archived-videos My First Short

Here's my first short film titled "Security Smoke." It's a part of a documentary I'm doing for my sociology class which is why there's no credits or anything.

The music is a mix of various songs by Faith No More and Serj Tankian that I spliced in there as temp tracks.

Reviews are welcomed, especially anything that could help me out in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbf9bwPRa0w
 
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Heh, watched it last night. :)

Watched it again just now. Sound was off (no dialogue, and the music was just filler) for a better look at the edit.

Pacing was flat. Not terrible; just unvarying, both in duration & content. Smoker in new location, lights up, gets a puff, guard arrives, moves on. Repeat.

Now, there's nothing wrong with repetition but there still needs to be change along the way. Comedy in threes, an escalation of pace, an unexpected change of direction, etc. Something that allows repetition, but alters it so it's no longer the same.

A simple way to have done this could have been by incrementally decreasing the duratation of each "bust", and adding several more locations (each shorter than the previous) and having the guard eventually be at the locations before our heroic smoker does. Smoker realises the futility of his actions and takes his lumps at that gazebo-thing. That's just an example; I hope you get the idea, though.

I've no idea how that fits into the greater documentary-thing you're doing, though. I'm thinking more slapstick.
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As is, though, you've got all the shots you needed and it's put together well enough to tell what it's sayin'. It doesn't fail at all. An audience can follow it with no problem. It works. Much better than my first film, too.

Why's it sepia tone, btw?


So what's the rest of it all about? :)
 
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Thanks, man.

I wanted in sepia tone mostly as an homage to the old silent nickelodeon films, hence why the music is mostly piano.

I was thinking of cutting one of the scenes though because I am aware of the rule of threes in comedy. Maybe just limiting it to three scenes. I would've shot more but we were limited on time and still had other stuff to shoot. We really only shot this for an hour around school.

And the whole documentary is about the subculture of cigarette smokers for my sociology class. And this was just a fun way to demonstrate the conflict perspective between smokers and the current anti-smoking laws. I figured it was better than just having a guy talk for the whole time. And to keep it more lighthearted and not too serious.

Thanks for the response though, Zen. It was helpful. And I'll be sure to post the documentary on here when it's finished.
 
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