MMEA Fest

A farcical parody of film noir and horror made for Wheaton North's Halloween broadcast.

2/28 9:33 am - Lots of good stuff here. I especially like your camera work and lighting. Shooting in low light is tricky, but you’ve got (what I think is) terrific image quality here. Good for you. Your audio is a little more spotty. You’ve got a couple of rough sound transitions, and a lav mic might have helped the scene on the loading dock. I’m not sure that using such recognizable music from Psycho is a great choice. Yes, it’s great music, but it pulls me entirely out of your film and into Hitchcock’s classic. Then I start comparing the two, which is a tall order for any filmmaker. Still, it works, so at least you borrowed from the best. The problem is that it immediately flags this as a student project, and I’d encourage you to attempt the next step of producing a film that could legitimately stand on it’s own as professionally produced short. You clearly have the ability. Same goes for casting high school students in adult roles. I get that you wanted to do the noir thing, but I’d think about plots that you could cast high school kids as high school kids, or find adults to play adult roles. (Not easy to find solid actors.) But like I say, that would help take you to the next level. Kudos. This is very solid work. Keep at it.

Positives: Great opening sequence, started me into a Hitchcockian vibe immediately. Love the retro feel with high contrast lighting.

Improvements: A little too dark at times.

Positives: The noir qualities work...shot very well

Improvements: Audio was very choppy...bed music at the end drowns out the peak narration

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