archived-videos My Ex Girlfriends TV - A short film

K

keepitlowkey

Our first short film about a foreigner in Japan who turns to a friend with an unorthodox plan to get rid of his ex girlfriends TV. It was shot almost 3 years ago on a Canon XHA1 on almost no budget. Any comments are more than welcome, positive or negative. I'm a grown man, I can take the criticism :) Enjoy!

http://vimeo.com/24949840
 
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It seemed frightening how cramped that apartment was, and the severity of the characters, made it seem like the location where this was filmed would be a very unpleasant place to live.

The inability of the main character to have the basic freedom to dispose of his old tv, without marking up trouble with the law, seemed like some kind of orwellian nightmare. This fear was fatefully alleviated, I won't spoil the thing by saying how, but it was a pleasant thing to watch, in a sort of classical feel-good way, like the old tin-tin cartoons.

This gets my "why don't we ever see this kind of thing on basic cable" signature of approval.
 
Cheers Murdock, glad you enjoyed it.

Sidewalkbowling said:
It seemed frightening how cramped that apartment was, and the severity of the characters, made it seem like the location where this was filmed would be a very unpleasant place to live.

The inability of the main character to have the basic freedom to dispose of his old tv, without marking up trouble with the law, seemed like some kind of orwellian nightmare. This fear was fatefully alleviated, I won't spoil the thing by saying how, but it was a pleasant thing to watch, in a sort of classical feel-good way, like the old tin-tin cartoons.

This gets my "why don't we ever see this kind of thing on basic cable" signature of approval.
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The writer (and lead actor) actually had a difficult time living in Japan; the tiny apartments, language barrier, indirect communication, and the rigid system they have here really got to him. I'm really glad that you picked up on it. He wrote this piece as a release of his frustrations and it was very cathartic to turn it all into a comedy.
 
It was fairly fun. Two things seems majorly off though: the inclusion of titles on-screen to signify time jumps of some sort, and the OJ joke.

Now, the first one is kinda obvious and I'm not going to go too much into that. But it's the OJ joke that seemed really off-putting. I'm not saying that a joke about him can't be made - I'll be the first to laugh at a distasteful joke - but it was so out of context that it really just seemed like a direct jab at OJ rather than a joke. It also seemed to go on for a line too long. I'm not sure out of context is the right term to use here... but that joke specifically was extremely different from the humour in the rest of the video, which is why it stands out as a bit more than just a joke.

Overall though, I thought it was a pretty nice piece.
 
Nice one TheKoreandonut, we'll keep spreading the fun :)

ThatGuyFromThatPlace said:
But it's the OJ joke that seemed really off-putting. I'm not saying that a joke about him can't be made - I'll be the first to laugh at a distasteful joke - but it was so out of context that it really just seemed like a direct jab at OJ rather than a joke. It also seemed to go on for a line too long. I'm not sure out of context is the right term to use here... but that joke specifically was extremely different from the humour in the rest of the video, which is why it stands out as a bit more than just a joke..
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I can completely understand where you're coming from. The OJ thing was a bit of an inside joke and there was a bit of a debate whether to keep it in the script or not. I personally didn't find it distasteful and left in in the script in respect of the writer/actor, but you're right about it sticking out from the rest of the humour.

About the on-screen titles, it never occurred to me to omit them, I always felt that they worked from reading the script. You could be on to something there...
 
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