Cookies and Crime - ID# 517
Lake Forest
Comedic Narrative
Entry Description
EXCERPT. When a rival Girl Scout troop steals her cookie shipment, Emi drags her older sister Sarah and friends on a wild goose chase ending in disaster.
Copyright Info
Recent Teacher Comments
- 4/23 10:46 am - Really fun idea for the category. The movie looks really good. Camera work is solid and the girl scout troop concept works really well. One technical aspect you could work on is sound. It seems like some of the characters were mic’d up and some weren’t. This is a challenge when you have multiple characters talking. If you have access, maybe try recording audio with a boom next time. I also wasn’t sure who the third girl was who was brought into the story. I know she had a history with the other character, but it wasn’t totally clear. Overall, this was a fun movie with good performances and some really nice filmmaking. Keep making movies!
- 4/22 1:54 pm - You have some great shots throughout, particularly the hostage shots and the reaction of our main character. You brought the viewer right into his predicament. Also, the storyline was really clever and kept moving. Finally, there were some fantastic jokes, especially with Ben when he’s tied up. Regarding some specifics to improve upon, your transitions need a bit of work as your jumping from one medium shot to another. Every scene needs a bit of a transition like a wide shot or establishing shot to show location. As for the story itself, the storyline and pace could be helped with audio work, adding various background audio to set tone and mood. The audiobed does as much for the story as the dialogue and actors, if not more. Keep up the great work!
Judge 1
Positives: This was an EXCELLENT comedy film! I laughed out loud several times, and that is clearly among the most important factors. The acting was very good throughout, particularly the younger Girl Scout bullies. Incredible. Great performances all around! Snappy writing, good distinction between characters, a narrative arc. You had it all here! It looked like a ton of fun to make. I can heartily encourage everyone involved to keeping making movies! There is a lot of raw talent here, and you ought to be very proud!
Improvements: Honestly, having trouble generating any type of criticism here, this was a very wonderful film!
Judge 2
Positives: Before I even watch... this has the best title of all the entries. OK, I watched it. And it is every bit as funny as a project with such a rad title should be. Great casting! The younger girls were snippy and mean and hilarious. Their banter at the folding table was as good as anything in Mean Girls. The delivery guy and Ben were great choices as well. Most of the jokes landed and that was due in large part to the fast paced editing and well timed cuts.
Improvements: The story got a little hard to follow about halfway through. At 2:27 you introduce a new character and I couldn't really tell what her role was in the overall story. And at 4:05 the older scout girl comes back and that was confusing as well. I would have liked to see how she stole the cookies! Also, we could have used more lines from the younger scouts. They were the strongest characters but were underused in the second half. All in all, this project was fantastic. Lots of great moments and hearty laughs.
Judge 3
Positives: the script is super funny. i think the dialogue is really strong. i think you managed to tell a funny story with character development, a lot of characters, in a 5 minute span which is not done very often.
Improvements: i wish there was a little more done with costume design to really portray these characters better visually. i think the lead characters falling into the classic teenage tropes (shown with costumes + makeup) would make this a lot stronger and stylized. the lighting in a lot of the interior scenes made things look a little dull and felt contradictory to the tone.
Judge 4
Positives: I enjoyed the locations used and how they were introduced, so much of good cinematography is proper locations to do the heavy work of setting the story. I really enjoyed your shot at 4:38, adding the foreground element of the half open door gave depth to the scene, a fair amount of film the actors are lined up facing the camera like a stage play. This isn't one! Play around with being able to set the perspective of the viewer anywhere!
Improvements: When shooting outdoors without the possibility to control the lighting available can be difficult, placing actors is shade and others in direct sunlight makes picking an exposure where both a happy hard if not impossible. At times people were under or over exposed. For dialog which you typically capture with a single microphone you want to make sure in editing the mono signal is duplicated to both stereo channels. Unless you want to make a artistic choice is why the dialog is panned left or right, otherwise is distracts from the other lovely elements of your film! I know you were in a time crunch with the credits, you didn't have enough names to properly scrolls, maybe a static text would be more fair to the people at the top or bottom and be less distracting from the lovely names of people who gave time to the film.
Judge 5
Positives:
Improvements: