The Note - ID# 141
Wheaton Academy
Dramatic Narrative
Entry Description
Sky gets killed and leaves her best friends and school enemy as murder suspects.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/29 5:32 pm - The story was clear and well-thought out. It was not particularly original, but the clarity made up for this. Overall, good dialogue and story. There are technical issues with this: audio jump cuts, the black bars that don't cover the entire corner of the screen, music that is way too loud, actors noticeably reading the script. And yet, I loved it. It was fun and ambitious. It made me want to shoot a short with friends. It needs a lot of technical polishing the next time around, but it was very fun. The audio editing was all over the place, but the rest of the editing was good. It followed the typical editing rules, but needed a lot more polishing. You chose good shots - I can guess you had a well-developed story board or shooting script. This part was very well-thought out. I appreciated that you color graded and gave emotion to it. However, it was not polished. The black bars added dramatic effect, but there are better ways to crop an image in any editing software. This was very fun, and it is impressive how many actors were used. However, I think everyone could have spent more time practicing their lines.
- 3/10 8:26 am - Not sure how I feel, anytime the full story doesn’t fit into the 5 minutes it is hard to judge because you are spending so much time introducing the story and characters, that the story doesn’t really resolve. At times you do a great job with using your camera to help your audience understand the story visually (establishing shot at police station), but then other times I would have loved some more intentionality on how you frame your shots, for example the phone conversation at around 30 seconds I would have loved to see just a little more lead room and you should have flipped one of them so they were kind of facing one another as the conversation cut back and forth between the two of them. Also when people are walking, make sure you put lead room in front of them as the camera follows them. The interrogation scene at 1:44 a creative shot with the shadow, but you were on it way to long, and again your audiences didn’t get a lot of diversity in shots in those scenes. I didn’t quite understand the investigator arrested Maddy, she said she didn’t do it, the same as the other two did, and yet without any strong evidence it was decided to put her on a trial (I just didn’t find it believable) You also need to do a better job introducing your characters, eventually I could figure out who was who, but you just kind of assume your audience knows who everyone is (the boyfriend, the police investigator, etc). I would have loved them to have a little more depth, I didn’t find their level of emotion believable. While it is true I don’t see the gun, I do think you pushed the limits of this festival a little bit in terms of the use of violence, I see the gun for a split second, I certainly hear the sound, and I see the smoke from the firing gun. Except for a lack of light, everything else is there? Would have liked some more shots, you tend to do a lot with cover shots, for example when the friends discover the body, it is all from one wide shot (and from behind) I would have loved some close ups to really help tell the story and reveal some emotion. There were times that the sound levels/quality seemed a little muffled. On your next attempt, just use all the tools (more camera shots, editing) you have and you will discover you can tell your story better and faster and won’t need it to be a cliffhanger.
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