimeo.com/43119465

the film was shot on a canon 550D and edited in sony vegas, after effects and various plug-ins.

If you have any questions about the production (or post-production) feel free to ask me and I will do my best to answer.

ps. Im looking for critique, so don't hold yourself back!

Thank you in advance
Jonathan
Click to expand...

For me the 'tone' of the image was far too light for the 'death' subject. I personally prefer the following example of humans interacting with the Angel of Death:



Alternatively, even this spoof of Bergman 'works' for tone...


There is something about B&W that says 'deep/moody' if the basic pallet is blacks and dark greys with touches of very light... One can get this in color, but then one must mute and subdue the look...
 
Thanks for your comment!!

Actually I didn't want to portrait death as a "bad thing" but as something mysterious that every human has to experience.

I thought about making the film b/w but again, nobody knows exactly what happens when you die and choosing black and white would have made a clear contrast between life and death.

I wanted the line to be a little less defined, so I decided to go for the dreamy look in colours. that puts the focus on the characters making them more "alive" i think :)

Jonathan
 
I really liked it. I liked the tone a great deal - I think b&w would have been too "movie-like", and the story is stronger because the lines are less well defined visually. What I like most is the idea itself - the execution is OK technically, though not great (losing focus is not nice, some poor framing and angle choices etc.), and the acting is of course amateur. But the idea is very nice and you managed to also get good atmosphere going. The execution could have used a bit of work - fewer visual cliches would be better (portrayal of the angel of death is very tired). But overall, this is very, very, very nice. Even the music didn't suck too horribly - and in fact I really liked the way that track came on while they were running on the road, and I was groaning inwardly at how horrible a musical choice it was, but then I understood it's coming from the car, and that was very nice indeed (it just means the couple had very bad musical taste!).

Overall a great effort. If I had to judge just based on this, I'd say : you have talent. Keep working!
 
OldCorpse said:
I really liked it. I liked the tone a great deal - I think b&w would have been too "movie-like", and the story is stronger because the lines are less well defined visually. What I like most is the idea itself - the execution is OK technically, though not great (losing focus is not nice, some poor framing and angle choices etc.), and the acting is of course amateur. But the idea is very nice and you managed to also get good atmosphere going. The execution could have used a bit of work - fewer visual cliches would be better (portrayal of the angel of death is very tired). But overall, this is very, very, very nice. Even the music didn't suck too horribly - and in fact I really liked the way that track came on while they were running on the road, and I was groaning inwardly at how horrible a musical choice it was, but then I understood it's coming from the car, and that was very nice indeed (it just means the couple had very bad musical taste!).

Overall a great effort. If I had to judge just based on this, I'd say : you have talent. Keep working!
Click to expand...

thanks man, I really appreciate it!

I know what you mean about the execution and I don't want to use this as a bad excuse but we simply didn't have time to fix it'
The short film was made for a schoolproject and therefore we only had time to shoot during weekends.
The locations (particularly the field in the beginning) were very, very hard to reach and because of weather changes everything got swampy and wet, slowing us down a lot.
It also made it difficult to maintain the dreamy look of the movie since everything turned grey and boring ^^
We had to make the film within two weeks and lots of things screwed up un set, making us really stressed. So in the end we threw the storyboard away and just sticked to our intuition.
That turned out to be a big problem in the post-production because I wasn't completely satisfied with the footage, but I did what I could with it, and I think the film turned out pretty good'

I didn't want to make it sound like an excuse but just to tell you a little about why the film turned out the way it did, and well, I actually like the song from the car haha :)
but like I said, thank you very much for the "review" and i'm glad you liked the film!

regards
Jonathan
 
Very good. The main two issues I had with the story was that it is implied that they're injected out of the vehicle which does not make sense from where they're on the ground. Also, the man in the white coat at the end I assumed was a doctor at first and thought it was strange he was shaking the accident victim.
 
JoeButch said:
Very good. The main two issues I had with the story was that it is implied that they're injected out of the vehicle which does not make sense from where they're on the ground. Also, the man in the white coat at the end I assumed was a doctor at first and thought it was strange he was shaking the accident victim.
Click to expand...

thanks for watching :)

haha, yeah - every film has bloopers ^^ actually we noticed the problem with the characters' position on set, but decided to leave it because it fit with just about everything else.
The doctor part is an honest mistake, but because of the stress on set (it turned dark) we didn't notice it! it's unrealistic, i know'

Jonathan
 
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