Tommy's Day Off - ID# 91

Glenbrook South

Division: A

Comedic Narrative

Entry Description

This year's Homecoming Video centers around the school's beloved Tommy the Titan as he takes an adventure downtown with some of his friends. Meanwhile Titan Nation, Glenbrook South's pep club, is frantic because Tommy is missing. It's the day of the football team's pep rally and without Tommy, it will be a disaster!

Recent Teacher Comments

• 4/25 11:03 am - Fun story. Good pace. Great vareity of shots and locations. Music used well.
• 4/24 5:22 pm - Ambitious project. Lots of locations. Good sight gags. A lot of energy from the performers helps the video.
• 3/5 1:50 pm - Well. The opening shot is poorly lit and out of focus. Well, to be specific, there’s no key, back, or fill light on the subject, just ambient spill light from the background. The focus is soft; not so much out of focus, but rather not crisp focus…probably due to insufficient lighting. The moving shots during the explanation were smooth. Your shots in the city overall were pretty cool. We assume you had a gimbal or some kind of stabilizer because your moving shots were all nice. Lighting in the scene from about 2:25 to 3:05 was rough; you exposed based on the existing outdoor lighting, which made your background blown out. It would have been cleaner to add in some daylight LED lights on your subjects’ faces and keep your ISO lower. Then your music bed ruined everything. Literally, you went from voice over that was too quiet to a blown out ”Oh yeah” and into a blown out “Homecoming”. Then your audio of the kids in the city was significantly louder than your original opening scene audio. The audio remained louder throughout the piece. Story wise, I’m not sure if this was an original comedic narrative or just a short video introduction for some kind of school event or assembly.

Judge 1

Positives: Some nice motion control edits. Dialogue was clean and crisp.

Improvements: It could have moved a little quicker. Maybe shorter scene duration.

Judge 2

Positives: Totally got the John Hughes vibe from this short. Super fun! And very, very ambitious. Not sure if there was really a part one to this story as the open suggests. On first viewing, I thought this might just be a narrative device. Either way, I liked this act 1 a lot. Super fast. Establishes character and tone nicely. You have a lot of characters in this short so that was a really smart narrative choice. I LOVE that the real reason Tommy Titan is along for the ride is merely to get Mia out of class. Also, you did nice job with the A-B story lines -- showing Tommy a good time downtown while missing Tommy storylines simmers back at school. TT's discovering the city montage -- super fun in establishing his needs. Huge cast -- not easy to work with -- really impressed. REALLY LOVED THIS ONE!

Improvements: Lots of good stuff in this short - take these notes with a grain of salt. I wish the inciting incident was a little more compelling. Instead of merely just going downtown - really figure out why they need to go downtown. It doesn't have to be a huge deal, it can something simple like convincing Allen that ditching school is a right of passage for high school senior. Or better. I think I just pitched the Ferris Bueller inciting incident. Oy. The story momentarily stalls in the scene where your main heroes are realizing Tommy's never been downtown. You might've been able to speed this up by reworking the beats in this scene -- Mia realizes Tommy's never been downtown, then Allen, who's afraid of getting busted by his parents freaks. In other words, play the tension between getting home before parents know what's happened vs. the humanitarian need to show TT the good time he's craving. The reason (hot dog!) they lose Tommy was a little hard to follow. I'm talking just the beat -- it didn't hurt my understanding of what was happening.

Judge 3

Positives: I liked the story...a nod to Ferris but told its own story and can stand on its own. Well-shot overall and well-acted

Improvements: There were a few scenes with jerky camera shots and it was distracting...there were spots where the sound could have been more consistent

Judge 4

Positives:

Improvements: