archived-videos "A Nightmare On Ninja Street" action/comedy (hi, I'm new!!)

S

sifusocky

Hi there everyone! My name's Mike and I've been lurking at IndieTalk for an age. I figured it was about time I registered up and posted something :D

Here's a four-minute film I finished a couple of days ago, it's a martial arts/comedy homage to the horror genre :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C66dbUecaE0

I would really appreciate comments on the filmmaking, if anyone would be so kind as to watch and offer criticism :) Really really hope you enjoy it!! It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's my first stab at trying to make the production values anywhere near acceptable.
 
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Ha! I enjoyed that very much. The fighting sequences were pretty cool.

The only thing I would critique (and I'm sure you're already aware of this) is the lack of an original story. It's basically a fight reel.

But very enjoyable. Kudos. :)
 
Hey, cool, man.

Welcome to the forum, and nice work on the vid. A lot of that choreography worked really well.

My constructive criticism -- some of those shots are rather boring -- not what's happening, but where you've placed the camera. I would like to suggest that you spend some time researching and practicing shot composition, and perhaps on your next shoot, get more coverage.

I look forward to seeing your next work!
 
Nice work. Is this your first short?

@1:38 before the close-up he's holding the knife right-side-up and the next shot it's upside-down.

Mixing tips:

Add some verb on the punches/hits/impacts so they fit the space better.

Ditto for the dialogue.

I think the ADR is a bit too tight - I.E. the mic is too close on the actor so it sounds unnaturally boomy for that space. I would just turn off all the noisy equipment in the house and do the ADR in there so you get the actual echo... Simple.

The grunts from the masked attacker could be low-passed to make it sound muffled as if it's coming out of the mask. What I do in these cases is take a speaker and put a mask over the speaker and re-record the dialogue and vocals through that speaker/mask and it fits perfectly.

But, those are picky points that I don't think anyone else would notice but would put it a notch higher in production value.

Great job!
 
Thanks for the comments, everyone! Particularly for pointing out my boring camerawork. You're obviously right, I need to sort that out in the next film.

@ROC:

Haha, good spot with the continuity error! It's certainly not the only one, there's about a zillion in there. I normally take the view that nobody cares very much, and seeing as this is the only one to have been pointed out, I guess I was probably right. ;) Here's a few that I'm aware of:
-During the run-around-the-sofa sequence, the sleeves on the Scream costume keep rolling up and down between cuts :p
-As I walk out of the door to bump into the real masked murderer, the preceding shot shows me reaching the edge of the open door. After the cut I'm a couple of feet away from it again.
-As the guy whips out his knife, I punch him on the right side of his face, but in the insert shot of him falling back against the wall, he is clutching the left side.
-At 2:47, the door in the background is closed. After the cut, during the backflip stunt, the door is magically open.
Like I said, I don't think anyone cares. It's just fun to point out all the dumb flaws in your own movie. ;)

Re the sound editing, some interesting comments. I kinda like my mixing to be pretty dry, but I will experiment with more reverb. All of the dialogue has got gentle reverb on it anyway. I dunno, I kind of like how crisp it is. Maybe it sounds weird to everyone else though. As for muffling the grunts, I tried digitally cutting some frequencies and it sounded shitty, so I gave up on that. I dunno. I guess there's no right answer really with sound editing. My own biggest personal beef with my sound cut is the total lack of room tone, which sounds hell of weird. I tried adding some subdued thunder rumbling, but that doesn't really help. I need to get a solution for that in my next project.

Thanks for the comments anyway. I'm a huge audiophile so it's nice to hear some feedback from someone else who actually notices and prioritises sound editing/design.

Above all, thanks to everyone for watching! I'm now certain my next film will be a lot better :)
 
sifusocky said:
Haha, good spot with the continuity error! It's certainly not the only one, there's about a zillion in there. I normally take the view that nobody cares very much, and seeing as this is the only one to have been pointed out, I guess I was probably right. ;)
Click to expand...

No, we care. And your audience cares, even the ones who don't know what continuity is. Continuity matters very much.

Look, I ain't trying to nitpick every single video that comes across this board. Frankly, I don't have the interest in pointing out every single little flaw. So, I mention one or two glaring problems that I think the filmmaker would benefit most by working on. That doesn't mean I didn't notice other stuff.

In all fairness, I also post my own work on here, and I receive criticism. It would be kind of dis-heartening if people just tore my stuff to shreds, without offering anything useful that I can expand on, so I'm glad that people choose to just highlight the biggest problems in my stuff.

"Nightmare on Ninja Street" is a nice start.

P.S. Issues with continuity don't magically go away with experience. We all deal with it.
 
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