Watch "Manifest Breakfast"

O

OpticSugar

Member
Hello friends at the DVXuser community.


A while back i said in a thread that i would post a full version of my 15 min short film 'Manifest Breakfast' as soon as it is completed. Well its not completed yet but i am looking for feedback, i feel like the edit is 95% final, i still need to do some CC and purchase the rights to the music. That being said i would like feedback from the community here.

I have a password protected version of MB at www.vimeo.com/6661444

password - "insane"

give it a min to buffer after you hit play

This is a work in progress cut and by no means a finished product. I am in negotiations for music rights as you read this. I am posting this link only for friends and people on this forum for feedback purposes only. I am really interested in what you guys have to say, positive or negative. If you love it please tell me why and if you hate it please be even more specific.

if you would like more info on the film you can visit my website (which is also incomplete) at www.manifestbreakfast.com

The film was shot on two HVX200's one with a red rock kit, that is why some shots look so epic and others don't quite match. Looking back i would have shot everything with just the redrock camera.

Thank you. Can't wait to hear some feedback
 
wow, ill comment more later, the credits have a cool effect, but MAN they are longer than some shorts that ive made.
 
So even if this WAS a finished product its still good. I know you want to do some color grading and I'd love to see it after you've finished, but I think on its own the color is fine. I think you nailed the mystic and the mystery with your story. My two cents is to let that live on its own with no more technical sweetening.

Maybe I just like a really nice clean shot. Maybe I really connected with the character and so I'm a little bit biased but damn I really thought that was badass.

Good work man.
 
Ok heres my 2 cents.

I liked it, after the epic-ly long intro sequence (i would say trim that by half if not by 75%, its nearly 3 mins).

Everything looked very nice, BUT, at the beginning there are some wide establishment type shots that the quality looks much lower than the other shots. Not sure if this was done with a different camera, or what, but they are slightly distracting.

The acting was good, and the story interesting. The shots of the things like cutting up the pancakes, coffee pouring were really cool, and i really liked the effect of his hand getting burned, very nice.

At the end, im guessing that last shot is supposed to show that there is no one there, in which case pretty neat.

There really is no explination, but i guess for something this short there may not need to be.

I agree the coloring looks pretty nice as is, great job.

keep it comming.

Out of curiousity waht was your workflow? What type of lighting, how many cameras, any sliders, jibs etc... Did you have any sort of budget, and how long did all the shooting take?
 
Overall, I think it's a well done short. The opening titles are neat but overly long.

I can't say I really got much out of the story but that's just me. I do feel that trimming the opening will help the audience appreciate it more even though they are very cool and well done.

Great location though, I really dug that aspect.

-M
 
I would agree with some of the earlier comments regarding the intro being too long...other than that I thought the mood and tone of the piece was great. Great quirkiness and interesting characters in a great location. Some of the shots very beatutiful. One thing that stuck out to me was the girl in the shower/bedroom when he is getting up and getting himself together. The Fx were great in that scene, Although I thought she could be been more abstract though and less literal in the scene.
To shift the focus back to him and more suggestive of her in the same space as him...this woud be a post effect pass only...the footage is perfect as a base.
Just an idea.
amazing short work overall, I look forward to whatever minor tweaking you have planned.
 
Thank you guys for your comments, it means a lot to me that you all seem to dig it. To answer some of you questions...

The epicly long open title sequence-

i agree it is too long, one thing that we enjoy doing over here at opticsugar is creating open title sequences for films and i know we went a bit over board on this one. I plan on sending it out to film fests with the open title sequence ending after the title "Manifest Breakfast" is shown, that makes the open title around 30 seconds. But for private screenings i like showing the titles because all the actors and crew were volunteer it makes me feel a bit better to give them a big credit in the beginning. I also like that fact that we see the janitor mopping the floor for 3 mins before the main character muddy's it all up. it makes me laugh. But i know its too long for festivals.

Workflow-

the film had a budget of $1000. We spent 4 days at the diner, the first 3 days we shot the short film, the fourth day we did some exteriors that didn't make the cut. The "hotel room" scene was shot the weekend after in my friends loft and took about 6 hours.

We used two HVX200's one with a red rock and one without as well as a HD panasonic field monitor. We had two 5 head arri kits and a mole richardson 2k as well as some assorted lowell pro 250's that probably didn't get used.

I rented a doorway dolly for the 3 days and used a skateboard dolly for the main characters entrance, that one was pretty shaky and i'm not happy with it but the doorway dolly didn't fit so i have to live with it. A lot of the moving shots of the mopping and other things were recorded with some interesting tripod setups that i have to credit stuart chudy (one of the DP's) with.

For post pro we used FCP with after effects. Pretty standard. I wanted to stay away from a lot of visual effects for this project. there are really no visual effects besides the steam and the red skin burning when the coffee is poured on his hands, any other effect is just done in camera and with crossfades.

Problem with the film-

I realize that some shots are a little blurry or even look a bit lower quality than the rest, like the EST shot at the beginning. It was one of the first things we shot and the camera was in a position that was such where we couldn't connect a monitor to it and since it was shot with the redrock the back focus was off, again something i'm not happy about but i feel like even a blurry EST shot is better than no EST shot. Your thoughts?

Again i thank you all for your comments, please keep them coming and ANY questions you have i would love to answer.
 
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