archived-videos My very first short film (Need Critique)

R

Raw-G

Hey fellas,

I'm a college student majoring in Neuroscience but I've been a photography hobbyist for the past 6 years or so. I always thought film making is cool but hesitated to get into it because I thought it was too complicated and that was discouraging. Last semester (fall 2013), I took a comparative film studies class and felt motivated to get into film making after seeing some early Lumiere films and I remember thinking "Hey *I* can do that!"

The film studies course involved no instruction in film making itself, rather it was focused on critiquing films. We had to write an essay as our final project in the class but I asked my professor if I and my friend and classmate could make a short film instead and she gladly said yes.

It took us a month and a half and $8 to make this. This is by no means my masterpiece or even something that I think is absolutely fantastic. It was quite experimental and the main reason was to explore and experiment and finally to get a feel for the medium. I thoroughly enjoyed making it and look forward to making better ones in the future.

Note - Please make sure that you watch it in 1080p! Be prepared to experience no sound! We neither had proper equipment nor the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSHaS3GmDnA&feature

Thanks for watching! Critiques are welcome and encouraged.
 
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Upvote 0
It's great to look at, the make-up was good and some of the transition effects were cool. But not having any sound at all made it hard work to sit through, for me.
 
"Silent films" were never silent.

One comment on your page is that it's a beautiful piece of art. It might be,
but it's not much of a movie. I'm sorry I couldn't get through it. Sound is
half the experience which is why all "silent films" have a soundtrack. You
have given us half a movie.

But it's so cool that back in Nov you came here asking for advice and then
returned with the finished product. Thanks.
 
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Another vote on the sound.

The visuals are interesting, but the absolute lack of aural stimulation is a killer. As has been said, even the old "silent" films had at least a live piano/organ providing music to drive the piece. But here's the fun part:

Lack of gear to record dialog in the field doesn't knock you out of being creative and having fun with the sound! Sure, you can simply add music and that will help immensely, but you don't have to stop there and don't need a whole big sound kit to make a big difference. There are plenty of cheap/free resources out there for decent sound effects. Even better, a simple device like the TASCAM DR-40 is all you need to start playing around with recording your own sound effects - even Foley, which are sound effects created and recorded in sync with picture playback - and ambient sound beds. Record some footsteps. Recreate the fabric movement as actors stand, walk, reach, etc. Go record some sounds of the outdoors (urban, suburban... whatever matches the needs of the film). Record sounds of other objects moving around as actors handle them.

This short film is rife with opportunity to create a compelling, convincing soundscape. It'll be a great exercise as well, and one that will help you plan out any future projects with sound in mind. Best of all, it's not too late for this film! Create your soundscape, re-upload with the completed project, and come back to let us know!
 
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Raw-G said:
Hey fellas,

I'm a college student majoring in Neuroscience but I've been a photography hobbyist for the past 6 years or so. I always thought film making is cool but hesitated to get into it because I thought it was too complicated and that was discouraging. Last semester (fall 2013), I took a comparative film studies class and felt motivated to get into film making after seeing some early Lumiere films and I remember thinking "Hey *I* can do that!"

The film studies course involved no instruction in film making itself, rather it was focused on critiquing films. We had to write an essay as our final project in the class but I asked my professor if I and my friend and classmate could make a short film instead and she gladly said yes.

It took us a month and a half and $8 to make this. This is by no means my masterpiece or even something that I think is absolutely fantastic. It was quite experimental and the main reason was to explore and experiment and finally to get a feel for the medium. I thoroughly enjoyed making it and look forward to making better ones in the future.

Note - Please make sure that you watch it in 1080p! Be prepared to experience no sound! We neither had proper equipment nor the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSHaS3GmDnA&feature

Thanks for watching! Critiques are welcome and encouraged.
Click to expand...

Firstly, well done for having shot and put it together. Congrats on your first short.

The good bits are the well framed shots and excellent colouring. When i look at that colouring, I am a little jealous of your skills in that department as it was very nicely done.

The bit I didn't like is that it is boring. The lack of music is a killer and the slow pace with lack of dynamic camera movement makes it uninteresting to watch. The constructive bit of this critique is if you add music, cut it in half (at least) and add some dynamic movement, then you would have a movie.

However, don't let that put you off as everyones first short is pretty bad, including mine. The next will be better etc...
 
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Not a bad first short, but it needs improvement.

Audio is my main concern. The lack of music is REALLY annoying. This could be fixed
There's some color banding in the first shot on the roof, which distracted me.
Old age makeup is a bit obvious, although I've seen worse.
Some shots looked a bit shaky.
It's also slow... and boring.
 
you have serious issues with that rooftop in the beginning it looks awful, cant you put a painting on it or something?

22 seconds in when hes holding the rose, its shaky as hell, you need to stablise that shot better

there are some serious issues with your video quality, it looks nasty and because you have no sound, i am forced to emphasize on the quality even more.

you could have put in a wild track, also maybe some metaphorical sound design?
 
Raw-G said:
Be prepared to experience no sound! We neither had proper equipment nor the time.
Click to expand...

My first theory was that you'd forgotten to check the audio box on your final render, and had uploaded a non-audio vid by mistake. Apparently not, as it was uploaded a month ago - plenty of time to fix & replace it, if it was possible to.

