archived-videos Left Turn

backlash

backlash

We completed our latest short micro budget film. This time we filmed and edited it completely ourselves.
At least we learnt a lot from it, so next one will be better.
Please give us feedback, we take it all.

LEFT TURN. Based on a real story, two men play with luck, however luck is not always on their side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<object width="1280" height="745"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zyQA1GtR8xg&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zyQA1GtR8xg&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="1280" height="745"></embed></object>
 
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Haha, it's funny. I like it. I'm not sure how much I like the cinematography, but the story is cool. Perhaps it would be better if we got to the payoff a little more quickly.

I have to be honest -- a couple of times, I laughed at lines that weren't supposed to be funny, because I felt like I was watching a movie filmed by Borat. I just mean to say that perhaps it's not a good idea for a filmmaker in the Netherlands to shoot a movie in English, using actors whose first language is clearly not English. It kind of sounds silly. And by "kind of", I mean it sounds really, really silly.

But I'm not trying to bash you. Honestly, I love the short story you've told. It's very funny. I only mean to say that it'd probably be much more effective if your actors were speaking in their native tongue's, and we here in America can read the subtitles.
 
I know, but we are one French dude and one Spanish dude... we can't even make the films in our own languages :-) At least we have some funny odd accent mix, we are used to the comment.

I know it would look nicer with native languages, but we are creating a new global trend... ahhahaha, I wish. We just like to do it.

We got some extra hands by people that didn't really know anything about the camera or lights. So we acted and set everything ourselves. Also filming inside a car was an unexpected nightmare.
 
backlash...

this is a great little piece. I liked it! The dialog is golden, man. Like I keep saying: all you need is a flashlight and a great story-teller...I believe people don't care so much about the technical stuff as long as you got a solid story and solid acting. Those two guys carried this piece all the way!

Cheers
 
Thanks a lot guideline. We put a lot of effort to get things right, but lack of time/knowledge/manpower/money sometimes has an effect.

We had to adapt to whatever we had. For example some of the takes were meant to be done from outside the car, with more interesting filming... but when we set everything we tried to film and what could we see? Just the camera and the camera man. The people inside were invisible, the car glass slight tint made it a perfect mirror! :-)
 
No, no, backlash...This is just my opinion maybe...but I think you did it spot-on, just right. Shot - counter-shot. Everything else would take away from this great dialog! Keep it as simple as possible in a narrative piece.

From Bavaria...
 
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Thanks Guideline. We filmed part of this short in Dusseldorf (Germany), hence the German car and police car :-) The prison was located in Netherlands, hence the bicycles :-)

We had quite some unusable footage. Just got a new better camera. So I hope that we can avoid some issues next time.
 
lol I liked it. The acting was good. I kind of liked the international accents. I live in a city where people from all over the world interact so it's normal for me to hear a mix of accents. I would write in that you are in some sort of international community, or festival, to excuse the accents. For example, the action could take place at the Cannes film festival or an international trade fair, this would help the viewer believe the eclectic mix. The Spanish guy sounds great, his accent gives the film a natural comedy, in a good way...

If you were going to reshoot I would:

- Try and find some more interesting backdrops for the car. Suburban city streets are pretty dull. A busy city street or derelict area adds more tension or mood.

- I think you could find more camera angles in the car. That one shot alone can get boring and you need tension and uncertainty in the scene. A shot from the back seat,
like the start of Blood Simple might work.

- I think you could make the interior of the car look more interesting. If this is going to be your main set put some effort into it. A few hanging things, different colours, something.

- You could set the whole thing in a busy city street, this would add to the tension.

- From what I recall, I can't see that you've paid any attention to soundscape. The audience needs that to know what's going on outside the car. If you are going to stay in suburbia,
a distant train, plane or group of people passing would do. Maybe some music on the car stereo.

- The Spanish character has a natural charisma, but I need more of a reason to like the guy, get behind him and know more about him. The scene at the start, where he hands the briefcase to the client, was wasted. That could have been used to show the guys character and give us a reason to like him. Look at the start of Reservoir Dogs. The guys are griping about low wages for waitresses in the States. Gangsters with a social conscience.

- To make it more visually interesting, maybe you could shoot some 'flash forwards' of the potential bank robbery, in a different visual tone, to show the Spanish guy convincing the robbery.
Click to expand...

It was a film that stuck in my mind, I liked the energy and scriptwriting.
 
