It looks fine, sounds fine, it’s edited well, it has no music (which is a plus when there’s a lot of dialogue), the actors seemed well rehearsed, the location and costumes with blood are not realistic but it’s apparent that the director (you) were aware of this and decided it was fine.
However, the “philosophical” discussion is a bit too much. Religious rants about agnosticism and atheism and believing in God because you fear Hell is something I’d expect on internet forums and not in a short film. I’m not trying to say that the discussions in your movie are clichéd or that your screen writing is poor, but these are conversations that don’t need to be said. Like an old man on his death bed who isn’t satisfied with how he lived, you know these questions go through his head. Try to communicate the psychological dilemma the character is going through with visuals instead of dialogue (i.e. the Bergman Trilogy or the Decalogue)
Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts.
While I appreciate your suggestion, honestly it is of little concern to me whether or not the characters are saying things which “need to be said” — it’s what I wanted them to say, and the characters are expressing sentiments which I feel are of some importance. It was not my intention to make what you might call a realistic or more narrative-based film; I wanted to make a film about these ideas, and chose to do so through the dialogue and by having the characters bounce these ideas off one another. I know there are more cinematic ways to show the internal emotions these characters are having, but those emotions (or the “psychological dilemma”, as you say) are not really my main concern. The events of the film (or rather, the discussion at the heart of the film) unfold with little context for a reason; I am not interested in what led the characters to this moment, or what may be influencing their ideas; my interest is in the ideas themselves.
Not a bad concept. Simple, wll-done for what it is. The “philosophical” discussion is a bit worn out and it’s too long, though. I’d cut out some dialogue and get it down to maybe 4-5 minutes maximum.
This is the final cut that’s being shopped around to festivals and whatnot, I have no plans to change it in the near future. If I ever did, though, what specifically would you suggest working on? Compared to the script the main conversation was streamlined/tightened up a bit, but if it’s still a little too meandering for your tastes how would you suggest tightening it further?
Apologies for the bump, but our Production Notes article is now online: http://mubi.com/garage/posts/3183
So I just went through your video and took notes as I went along, and heres what I got.
The outfits look cheap and don’t sell the actor’s roles at all. If you are going to give them bloody coats, give them BLOODY coats. It literally just looks like they got off working at a doctor’s office and went and got hot dogs and got ketchup all over each other. The main problem with this is that, as an indie filmmaker, your budget is probably low, so I would tend to shy away from costuming unless absolutely necessary. In this case, it really isn’t even necessary: The body that we see for that short period of time has no visible wounds or blood on it, so why should they? A plain, everyday outfit would have worked just fine. In the way you used their outfits here, it just seemed redundant and cheap.
On a technical note, in some of the first scene, you were clipping hard with the whites on dude with a goatee’s (now known as character 2) face, but you can fix that with either iso or aperture (good job shooting at what looks like 50 too, I like that look). On the note of aperture, it looks like you shot this thing with your aperture wide open the whole time. I don’t know if that was a creative decision or a limitation of technology, but know that narrative film making is very synonymous with shallow depth of field. If you’re scared of doing that because you know it will blow out your whites, invest in a ND filter, or do what I do and build one of these: http://vimeo.com/17167113. That will allow you to adjust how much light is getting to your lens, that way if you really open up the aperture, you can shut down a lot of the incoming light, which then would properly expose your image, as well as retaining the shallow depth of field.
Next, there was some instances of over acting on your actor’s part, but those instances were few, and the most notable one being when they looked at each other when they were getting out of the car. This shot seemed unnecessary, as the audience would have immediately caught on to the fact that they were getting ready to take the body out, and didn’t need to see them agreeing with each other. It does build a bit of character for character 2, but I don’t believe it is enough to justify its inclusion in the piece.
Next note (sorry for the sporadic notes), I’m glad you used a field recorder, but watch out for wind sounds. I picked up on some of that stuff during parts, and while it didn’t detract from the film, it was there and worth mentioning.
Next, I don’t understand what happened from 1:20-1:30. At first I thought that they were driving somewhere to go put the body, but then it cuts to them digging, with no body to be seen, and no deep hole in the ground (their shovels aren’t penetrating but what looks like half a foot or so). Maybe the body is back in the trunk then? This seems viable, but then makes the earlier shots look weird because they just took a body out of the trunk to only put it back in? Or maybe in the in between, they buried the whole body. While this is a viable explanation, it doesn’t seem logical, as they would take a lot longer than the audience believes time has passed, and they look no more sweaty or dirty. Again, confusion.