I get the feeling that you were supposed to have sound, but had some kind of unsalvageable problem so "no sound' is just the way it is; not actually the way planned. Would that be right? :hmm:
 
Equipment used and the story behind no audio

FantasyFilmProductions said:
So...could you tell us what camera you used please?
Click to expand...

The entire film was shot using the Nikon D800 with the following lens combinations:-
1) Nikkor 50mm f1.8D (the primary lens used)
2) Tamron 90mm macro (those close up shots)

The Nikon D800 has been my primary photography camera for the past few months and it's got a decent video quality but there were some instances during our shoot where we were limited by our lenses. The 50mm and the macro lens were the only good quality Fx lenses I have so we had to shift a couple of good locations due to the narrow angle of the 50mm. This is why last week I invested in an awesome wide angle lens - the Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8. It's fantastic and I will be using it in my next film.

I used Premiere Pro CS6 for editing.

Zensteve said:
I get the feeling that you were supposed to have sound, but had some kind of unsalvageable problem so "no sound' is just the way it is; not actually the way planned. Would that be right?
Click to expand...

You're right. When I wrote the script and discussed it with my partner we had rich imaginations for the sound. In fact, our script had sound FX for almost every shot in place. I can imagine the film being quite suspenseful and stylish if we had successfully implemented our plan.

My partner Brendan is quite an experienced audiophile although he'd never worked on audio for a film. One of the biggest mistakes we made was to assume that we could work out the sound design in the post. So we didn't grab sound on location while we were shooting. To be frank, we had our hands full with the shooting itself since we meticulously planned each shot's composition and the cuts.

Since most of the scenes were shot during the night I also had to grab noise profiles on a uniform surface so that we could use that to eliminate noise in the post. It worked, but given all that we had to do just to get the visuals, even in retrospect it seems like we couldn't have grabbed audio on location given that we didn't have a shotgun mic.

We started shooting a month and a half before the deadline that our professor had for submission of our final project for the class. We got done shooting and editing 7 hrs before our deadline for screening. Brendan and I sat down to do the sound design that night. Brendan has an omnidirectional mic that he used to record breathing noises, footsteps, door knocking sounds etc. prior to when we sat down to do the sound design. But as we started working on the beginning scene the frustration was immediate. We knew we didn't have all the audio samples so we decided to use the sound from the camera for some scenes. As you may know the built-in audio from cameras are not the best and it has this buzz. As we mixed those sounds with the samples we recorded and the samples we had from some databases, we didn't get consistent audio. Plus we were doing all this on the night before our classroom screening. We both concluded that this wasn't going to get done in time.

So we made the choice of not having any sound as against going with poorly done and potentially distracting sound design. We did consider doing a better sound design in the winter break but we felt that we were done with the project and didn't feel up to fiddling with it.

So we did learn a good lesson. This is why we got a Rode shotgun mic and boom pole so that we can be prepared for our next venture.

So that's the long version of the story behind the lack of audio. Our professor complimented us on the effort and said that we did a good job and gave us a 95/100, so I guess for what it was worth the project was a success.

Thanks to those who gave constructive criticism.
 
I recommend you get a composer to score the project next time. There are plenty of composers on the forum that are willing to score for free or very little.
 
I'm really surprised how much moire there was on the opening ... figured the D800 would be better than that. Low light stuff was really noisy (2:00), and that's a function of the camera, too. Light those better with appropriate ratios, and then lower light in post or you'll get tons of noise like you did.

Focus pulling was also off through most scenes. You're going to need to either get an external monitor or better eyesight. Some of the footage could've benefitted from stabilizing -- either a shoulder rig or something. Hell, even a 2-foot 2x4 with the camera bolted to it and hand-held would've worked wonders on that shaky-cam footage.

I liked the kubrik-like follow (1:50) and smoking scene (1:00), and the color grading. Framing could use a little work (closeups seemed shot a bit too high with eyes right in center horizon, not counting the smoking scene), but overall was pretty good. You used the whole frame, and that was good.

I got through about half of it, but need to go do work.
 
Raw-G said:
My partner Brendan is quite an experienced audiophile although he'd never worked on audio for a film. One of the biggest mistakes we made was to assume that we could work out the sound design in the post. So we didn't grab sound on location while we were shooting. To be frank, we had our hands full with the shooting itself since we meticulously planned each shot's composition and the cuts.

Since most of the scenes were shot during the night I also had to grab noise profiles on a uniform surface so that we could use that to eliminate noise in the post. It worked, but given all that we had to do just to get the visuals, even in retrospect it seems like we couldn't have grabbed audio on location given that we didn't have a shotgun mic.
Click to expand...

As I said previously, you could have recreated the soundscape in post. You still can, too. It does not require a single scrap of sound recorded during production, and it certainly doesn't require a shotgun.

The shotgun and boompole are great (and necessary) if you're recording dialog. For this piece, though, you can completely recreate the entire sound design in post using things recorded after the fact (or even in similar but different locations). All you need is a handheld recorder, and some time.
 
I couldn't sit for 12mins and watch a silent film.

The way it was shot was lovely. I did skip through some scenes. Add some music at least.

I think if you are going to take the time to film something like this, you could invest in a cheap sound recorder or something.
 
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