The Drive - ID# 250
Glenbrook North
Division: A
Dramatic Narrative
Entry Description
A short film we shot throughout winter break. Follows the downfall of a relationship between Josh an Alexis. A look into teen relationships, tensions, and difficult decisions.
Recent Teacher Comments
- 3/9 5:41 pm - Strong opening. Sounds is not robust. Your ADRs are not credible - need a better sense of “room tone” and EQ. Why is the scene out of focus- couldn’t get adult actors? Flashbacks/intercutting from car scene doesn’t work. Filmmaking is most controlled in montages- shot well, edited well. The dialogue sequences are not as strong. Great writing. Ending is relatively abrupt.
- 3/8 9:07 pm - SOUND. Talking didn't seemed matched at various point throughout the piece. I like anytime (without overdoing it) you can pull in natural audio for example when you put the car in park. There are a few spots I would have expected it because I was seeing the action, but didn't hear it. STORY. I know the first line of dialogue was Emma saying she was tired of the silence, (implying the story started earlier) but it still took to long for the story to start - to much driving. Didn't find the emotion in the guy always convincing (3:18 - 3:31). The last scene is sweet, but then the video ends so suddenly. CAMERA / VISUALS. You have some great creative shots. Great variety of shots while they are talking within the car. There seemed to be a few continuity errors, and I could be wrong but at 1 minute does the driver turn the car right while the footage of the girl makes it look like they are turning left? EDITING. Loved how when flashbacking the first time to the parents the shot is initially out of focus - it really sells the point that this is a time shifted scene, then I love how Emma leans in all in focus - nice job. I wish some of the other flashbacks would have done the same thing (out of focus tree branch and then the subjects enter walking down the sidewalk). Audiences love patterns and in a video like this where there are flashbacks, make that pattern a little more consistent / obvious so right away your audience knows what is going on.
- 3/6 2:11 pm - Nice use of music to set the scene, and the audio levels seemed right. The guy’s title placement was on a shot of him, but the girl’s title wasn’t on her shot. Be consistent. Dialogue audio was inconsistent; his audio seemed pretty even, but her audio was kind of noisy, as if you were using 2 different microphones or maybe one was a boom and the other was the built-in mic on the camera. Camera: you had relatively soft focus for much of the movie. Having some shallow depth of field for a cinematic look is fine, but soft focus usually means you didn’t have enough light for proper exposure, and in opening up your aperture, you made TOO shallow of a depth of field. Bokeh is good, but soft focus isn’t good. Specifically, one scene was just not in focus at all - from 3:15 to 3:20 literally NOBODY was in focus. As for editing, you only had cuts from the present tense discussion in the parked car to the flashback scenes. The flashbacks really didn’t look very different cinematically (color, absence of color, vignette, etc.). You also didn’t have any transitions (video or audio) to signal to your audience that you were moving to or from a flashback. Might want to consider using any of the above. The end credits were dead silent. Why?
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