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Thanks Positive Future, very useful feedback.
We won't reshoot it for now, but sure I can use these tips for the next one.

On the soundscape we had a nightmare... really a nightmare... Some parts we had voice over, and lipsync not always matching... So we basically tried to get it as right and clean as possible.
It would have been nice to have a radio music... I could have played with that a lot.

Due to limit time (2 days with the right Sun light) and filming in Germany (where they looked at us as if we were criminals) we filmed around the suburvian side. But I agree that a busier city would look better.

The car I couldn't change, no pre-production time, and it was my brother's car, so not that I could paint it either :-)

And the idea of the flash forward would be a very nice idea for story telling, I have never used so I didn't think of it. Certainly to add to the pile of tricks for the next one.
 
The car I couldn't change, no pre-production time, and it was my brother's car, so not that I could paint it either :-)
Click to expand...

Sure you can't paint it but you can bring some stuff to hang and stick up temporarily, but I know what you mean, it's hard on short notice.

And the idea of the flash forward would be a very nice idea for story telling, I have never used so I didn't think of it. Certainly to add to the pile of tricks for the next one.
Click to expand...

I thought maybe some floaty, slow motion, grainy black + white shots.

lipsync not always matching...
Click to expand...

This happens in tons of movies all the time and audiences hardly ever notice. More interesting exteriors and flash forwards give you a chance to cutaway when it goes wrong, same with a shot from the backseat.
 
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I really like the idea of the visual explanation flash forward. I should have thought of that. B&W would have worked fine then.
 
TheMurph said:
I like it, thought it was pretty funny! Smooth out the sound and it would have been great!
Click to expand...

The audio wasn't as good as we wanted. We had to do some voice over, that's why there are audio differences. See the video below that shows some of the things we did.

We didn't have experience recording audio. I have done some voice over work so I knew the basics, but we don't have a studio. We should have recorded it on a car as done the first time... but this is thinking things now :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<object width="1280" height="745"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BjEumUlyLLU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BjEumUlyLLU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="1280" height="745"></embed></object>
 
Not bad.

Yes, there is a lot you can do to improve the sound, but I could understand every word - and that's 90% of the battle. The music was at just about the right level.

Picking interesting locations also allows you to play with sound some more, as do establishing shots/B-roll or nice long pans. They provide visual cues for sounds that can be used in all sorts of interesting ways. It can also help cover problems. If the location was a busy street the sound of a passing car, etc., could have disguised the ADR lines a little better.

Think about sounds from a script standpoint. The robber leaves the car door open and the car keeps announcing the fact, the GPS is giving directions, the radio is on, the driver isn't allowed to answer his cellphone (which has whatever would be funny for a ring-tone) and the caller keeps hanging up and calling again... adding more distractions to perturb the robber.

BTW, keep playing with the sound, use the opportunity to learn how to use the tools that you have. As limited as they probably are, they can be powerful tools if you take the time. Job one: make the ADR sound more like the production sound using the EQ. Hint: Get a piece of the "clean" BG noise half again the length of the ADR that can be faded in and out.

It took me a couple of lines to get used to the two different accents. Perhaps that is something you can work to your advantage?
 
Thanks Alcove, really instructive. I used Audacity for the audio. I spent a long time trying different modifications to the ADR but I didn't manage any better than what we got. Actually what I noticed is that the original audio had some small distorsion, and probably we hit the limits a few times. There was nobody checking the audio (our mistake num. 142), and the camera doesn't have audio indicators either.
I tried to reproduce that for days but no luck. I solved some of them by re-using audio parts from other takes, but I didn't have enough.

And I agree, we could have played with a radio or a phone. Adding some background noises (we had trains passing by all the time, although it was really close by).
We didn't use a busy street because it would be a bit odd to have a guy with a gun and nobody noticing, but I see how it would make it more interesting.
 
Audacity is great on a Mac but nothing special on a PC. I miss my Mac.

Maybe you can do some color correction to improve the visuals. I know you didn't shoot it on the most expensive camera but a bit of simple post could help you get away from the video look.
 
I don't have a mac :-( ... yet. Saving some money for that.

Actually we did apply a colour filter on the main part (not the prison) of the scene to look a bit vintage.
 
I don't have a mac :-( ... yet. Saving some money for that.

Actually we did apply a colour filter on the main part (not the prison) of the scene to look a bit vintage.
 
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