Witch Bottle by Justin Demeere

Hi Justin, this was a fun film, kind of a campy ed wood kind of flick. Great use and wrangling of the smoke machines, good creative colors for the night lighting outdoors. SOunds like there were some sound artifacts problems left over from Soundsoap (during background hum removal) used on the dialog. Would have liked to hear the actors mic'd a little closer to remove the ambient room tone.

I think this film was a success at what you were going for.

Extra credits for the headless woman's blood squirting into the lead actors mouth and him gargling/gagging on it!!! LOL - nice touch.

Looking forward to seeing more of your work Justin :)
 
Charli said:
One thing I thought of was how did you get all of that information on the bottle? LOL - it seemed like a lock for such a small bottle.

It was entertaining.
Click to expand...

Hehe thanks! Glad it was entertaining. That's all that matters to me.

TMerry said:
Hi Justin, this was a fun film, kind of a campy ed wood kind of flick. Great use and wrangling of the smoke machines, good creative colors for the night lighting outdoors. SOunds like there were some sound artifacts problems left over from Soundsoap (during background hum removal) used on the dialog. Would have liked to hear the actors mic'd a little closer to remove the ambient room tone.

I think this film was a success at what you were going for.

Extra credits for the headless woman's blood squirting into the lead actors mouth and him gargling/gagging on it!!! LOL - nice touch.

Looking forward to seeing more of your work Justin :)
Click to expand...

Yeah I need a mic. I have an H4n but no stinkin' mic so it wasn't useful at all. Let this be a lesson to all you GH1 folk out there... don't use the GH1's mic kids. I will make sure to get a hold of a mic on my next project for sure. Thanks for the input man!
 
Okay, Justin! Finally made it. I very much liked some of the things you did here. Some of your shots I think were superb, like the clock shot, the zoom to the door shot and the shot of the house at the end. I agree that the sound could have been better. Their voices sounded a bit echoey in the beginning. The acting was okay. There were a couple of spots where a couple of the actors delivered their lines as if they were reading, but that's about it. Once the action started, it started. Remember I wanted to see how the green-screen car shot turned out. I thought it looked pretty good, except for the lighting on the guy. I think if that was a bit darker it would go better with the background. Other than that it worked. Good job. I know that was a pretty big set up for such a short shot. Some of the things you did definitely took me back to Romero's original zombie flick. :thumbsup:
 
Zak Forsman said:
You know what they say, if you're going to steal, steal from the best! had a lot of fun catching all the Evil Dead shots and gags. and they were really well done. nice work!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the comment and for watching! Glad it was fun to watch.
 
Marlon Ladd said:
Okay, Justin! Finally made it. I very much liked some of the things you did here. Some of your shots I think were superb, like the clock shot, the zoom to the door shot and the shot of the house at the end. I agree that the sound could have been better. Their voices sounded a bit echoey in the beginning. The acting was okay. There were a couple of spots where a couple of the actors delivered their lines as if they were reading, but that's about it. Once the action started, it started. Remember I wanted to see how the green-screen car shot turned out. I thought it looked pretty good, except for the lighting on the guy. I think if that was a bit darker it would go better with the background. Other than that it worked. Good job. I know that was a pretty big set up for such a short shot. Some of the things you did definitely took me back to Romero's original zombie flick. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Hey thanks for the comment man! It was fun doing a short again after all this time. I'm ready for another one now after all this great feedback. Thanks for watching.
 
Ok, this sucked. Now that I have your attention I loved it! Sure there were technical difficulties, but it just added to the campyness. Oh and the dude ready a novel off the back of the bottle was hilarious. And when the witch, a seemingly very old witch, hops into the car and jets off I guffawed aloud. Good Job.
 
****! That was great! Ok, the dialogue sounded like total ****, but I read about your technical limitations in the sound department, so I won't harp on it.

Throwback soundtrack, fog, everything brought a smile to my face. Loved the over-the-top stuff like the guy being almost drowned by the decapitated body's blood draining out its neck, especially the gurgling.

Great job and definitely one of my favorites.

Thanks for sharing!
 
I call this early on before you post the film. This is an Evil Dead remix. You must have had a good time making this film. It became a little slow near the end when the characters strayed into the woods. Other than that... its funny fun.
 
Some great shots in this even though it is a lot of homage to the master. :)
Not as easy as one might think.
Looks like it was a lot of fun to make. I'm guessing you had a blast.

I won't go on about the sound issues as it's already been touched on.

Bottom line, this was a lot of fun.

Thanks,

MAH
 
This film was a lot of fun! I loved your Evil Dead style approach you took with it. Your camerawork was spot on and really fun to watch and your film has a solid pace. The only thing that took me out of it was the audio. Whenever the characters spoke, their voices seemed a bit hollow.
 
good stuff. definitely had the campy horror movie feel to it, and the raimi/evil dead influence was definitely evident. the sound for the dialogue in the beginning obviously had problems though but fun short overall.
 
I can see at least two people have beat me to the Evil Dead comparison (I'm sure there were more but I haen't read all the reviews.) I was actually hoping there would be a bit more entries with this type of influence in the fest. We had a couple ideas initially that were sort of in this style so I'm really, really glad you made this.

I think I read back somewhere that you haven't made anything in a while so this must have been an absolute joy to be a part of. Couple that with the fact that there are some truly great elements and moments in here and you have yourself a successful short film here. I was smiling the whole way through brotha, seriously. I will have more for you later, I just don't want you thinking I had forgotten to watch it. Once you have a solid microphone you're going to blow it away. Thanks for the solid entertainment!

Great job.
 
Thanks for the comments doods!

Yeah Nobelo it has been since 2003 since I made a short. I did make some silly youtube videos here and there and some local site but nothing I would call an actual short. Just goofing around with an old standard video camera really. Well I guess I was goofing around with an HD camera here too. Hehe but this time I was jumping in to get my feet wet for the really good stuff to come. muahahahaaaaa.

Oh and yeah Evil Dead is a favorite of mine. I guess I like the cartoon-like way of telling stories like this. After all I am a huge fan of WB toons.
 
The best thing about this was how inventive and bold all the choices were. There was a lot of creative/interesting camera shots: some that worked, some that were a little over the top and extraneous.

But this short was unafraid, and that was cool. The make-up effects were fun.

The sound made some of this really difficult to watch for me.

Also, some of the editing and staging left me a little confused as to what was going on.

I'm not a big fan of opening titles that overlay images, unless they fit in really nicely and are timed properly.

Keep the energy and creativity in your next project, just make sure to get some good audio, mix it well, and to tell your story as clearly as possible.
 
This one had a very Sam Raimi'esque type of feeling to it. I liked all the weird angles you used. I felt the camera man was the biggest talent on this flick. The music, sound and acting left a lot to be desired. Oddly enough after watching 90% + of the films this one stuck out to me. It's probably in my top 10. I have a few more films to watch and it could get bumped, but I doubt it.
 
It looks like you pretty much accomplished what you wanted with this piece. I'm not a big fan of the Evil Dead movies myself but I can see how you were inspired by them on this one so it that is what you were going for you succeeded and congratulations for that.
 
I saw this as an amusing non too serious homage to Evil Dead (fairly obvious.) Perhaps too much though - as there was little new introduced into the concept (and homages do that) fan films usually don't and perhaps this has fallen too much into that category.

There are some interesting shots on display here, well executed Evil Dead inspired equievelants and the sound effects were amusing.

However, it is self indulgent to make a film that is really more amusing for its participants than its audience, and mostly i felt that while it was fun, it was perhaps a waste of time, energies and talent that could have been put to creating an effective original piece.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top