(I’m refraining from using the word next from now on, just know that i’ll use paragraph breaks for different thoughts)
Mix up your shots. During the bulk of the film, you alternate between about three different shots. Don’t be afraid to move the camera during some of these scenes, as well as trying some different angles (more of the later, as it IS hard to make a conversation between two people a dynamic experience). Also, some of your cuts seem VERY deliberate, almost jarring in a why-did-he-cut-this-to-there type of thing. Your match-on-action is fantastic, but cutting around to other things seems jarring in the way you do it. Maybe practice pace? I’m not sure what exact advice to give on this, but it’s definitely there. You want your cuts to look and feel natural. Hence why before I complained about the sequence from 1:20-1:30, because those fast 4 or 5 cuts you did don’t portray the amount of time you want the audience to believe has passed, which arises suspicions as to what exactly happened. I want to reiterate again though, your match-on-action is fantastic, different shots of shovels being put into the ground match up very well when you make a cut to a different angle. But work on the other stuff.
Your understanding of the rule of thirds also seems to be intact, but there are some places where I think it suffers due to the way you tried to compose shots. Specifically at 1:51, you seem to make the decision to want both of them to be in the frame, but also have the care appear at a semi-normal level in the shot. This though comes at the expense of you losing the top third eye level of character 1 as it seems to go north of where it is suppose to be, as well as throwing off your whole composition of the shot, as it seems to be awkwardly weighted towards the right side. You do much better with the shots at 5:05, as you properly compose the car in the background with the two actors in front, both at the right eye level (Be careful though, your camera doesn’t seem perfectly level, it looks like it’s sagging on the right side).
On the topic of color, I think you did a good job throughout, although your blacks look a little crushed (not black) in a lot of parts. A simple fix to this would to just bump up the contrast, and establish a good white point and a good black point that you can then reference off of. Also, your skin seems a bit blue in a lot of areas, but thats nothing a 3-way color mixer can’t fix.
Setting is terrible. The first scene there is clearly a building in sight, and the second scene (digging), you can tell they are on a road. Road = rocks and/or pavement (which you can hear them hitting when they are digging)(on a side note, if they are burying the body they just dug a hole in the ground for, why are they not filling the hole, instead of digging more?). But yeah, setting was just bad. Who is suppose to believe these guys are seriously burying a dead body in the middle of a clearly marked road?
The music near the end is corny for the reason below. (It implies something more profound just happened than what the audience actually experienced)
As for the rest of the story and the premise itself, I don’t think you really delivered on your premise. If you are going to do a short about a “faith and redemption”, make it heavy. And here’s why. Consider the average “bro film” of today, which is basically any movie made by Judd Apatow. Tell me exactly why this scene wouldn’t fit into any of these movies? You can’t, because it would. The conversation they have seems just like pseudo-philosophical weed induced “bro banter” that any of those characters would have in those movies. The audience doesn’t feel the heaviness you want to portray in character 1’s words, especially by the way character 2 simply bounces them back at him. The premise of the movie seems good, but I think the execution misses the mark as to the heaviness you wanted to portray. So next time, make it more meaningful.
I hope this gave you some insight into the specificity that you are seeking in criticism. Note that this is all (hopefully) constructive as well, and I am just trying to give you insight into your film and make you consider the choices you made.
Oh and I didn’t read any of the previous comments in this thread, but I just did, and in regards to Zachmore’s comment, don’t listen to him. These ARE conversations to be had. Make the film that you want to make, but know that if people like Zachmoore don’t think that these are things to be said, make your film that much better as to convince him that this was something that needed to be said, and you had to be the one to say it.
There’s this scene in The Brothers Bloom where Mark Ruffalo’s character tells Bloom that when real blood dries, it turns black, and only fake blood remains red. Just something to keep in mind for next time :)
Also, and I know this may not have been an option seeing as you didn’t want to use artificial lights and what-not, but I feel disposing a body at night would be much more convincing. Or at least at dawn.
I like the acting though. From both actors. Especially the Catholic dude. He was very convincing.
I was going to talk about other things, but KKUKSHTEL beat me to them.
@ kkukshtel
know that if people like Zachmoore don’t think that these are things to be said, make your film that much better as to convince him that this was something that needed to be said
Thank you.
Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate the feedback. KKUKSHTEL, a lot of the issues you had with the film I agree with, especially on the technical side — we were more or less forced to shoot in a really unforunate location, with sporadic bursts of wind, sunshine etc. constantly throwing us off, often mid-take. I tried to equalize the wind sounds out as much as possible, and we used a windscreen on the mic, but there’s still a few instances where it’s noticeable and — especially if you listen with headphones — a bit distracting. I’m not sure what ISO we used for every shot, but a lot of shots we were getting blasted with sunlight at odd intervals so we decided to preemptively work against that and stop down to around 5.6-8 for a lot of shots and shoot at low ISOs, particularly for the final section of the film. The blood on the costumes does look pretty shitty, I wish we hadn’t gone that route but there’s not much I could do to change that after the fact.
