Tolernace Trailer - Version #2

I watched the trailer:

Here's what I liked ...

It looked good, brisk enough edit pace (could be a bit faster but only a tad..)
The intro flash frame sequence was good, mysterious and instantly sets up the environment...
Setting looks great..

Here's what you need to fix:

The voice work is flat... You will seriously have to re-record the voices of all the people
1. The useen voice in the beginning is too "whiny" crazy - try deepening it, pitching it down, something to make it more ominous. Its sounds like a ten year pretending to be a bad guy..
2. The blond haired prisoner guy (I guess hes the main character)
his voice is extremely flat and has zero gravity or interest - get him to dub himself and put some feeling and consciusness into what he's saying..

Really, redo all the voices. Listen to studio trailers and hear what the pro actors do with their voices to make them interesting...
Remember - the sound has to tell the story (or at least set it up) completely on it's own! Before you even cut any visuals to it.

The music in the whole last half is too gentle - this seems like a scary, nerve wrenching story - make the music match that.

You need some more info here on what the general story outline is.
All I could gather is that some guys are imprisoned, being tortured very cruelly and trying to escape.... this is all good, but at least
give us some title cards or a voice over that says "In a world where people are dragged off to jail without reason, one man will stand for all those poor assholes in that jail.." or whatever,
It seems like it is a good story, a very current sort of tale, so tell us right away what your veiw of this situation is.

But, again,
Re-do the sound, man!!! Seriously, this will make or break you. right now your visuals are pro and your sound is strikingly amateur.. Your sound should always be better than your visuals. get it there.

And encode the trailer in h264.. its the greatest...

check one of my trailers --
one minute thirty and its only 30 mb at 480p

Give me your feedback on this trailer if you like..

http://www.stickypod.com/stickypod_upload/uploads/34Zero480pIMA48k.mov

Good luck,
 
The previous post notwithstanding, it made me want to know what was going on and what it was about.
 
Matthew Bennett said:
Remember - the sound has to tell the story (or at least set it up) completely on it's own! Before you even cut any visuals to it.
Click to expand...

Uhm.. don't you have that backward?

You make sure you have the VISUALS together before you cut MUSIC to them....

That's why it's called moving pictures... and not moving sound. You go to watch a movie, sound comes second though it's important as well.

With that said --

The sound was off, the actor's voices need tweaking. ADR time.

Otherwise, i'd say you put that damned DVX100 to good use.
 
It's taking a really long time to load for me. I'm 75% of the way through, and what i've noticed so far, that has bothered me the most is that mans horrible accent. and the music is far to quiet. I think it should be more tense as well.
 
Kholi said:
Uhm.. don't you have that backward?

You make sure you have the VISUALS together before you cut MUSIC to them....

That's why it's called moving pictures... and not moving sound. You go to watch a movie, sound comes second though it's important as well.
Click to expand...

I guess it's a 'matter of opinion' thing... Maybe someone should do a poll ...
 
From a screenwriting point of view, the dialogue needs tweaking. It falls a little
flat and uninteresting. I'd also work on the tone of the dialogue. I would give
the protaganist an accent, something to set him apart for the rest.

Your trailer is only as good as your words.

Charli
 
well

well

Matthew Bennett said:
I guess it's a 'matter of opinion' thing... Maybe someone should do a poll ...
Click to expand...


Not to sound preachy but it's not really an opinion. It's a matter of what's most practical and what's usually done. It's a voice OVER. You shoot the picture, then do the voice over.
 
Well, since you're going to send it out to studios, I'll pretend I'm a studio person. That means I'll be harsh. The good news is you still have time to change it if you agree with anything I say.

The trailer starts out very strong. The sound (alarm) mixed with the images and the timing of the cuts works perfectly. Then we cut in on the face. Awesome.

Then through the whole middle, it gets kind've vanilla. It's not that the acting is bad. It's just a little underwhelming. The conversation between the two has that 'cheap independent feel'. There's no "ooomph" behind it. And yet every production value shot you throw in there (particularly the stuff with blood), looks awesome. I know that the dialogue stuff is helping to tell the story of the movie, but would you rather someone be like "ehh?" on bland dialogue that tells the story or really excited about a storyline they may not totally understand.

It's just that all your imagery is so powerful and brute and in your face. It doesn't mix well with those soft moments of conversation. Plus the ending of the trailer is really strong as well, with your most powerful image being the guy in the gas mask coming down the hall.

If I were you, I'd cut a dialogue-free trailer that tells the story through images. I'd also like some music in the middle that's a little harder. Maybe tell the story through interspersed black screens with titles? I mean I'm not telling you to lie here. But you can really be creative and draw on people's imagination with the stuff you have and really make it draw in different genre fans (thriller, horror, etc.)

That's my two cents, for what it's worth.
 
I read Matthew's post after I posted mine and I think he's spot-on. He's offering another solution to the same problem I saw in the trailer. Which is that soft back and forth dialogue. If you can do what he said, do that. If not, see my above post for another solution.

I have a question. How do you solve this soft voice with no punch problem on a film? I do notice how much more 'oomph' these studio movie's actor's voices have. Is that just the actor's voice? Or is that a lot of audio post work done to their voice to make it crisper, bigger, bass-ier, etc.? If so, what are the most common tools used?
 
c.g._eads said:
I have a question. How do you solve this soft voice with no punch problem on a film? I do notice how much more 'oomph' these studio movie's actor's voices have. Is that just the actor's voice? Or is that a lot of audio post work done to their voice to make it crisper, bigger, bass-ier, etc.? If so, what are the most common tools used?
Click to expand...


