It has fairly good cinematography but there really is no apparent story- I mean, I understand that he has a boring life and all, but 90 percent of short films still need a plot with some sort of conflict and resolution. As it is now, it's simply a collection of random shots of this guys boring life- this doesn't translate into an entertaining story. Also, it seems like over half of student films start with a kid getting out of bed and slamming his alarm... I don't understand why... Hope this helps and I don't mean to be too critical. I think you have obvious talent with some of your shots- you just need to work on the story and you'll be fine.
Posts: 85 | Location: Washington DC | Registered: July 05, 2006
The squished video gave me a headache. Were you trying to achieve a certain aspect ratio? You crop the footage to do that, not squeeze it.
It seemed like one giant music video. If you want advice, one strong piece of it I would give to you is not to let copyrighted songs set the mood of your film for you. You're letting the bands of those songs do most of the work, and to me that shows a little bit of laziness.
Otherwise I thought it admirable that you kept the camera locked down on a tripod for most of it. The "high school"-esque filmmaking immaturity reveals itself rather quickly when the videotaping is done handheld.
Overall the squeezed aspect ratio and blurred motion combined made this very hard to sit through. Try to look into correcting these issues and maybe minimizing the blur effect. Keep in mind your movie isn't really benefiting much from the giant black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. 16:9 is fine, I don't see a reason to push it farther than that. And I hate to mention "cliche" but the opening of a person in bed and hitting the alarm has got to be the most overused beginnings to film known to man. Add some story and correct those issues and maybe this could turn into something.
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