clips mesh poorly together
i’m really surprised anyone could overlook that
thank you for your review, although some parts are a tiny bit off as well as the audio I hope people here give it a chance to see from beginning to end.
Not bad. I liked how you set upyour camera. The guy wiht the balack shirt was not very into it but the guy with the white shirt was good. Not bad.
Hey! Very nice texture. I liked the lighting. The audio was a bit low.
The mise-en-scene could have been a bit more interesting. I couldn’t help but notice the banal walls. Next time give the set a bit more character. A picture or two will tell us more about the character(s) and save some dialogue.
All in all, a good effort!
-Bill
thanks dudes, this was done out of the blue at my friends apartment but I tried my best and yeah the guy wearing the white t shirt is a great actor!
A few shots were interesting. Dialogue was a bit unnatural. I liked the guy in the white shirt too. All in all, I think it was a fair attempt.
Loved the ending! Interesting twist, and you can even contemplate a deep philosophy to it: the similarity of women to felines in charecter.
Great short film.
What type of camera did you use, may i ask?
I don’t really have much to add beyond what’s already been said, but I did like the lighting and camera placement on many of the shots. Image is very crisp and seems to be balanced pretty well. It’s kind of a ‘blah’ story though and the idea that it communicates some kind of ‘philosophy’ is reaching quite a bit, but as it seemed to be thrown together out of the blue, I understand it can’t be perfect. Dialogue was too formal and rather one-note the entire time. The guy in the white shirt was really milkin’ that cigarette, heh. I also liked the ending which was pretty amusing and well done. Maybe just a tightening up of the structure/editing, and perhaps a reworking of the flow of the dialogue might really improve this considerably.
Nice ending!!! I thought the guy in the white was a good actor!
thanks dudes, the camera i used was the canon t2i
Meshing wasn’t as horrible as stated. Some were a bit off, as was some audio, but not enough to annoy people.
I loved the placement of the window, it gave a very good compositional focus to the characters, although sonny was completely out of place in the shot since he was 1) out of the light 2) almost giving his back to the camera. The cat shots were quite simply stunning
Actor wearing white was interesting and into it, one wearing black was not that good, but it could also have been the fact that the script was a bit wooden as it tried to build up, but fell a bit flat.
Didn’t care too much for the twist, but then again, I rarely do.
All in all that was actually a really decent out-of-the-blue attempt.
(Also, disagreeing with a previous post; the lack of pictures on the wall was great. The blankness put the focus were it was meant to be. On the conversation over coffee and cigarettes. We didn’t need to know anything about the characters to enjoy that, especially since one character had very few seconds of screen time)
i met those two the day i shot it, we never rehearsed at all, for my next short i will be more prepared :)
I enjoyed it a lot. I agree that the script perhaps needed work, and the bloke in black didn’t seem to commit himself as much as his opposite number in white, but I liked it regardless. It was well made on a technical level, and the twist at the end was very charming.
I’ll chime in on the seemingly popular opinion that the guy in the black shirt needs to learn how to act.
Seriously… was he trying to be super monotone? Or was he just nervous? … either way, his inaptitude is blatantly apparent and does not complement the vignette whatsoever…
On a more positive/constructive note, I must say that I do quite enjoy the cinematography (if you can call it that). The black and white medium seems to have worked well for you, although, (imho) I would have liked to see more fluid transitions, perhaps maybe some over the shoulder reaction shots… either way, you’ve got to ‘keep on keeping on’. It is no secret that it takes a brave individual to submit one’s work to the ruthless criticism that is usually associated with this forum; so, on those terms, kudos to you…
We all know that criticism, in the end, will only make you a better filmmaker/artist.
Good luck in your future projects and cheers.
the main reason why i decided to shoot this thing was that i’m tired of criticizing other people’s work so I thought i’d give it a try and see how it goes. The guy in the black shirt was a bit nervous when he came to the shoot, like i said we hadn’t rehearsed and i met them through e-mail so everything was done in an hour and a half. The reason his performance was poor was 100% my fault.
