watch Darkland - Episode 2

[EDM17]

Hi everyone! Here is the first (yes, first) film in my short film series, Darkland. It is also my first film. The majority of it was shot in 2007 by me and a friend, and we both act in it as well. I have no experience acting, but he has quite a bit. Some of footage from the original shoot was unusable, mainly my horrible acting, so I reshot some of it last year. So, with the mess that it originally was, I am happy to have actually finished it either way.

Also, there are a couple of instances in the film that have adult language. Otherwise, its alright.

Enjoy.

http://vimeo.com/3464604


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuDYZV_Hew

 

[indietalk]

back Ed! I'll take a look later.

 

[EDM17]

Thanks alot Dan! Why I left, I don't really know. I suppose it was the lack of motivation I had at some point for getting something done. But, the forums are such a great help with that, so I am not really sure how it could have happened!

 

[indietalk]

Good stuff. Love the spider shot. If this is a true series you might consider renaming it to Episode 1 .

 

[EDM17]

Thanks for checking the film out, Dan! Glad you liked it.

I'm thinking about making the films out of order, to make the story a bit more of a puzzle. But I am not sure about that yet.

 

[indietalk]

Thanks for checking the film out, Dan! Glad you liked it.

I'm thinking about making the films out of order, to make the story a bit more of a puzzle. But I am not sure about that yet.

Oh cool, so there would be a #1. I though this was #1 and you were calling it #2, I was going to say, that could be confusing.

 

[EDM17]

#1 is written actually. And I would like to shoot it sometime. What originally happened was I had written episode #1 and one of the actors was not able to make it here to shoot. Zan had to go back to college and I wanted to shoot something anyway so I wrote this for us to do instead. So unfortunately I had to act. I hope people are still able to follow whats going on even without the first part.

 

[Zensteve]

Hey, Ed. Long time o/

Interesting thing you've got going there... along with some big spiders!

A lot of the dialogue between the two seemed redundant. They're both trying to hide things from each other, while getting the other to slip up.. kinda goes on, though. Seems they both already know the answers each other has anyways. Hints of Tarantino-esque back & forth, that didn't quite hit it.

How does White Guy know Black Guy's name? (WG mentions it at 06:55) Only matched that up by watching for names in the credits.

I'm suspecting that you're working on some deliberate misdirection (with text-subtitles instead of V/O, to avoid identifying who's thinking/saying it) at the beginning. Even the end subtitles leave it fairly ambiguous.

Really enjoyed the establishing shots, and the ambience in general. Good crack at a noir-ish look.

Editing overall very good. Dubbed dialogue was audibly noticeable, but covered up well visually with cutaways, & J/L's.

Dang, there's a lot of crickets in them woods!

Can't really comment on the overall arc (as this is just a piece of it... and out of sequence, to boot!), but it looks like it's going to be pretty good.

Definitely left me wanting to see more, though as a stand-alone segment it could have been a bit faster-paced. (Just my opinion)

Spoiler

I'll hazard a guess that BG & WG are the same person

. Nothing to really base that on... just forming ideas in my own head, from the information given so far.

Gimme some more details, Ed. You have a website for this project?

 

[EDM17]

Hey Steve and thanks for checking out the film!

I'm not sure about how you heard Zan mention the other guys name. I don't even have a name for the character at the moment. I just call him "The Seeker". Zan calls him "man" at one point but I think thats pretty much it.

The subtitles at the beginning are mainly to not hurt the soundscape made by the music and sound effects. But it does make sense that it would make it be so that you are not sure from what person the narration was coming from. But that was not my intention.

The sound editing was extrememly tough on this one. The crickets were very loud and we had a few technical difficulties with the sound when recording. I also had a very tough time matching up the sound for the newer stuff i reshot on my own. And I put some noise reduction on the audio to try to bring up the voices up from the cricket sounds.

I do not have a website for the project but am going to work on one shortly. The weather is going to warm up some over here for the next week or so and I am planning on filming the rest of the shots for the next episode.

Thanks alot for the critique, Steve. I've been waiting to hear a bit of constructive criticism on the film.

 

[M1chae1]

Hello. I'm glad to see you finished the project, you are now officially in the minority of filmmakers.

There are a few things I'd suggest about the film. It's dark...yes, we know this, because that's the title of your production. However, it's a bit too dark. This can make for some pretty cool contrasty shots when the lighting is right, but for the most part it's hard to see what's going on. The only way this would really work, is if you had a skilled cinematographer placing key lights in just the right areas, with just the right intensity. As of now, not enough is lit, and not lit well enough. This is just my meager little two cents.

I think you could spice up the dialog between the two characters...both in terms of material and performance. I think the pacing was a bit slow.

Other than that, the concept is cool, and I'd definitely build on it. Great first crack at the craft of filmmaking.

Remember, the three major things that novice filmmakers need to improve are: sound, lighting and acting. As long as you know what's good (and what you like), and you are actively striving to better the execution...then you are golden.

Cheers.