archived-videos "Do Us Part" -- 20min short (50MB)

[Will Vincent]

Well it's taken long enough, but I was finally able to get this thing online.

If you don't remember hearing about this, I put a teaser online for it back in October, which is in this thread.
This is the film that I was 1st AD/Editor on, and we premiered it in the Twin Cities back in November.

It was very well received, and I hope you all enjoy it. There are of course a few problems with it, but hopefully they won't distract you. For the most part they're minor, and shouldn't be noticeable, though some of the audio (music wise) just isn't quite right, but we were under a time crunch to meet the submission deadline for the premiere, and haven't gotten back to it to get it right yet. So, although in the credits it says I did the music, that's not quite accurate, as my sound guy got that put together for us last minute using loops from soundtrack pro. However, the closing credits music is original, composed and performed by yours truely, which as I'm not really a musician is saying a lot...

Anyway, without further adieu, I give you Do Us Part


[QT]http://www.intensitymedia.org/douspart/DUP.mp4[/QT]
(This is an mp4 file)

 

[Spatula]

Overall it was really good. I would say it could have been told in a shorter time frame, and the beginning was the slow part that really made getting into the video hard... but the ending (albeit predictable) was very well done, and the acting picked up about halfway through. The male lead gave some great reactions.

I liked it- would've liked it better if it was just 5mns shorter, and a little quicker in the beginning.

Note: I think my thinking of the predictable ending comes from Zensteve's last ITOOFC entry with a similar theme. Either way, I'm just referring to the status of the character's lives that I could predict-

Spoiler

the necklace bit was a great addtition and made it all worthwhile.

 

[knightly]

It looked great on the big screen too!

 

[clive]

I liked the overall look of the film, but I'm a sucker for Black & White.

I agree with Spatula though that the pacing is a little slow for the story. I was thinking about how neatly the same daily events are encapsulates in under a second and a half in a film like Pi and that could have worked for you here.

I also found the blocking for the actors was a bit static, which lead to them looking as though they were trying to work out what to do with their bodies most of the time. (It's almost like a nervous tic that actors have when they want to be doing something but aren't sure what it should be; I'm super sensitive to it so I tend to spot it a lot. It tends to show up more in wides than mids or close up and is often a sign of inexperienced actors: who ahve higher degrees of self-consciousness)

What I really liked was the dream sequences, which I thought were very effective.

The only script note I'd give is that medallion speech came over as exposition, despite your valient and fairly good attempt to disguise it as dialogue.

 

[Will Vincent]

I appreciate your comments, and I will forward them (and any others that are posted) to the writer/director.

I agree that the pacing at the beginning is tragically slow. For a directorial debut though, I think he did a good job. Oh, also I failed to mention that this was all shot in 40 hours (within a consecutive 60hour time frame) and a number of changes were made on the fly, to get the full story on tape... so some of the trouble spots are likely akin to the haste with which it was shot.

Incidentally, that bathroom was a set that our crew assembled from found objects in the warehouse the dream sequences were shot in. In total, there were only two locations.

Also, clive, funny you mention self-concious actors.. the male actor is the most self concious person I think I've ever met, he was adjusting his hair using the camera lense as a mirror between takes. Self concious and a bit vane, but he was without doubt the very best we saw during the auditions. As for the female, this was her very first acting experience. She had been a walk-on extra in 'Prairie Home Companion' earlier in the year, and fell in love with the filmmaking process.