Death Writes a Pass - ID# 505
West Chicago
Dramatic Narrative
Entry Description
When a mysterious pass is delivered to his first hour classroom, David's life takes a dark turn in this Hitchcock-styled original student drama.
Recent Teacher Comments
- 3/5 7:01 pm - I think you have the ability to edit and put pieces together, but I think you were missing to many pieces to tell the story you wanted to, especially a story without dialogue. When you do that, which I love by the way because it takes great skill, you have to be very intentional about the shots that you use so your audience knows what they should be focused on, and you can lead them where you want, even if it is in a different direction to make a twist ending all the more suprising. You needed more close ups cut in, what did the pass say, the person receiving the pass shows no emotion so as an audience it is hard for me to determine what he is thinking. Is he scared, nervous, confident, perplexed as he walks through the hall I just don’t know what he is thinking so the more he walks the more I wonder, and wait for a clue, but the longer he walks without knowing, the quicker my class (and your audience) begins to lose interest. I like your idea, and you are good at editing, you just need those essential story pieces to help us know what is going on, I never feel like he is scared, and yet what would lead a student outside and to what he appears will be his death and yet the subject still has little emotion. Without feeling anything the main character is feeling I am nothing more than a viewer watching some stuff go on. So in the end he is not a hero or villain to me, I have no vested interest and therefore whatever happens happens. You don’t want that to happen so use your camera to take back some of that control. Some of your camera shots are shakey and a little out of focus. Your audio levels are not matched between songs, and I guess I would have liked to see the pass a bit longer at the end, so I can put 2 and 2 together (since we don’t know who the pass is from until the end).
- 3/1 12:51 pm - I like the idea of telling a story purely visually. The thing is, just like a story told in words, you need to trim away all the unnecessary parts that don’t improve the final product. Overall, I think you could put more thought into telling a clear compelling story, and then shotlisting out how to tell it as dynamically as possible. I find the story here to be pretty on the nose, and some of your cinematography feels almost like you’re experimenting and trying to discover how to use the camera. I don’t know that all of the shots of him leaving the school really advance the story much or develop his character. And then the climax is that the big, slow guy breaks his neck or something. I just think you could do better. Having said all that, you have some good camera work, your lighting is simple but solid, and your music (though your levels sound a bit high to me in parts) is well chosen to create your intended mood. Keep at it.
- 2/25 10:14 am - STORY: The story wasn't clear - why was the character being chosen for death. Also, the person choking the character at the end was smiling; obviously not an actor taking the scene seriously. In that case, a director needs to re-take the shot and coach the actor on how to portray the scene. Kind of an important part of your story, so the guy smiling/laughing doesn't work. SOUND: You selected decent music to fit the scenes, but the rest of your soundscape was very thin. No dialogue, no voice over, and no sound effects to help tell your story. A little of those elements would go a long way to making this a better piece. CAMERA: You had some nice shots and compositions in the piece, shooting through objects and using the locations to make your shots more interesting. However, your handheld work is shaky, and you go in and out of focus a lot. Controlling focus is essential to filmmaking. LIGHTING: It doesn't appear that you controlled lighting in any way. It looks like you just shot everything with existing lighting fixtures. More lighting would help your overall image, including your control of depth of focus. EDITING: Your edits were fine for the pace of the video. But you could definitely have added in more shots and a faster pace at the end during the choking scene to increase the intensity of the moment.
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