I'm no expert, but I think it's all about
1. A Good Mic, (couple a thousand dollars at least),
2. a good recordist (put the mic close, basically),
3. A GOOD ACTOR who can make his voice interesting (change tone, emphasis, tell the story through the timber of voice and not just words, blah, blah,)
4. Taking that already awesome voice and putting it through a sound processing suite (soundtrack is a good prosumer one), equalizing, compressing for loudness, adding bass, whatever, to make it sound even better and punchier. This of course requires someone who can manipulate these tools, has a good ear, etc.

By the time all the voice work is done, the voice should have had just as much attention paid to it as the image.

I think thats the problem with a lot of work that we percieve to be 'weak' - the sound was left behind at some point.
 
Matthew Bennett said:
I watched the trailer:

Here's what I liked ...

It looked good, brisk enough edit pace (could be a bit faster but only a tad..)
The intro flash frame sequence was good, mysterious and instantly sets up the environment...
Setting looks great..

Here's what you need to fix:

The voice work is flat... You will seriously have to re-record the voices of all the people
1. The useen voice in the beginning is too "whiny" crazy - try deepening it, pitching it down, something to make it more ominous. Its sounds like a ten year pretending to be a bad guy..
2. The blond haired prisoner guy (I guess hes the main character)
his voice is extremely flat and has zero gravity or interest - get him to dub himself and put some feeling and consciusness into what he's saying..

Really, redo all the voices. Listen to studio trailers and hear what the pro actors do with their voices to make them interesting...
Remember - the sound has to tell the story (or at least set it up) completely on it's own! Before you even cut any visuals to it.

The music in the whole last half is too gentle - this seems like a scary, nerve wrenching story - make the music match that.

You need some more info here on what the general story outline is.
All I could gather is that some guys are imprisoned, being tortured very cruelly and trying to escape.... this is all good, but at least
give us some title cards or a voice over that says "In a world where people are dragged off to jail without reason, one man will stand for all those poor assholes in that jail.." or whatever,
It seems like it is a good story, a very current sort of tale, so tell us right away what your veiw of this situation is.

But, again,
Re-do the sound, man!!! Seriously, this will make or break you. right now your visuals are pro and your sound is strikingly amateur.. Your sound should always be better than your visuals. get it there.

And encode the trailer in h264.. its the greatest...

check one of my trailers --
one minute thirty and its only 30 mb at 480p

Give me your feedback on this trailer if you like..

http://www.stickypod.com/stickypod_upload/uploads/34Zero480pIMA48k.mov

Good luck,
Click to expand...

Uhmm... I don't know if the opinion of people whom are not professionals really matter in real-world case.

There are many people whom write to music, but using sound before you use the images is backward and you'd be hard-pressed to find a pro that doesn't work by that rule.

Sound scehma is second to visuals, and just as important, but it's still second; in most cases.

If this were a movie about music or dancing, then okay, fire away... but it's not.
 
Excellent trailer. I agree with the person who suggested the trailer lacked oomph halfway through. I would recommend cutting out some of that dialouge as well.

Visuals were excellent. I really enjoyed the editing, it was tight.

Where was that jail located?

I noticed you live in Huntersville, my sister lives there too. That was an awesome location.

Good luck.
 
Thanks everyone for the posts. To all those that went in depth about audio, I will look into it further and work on it as much as I can before we have to send it in. One of our problems was that we shot peices of this over many days, and different mics/sound equip was used each time, so we got different results with different segments of the video. I'd love to do ADR if we have time. I'll have to check with everyone and see what we can do. I will post up a new version as soon as we make any changes.
Baquajim, the prison is located off of exit 18 of I-77, about 2-3 miles north above the huntersville/charlotte border. The NCDOT is planning on demolishing the prison in April, so if we cant raise all the funds and shoot before then, we lose the prison. And since theyre tearing it down, we have complete freedom to do anything we want with the prison, anything.

Can anyone spot the footage from an XL-2? There are 9 shots total that are filmed by an XL-2, and the rest is DVX. Hopefully no one will notice....

Thanks again for all the comments. I just hope we have time to get everything we need done.
 
directinglegend said:
It's taking a really long time to load for me. I'm 75% of the way through, and what i've noticed so far, that has bothered me the most is that mans horrible accent. and the music is far to quiet. I think it should be more tense as well.
Click to expand...

Which mans horrible accent?
 
Hi Kevin, cool trailer.

Keep up the good work.

Where are you sending it, by the way? Is it a movie that is done already or is this a spec trailer to drum up interest? Just wondering.

Do you have any other cool trailers or shorts to show us?
 
Thanks Matthew. Our main target is Lions Gate, but we're also going to send it to Paramount, WB, and Universal. Somehow we got a backdoor in. So who knows.

We've only shot a trailer for this film, and if we cant raise the money, then we cant shoot the film.

I'll have a music video up in about a week. We've got alot of bts videos and stills from our 8 months of pre producction on Tolerance. And my DP made his own short for the upcoming sci-fi contest, and Ive seen a rough cut and it looks pretty sweet.

http://www.techincproductions.com/projects3.htm - for bts.
 
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