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Flash Fiction: Ridden

C

CrazyFrazee

Seeing as my premiere membership expired, I guess I will post this here!
You may recall my post previous about getting electricity in the woods. You might not. Whatever.
This is the finished project. It took about two and a half hours to shoot, one and a half bottles of fake blood, a whole roll of paper towels, and a visit from a policeman, who, no joke, actually asked us about shooting training videos for the state. My personal theater of the absurd.

Anyway, this is the first installment of my "Flash Fiction" project, a series of shorts without plot or character continuity between them. Kind of a net-experience. This one is called "Ridden," and can be found here.

Feedback, CnC, greatly appreciated. A large motivation for this project is keeping the films short enough that I can focus on the cinematography. Seeing as I'm the only crew (though a friend tagged along to help this time), it's a necessary drop in scale. And I think it served me well.

Thanks
~ Paul Frazee
 
It looks like the lighting worked for what you were doing, although the lights were a little too hot when you got too close to them. The continuity was good, the blood looked pretty good, and the camera work was quite watchable. Now, lets get a little more of a story!

Doug
 
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Website classifieds? Well, now I know!
Thanks Oak. The hot lights were kind of unavoidable, being so close to headlights and not having enough fill to shutter down. I actually thought it contributed to slightly raw feeling, the harsh lighting condition.
I don't know if any of these shorts will give you all the story you want because of the concept, but I'll keep story more in mind on my next one (shaping up to be an action sci-fi, which is really exciting me).
 
Did you say yes to the police officer? That could be a paying gig! If not, it could give you a future turned eye for your filmmaking endeavors ;)
 
Just watched it. Like the shots in it alot. I agree with the lights being too hot. Perhaps you could pull down the hilights slightly with a 3-way color corrector in post? Or using a bounce card just off camera for fill to bring that up... or ... um... Letting the far side of the face fall dark when you stop down a bit? I'd be concerned you'd lose the environment a bit though, and that really made these shots cool! I think the stabbing needed either an insert of a knife ( could be shot anywhere with even just a black background as long as the lighting looked consistent ) or a sound effect to indicate a splortchy (yes, it's a real word!) impact, I didn't realize what had happened until he was pulling away (thinking maybe he was doing that temple of doom beating heart thing ;) ).
 
Knightly, you're totally right about the knife. It should have been seen. Right before the stabbing, after he stoops to pick up the knife, there should have been a close shot of the knife in his hand, and then him stepping toward the victim. When I put these all together (all the shorts will be put in sequence if enough are made) I might go back and get that shot.
You're also right about the lighting environment delimma. I decided to suffer the overexposure so I could keep the lighting extremes. Oh well.

So, yeah, the cop. There I was thinking I was going to be shut down, and he offers me a job! It's up in the air, but I've made a call to a friend with a full shooting equipment suite, and, if it works out, I'll be shooting training videos for the state of Connecticut. Saweet.
 
Your lighting did work for what you were doing. I also understand that your situation was pretty extreme. If you could shoot at dusk or early in the morning, so you could take advantage of some natural fill, that would be great. Otherwise, a low-key flood fill would do the same thing, but I know you're doing this on the cheap. You did well with what you had.
 
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