archived-videos Mnemosyne: 19 Minute Surreal Short

M

makingthefilm.com

Dear IndieTalk,

Hello! Just found your forum - glad to find such an active independent film community!

I am in search of some feedback for my first short film which I completed on Halloween. It is part of my project MakingTheFilm.Com which I began as a journal to show how one could go from knowing nothing about filmmaking to making a feature - this short is a milestone on the way to the feature.

The file is a 30 megabyte wmv file. It can be downloaded from:

http://www.makingthefilm.com/screen.html

It is shot with with both Lynch an Kubrick in mind, so if you are fans of surreal, mood-driven, slow paced movies this will be right up your street.

Thank you for your time,

-Michael Bartlett
MichaelBartlett@aol.com
 
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Christopher said:
You could be my lost twin that died at birth! I loved it, one of the best shorts I've seen in long time. :yes:
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WOW - thanks, man - I'm glad you liked it. Did you have any criticisms, or minor quibbles with the movie?
 
Hello, and welcome Michael! Glad to see you found your way to IndieTalk. You already know my thoughts on your movie...but I will encourage new readers of this post to check it out. This is well worth seeing!
 
John,

Yes, thankyou for providing me with the link - the place is brimming! I also passed the details of your film onto my producer, Hakan, who runs budgetfilmmaker.com and I believe he is going to contact you.

Thanks for being so supportive of my film - I really appreciate it.

-Mike
 
I'm half way through it and...WOW. This is awesome. So far it is like exactly my taste. This is the reason I got into film. Sureal films like this one. Great cinematography, phenominal sound (that means music, ambient, vocal, all of it...it exceeds many hollywood films), and so far...the story has me enthralled. I'll give you more when I'm done watching it.
 
Awesome. Absolutely great! Right after I posted about the great audio, the part where the guy turns the birds on came. Great stuff, man. I can't say that enough. This film will go far if you intend to do anything with it (I assume you do).
 
That was a very interesting short.

Kept me very misdirected with hints of Village of the Damned, The Quiet Earth, and The Tomorrow People.

I expected to see a more consistent use of colours throughout... it was very pronounced at the start, and became less noticeable as time went by. Was that by design?

Was very good all around. :)
 
Zensteve said:
I expected to see a more consistent use of colours throughout... it was very pronounced at the start, and became less noticeable as time went by. Was that by design?
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Honestly, no.

We were lucky because my flat had some great colors when I moved in, and we were able to take advantage of them and enhance them. The doctors surgery was all natural light because we were given a 45 minute timeslot to shoot before they opened (The receptionist turned up early especilly to help, bless her).

After that most of the ilm takes place outside - I tried to add some nice blue tints towards the end of the film, but we really were never able to get the kind of colors again that we were lucky enough to get in my flat.

That was an interesting flat to live in - red living rom, yellow kitchen, green bathroom and dark blue bedroom (which I later repainted because it was way too depressing in winter!)

Thanks guys - I am glad u liked my film. I worked very hard on it and it's good to see it being well received.

-Mike
PS I really enjoyed THE QUIET EARTH - very cool and unusual film!
 
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Brilliant!

I loved the premise and the mood of the environment and such. Actors were good and the cinematography was great, except for the shots inside the car.

I would have liked the main character to have done more than just walk around and sit in places moping. Something to actually give him a real reason to be so stir crazy would have been nice. And perhaps a bit more humor to express the absurdity of the situation in the minds of the characters. As you said you were influenced by Lynch and Kubrick, they always had some humor in their films, whether it was blatent or subtle, it was always there.

Also, wardrobe wise, I liked the idea of having the Dr. all in white as if he were an all knowing and pure informant or something of that nature. However, I think it would have been even better had you found a white suit or something to really show that this man was in control and understood his environment much more than the protagonist.

I liked the framing for the discussion between the two also, with the two chairs out in the middle of a field and I was disappointed when you cut to a close-up of the Dr., then back to the wide shot of them sitting down. I felt it would have been better just to let the shot sit there and watch them as they went to sit down, the cut away to the close-up was just a distraction and unnecessary.

Other than that, great job with the Canon DV camera, looks very crisp and "film like". What did you cut it on?

I look forward to seeing some more material from you, you definitely have some promise.
 
Hey - it's funny you should remark on the lack of humour. I ran an experiment recently - we substituted the music in the Doctors Surgery for "The gonk" which is the shopping mall music in Dawn Of The Dead. It worked realy well but my sound recordists said maybe it was a bit 'too' light. It's really difficult to tell. I could cut that scene and upload it if you want to see how it looks/sounds?
 
Great short Mike! I loved the locations! Tell me, how did you get the streets so deserted? Did you merely shoot in the early hours around dawn, or did you pull a Danny Boyle and have topless women stop traffic? :eek:

You have some well composed shots in this, so much for the eye to look at. I expecially liked the fountain/mirror pool shot towards the beginning, the shot with doc and David walking towards the chairs ... cool stuff.

Poke
 
Poke said:
Great short Mike! I loved the locations! Tell me, how did you get the streets so deserted? Did you merely shoot in the early hours around dawn, or did you pull a Danny Boyle and have topless women stop traffic? :eek:

You have some well composed shots in this, so much for the eye to look at. I expecially liked the fountain/mirror pool shot towards the beginning, the shot with doc and David walking towards the chairs ... cool stuff.

Poke
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Hiya,

Yes I had Scarlett Johanson, Naomi Watts, Shelley Bennet and Anna Faris out stopping Traffic. hehe.

Then my alarm went off at 5am, and I woke up ... Dawn hours only, I'm afraid. Glad you enjoyed.

-Mike
 
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