Well, compared to many shorts done by mature adults, this is remarkably well produced one. It's great that you made such a strong effort to do as much as possible in it (including foley).

I'm pretty sure much of what I'm going to say you will know or have noticed as well. Here goes anyway.

I would stay away from zooming as much as possible. Pretty much every single book on filmmaking will tell you that. Zoom should always be treated exactly the same way as those flashy transitions you can use in iMovie (or FCE/FCP, etc) -- barndoors, wipes, tiles, flips, circles, etc. Use it never, or very rarely (and you have it at least three times in four minutes). Also, make sure your pans are EXTREMELY smooth and even (unless you're following something or someone).

Your foley work can definitely be commended, and I'm sure you can notice as well that it's a bit sloppy. Your footsteps sound the same on any surface, at any distance. When a person walks (or runs) away, the sound is expected to fade away. Also, if you were using canned samples for each step and pasting them onto the timeline, make sure you find at least dozen slightly different ones. After a few shots, it becomes obvious you're using the same pair of sound effects for the footsteps. Mind you, gravel (or dirt) sounds different from grass, and audience will expect that. Lastly, make sure sound matches the audio. Most of the shots have sound of footsteps out of synch with video. It wouldn't be significant if the audio matched the video, but was delayed by 100-200 miliseconds; the sound is often arbitrary, completely unrelated to actual steps, and the only resemblance is the relative speed of paces. Eighty years ago, in the early days of sound film, audiences would have easily bought this. Today, they'll notice everything.

As for the visuals, I'll let others comment on that, since that isn't my strong suit.

First, some gut comments as I watch:

The first zoom transition didn't really work very well. When it got to the "for sale" shot, it felt like the zoom was going to continue on again, but it didn't. That's just my opinion.

Check the contrast on that shot with the goats: it's really hard to make out any definition in the black fur.

Too many zooms... too many. Not only that, but they're all the same speed: you ARE allowed to alter the zoom speed or zoom manually you know. 😛

VERY nice touch on the matching outfit on the female character, I appreciated that.

Please, please find another drinking sound effect. The one you had would be fine once (though you could probably make it more subtle...), but the four or five times it is played simply kills it.

Well done though, very nice. Where the heck did you get to "borrow" that camera from though?! 😛 I've never worked in high def, and the film I'm finishing up at the moment was filmed with a Panasonic DVX100a that I spent $40 for the day to use. I will admit to being envious of the quality of gear possessed by some people around my age I see on this forum sometimes. 😛

Our friend saved up money from a summer to job to buy an FX1, so he was our cameraman (and he is the root of the apparently unpopular zooms).

And yeah, we admit sound is our biggest issue and other people we have shown the film to have had similar complaints.

What about the story itself? We realize our production wasn't exactly top-notch,but was the concept solid enough and did it show through effectively?

I quite enjoyed the story. The story itself is extremely simple, but you did it really well I thought. The character's bodies lying around was very well done, I didn't see any flaws in that and it was a very appropriate element of the movie.

Now that I think about it though, some of the opening montage could be considered pointless. Those rocks were pretty darn cool, but they never come back apart from that shot. And the zoom from the rocks to the "for sale" thing felt like such a big deal but... it wasn't? It perhaps could be to your benefit to be a bit more objective in the choosing of montage shots: at the moment one could argue that you're a bit too far into the "whoa check out this neat angle" territory.

It's all pretty darn good though, I'm just being picky here since you're looking for criticism and suggestions.

Oh, and I'm not complaining about the music, so that would mean it was very appropriate. 😉

And I was also referring to the Sony you filmed with, I was wondering how you could manage to "borrow" such a thing, haha.

Well we didn't actually burrow it, our friend lent his hand in helping shoot the film. I say burrow because we got to make the film with the camera even though it wasn't ours.

And yeah the opening scenes didn't serve too much of a purpose, just to lengthen it out and establish the setting. I guess I'll tighten that bit up next time so I'm not wasting screentime!

Just out of curiosity, did any of you catch the scene that was green-screened? So far, nobody has been able to tell without us coming out and saying, so I want to see if you could find it.

Hey GeneFreak, no doubt youve picked up on the main issue of sound & the zoom so you would do well to bare them in mind for the next short. I think you would do well to colour correct your production next time so that every things level, this will add to the production values of your short.

On a positive note though I like the way that you were very minimalistic with your actors, I find that it makes a production so much easier if you use people and places readily available to you.

Like every one keeps pointing out its pretty much the audio and the zooms, but "you live and learn".

All the best Cleary.

www.myspace.com/b31_film_productions

We did color correct this a lot actually, our first time using Color. It took some getting used to and we pretty much toyed with it until we got a bleak mix of colors we were going for.

Hey GeneFreak,

What Cleary was getting at there is that it's actually difficult to see things at times. To me it looks a lot like you threw a neutral density filter over everything, so, given that we know you did colour correction in post, it looks a lot you made a lot of things unnecessarily darker.

Watched it..

First of all, get rid of that drinking effect. It makes things so unnatural. Same goes with walking effect. Moreover, same effect can't be used if the person is walking on grass. You made it darker. Get some good actors.

I like it. My only suggestion would be to tighten things up a bit.

It's a fine concept and you did a good job. Had it been more concise, however, you could have struck a more even balance between the listless tone and the punch at the end. Perhaps something to consider...

My advice in terms of your 1st short film though, make every thing as simple as possible. For example: When I write a short film I write it with as few characters as I can get away with because this make the shoot way more manageable than having to direct masses of people. The same goes for locations as well, I aim to work with as few locations as I can get away with as this means that the main stay of the footage can be achieved in the same day which is really really productive as this will also lower your transport costs. These are the main things that I focus on when Im planning a film & I find that it makes every thing so much easier

Hope these help?

Cleary.

www.myspace.com/michael_mccleary_films www.youtube.com/cleary82

Your story went well enough up to the point where the kid remembers he was in a smash, and wanders off back to reality. But after that, when the girl enters and drinks from the discarded bottle, (big yuk factor there!), I lost the thread.

The green screen shot? I'm gonna say at 2mins 50secs into the film, where the kid runs past a body on the ground. That extra kid looked composited to me.

But not a bad effort.