archived-videos Student Film "The Art of Gettin' It In"

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gkcogs

Hello everyone my name is Alexandar Wagner and I am a second semester freshman film student at Columbia College Chicago. I just finished my second short film “The Art of Gettin’ It In” and hope to continue to get feedback on the film online. I am looking to improve my film making skills and any feedback that you as a community could give me would be more then appreciated. I am not very confident in the project and it’s ability to be successful so any comments regarding if the film is or could possibly be festival ready would be great as well.

I appreciate your time and feedback greatly.

Link to film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjRvx-6LlM

Thank you,
Alexandar Wagner -
gkstudioproductions.com
 
Upvote 0
At the very beginning, the pizza has already been bit into, but now its too hot??;) Over all I

thought it was good, but it was about 4-5 minutes too long, in my opinion. The actors were good.

They gave the desired effect: The loafer, clingy guy, etc. We "get" them quickly, so you don't have

to spend as much time developing characters. The story itself isn't anything new, so I look at it as

more of a character study and I thought they did a pretty good job. If I were to make an

observation, I would say the loafer is a little too annoyed all the time. I would have gone for, think

of The Dude, but a little more annoyed. If you don't know who The Dude is..........:) The Big

Labowski


I thought it was funny, but could be cut down a bit.
 
Quite a nice video, I enjoyed watching it :) I just thought I'd get that out of the way before going ahead and nitpicking at certain things - the things below aren't reasons to not like your film, but simply things you can improve upon, at least in my opinion (which could very well be wrong).

  • The beginning could have been cut down on - short films, unlike feature films, don't necessarily need opening credits, at least to that extent, and open credits usually overlay changing shots as opposed to just one shot with static action. Nice imagery in the scene though, if a tad simple - the placement of the bottle sets the theme of sex/relationships, as was clearly intended, but it was lingered on for way too long.
  • The music at certain points seems a tad too loud in comparison with the diegetic sound - mainly at the beginning even when Evan talks, and especially during the little argument between Kevin and Evan later on. The music during the argument also didn't seem to fit the tone very well.
  • The camera when moving is very shaky - I suggest investing in a cheap tripod, because even though many of your shots that had this problem lead into moving around the room with the camera, that can also be done with a tripod (just lift it with the camera when you need to move).
  • That also leads me to another point: watch out for reflections. When Evan and Kevin are having pizza and Kevin goes to leave, he passes the window, and you can just make out the guy holding the video camera. I came across that problem when I was making a film once and didn't even notice it until I had it pointed out for me, so keep it in mind when filming.
  • The actors were pretty great, the only problem seeming to be from two points that I saw where the acting could have been slightly better (and fixed by simply reshooting that section - the actors were all pretty competent). These two parts were the first scene with Ashley (she didn't seem to be too in-character at that point, but showed she definitely could be the second time she came to the apartment) and Kevin being upset over Ashley leaving (though this may be just the way he acts - his actor is fantastic at the comedic role throughout before being dumped, just after that it got a bit weaker).
  • The rolling credits with Kevin were a very nice touch, the only improvement being that the distress his character shows towards the end of the song should probably have been throughout it - at the beginning, he seems too perky, though this is probably because of the way he learnt the song (I know I can't play certain songs unless I'm in a certain position for that reason). An added comedic element during that could have been hearing Evan and his girlfriend (?) in the background and Kevin compensating by increasing the volume of his playing and singing.

I really like the final shot actually (towards the end of the song), with just about every aspect showing Kevin as lonely - the single controller, no more slice of pizza on the box, Kevin wearing the colour red (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm colourblind) and him essentially clutching his guitar and looking on sadly towards what I assume is his mobile phone. Even if these things weren't intended, it still was pretty nice.

Though the script became weak at certain parts (I thought the argument between Evan and Kevin dragged on for a bit), overall it was nice, and the actors played their parts very well.
Very nice short film, and a very good start to your portfolio IMO :)
 
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