I disagree with your views on the thematic content of the film, though — I was deliberately trying NOT to make this material too heavy, and feel like doing so would have been more detrimental to the film. My main concern is the driving conversation, and not in grand sweeping dramatic arcs or even necessarily “paying off” the events of the film. There is nothing to pay off, in my eyes. The entire film is about fleeting emotions, and about not providing answers — there’s a reason you get no backstory, are not told why or how these characters got to this place, or how they are effected by the events that have taken place (if they are truly effected at all). Maybe this doesn’t come across well in the film (though others who’ve watched it have picked up on it without my input, so who knows), but my whole point is the undercut “Character One’s” emotions — I am not asking for the audience to sympathize with him, in fact quite the opposite.
I do agree with a lot of your points overall, though. This is definitely a flawed film, but considering our limitations (which I tried to outline in the Production Notes piece), I’m still quite happy with the results.
Also, which cuts specifically threw you off? You claimed there were a few a few jarring cuts here and there, do you have any examples so I can get an idea what you mean?
Miles,
Lest you be misled, I’d like to comment on a few of kkukshtel’s well-meaning but sometimes inaccurate technical points. I’d also like to opine on what I think kkukshtel and zachmoore were attempting to say about the film in a general sense.
Errors
RE: “On the note of aperture, it looks like you shot this thing with your aperture wide open the whole time.”
In cinematography, “wide open” means the exact opposite of what the author wrote here. It essentially means that the iris of your lens is opened as far as it is able, thus rendering a comparatively shallower depth of field. What he means to say is that it appears you shot with a “closed/stopped down” aperture, thus giving a comparatively deeper depth of field. To his credit, kkukshtel’s advice on one way to attain a shallower depth of field is correct. A good ND filter can go a long way in less-than-perfect daylight and would have been helpful here.
RE: “although your blacks look a little crushed (not black)”
“Crushing the blacks” in colorist speak is once again the opposite of what the author has posted here. It essentially means deepening the blacks (more or less the equivalent of adding black clipping to a photograph). By doing this, you often lose detail in your shadows. Sometimes it’s a good thing; sometimes it’s not. This is your aesthetic call.
Things I liked (and didn’t like)
I thought that the gentleman with the goatee was really quite good. His delivery was great and I felt he gave a very natural performance, especially compared to the histrionics of the other actor. Out of curiosity, did this latter actor have a background in theater? This might account for his style. In any case, his lines came off hollow, artificial.
I don’t need to talk about the fake blood. We all make a cheesy decision at one time or another.
The Elephant in the Room
I think that the internet has once again effectively created a rift in communication. While kkukshtel ostensibly seems to disagree with zachmoore and urges you not to listen to him, it’s curious to me that when examining the latter portion of the former writer’s post I found that they both take issue with the same aspect of the film. Let’s not mince words here: it’s not the idea that is lacking here. It’s the execution. What kkukshtel and zachmoore are both saying is that the philosophical discussion needs a better vehicle for carrying it. It’s all well and good to say that you’ve made a film about ideas and you don’t need to pay attention to narrative, but the problem with this is that the work holds no weight if those ideas have already been expressed by several other renowned filmmakers in a more convincing and authentic manner. What allows filmmakers to continue recycling the same themes and issues (in your case, god, guilt, punishment, repentance, etc.) throughout the years is that they find fresh, poignant ways of expressing these ideas.
The point is it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to model bits of dialogue off of things that have been expressed in countless other films. Bergman, for instance, nearly drove these same themes into the ground in his trilogy. What does take a great deal of skill, however, is finding that interesting concept for treating these themes. What both posters seem to be touching on is the fact that this situation involving two guys burying a dead body without any expressed motive feels contrived and dull, an unwarranted device used to wax poetic on a worn-out subject.
One final thing, please don’t feel as though I’m trying to tear the work to pieces. It’s laudable that you have transcended the mindless garbage that filmmakers continue to pander to the pathetic public at large (I’m looking at you Hollywood blockbusters). You’ve obviously found some deep issues that interest you and that needn’t be shunned entirely. Now it’s time to explore them in a captivating way.
—Keith
Thanks for the input, Keith. I’m definitely open to the idea that perhaps the execution was lacking to some people, though at the same time I’m finding some folks here seem to be giving the film (and the ideas expressed therein) a bit more weight/gravitas than was intended. And yeah, I understood what the previous poster was getting at on the technical side, even if he fudged the specifics a bit; I’m happy with the color work/shadow detail myself, and as I wrote above, the location and other outstanding factors kind of forced us to shoot at a low ISO/relatively high f-stop. And for the record, both actors have a background in theater, though as far as I’m aware Ryan (who plays Peter, the taller one) has more film experience than Justin. Personally I’m quite fond of both performances, for different reasons (partly because they clash a bit).
Thanks again for watching/sharing your thoughts.
