Honest opinion of my trailer

M

MindStudios

So, I made this trailer in one night in anticipation of my short film, Shattered Woods.
I really love making trailers, but as with most things in moviemaking the outcome can be seen as good or bad depending only on a different viewpoint. I can see many faults in it, but I think it's a decent trailer.

Anyway, I just wanted to see how other people saw it. What are your thoughts when you watch it? Does it interest you at all? Or would you brush it off completely?
These are important questions that are often disregarded by filmmakers, even though it could help their future projects tremendously.
So.....yeah, haha. Give me your opinions so I can make a better trailer next time. And be honest, haha. Thanks!

Shattered Woods Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV3eAwMTJJc
 
I stopped watching at :50.

I was initially drawn in, even though this wasn't cut like a typical trailer. But around :30 it just fell apart.
 
Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC said:
I looked at it and don't understand what the story is about.

Can you clarify the story?
Click to expand...

Well......in the 'real world' this wouldn't be a very marketable film. Because the only thing I can give away without ruining the story is that there is a man lost in a forest. He doesn't remember who he is or how he got there, and after days and days of searching he hasn't found a way out of the forest or any sign of people living nearby.

I say it's not 'marketable' because in a feature-length film there is often a 'twist' in the premise itself, therefore they can set up the situation and introduce a twist in the trailer itself. Since this is a short film, there isn't much time to play on twists too much so they are very minimal.

If we had more time, I would have turned this into a 30-40 minute short, but as of now it will probably be 15-20.
 
GuerrillaAngel said:
I stopped watching at :50.

I was initially drawn in, even though this wasn't cut like a typical trailer. But around :30 it just fell apart.
Click to expand...

What exactly made it fall apart at the 30 second mark? Just dragging on too long or what?
Also, normally I would have added different voice-over lines to more flesh out the story and character, but the lines still need to be recorded by my actor (my brother). He had to leave so he has to record them himself in D.C. and send them over.

If I do another trailer, it will have some type of voice-over to hold your interest better (hopefully). Thanks for the comment, though.
 
I think your decision to shoot it in 60fps (having read the YT comments) was probably a mistake. I don't mean to be harsh, but these are the sort of mistakes that we learn from. As that commenter says, there something off with the footage that makes it look like it's ghosting. Also, that's a very non-lethal looking arrow.

That all said- it looks like it's pretty well made. Lost in the wild films are quite common and its hard to make them engaging, but you look like you've done a good job. I recommend finding a different font for the title cards.
 
iv decided to be kinder to the indietalk film people when reviewing their footage this year.

ok so heres what i thought:

1. trailer was too long

2. lots of footage that wasnt needed and just looked like recycled clips playing over again

3. beginning shot of him coming in was good, for me from there on it looked confusing theres a random old guy who just sits at a desk, which for me doesnt make sense or add to the trailer

4. i think the main problem for me is in how the clips are put together the story was confusing for me.

5. font is horrible really really horrible, which is your easiest thing to fix, i would say look at other film trailers that you really liked and check out their fonts and make yours closer to theirs.

6. sort out the framerate again.
 
Yeah, I definitely should have looked into the framerate issue more deeply before starting. But I must just not have enough experience, because I can't really see the ghosting you guys are talking about?...

The font looked cool to me at first, and I felt like it fit the music and style, but yeah you guys are right, definitely could have picked a better one.

"Also, that's a very non-lethal looking arrow."

Hahaha, yeah......I was hoping most people wouldn't catch that...the close-up probably didn't help ;)
But no, I knew going into it that people would see that and there really just wasn't much I could. That was a bow and arrows that I already owned, and the budget at the time didn't really allow for getting a more hunting-ready weapon. Yeah, more preparation and that might have been solved.

"random old guy who just sits at a desk"

I only added that to show that there's more in the film than just the woods....to show a little variety in setting and story, but yeah.....that could be confusing.

Thanks for the comments so far! Again, as you can see so many of these things are due to perspective: In my eyes, with what I know of the story, or what went into making those certain scenes, things seem alright to me. When in reality it's just a jumbled mess to the audience.
Thanks again and keep em coming!

I'm also rethinking the entire short in general, with regards to a lot of people that want to be hooked immediately and have their attention held the entire time. I need to wrap my head around the fact that I don't have time to 'build up' to anything much. So, I will be experimenting with the rough cuts to see how I can speed up the pace without making it confusing.
 
