Yakoob on 12/3/2009 at 03:53
So I figured I would post my most recent college creation and get some feedback. Done in a team of 3 over 3 weeks (including script writing), it is a 20-minute story of three scriptwriters who are constantly bickering and arguing as they try to complete an expensive script for an upcoming deadline. Little do they realize that there is more to the project than they might think.
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http://koobazaur.com/?v=TheProxy)
Inline Image:
http://koobazaur.com/content/image/movies/screenshots/theproxy01.jpgEnjoy!
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Any and all criticism is MUCH appreciated, especially things I can improve upon.
Tonamel on 16/3/2009 at 22:42
I know how frustrating it is to put something out and not get any response, and you did specifically ask for criticism. So in the interest of not leaving you hanging, I'll give some comments. Unfortunately, they have to start with me saying that... um, well...
It's not very good.
Of course, a lot of the trouble I think comes from the very fast production cycle, but the end result was that I had no idea what was going on.
First: the script. I'm trying to think of a better way to say "the whole concept was a poor choice" because that's not at all what I mean. Since you were writing your own script, you would have been better served by picking something that you could film in a more believable fashion. The main characters were supposed to be millionaire out-of-college artistes, which took me ages to figure out because 1) they're college age, 2) they dress like college students, 3) they talk/behave like college students and 4) they spend almost the entire film in a cramped student lounge (am I to expect millionaires to work in that kind of setting?). If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
The rest of the issues may be from The Curse of Knowledge. You know exactly what's happening at any given moment, so it can be very hard to remember what the audience doesn't. This can lead to issues such as continuity confusion (at the end, the guy refers to "these three idealistic writers" when we've only ever seen him talk to two of them, and we never actually see him involved in the teaching of the lesson. What's his deal? Also, what lesson did the writers learn?) to understanding the plot sequence (I could never tell if, when we returned to the writers' room, we were in the same scene as before. Was everything else a flashback, or was there more linearity to what was going on?).
But like I said, this may all be symptoms of going through a project too fast, where it's really easy to forget to do regular checks for this sort of thing. I recently had to do an adaptive music thing for one of my professors that involved writing a bunch of different instruments separately, so they could each change of the fly. I only had two days to do it, and in the end I forgot to test all of the instruments against each other. The final mix was TERRIBLE, but I didn't even notice it until the teacher said (quote) "This mix is really, really bad." It happens, but you remember for next time and improve.
I look forward to the next one!
Yakoob on 17/3/2009 at 03:26
Tonamel, thank you for your feedback! This is exactly the kind of criticism I am looking for (as opposed to all of my colleges creaming themselves over my "growing talent" and "aspirations" :mad:).
The thing about millionaire college students is an excellent point. Sadly we lacked any sort of funding or good locations so we had to work with what we had and hope for "suspension of disbelief". Works ok for people who know me and what I was going for, but for complete strangers like you and the Internets... not so much. A lesson well learned, something I will definitely take in consideration in the future.
As for the "three idealistic writers" but talking to only two, I completely agree - after rewatching the film multiple times, it really needed the guy to interact with the 3rd one as well. (In the 3rd guy's interview he actually references meeting with him, but it's not strong enough and does not stick in the viewer's memory).
Also, just FYI, the lesson is explained right in the last banquet flashback. The idea is that the writers claim the do all of this for their passions and the money is just a nice reward, but when encountered with the shitty project, they all opt out of their passions, take the money and run. But in the end, they all get screwed over by the guy at the banquet (McDowell), who arranged the whole thing exactly to prove this point to them.
I also felt this point was not clear and strong enough, but due to time constraints and no scriptwriting experience, we just had to roll with it :(
Again, thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Out of curiosity, since you seem to know what you're talking about, do you have experience with film, or are you just a diligent movie watcher?
Tonamel on 17/3/2009 at 05:25
Well, I was a teaching assistant for a video production class, but that's about it. Any expertise I have comes from studying storytelling for my game design work. Notice how I only talked story, and not cinematography/etc? That's why.
