Trade - ID# 429
Lake Forest
Division: A
Dramatic Narrative
Entry Description
What's in the bag?
Recent Teacher Comments
- 3/8 8:50 pm - SOUND I liked the mix of natural sound in certain spots and that you weren't afraid to go without a soundtrack throughout much of your video. It allows your audience to truly focus on the dialogue. I was surprised that you didn't try harder to bridge the audio at various points in your video. It was most obvious with the conversation between the guy and the girl when they were sitting at the table - there was backround noise in his shots, but not hers. Kind of diminished the effectiveness of a realistic conversation. STORY. It took a long time to for me to try and figure out everything that is going on and still don't know what the story is. And why the creepy guy in the mask, is that for comedic reasons, I had a hard time piecing it all together. I felt like 5 minutes of set up for the final scene of burning the wrong bag. Not that your story can't have twists, but if you want your audience to buy in and become immersed in your short film, don't leave them on the outside trying to figure out just what the story is. Even at the end I still had more questions than when I started and I am guessing you didn't mean this to be a thought provoking piece. I will say the acting was good and very dimensional. Also, I know this is just me, but I got tired of hearing "hell" all the time. I know it is how people talk, I just always think it is more clever to communicate the anxiety, anger, frustration, with the camera or the acting rather than just swearing. CAMERA / VISUALS. You had good variety of shots, and use of leadroom was evident, but obviously as the sun set the lighting changed quickly within your video. I realize you don't control the sun, but then maybe you shoot with two cameras or at the same twilight hour on separate days. The lighting changes were distracting. Also I would have loved an establishing shot of the guy and the girl. I never saw them together at the table, matter of fact she just appeared. EDITING Pace moved as fast as it could considering the dialogue of the story, although cutting to the person listening, while the other is talking is sometimes an effective way to speed up the dialogue and keep the scenes from looking like a tennis match of each person talking. The scene with the creepy music before the girl was killed seemed out of place and to long. Again not sure if I was supposed to be scared at that moment or laughing. OVERALL Great acting, and there were some great flashes of creativity, but all the questions about the characters and story kept me from enjoying it as much as you might have wanted me to.
- 3/6 1:46 pm - Audio levels seemed a bit hot on them music in the beginning. The scene outside between the 2 characters seems like it was shot at 2 totally different locations (like he was in one location and she was in another). The shot variety is heavily handicapped by this set up; it’s basically just cross cut between 2 medium shots. Also…white balance didn’t match; the guy’s shots seemed like they weren’t white balanced for daylight, while the girl’s shots were balanced somewhere near tungsten. The lighting is insufficient for the scene, and it obviously changes at 2:51 when the creeper dude comes into the scene. The initial lighting on the female was clearly only motivated by the outdoor wall light. While this was a cool practical backlight, it was not at all sufficient. You needed to have additional lighting to at least act as a key light, or you could have bounced another light off the wall, implying a light in front of her (between her and the guy). Likewise, he needed more key light as well. Even when you want your lighting to look like it’s just natural ambient light, you need to think about your lighting motivation and then ADD additional lighting. The creepy guy theme music comes in WAAAAY too hot. Watch your VU meter. Music beds should be UNDER the level of dialogue and sound effects…that’s why they’re called music beds. The story took too long to make the point. The whole punchline at the end worked, but it took too long to get there. Keep your story simple; you have the characters (although the girl’s role was kind of watered down), but the conflict / plot line wasn’t as strong. The visual gag at the end was more comedic than dramatic. I spent most of the movie wondering why this was submitted to the Dramatic Narrative category, because it seemed more like a comedy.
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