I'm in agreement with the other comments in this thread. My addition is that the music just kills it. This doesn't feel like a film, it feels like a music video. The scoring should follow and be a part of the visuals. What you've got is just some music slapped on top of video.
 
escher said:
I'm in agreement with the other comments in this thread. My addition is that the music just kills it. This doesn't feel like a film, it feels like a music video. The scoring should follow and be a part of the visuals. What you've got is just some music slapped on top of video.
Click to expand...

Yep. That was one of the first things I learned from my other short, 'Home', and was one of the biggest reasons that I definitely wanted someone to compose music specifically for this new short film.
Since I was using pre-made music, I was forced to make decisions in editing that I normally wouldn't have done. Otherwise, it's a music video exactly as you said. I didn't apply it to trailers though, which I should have the same concept.
For the next trailer I will definitely have music scored specifically to it.

As for the 60fps issue.... Is there no way to save the footage? Would it be possible to bring in the 60p footage on a 24p timeline and playing it back at .4 speed (to get 24fps, and slow motion) then rendering it to 24fps, because I don't think there's any ghosting when I do slowmotion....then bringing in the rendered 24p file onto a 24p timeline and speeding it up by 2.5 times so that you have normal speed again, but it should be exactly 24 frames per second?? Does that make sense at all? Or are you basically just getting the same footage again?

I did test this out, but like I said before I don't know exactly what to look for....well....I know what ghosting is...and I can see it, but only sometimes (when the camera is moving quickly) which is hard to distinguish (for me) from just motion blur.... Anyway.....yeah, obviously a noob at a lot of the technical stuff. I definitely will need to learn more about rendering and output stuff.
 
I need to learn more about 60-24fps conversions with modern technology. I only know what's theoretically possible, but not how you'd actually do it:

If you just downsample 60fps to 24fps, the motion blur won't look right. It will have that overly-crisp look you can see in sports footage or certain parts of Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator. Is there a way around that? Theoretically, yes. There's a new technology called "optical flow" used by Twixtor and other framerate changers. It's frequently used to slow down footage while still keeping it smooth. What you'd need is a program that uses optical flow to track the image and then not only generate the 24fps version but also render correct motion blur based on the flow's tracking information.

I do not know if Twixtor and the like can do this yet. If you know any good programmers, they might be able to write custom software using the OpenCV library, but again I'm just guessing here.
 
8salacious9 said:
Did you use 60fps for the purpose of slow motion?

If not then why shoot at that framerate?
Click to expand...

Originally, I was only using 60fps for slow motion, yes. But I wanted to keep my options open in terms of what I would want to turn into slow motion, so I just kept it like that all the time (obviously not knowing the consequences). Also it just saved time because then I wouldn't need to keep switching back and forth, and I knew the final product would only be in 720p since the 60fps could only record at that, and I wasn't going to upscale that footage to match the rest in 1080p.....
 
Like a lot of the comments I didn't understand the story line at all, but I did seem interested enough to watch the whole trailer. Maybe if I knew the film synopsis before I clicked play then I would feel better about it.

Now as a editing point of view, I would use faster cuts. Just enough to get me excited. The choice of music was good. I like it, so maybe do a little rhythmic editing would help it a little. Just my opinion. Seems like a good project though. Keep at it.
 
It would be a smart idea to color correct the trailer instead using a text in the start saying this is not color corrected.

Tighter cut would be also good idea and there should be something in the end that would interest the viewer, now the start of the trailer was best, but there is not much in the end that would intrerest the viewer.

I did watch the trailer without audio tough, so cannot say anything about the music score.

I think that a bit of more editing and thinking the rythm of the trailer would help a lot.

Still there were something interesting in the trailer.
 
Honest opinion?


It's terrible. It's poorly shot, 60 FPS doesn't even fit 'The Hobbit'. It looks very amateur-ish - the whole 'look' is very low budget camcorder. It doesn't draw me in or make me want to watch more. I was bored quite early. It's just basically a guy walking through the woods and some old dude.

The only positive is the shot by the campfire is almost nice.

Sorry, it needs re-thinking.
 
Yeah, I was pretty happy with the campfire shot. But I think this whole short film will be one of those films that takes forever to finish, and is only decent in the end. But I'm determined to make it as decent as possible, hahaha. Thanks for the comments!
 
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