First of all I want to congratulate you on making your film. I’m sure a lot of time and effort went in to the making of this film. It does look very nice and it is interesting, so I applaud you for seeing through its creation.
However, I must question who your target audience is? I don’t really get what you were trying to achieve with this whole concept. Do you believe that people want to watch a film that looks like “ink drawings in an old history book”? When I think of the drawings in a history book, I think of black and white images, which are much more detailed than the rough line drawings your film appears to be.
I assume you were inspired to do this, at least in part, by “A Scanner Darkly”. Trouble is, “A Scanner Darkly” (which itself wasn’t very successful) had a built in audience. It was made for Sci-Fi fans and comic books fans alike. That covers two pretty wide, overlapping demographics. I don’t think your film would have the same reach. In fact, I think the animated element would put off otherwise interested fans of historical films, and I’m not sure those who’d appreciate the concept of the animation would actually be fans of historical films.
I know it’d be a lot more work, but, if this were my film, I’d be looking to add a lot more detail to the images. Either in colour or black-and-white, I’d be filling in all that white space behind your characters to add a lot more depth to the scenes and more life to your characters.
Also, a technical issue; sound. Your sound has the hollow, roomy echo that plagues a lot of no-budget, indie films. Personally, I can normally look past it. However, we don’t normally get this issue in outdoors scenes (of course, there are a million other issues that crop up with outdoors sound!). But in your case, due to the process you’ve used, your outdoor scenes sound like they were shot in a small empty room (which, presumably, they were). It’s quite off putting.
Again, well done on making your film. I don’t want to seem like I’m just bashing your work, because I’m not. I appreciate the hard work that you’ve put in to this. Just hoping to offer an opinion, as a potential viewer. Others may disagree, but that’s my two pennies worth.
Good luck with any future projects!
