Love Is Bittersweet - ID# 342
Maine South
Dramatic Narrative
Entry Description
A spoken word about first love...and its loss.
Recent Teacher Comments
- 3/1 3:56 pm - I appreciate the straightforward vulnerability here. Feels raw and real and honest. I’m not sure I would categorize this as a narrative. It feels almost like a video slam poem, or a montage, or even a music video. So I’m not going to critique the story- it works well for whatever it is. From a cinematic perspective, there’s some good ideas here. You’ve clearly got some symbolism at play, some interesting angles, use of perspective, etc. Your editing seem appropriate for your intended mood. I see you working with pace, use of color, lighting and so forth. In general, I think your skills still need some development. This work is a little rough for this competition, but it’s good to see the next generation coming up through the ranks. I hope you can attend the festival or at least spend time watching the other entries. Learn from the successful ones and keep adding to your cinematic toolbox. That’s how we all keep learning and growing.
- 2/24 11:13 am - STORY: This felt like a very real and honest story. Very brave to make this kind of video and very relatable. You establish the conflict of your character and you conclude with a positive outlook on the future. But you didn't really show enough of the "happy" time with her boyfriend/girlfriend/partner. As an audience, we need that contrast or juxtaposition of love with heartache in order to truly feel empathy with you or your character. SOUND: Your voice over was clear and understandable. However, it sounded like you were reading it from a page, rather than being an inner monologue in your head. They key with good spoken word is to make it SEEM like it's your natural thoughts and voice, instead of words being read off of a page. Options for doing it better/differently would include doing multiple takes of each line or chunk in different voicing and pace, or literally have someone else (maybe a theatre kid or another person) do the voice over. The music was a bit overpowering sometimes; the levels were a little high and it became too much of the focus. CAMERA: You had a lot of shots and variety of shots, but many were out of focus. You also chose to do a lot of color correction or black and white. However, this didn't appear consistently; it seemed like you were experimenting with color and the absence of color, but it wasn't clear WHY or more importantly HOW the color related back to the story. Is "happy" colorful and "sad" black & white? Or are color and black & white representative of past and present? LIGHTING: There were a lot of shots that were either not lit enough or overexposed. You can see the under lit shots because there's a lot of noise and pixelation. The overexposed shots are blown out. Part of good lighting - even when you're using natural light or direct sunlight - involves looking at how the lighting impacts your subject. EDITING: A lot of your edits were choppy. I'm not referring to the intentional jump cuts - those are okay. But the transitions between the past and present tense isn't always clear. Those are editing choices, as well as decisions about how to visually represent the transitions (dissolves? Dip to black? Flash to white? straight cuts?) Right around the :54 - :55 second mark, it looks like you have a glitch or a bad transition. An editor needs to be precise - like a surgeon, you have to zoom into your timeline and make your cuts at the exact frames and times to keep your pace consistent.
Judge 1
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Judge 2
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Judge 3
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Judge 4
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