F - ID# 285

Vernon Hills

Comedic Narrative

Entry Description

A young girl learns an important lesson about failure, and that expectations are often far different than reality.

Copyright Info

Music composed for the project, by Vernon Hills students Veronica Pomogaeva and James Altschul

Recent Teacher Comments

• 4/22 10:26 pm - Successful - Clever and fun premise. Good cinematic storytelling - no dialog was needed to tell this story. Great use of reaction shots. Needs Work - The color grading was a bit much. This might have worked better in black and white and then just completely owned up to being a silent film. The beard joke was a little strange and ultimately not all that funny.
• 4/22 9:15 pm - There are some incredible filming and editing techniques here and the actor does a great job to really sell the emotions and the the tone of the video. The edits and cuts work really well with the music, the editor did a superb job to create tone and pace as well as working with the movement of the camera. But the story is a bit slow and the humor, or lack thereof, needs to be more apparent in order to really succeed in the Comedic Narrative category. Keep up the great work, you're on the right track!
• 3/6 11:44 am - Some absolutely stellar camera work in this film. Between the composition, The exposure throughout and even the very tough to pull off Hitchcock vertigo shot...amazing stuff. With that said, my major issue is with the story in that I did not find much of it very humorous. This seems like this was a film made for a silent film festival and repackaged to be comedic narrative.

Judge 1

Positives: Nice story...tells how things can seem different than they may be and illustrated that very well. Great use of sound and sound effects--purposely exaggerated actions followed the plot and were matched well with the music.

Improvements: There really wasn't anything I didn't like about this--it was very well done.

Judge 2

Positives: The camera work is very clever- nice use of character reveals, color grading and even a bit of production design (the 'Wanted' Poster). The score is great- fits the film perfectly - I assume you created the score specifically for the film? Very nice touch.

Improvements: There's a ton of potential for better sound design; currently it feels empty. More atmospheric sounds like 'whooshes', 'swishes', footsteps, cars, breathing, etc. can do wonders for this.

Judge 3

Positives: This was a delightful little short! The nightmare scenario of the mother discovering her daughter's poor grade was dramatized very effectively. I particularly liked the smoke at her feet as the mother entered through the doorway with that ominous piano. The beard gag was very funny and played very well in that transition. I liked the restrictions with the use of sound. Sound was only used at key moments, but was otherwise absent under the score that was constantly building the tension. The music was also very simple but effective. I believe it was ukulele at the end, and that really captured the tone of the mother's acceptance. Overall, some great camerawork. Honestly, the final moments of the film were unexpectedly emotional. I will admit I teared up just a bit at the thought of a mother's unconditional love for her daughter. I'm very sensitive though. If this was a letter grade scale, I'd give F an A!

Improvements: I think there was potential to do just a little more comedy here. Probably during the sequence where she is imagining her pursuer, because after that we've got a straight-forward happy ending. With the lack of dialogue I think a couple more visual gags would've served the story nicely. Besides that, this was an excellent short film!

Judge 4

Positives:

Improvements: