Trailer "Shadows" Short Film

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Nuno Dias

Carbonite Member
This is a trailer for a short film we shot last summer. Its been a while on post production but we are finally done. It looks awesome! (Even if I might say so myself...)

Hope you enjoy this little snippet!

 
I always marvel at how something like this will get like no feedback but cats on couches and rack focusing through leaves gets all kinds of feedback... Anyway dude looks super good... beautiful use of color that doesn't look over the top but creates a very surreal a gritty look. Love it. If I could make two suggestions, one would be that I would say this trailer looks like a Tier A low budget indie, ie very very good, those title cards though look cheap to be honest... it's a combination of the font and the plain white color... the font is no good, I would change that, but the white can stay with the right font if that's what you want. The other thing is just kinda my own opinion but that music towards the end felt like "Oh yeah, they're trying to sound like Inception, but it's not as good." It's kinda like when people try to shoot a club scene but they only have 12 extras, it just comes up short of what it's trying to do. Other than those two things I love the cinematography and would watch the film so that's the point right? Good job!
 
Wow Sean what a review!

I have to say that you hit the spot on your issues, I was never happy with the tittle cards but after fussing with them for so long, I thought it was just me being picky, but now that you've mention it my insecurities about them came back strong, I definitely have to make them work some other way. The music, again, right on the money, but in my opinion the all piece is over the top. But the funny thing is, there is no music at all in the film, so having this over the top score on the trailer makes me think I really messed up the concept of the film. But it somehow translates the "mood" of the film, with that I'm happy, but the Inception part of it, I have to agree with you, doesn't make much sense...

I really appreciate your comments. Thanks very much.
 
I think the title cards could be improved, but I also have issue with how fast the first title card comes up. Maybe I'm just slow, but I actually didn't read the first title card before it disappeared.

Looks like a lot of fun, though. Just really nice colors and framing.

I'd be interested to have a little something with regards the script. I think these kind of "woman escapes captor" flicks are pretty junk-food-easy to sell to an audience, but I'd be interested to know if there's anything more to it than that. I Spit on Your Grave and Texas Chainsaw pretty much defined the subgenre. I'd like to know from the preview what makes this unique and interesting.
 
Brian_Rice said:
I think the title cards could be improved, but I also have issue with how fast the first title card comes up. Maybe I'm just slow, but I actually didn't read the first title card before it disappeared.
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After the first card came up I thought "what did that say? I'll have to read quicker next time!". Usually title cards are up for too long for me. Other than that it looks good! Glad to hear there's no music in the film. Music is often overused and a lazy way to make atmosphere IMO.
 
looks good especially interiors,i only didnt liked shot on 0:30 when he had a gun and i think white balance could be a bit different on exteriors.
 
seanmcleod said:
those title cards though look cheap to be honest... it's a combination of the font and the plain white color... the font is no good, I would change that, but the white can stay with the right font if that's what you want.
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This was my only negative comment. I thought it looked great, but the graphics gotta be brought up to the same quality as the footage.
 
Agreed, great looking footage but the graphics need some more work. The size and font is wrong, the movement is also too fast backwards. But looking good anyway!
 
Brian_Rice said:
I think the title cards could be improved, but I also have issue with how fast the first title card comes up. Maybe I'm just slow, but I actually didn't read the first title card before it disappeared.

Looks like a lot of fun, though. Just really nice colors and framing.

I'd be interested to have a little something with regards the script. I think these kind of "woman escapes captor" flicks are pretty junk-food-easy to sell to an audience, but I'd be interested to know if there's anything more to it than that. I Spit on Your Grave and Texas Chainsaw pretty much defined the subgenre. I'd like to know from the preview what makes this unique and interesting.
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Yes, I tried to stay away from that sort of thing. In fact, me and the actress worked out before the shoot that she would never, ever scream or do any of the usual girl hysterics! We tried to work our way out of some of the genre clichés, but it is a "girl escapes captor" narrative structure, but I didn't necessarily wanted to reinvent the wheel, I just wanted to build a tight narrative, with room for thrills and surprises. And I think we managed to succeed very well on that. I'm still doing final sound mixing and it should be completed in about a week, from there I'm very sure I can post it online on a dedicated website (http://www.wix.com/shadowsthefilm/shadows) before I send it off to festivals.

I didn't want this to be a Chain Saw Massacre but rather a Once Upon a Time in the West type film, only shorter... a lot shorter!

I know the tittles aren't smokin' but to keep those title cards in harmony with the rest of the film was difficult. Whatever it was, it had to be simple. That's the best I could come up with, I just didn't realize they were that bad, judging by all the comments anyway... They might change soon

Thanks for your comments by the way.
 
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Brilliant piece of work!!! I don't like the ending but definitely understand why you did it that way...
Love the last part where the car hit the main character!! How did you do that?

The sound and lighting are awesome and you really know how to build up the suspense. Kudos on that one and the cinematography was pure excellent work!!

Thanks for sharing too...
 
Excellent work Nuno! The bottom line is, I want to know more -- what happens next, who were the other characters, heck, who is she, etc. Always the mark of a good story!
 
Wow! Thanks for all the love guys, there's nothing better than to get your ass kicked at doing a film and then have people liking and enjoying the final work.

Thanks very much!
 
Hey Nuno... I have to weigh in because I did love the teaser very much. The short looked great, visually stunning in a lot of parts. But to be honest I was disappointed with the story. I realize to make this global you might have strayed away from speaking, but I was not emotionally invested in the characters at all. I don't know any of them, what they're doing out there, how they go there. Also you don't reveal what's in the bag, which is a little bit Pulp Fiction-y and that took me out of the moment as well. You had the basis of a story, Girl takes something that doesn't belong to her, Man wants it back. But with that little information I had no idea what the motivation for anyone was to do anything. The car hit is a punishment for her wrong doing I guess but there was no character arc or change to make it have weight. If she showed signs of remorse or something like that then when she got hit it would be tragic, and as such more poignant. As is she steals, she kills (presumably) and then gets hit by a car, and I'm left thinking so what?

Don't get me wrong, I watched it the whole way through and if you shot this I would hire you to DP a film of mine in a second. There is nice pacing in places and some real tension, but I think you need to work on the character development and really give the audience the ability to care about these people, or in this case, this girl. If you don't want them to, then that's fine, but there still needs to be a development within the character to allow us more than just a superficial understanding of who they are. You got the bones... work on adding some nice meat!
 
Hi Sean thanks very much for your post. You made a very smart analysis of a few things that I thought would be difficult to spot in the film. For example, the fact that you saw her death as a "punishment" is right on the money because that's exactly what I felt, but the funny thing is, most people tell me that she was unlucky...

But in fact I love that, there is enough room in the film to let people fill in the gaps according to their own opinion and views on things.

The fact that I didn't show the contents of the bag in the beginning was to not associate her motivations right from the start with anything, I wanted the audience to just witness her behavior and not question it or judge it.

Also, you might have missed it, but after she gets hit, there is a shot of the bag, with its content spilling out... only then I thought would be the best place to show it, and only then as the film comes to an end, you can finally have all the emotional information, and hopefully, investment to judge all her prior actions.

But its hard to tackle a character arc in 10 mins, even more to create attachment to characters that are all antagonists. This was my take on the film noir genre, meaning that characters don't change, they begin bad, stay bad and die bad... maybe what you felt was lack of some sort of emotional closure, and not really a character arc. Either case, you're right, and that means my job didn't go through as it should have, or did it? It's hard to tell when you're playing with genre conventions...

By the way, I wasn't the DP... I wrote and directed the film.

Thanks very much for watching and giving your opinion of the film, really.
 
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Yeah man, sorry for the delay but what you said makes total sense. I think that's an interesting response and I get more of where you're coming from... maybe I missed it the first time but I see the cash in the bag now, weird I missed it somehow. Anyway like I said really strong piece, just wanted to give my take. I think what could have made for a nice punctuation on the end of the film is if the bag fell closer to her when she got hit and the driver gets out, walks towards her like hes going to help her, stops for a moment, and moves past her to grab the sack of cash and scurries back to the car... then shes punished and presumably something not so great is coming the drivers way as well... haha
 
My input...

I really enjoyed this. Up to the point where she got hit with the car...
... what disturbed me most was the apparent lack of concern from the driver that hit her. He just stood there at the front of the car watching her die. He didn't run up to check on her. He didn't hop back in the car and run away. He just stood and watched.
My mind was thinking "Did her attacker finally get her? No, she killed him in the shack. Or did she?"
 
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