• READ BEFORE POSTING!
    • If posting a video, please post HERE, unless it is a video as part of an advertisement and then post it in this section.
    • If replying to threads please remember this is the Promotion area and the person posting may not be open to feedback.

watch New short film: The Night Shift

F

FightingOwlFilms

Our new short film The Night Shift is finished and finally online. It's a horror/adventure/comedy/romance and sort of a cross between Army of Darkness, Cemetery Man and The Mummy.

Plot:

What if you could live forever? What if you had to spend that eternity stuck in a cemetery with only a limbless corpse for a friend, and inmates that were anything but resting in peace? That's the situation for Rue Morgan, night watchman extraordinare. Rue, along with his buddy Herb, spends his nights watching out for zombies, and his days dreaming of a date with hard-nosed day-shifter, Claire. It's an okay eternity, but Rue's never had to deal with the demonic "resident" of mysterious Section 13.

The film can be viewed via the Fighting Owl Films website here: http://www.fightingowlfilms.com/films.html

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
That's a great short you have there. :)

Well written, story kept moving, great pacing.

I was going to ask how you did some of the effects, but then saw Detonation Films listed in the credits. Great resource for any filmmaker on a budget looking to do muzzle-flash, explosions & smoke.

Some of the day-for-night effect didn't work - mainly the first few minutes of it. The majority of it was steady & constant, but some of the earlier bits (I suppose the twilight time?) swung wildly in gradation.

Also, on lighting - the opening setup scenes (where Rue is walking with Claire to the gates) the sun has the shadows falling directly on the actors' faces & fronts. Sure, there's times when there's a reason to obfuscate faces... not sure this was meant to be the case here. Was that a deliberate choice?

Sound was really good. How much of the dialogue was ADR? I'd kill to be able to pick up sound like that, if that was from a mic.

Heh, off to watch the other films on your website.
smiley_ghost.gif
 
Thank you for your very kind words. I really appreciate it.

Day for night is very tricky and we're hoping we really don't have to do that again (fingers crossed). This is our 2nd time trying it and while the outcome was a little better this time it's still not ideal.

Actually, about 99.9% of the dialogue is ADR. The live audio we got from filming was pretty rough - lots of random background noises, wind, etc - and we had some mic issues (it'd cut in and out for no reason sometimes - we've since purchased a brand new mic).

We all had a lot of fun making The Night Shift and we're glad you enjoyed it. Thanks again!:)
 
Great work, I was quite enamoured by the look and feel of the daylight sequences apart from the shadows falling on the actors faces mentioned by Zensteve. However, as exceptionally beautiful as it looked at times I found the lighting and colour tones inconsistent throughout the film, at times it was a tad orange in hue, at others very purple, and throughout most of the latter half of the film it looked as if the entire thing was drowned in a blue filter. Perhaps this was intentional but it felt too strong for my liking, some natural colours have to bleed out somehow IMO.

The narrative was interesting, I didn't find myself all that caught up in the story but I felt a distinct charm to it nonetheless. It felt a tad Burton-esque with the music and the innocent black humour, but that would be selling it short as it did have it's own unique style. Subtleties like the woman tapping her shoe on the ground caught my attention, the sound was spot-on, overall it felt to me an excellent effort.
 
Haz said:
Great work, I was quite enamoured by the look and feel of the daylight sequences apart from the shadows falling on the actors faces mentioned by Zensteve. However, as exceptionally beautiful as it looked at times I found the lighting and colour tones inconsistent throughout the film, at times it was a tad orange in hue, at others very purple, and throughout most of the latter half of the film it looked as if the entire thing was drowned in a blue filter. Perhaps this was intentional but it felt too strong for my liking, some natural colours have to bleed out somehow IMO.

The narrative was interesting, I didn't find myself all that caught up in the story but I felt a distinct charm to it nonetheless. It felt a tad Burton-esque with the music and the innocent black humour, but that would be selling it short as it did have it's own unique style. Subtleties like the woman tapping her shoe on the ground caught my attention, the sound was spot-on, overall it felt to me an excellent effort.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your feedback and your time. Most of the color choices were intentional but some we couldn't get to look quite right and had to settle for "close enough". But I think I know the scenes/shots you're talking about and I agree that it can be a little jarring/heavy-handed.

Thanks again for your feedback. It's greatly appreciated.
 
Just wanted to say that so far The Night Shift has gotten some really positve reviews and feedback across the web. Thanks to everyone for watching! We're contemplating creating a Night Shift web series, so look for that in the future. We've also updated our website's look (slightly) and added some behind the scenes footage from The Night Shift in the form of a gag reel and Herbie's Screen Test, in which Herbie the skeleton sings Prince's Purple Rain.

Take a look over here: http://fightingowlfilms.com/extras page/extrasNEWNEWNEW.html#The Night Shift

Any and all feedback on the film is still encouraged and very welcome.

Thanks guys! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top