It’s kind of late and I’m zoning out a bit, but I felt I should clarify that I don’t mean the ideas expressed in the film shouldn’t be given weight or gravitas (I mean, clearly, they were), but rather the film’s narrative itself. The ideas were the focus, not necessarily how they radically shifted the character’s perspectives or changed them as people. Sorry for any confusion.
You’re welcome, Miles. Keep it up and remain open to criticism in the future; I think your work has a lot of potential.
@ Keith I’m sorry, I did terribly misspeak in regards to aperture, as for the the phrase “crushed blacks”, I’d either learned the wrong definition, or misunderstood someone when they told it to me, thank you for making the corrections.
@Miles (when you responded to my post) I’d have to disagree with you again,
You’re stated description is that your film is a film about “faith and redemption”. Given that that description usually imples a heavier context to a film, if you’re plan was to simply observe a conversation, then you should have chose a different direction with presentation. The people just killed somebody, pretty serious, and are now discussing faith. Again, serious. No happy music to lighten the mood, yet ominous music near the end that would typically imply a concluded idea/feeling, something you dont typically put that at the end of a plain conversation sequence.
And I’m glad you enjoyed the film, I respect it as a piece of work. Most people just get these cameras and shoot test footage for their youtube channel, so I’m always glad to know somebody IS making a film.
As for cuts:
1:21-1:24 got me, I think because the shot before the cut looked so good composition/color wise, and then you cut to what looks like raw footage on character 2 getting into the car. I almost wished you would have lingered a bit longer and chose a different route to transition, especially considering you favor longer shots when they are digging.
1:25-1:26 I think you should have went with a fade here. The simple cut to the tress and back is much too fast for the passage of time I think you were trying to convey.
I would like to point out again that the cuts during the conversation are GREAT. Seriously, they are spot on.
Again around 4:50 with the fading suggestion. I still don’t know what they did with the body, like if they ever actually burried it, especially considering they are digging during the whole conversation, NOT filling.
And I think Keith got what I was trying to say? I’m not sure, but he does make good points. I disagree with zachmoore in the fact that he didn’t think this should be a topic to be explored, that topic (as I took it), being philosophical conversations. I argued that these were films to be made, and commended Miles on his effort, despite my complaints.
Also Miles, I don’t think I said, but I do like the character’s performances. The taller one is definitely more convincing though (as you pointed out he had more experience), but they work well together. The only part where I doubted a bit was the prayer near the end.
And I don’t think either of us (though I may be speaking out of turn) were speaking of narrative. I had no issue with the fact the characters were simply in a place at a time. I was more or less interested in what you were trying to accomplish through this dialogue GIVEN the lack of narrative.
Hmm, those cuts you mentioned could perhaps be worked incorporated… I know I have some different takes of Character 2 getting into the car, and a fade might work well to distinguish between the middle and final scenes. Thanks for going back and giving specific examples, I appreciate it.
I re-uploaded the final 1080p master, including different credits (a couple people complained about not being able to read the previous font), as well as two alterations discussed above. Check it out: http://vimeo.com/21064824
Well a “windscreen” is, ironically, not what you’d want outdoors. As you noticed, you still get wind in the track. If you spent any time trying to remove it, you probably noticed there’s really nothing you can do about it after the fact.
The solution? A blimp.
http://rodemic.com/accessory.php?product=Blimp
Rode makes the cheapest full blimp I know of, and it’s very good.
The so called “deadcats” you see that just pull over the end of the mic aren’t really helpful in wind above 5 mph. A full blimp is basically a 4-5" diameter hollow tube covered in a thin, mesh screen. Then you pull fur over the tube while the mic sits centered inside. The result is 2-inches of dead air & empty space on all sides of the mic.
This is what you see boom ops holding on any normal film set outdoors.
We’ve won our first round of awards for this film, picking up Best Narrative Short, Best Director and Best Actor (for Ryan Castro – “Peter”) at the first annual Super 68 Film Festival in NY this past Friday.
Miles Trahan
Check it out in High Def: http://vimeo.com/21064824
Two young men discuss faith and redemption while disposing of a body in the woods.
“…Simplicity at its best…. If you can overlook [a] few flaws, you can appreciate the skill and expertise that Trahan exhibits in executing his dialogue-heavy, philosophical short flick.” – MovieCynics.com
Written, Produced & Directed by Miles Trahan
Starring Ryan Castro & Justin Serrano
Director of Photography Iain Browne
Camera Operators Dean Urciuoli, Sean Feuer & Iain Browne
Field Audio Dylan Snyder
Edited by Wade Wilson
USA | 7 mins. | Format: HD Video (HDSLR) | Drama
IMDB Title Page: imdb.com/title/tt1867983/
For More Information: mag-waste.tumblr.com/post/4453154635/bad-things
Please watch, rate, comment or just drop me a line here. Thanks, all.