editing Feedback on this visual style

[cheeseandachallenge]

Hi there, I'm doing a film based largely around facebook/online interaction.

Initially I planned to tell the chat through voiceover and cutting between characters. However, through a bit of a hardware meltdown, I lost a lot of footage (luckily none of the main character), and I shot this just before moving cities, so reshooting isn't an option (and it was going to make getting recordings of voice overs difficult). My own fault for having a rushed and not very secure workflow.

Anwyay, this leaves me telling a lot of story through on-screen text. Which is hard to sell, at the least. This is the visual style I've gone with. Nothing original, but looking for some feedback. I will probably use the facebook fonts in the final cut, but I haven't done that yet. A friend also critiqued that it didn't really feel relatable to facebook, and it might work better to have the chat bar overlayed instead - but I'm not sure if i can do that without it looking awkward and clunky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcbRrk8Z9X8 (ignore the music, it was a placeholder as it felt weird as I haven't done foley yet).

 

[MetalRenard]

I quite like it, it feels minimalist (in a good way) and you have to pay attention to what's going on to read the actor's emotions (he did a good job in that shot too).
Having said that, I don't think it would hold up for more than small sections every now and then unless you find a way to keep it fresh throughout the film.

One request... Make sure your grammar and punctuation is good when you do these kinds of things. I'll start frothing at the mouth and pulling my hair out if I have to read hundreds of lines of text without a full-stop or question mark and misused verbs.

 

[harmonica44]

I don't really like the barrel distortion and the angles are very wide for close up shots of an actor. I've never like wide focal lengths for close up shots anyway though. But that's just my opinion, and for that particular style though, it's probably good. The colors are good too.

 

[cheeseandachallenge]

I don't really like the barrel distortion and the angles are very wide for close up shots of an actor. I've never like wide focal lengths for close up shots anyway though. But that's just my opinion, and for that particular style though, it's probably good.

Yeah they are. I shot this about 8 months ago on a friends 720p DSLR with a rubbish-y kit lens (only getting to edit now due to moving cities, and having no time between work and university). This was before I ever started reading or looking more into the technical side of filmmaking, so there are a lot of flaws (I also had to get relatively wide due to being in a tiny room). The shots in that short sample are a lot nicer than some of the later ones too (but I'm working with what I've got, I would abandon it if it wasn't a fun project to work on, and we didn't like the script).

I quite like it, it feels minimalist (in a good way) and you have to pay attention to what's going on to read the actor's emotions (he did a good job in that shot too).
Having said that, I don't think it would hold up for more than small sections every now and then unless you find a way to keep it fresh throughout the film.

One request... Make sure your grammar and punctuation is good when you do these kinds of things. I'll start frothing at the mouth and pulling my hair out if I have to read hundreds of lines of text without a full-stop or question mark and misused verbs.

Thank you, I'll pass the compliment on! He's by no means an actor - we work together often, and he's a bit less uncomfortable than the camera than me, so for casual project such as this, he bites the bullet. So it's nice to get some good feedback there!
Keeping it fresh is the struggle I'm going to have, I guess - there are longer 'talking' scenes later, and I'm not sure how to keep it interesting (I will look into the script and see if I can cut it down as well).

I have a strong appreciation of language, and share your frustrations - however the english used is meant to be informal and somewhat incorrect, to mimic the way people interact online. Maybe it needs to be more obvious if it's intentional? Though I think if it was full text speak, I would find it distracting/frustrating....