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watch Portfolio Trailer - My first ever trailer.

It's always going to be difficult to achieve a 'high concept' or genre piece on a limited budget etc

There were some great efforts made to make this work

Some of the shots were a lot better than others. Some of the shots were let down by their location. I assume this was submitted as part of a college course? The age of the actors and some of the places (the IT room for example) betray this. Also, some care and attention is needed; the shot of the young man in the shower was let down by the 'head and shouders' bottle in the back ground!

The music was very good, did you create it or lift it from somewhere?

It appears you were attempting to achieve a trailer for a horror or psychological thriller. The genre conventions were there, but the story was not. This meant that some of the shots that worked well lost some of their validity because their context wasn't clearly definied. Some shots and pet pieces appeared to have made it into the final cut because they looked cool; this isnt enough most of the time

It was well edited though and the pacing really worked. I just feel that more consideration needed to made in regards to the content

I hope this helps
 
Yeah the locations were at our college and my home, it had to be written shot and edited within 5 weeks and with this being our first trailer it was quite a challenge. This trailer had no budget, we had to create something based on things we had.

The music was from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), we didn't have to research copyright laws.

LOL yeah we noticed the head and shoulders bottle during editing, its shocking we didn't notice this whilst shooting.

Thanks for the feedback Henry, much appreciated :)
 
Nice work for your first piece of film making.

You had some really nice imagery there. Some of the shots were pretty cool.

The pacing, editing, and music were a little formulaic...but I suppose it being your first trailer, it does you good to mimic the pros.

Being a narrative, I'd love to see this cut together with some dialog...personally, I dislike when film makers edit their narrative trailers without a single line spoken...to me that screams red flag. It makes me wonder if the acting sucks, if the script sucks...and the truth is...implementing dialog into a trailer DOES give away certain qualities right away...that's why it's avoided by many beginning film makers. To me, however, if you are able to put together a trailer with dialog and it looks and sounds great and believable...that's when you are nailing a solid trailer.

Another thing, as Henry eluded to was that you have shots in the trailer that are there simply because they look cool. In my circle of friends this is called 'Masterbation material for DP's.' They don't move along the story, they don't express the narrative aspects of the piece...they are simply there because the shot is cool...

Good luck with future exercises.
 
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I agree with the posts above. It needed some voice over explaining things and it would have really rocked. Not bad for first one though for sure.
 
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