The "lesson learned" is a perfect example of the aforementioned Curse of Knowledge. You know what the lesson is and how they learn it, but I don't. Sure, they dump their ideals for the money in the end, but there's no follow-up showing how they've changed from the experience, so as far as I know they're just as egotistical and idealistic as they were at the beginning, having brushed this experience off as a fluke. If I don't feel like they've learned anything, it's hard for me to pin down what it is they're supposed to have learned.
Muzman on 17/3/2009 at 05:39
I meant to comment on this, but I forgot. Sorry. Good thing it got kicked back to the top.
Anyway, Tonamel's covered most of it. I had to watch it twice to work out what was going on and I'm still not entirely sure what it was all about.
The acting isn't great and neither is the dialogue, but that's not always the end of the world. Immediately alienating is the audio; distorting on-camera mic from the first minute. The room space changes with every angle and quite a bit gets lost. I don't know how much gear you had or whose it was but proper sound can go a long way to bringing the audience in. Secretly all people are old and deaf inside; if their normal adjustments can't make what they're listening to clearer, they get annoyed and/or stop paying attention.
Use atmos tracks to keep each scene even and junk stuff that doesn't work. Brutal noise reduction and compression artifacts are distracting. There was evidence of some ADR and foley on there. There needs to be a lot more. There were a couple of stray sounds as well; the car park has funny noises that sound like off-camera cues from someone filling in for the phone; the agent in the lift gets caught in the edit partly starting her next line etc (and if she's not plainly reading the script off that clipboard it sure looks like it); camera handling noises. That kind of thing won't do either, I'm afraid.
Camera stuff: There's a few blown eyelines, line crosses and crooked frames here and there. If you're doing a mannered 'set-shots, tripods, shot-reverse shot' sort of flick, these get pretty noticable. You can get away with it if you do it all verité hand held and so on and that's generally why everyone does it these days. However I really wish people didn't and I don't think it would have suited this. Watch out for leaving the auto exposure on though.
Lessee. We don't learn much about these three writers except that they always bicker and talk about how they haven't gotten anywhere, the tone isn't light enough for repeated water throwing gags. I guess there are some narrative explanations for a lot of it, but I kinda missed them because of the problems buying into what I was seeing (un suspended disbelief as per above). There was technical stuff like them talking about structure breaking down the plot and never actually doing it, where people that high up the food chain would be doing exactly that and graphing plots, arcs etc. All the scenes would be on cards with the specific goals of the scene written out so they could be rearranged. There's a scam aspect and the idea that some are indolent prima donnas, but they weren't individual or strongly devloped enough to cover that for me. They seem to be trying to do the job angrily but can't work together; that is a dynamic but it didn't seem to be the one this story needed. If you're getting together people who are just going to fall apart it'd be good if they did so for more interesting character reasons.
I kept expecting a parallel between the script and the 'movie' stories but I couldn't put my finger on anything specific. Was there one?
Anyway, won't go on too much. Could be a bit more pacilly cut though. There's probably 3 minutes to be had there.
You shouldn't be too discouraged by this, I hope. I went a bit beyond 'unvarnished detached audience member reaction' in what I've said, but hopefully it's useful. I'll have to go check out the other stuff now.
Yakoob on 17/3/2009 at 09:47
Quote Posted by Tonamel
Notice how I only talked story, and not cinematography/etc? That's why.
Yes, I did notice that, but I think Muzman covered the second half pretty nicely :)
Quote:
... there's no follow-up showing how they've changed from the experience, so as far as I know they're just as egotistical and idealistic as they were at the beginning ...
I guess my inability to write good scripts shines through this (note: I do not want to be a screenwriter, I only did it because no one else would). The reason for the lack of a follow up is deliberate, though. I did not want a cheesy "the guys fall down, but learn from their mistakes and are now great people!" It was supposed to be more of a "you are dicks and that's what you get for it!" kind of a thing, not intending to change them, but be more of a punch in the face. I guess over the few script revisions that got lost though (originally it was just a evil joke the rich guy plays on these writers to fuck with them for being so boastful, that somehow evolved into a "lesson" since other people in our group bitched about this script being too dark and gloomy).
