It might be a good idea to incorporate a comment system where the director could respond to reviews. When I watch the projects on this site I usually take time to write a 3-4 paragraph review - it would make my time seem better spent if the filmmakers had a public means to responding to criticism or answering equipment/production/story questions.

On the same note, maybe you should add a table where the filmmakers can describe the equipment they used.

The equipment table isn't a bad idea, but I think the whole director response idea is pushing it. Plus, that could possibly start a lot of unwanted flaming if the director doesn't get the feedback that he is looking for.

Besides, we already get enough people trying to defend their movies in the forums, and it almost always ends badly.

"Besides, we already get enough people trying to defend their movies in the forums, and it almost always ends badly."

I have little interest in reading defenses. More like a response, so that you can figure out if directors actually read the reviews, and how they respond.

It's possible that there could be flaming, but why not just moderate those comments the same as the actual reviews?

Seriously, I've said this like a hundred times. Newgrounds.com has all this, a great voting system, author's comments, reviews and author's response, and a nice profile system. If this site's going to go through a major redesign it should really follow what newgrounds has going for it.

elliott.

I'm not sure about the "Author's response" - that's what the forums are for.

But it might be nice to have a bit of text (besides the description) where the filmmaker can talk about his film such as the film's background and how he/she made it.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

Well, you're changing the design to black on white, what should I care anyway? *sobs*

elliott.

"I'm not sure about the "Author's response" - that's what the forums are for."

Seems to me like the filmmakers don't widely use that part of the forum, and if so, rarely acknowledge specific reviews. I think if it was incorporated into the site proper rather than the forums, it would become more of a useful tool.

Don't steal the black on white. White backgrounds hurt my eyes after a while. (Sobs along with Grimlock).

Anyways, I like the idea of an equipment description, but isn't the whole Directors Defense thing kind of what the "Film on this Site" topic is for? Just start a topic about your movie, pick the reviews you wish to defend against, and defend yourself in a calm manner.

Or, you could just be cool and take the bad reviews and find a way to discredit it on your next movie. Then ignore the ones that don't make sense. Sounds like a better solution to me.

Evan, in response.

I do agree with you that there could have been more characterization and time spent with the housewife, postman, etc. My intention was not to spend the time building up to the murder sequence, perhaps a downfall, perhaps not. I don't think there's anything wrong with not anticipating something. It just happens.

The Mitchum line worked better on paper.

Points taken in regard to editing. I'm no professional at that. However, regarding the jump cuts -- of course they're not "necessary." I liked the way it looked. Sorry if you did not.

Adobe Premiere was such a ***** and I spent weeks trying to get the widescreen better and then finally gave up due to a lack of technical insight. I was going to release it full-frame, but people had insisted on the wide even if there is a slight stretch (including cast). In short, I gave up. You're entirely right to critique it.

Again, regarding characters, yes, I only had about 8 minutes to work with and shot the whole thing in a day. The script is suppose to be a throw-back to some film noir and things like that. So to repsonse to others who said it was 'unbelivable,' just don't think about e-mail and the digital age while you view it.

Voyeurism is great. I've see the colors trilogy though, but hey, thanks for the movie recommendation. I really enjoy Rear Window, Peeping Tom, etc.

Thanks for saying it's decent and better than most garbage on the site.

There you go. Director feedback.

Thanks for the response. It's nice to start a dialogue instead of throwing a review into the black hole. I don't know if I mentioned it in my review, but I think it would have been advantageous to not spend time on the character of the woman's lover, and instead focus on the 2 main characters. After all, his main contribution to the story was to establish that the woman was having an affair.

Re: widescreen, there's a couple different ways. It looks like you rescaled it to 16:9, without cropping the image. I'm not sure about Premiere, but in AE you can easily either mask off part of the image or matte it with black bars.

I actually could understand Mitchum's final line when I checked it out again, it just seemed sudden and out of place initially.