Very cool. The camera was great, I mean, the movements, position, etc. The sound (dialogue scenes) was confusing, though: the pan was always different, probably did not use external microphone. And there was much dialog, I think. A little less lines, some sound treatment and could have been great. I really enjoyed it.
Love the cat twist at the end and how you build up to it!
Considering you didn’t do rehearsals, I’ve seen worse performances with much more prep.
A good rule of thumb is to rehearse, but never over-rehearse. Kills the natural element of the performance. Good directors will leave some things to chance.
It’s so funny that you uses a very nouvelle-vague style for such an ironic movie, I see a contradiction here. Why should it be black and white, why is the guy smoking in this jean-pierre leaud manner?
Although, I love the humour and I think it’s a pretty good work.
Good luck!
work on the dialogue next time. I liked the editing. Make sure what they are talking about is interesting as hell. Watch Jules and Vince talk in “Pulp Fiction”. If you can’t come up with brilliant dialogue, don’t use any at all, make the film silent.
The clock on the wall. The texture of that shot is fairly stunning. The cat shots are, of course, amazing as well. Those two subjects alone entirely justify shooting in black & white. A little more thought/prep work could have gone into the human subjects to make b&w more appealing for them. I think the guy in the white shirt looks the most interesting visually (the camera is closer to him, and his attire/grooming feel more or less predetermined, even if that wasn’t necessarily the case).
I think the other two guys could have used a little bit of front lighting. Nothing too drastic, of course. Barring that, the shots could have been a little closer in on them when they were speaking. A lot of how we get to know characters in dialogue-based films is by seeing their faces. I think that effect is really good on the guy in the white shirt, but not so much on the other two. Also, the guy in white benefits from having the natural light from the window illuminating him. Sure, I think he’s the most natural actor of the three, but the biggest reason why he’s more interesting than the others on screen is because he’s lit better and his appearance is more suited to the b&w.
In all, I thought it was a neat little movie! You made me want to buy a Canon 550D.
Oh, another thing!
Just now I thought for a second it might be interesting if the guy in white and the guy in black switched positions. And what if we never saw the face of the guy in black? If we just saw, for example, part of the back of his head and his left shoulder. When the guy in black talked, we would just see the reactions of the guy in white, his mannerisms, what he did with his cigarette, etc.
Not only would this perhaps be a sort of antidote to the fact that the guy in black isn’t the most, shall we say, enthusiastic actor. But it would also build, I think, a lot more tension in the scene, which is then unraveled swiftly when we find out that Solma is a cat. Also, I think it would remedy another issue I discovered, which is … too many cuts! This scene is basically begging for a one-take, one shot dialogue. And when the big cut comes, where the camera pans down and we see Solma, the cut itself hits even harder because there haven’t been many yet in the scene. The only other cuts should be the inserts of the clock and the ashtray (which are, again, excellent). And the upside to this is that, because you’re just working with a single shot of the entire dialogue interaction, when you cut back from those insert shots, the continuation will feel far more natural (and not like you moved the camera somewhere else and restarted the scene).
Also, I think the bland kitchen works just fine, because it makes the juxtoposition w/ Solma and that brilliant floral carpet/rug even more pronounced. We move, in I think a fairly appealing way, from something bland to something incredibly lush, exotic, decadent. That cut, and that abrupt change in atmosphere, is the linchpin to the entire thing. Anything you do to place emphasis, to visually shock us in that moment, is going to be beneficial to your intentions.
one of the main reasons why i shot it in black and white was because my computer is not too fast so if i shot it in color and then did some post coloring (magic bullet) it would’ve taken me forever to edit. Ill probably do my next short in black and white as well.
a fucking cat. fuck you
LOL ^
Paulo Arellano
this is my short film about two male roommates talking about living with their female roommate:\
http://www.vimeo.com/12466621