Quote Posted by Muzman
Immediately alienating is the audio; distorting on-camera mic from the first minute ... compression artifacts ... camera handling noises ...
THIS. This has been the bane of my films since ever. Mainly because all our school has are shitty Sony camcorders with no microphone jack. So the sound just ends up being naturally shitty. You should check out some of my other works for a definition of a haliriously horrid and inaudible speech.
Quote:
Camera stuff: There's a few blown eyelines, line crosses and crooked frames here and there.
Since this is stuff I am most interested in, would you mind elaborating on that and pointing out the errors? I'd really appreciate that.
Quote:
You shouldn't be too discouraged by this, I hope. I went a bit beyond 'unvarnished detached audience member reaction' in what I've said, but hopefully it's useful.
Of course :) I'm not one of those people are gonna throw a fit over "my little precious" and ragequit. I am very much aware of the shoddy quality of my productions and, considering I want to get a career in this field, knowing what my greatest flaws are is the only way to fix them.
Again, I much appreciate you guys' detailed feedback, it is EXACTLY what I am looking for, and need!
Fingernail on 17/3/2009 at 09:56
Yeah, I had to stop watching because the first guy shouts so loud I had to turn it down so much I couldn't hear the girl talking.
henke on 17/3/2009 at 13:11
So you wrote a script about people trying to write a script?
: piccard :
I'll watch the movie later when I get home from work, but if you're not Charlie Kaufman I probably won't have any nice things to say about it.
PigLick on 17/3/2009 at 13:54
Sound was terrible, really hard to actually understand what was happening. Apart from that though, I think you had some good ideas, and hey, at least you have a finished product. Thats the only way to get better at shit, actually do it, then do it again.
Tonamel on 17/3/2009 at 18:47
Quote Posted by Yakoob
THIS. This has been the bane of my films since ever. Mainly because all our school has are shitty Sony camcorders with no microphone jack. So the sound just ends up being naturally shitty. You should check out some of my other works for a definition of a haliriously horrid and inaudible speech.
Well, better microphones wouldn't necessarily give you a better recording in that student lounge (though a boom would be handy to get everybody at the same loudness). What you need are blankets. cover every hard surface the camera can't see, especially the walls. Yeah, that means moving them for every shot, but it's the best and cheapest way to kill room echo. You can hold up blankets around the camera in places like the parking garage or gallery to try to create a smaller space for the camera's mic to live in.
And as Muz said, record the sound of the empty room, and loop that underneath to tie the shots together. Use a noise gate on the recorded audio track to get as much of the room noise out without making the dialog sound weird, then replace it with your own room noise.
Also, use a tripod or (
http://steadycam.org/) steadycam. Not only will it make your shots steadier, it'll seriously cut down on handling noise.
And if it still isn't working, ADR.
Quote:
Since this is stuff I am most interested in, would you mind elaborating on that and pointing out the errors? I'd really appreciate that.
I don't know much about eyelines, but I do know about "crossing the line." Basically, you should only ever film a scene from one side. If you are filming two people sitting at a table and then cut to a shot from the other side of said table, it looks to the audience like the actors swapped chairs without moving.
In the writer's room, the line is between the two guys (or at least the front two chairs, since I think they do switch chairs at one point). So whenever you have the camera between one of the guys and the girl, even slightly, it looks sort of awkward.
[edit] On reflection, I think it bears pointing out that "crossing the line" has more to do with camera angle than position. For your three chair setup, pick the blandest shot of "guy on either side, girl in the middle" then make sure that the camera angle never veers more than 90 degrees to either side. So if you want a tight shot on the girl, you can do that so long as the camera isn't panned over so far that you can also see one of the guys.
The classic example is filming a football game. It doesn't matter where you put the cameras, so long as Team A's goal is always on the left, and Team B's is on the right. You could even have a camera in the middle of the field, as long as it looks like the players are still running the same direction.
The only time you can cross the line is in a dolly/tracking shot, where the audience can clearly see "okay now we're on this side." Future shots must then be from THAT side of the line, unless you dolly back, but you probably shouldn't do that sort of thing too often.
I guess I DID learn a few things from assisting in that class.
