archived-videos Proven: Dreams of Redemption

I saw your trailer on Youngcuts! Congrats on getting in- I commented on the youngcuts forum. Very cool looking project. I'll make sure to catch it when it screens!

(we have Macbeth 3000 in the fest and a friend of mine has his short "Elise" there too)
 
Pretty good shot at an epic-style story. Long too, at 33 mins! :cool:

It had a lot of good things going for it... also some things that need to be thought about, before starting the sequel.

It looks like you relied on auto-exposure for almost the entire thing. You can get away with that in many situations... but not with white skies, with white snow falling on a white backdrop, which is covered in reflective white snow. Play around with the manual iris.

Some of the acting was a bit hit & miss... especially towards the beginning. It seemed to improve further on. Was this shot in sequence, for the most part?

There were a couple of shots that looked actually dangerous, as opposed to illusion of danger. One was the "bad boss guy" knocking over the minion, who falls to the ground with his head narrowly missing a stump/spike of some kind. The other was letting loose an arrow in the general direction of a person who was fleeing. I hope I'm wrong about how you did those, but they seemed pretty risky takes.

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Lots of good stuff, too.

Great battle scenes. Well cut & choreograhed for the most part. Some of the echo-overlays were overdone at the end, but still... top notch.

Extremely creative blood spatters. A few looked slightly odd, but overall it was a very ingenius use of that effect. I'm surprised more people don't try that. Nicely done.

Enjoyable story, as well.

I'm hoping you take what you learned while making this film and can make the sequel even better.

I'll be waiting to see it. :cool:
 
Thanks for all the feedback. You're right about some of the stuff, a lot of the acting was improvised, and most of the scenes were shot out of order. However, we're correcting that for the next movie, and all the lines have been scripted out, and should be a lot better. Those "dangerous" situations that you talked about, weren't really dangerous, we knew what we were doing. We're just starting to film the next one, it's going to take awhile, but I'll make sure to post it when it's done. Thanks again!
 
I'm going to echo ZS' remarks and please don't think I'm berating you or your crew when I say it looked dangerous to me too. Safety first, don't try this at home, there's a very good reason it's called the Jackass show, ad nauseam. That said this was a very nice effort. I personally don't like close ups during action scenes, I think it's a short-cut and a very obvious camera trick. Something to work on. ;)

Actors need to r-e-l-a-x, slow down. Improv works best like this. Take the actors in the scene, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, then when your sick if it you know you're half way there, rehearse some more. As I understand it Jodi Foster almost quite Taxi Driver because De Niro wanted to rehearse so much. But there is a method to the madness, after you know the scene like the back of your hand, only then does improv work like it's supposed to; naturally and effortless. Try it with one scene and you'll be amazed.
 
I want you guys to know that the things we did weren't dangerous. I think we actually fooled you guys into thinking that those things were actually done to hurt. But they weren't. It was mostly camera tricks, no one was even close to getting hit with an arrow. We shot it all with one camera, so it wasn't a fluent shot, it was cut and all edited together to make it look like it was actually close to hitting him. And about hitting the "spike/stump" it was actually corn coming out of the ground, and we knew it was there, we pulled up a lot of stalks for the actor to fall safely. I'm happy that people are interested in our safetly, because I know that we are, I guess were just so good we make it look dangerous :) No really, we do make sure all the actors are safe, I think the worse thing that has ever happened was when I got a sliver on some stairs.... Besides that there might be a few little cuts and bruises, but probably less than most kids get from playing tag. Thanks for all the comments though, they're really appreciated. If you have some free time on your hands, you can always check out our other movies on our website, ASAP Films Thanks again.
 
Bookmarked the site. Dang, you have a lot of films under your belt!

You run a film club at the school? That's awesome. :cool:

Btw... I see "Scholar Wars" listed under the shorts. (Doesn't have a link to the video yet). Was that one about changes being made to the Regent's? If so... I've seen it somewhere.
 
Actually, our Scholar Wars is different, you can find it on our site in the BHS TV folder. Ya, we have around 40 films altogether, that's pretty much all we do :) I'm actually not the person that does all the editing and stuff. His screen name is Savery, he might come on here once and a while, but I usually do most of the advertising and stuff.
 
Jeeze James, i guess a lot of replies have been made. Im glad to see everyone has taken an interest in our films.
But to adress some of your questions about the danger issues...you are correct, mostly. When using swords in a sword like mannor there is always the possibility of someone getting hurt. Luckily, in this film there was only one incident of an actor getting a finger cut, not off, but cut with a good bleed to it. Nothing a bandaid couldn't fix. As for the corn stalk, we did get rid of all the ones he would have fallen on but that one head level one was never planned and only in the editing did I realize how very close it was. However, it was just a cornstalk and probably wouldn't have hurt that bad. (poor max if it did hit him though, he was the same one that got his finger cut).
As for the part I dont think James (buffalob07) knows, the editing for the battle scene was more involved. First off, all the arrows were digital... you can tell if you are looking for it. Second, the two parts where our main charactor gets bashed in the face. The weaponry used to hit him, is digital. Most of the contact made between object and human was digital. I simply tracked the hand of the person and the motions they made. Also, not that it really makes that big of a difference, all the battle scenes were sped up about 20% to 30%. Making them seem more battle speed. So yes, you are correct, some things were dangerous but I do try to keep everyone safe when filming. (Even though I was the one that cut his finger during our fight).
As for the dialoge, I cant agree more... Althought I found something funny. Boz Uriel wrote that Improv works best when you reherse and reherse and reherse and then when you get tried, you reherse somemore. The thing is Improv is when its on the spot, no reherse!! But I understand exactly what he means, even though its not improv, rehersing is the act of making yourself completely comfortable with your lines so that your true and best acting can shine through without the distraction of remembering your lines.
Anyways, thanks to everyone that gave feedback and I really apprieciate the constructive critism. Good solid feedback is hard to come by on some forums, especailly in film making topics. Some of those people seem to feel better about their work by bringing someone with something just a little bit better then theirs, down in moral. It blows me away when people cant work together towards a common dream???
Thanks a lot to all who replied and I will edit your advice into my next film!!
Savery
ASAP Films
www.asapfilms.com
 
The thing is Improv is when its on the spot, no reherse!!
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Hmmm, I'll take issue with this. :) Having been to two graduate classes on improv and endless workshops on improv I can tell we have our terms mixed up. Stage and/or stand up improv may work like that but movie improv does not, at least not in my experience. But don't take my word for it, ask Martin Scorsese or any of the wonderful actors and directors to come out of the 70's with hits. Improv works in movies because the 'on the spot' occurs off camera, they rehearse the lines from the script, when they know their lines and get comfortable with the characters, then they improv.

However, feel free to do yours on the spot, far be it from me to direct from a distance, just passing on what I heard is all. :cool:
 
Boz Uriel said:
Hmmm, I'll take issue with this. :) Having been to two graduate classes on improv and endless workshops on improv I can tell we have our terms mixed up. Stage and/or stand up improv may work like that but movie improv does not, at least not in my experience. But don't take my word for it, ask Martin Scorsese or any of the wonderful actors and directors to come out of the 70's with hits. Improv works in movies because the 'on the spot' occurs off camera, they rehearse the lines from the script, when they know their lines and get comfortable with the characters, then they improv.

However, feel free to do yours on the spot, far be it from me to direct from a distance, just passing on what I heard is all. :cool:
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ahhh, what do I know??? Im just thinking of the whos line is it anyways stuff
 
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