watch internal - Short film

Hey guys,

I want to present you our new short:



Tom has to do it. It's more important than ever. Tom has to kill.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K-mfXyWA5k
(I dunno why, but if I try to use the YT-tag, I only see a white area instead of the player)


We are from Germany and are all not older than 17 years. I was responsible for camera and post production and it was my first shoot with the Canon 7D. It was especially new for me to pull the focus all time, but it worked better than I expected, despite the lack of a follow focus.
We shot the movie in one night and 2 weeks later it was finished. Kolja Brand, a young composer, made the great score in a very short time, which was also new for us.

I hope you like it, but I am of course interested in criticism.

Best wishes,
Alex

I liked it. I would have liked to see him fighting his conscience while next to his tied up brother, but I guess that woudl have spoiled the twist endin. Unless you put a gag in his mouth.

I just can say: Thanks and I am happy you liked it!

That was pretty sweet. Nicely shot, nicely edited. If I were to nitpick, I would say that I felt like the vast majority of the story was told via exposition (the phone-call), but I still like the action sequence you shot and edited, and it has a nice look.

On a side-note, and this is a small thing, but you might want to consider changing "Tommy Boy" to just "Tommy", in the subtitle translation. I know you didn't make this exclusively for an American audience, but I think most Americans have a pretty strong association with the name "Tommy Boy", and at least for me, it kinda took me out of the moment, cuz now I'm thinking about Chris Farley.

Totally good. I enjoyed that.

Gotta disagree with C-Funk. Sometimes VO is ok. This time it worked for me, I didn't find it overly expository.

Oh and +1 on the Tommy Boy comment. I don't need to be thinking about fat guy in a little coat whilst watching a serious short

Thanks for your comments!

I am sorry about the Tommyboy association.. We´ll fix it!

Apropos, we used a Sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5, which is obviously not the best for shooting films, but for my first DSLR shoot it was nice to be able to zoom, especially because we were in a hurry..

I didn't enjoy this film as a whole. There were component parts that were stong, but as a whole, I don't feel as if the film was complete.

I think it is always going to be difficult to achieve a genre piece, especially when you have a very limited budget. I think this film got away with appearing a lot better than it was due to the hardware and the colour grading in post.

The DSLR was creating images with great depth, and the colour grading work to desaturate the images worked really well.

I feel the scene in which he is tormented in his bathroom went on too long; this is a feeling generated by being presented with the same images without progression.

The music was well made and typical of this kind of genre. But, I felt the music almost raised the stakes further than the story and acting were able to reach

With this being a genre piece, a lot of work needs to be invested into the story so the audience is able to accept what they're being presented as plausible. I didn't feel this story was plausible are there a couple of reasons why. The people in the story were not old enough, and although we were instructed that the brother had done something awful to let down the family, there was no context presented to explain this situation

The 'twist' made me laugh - I'm sorry to be so blunt. But this kind of genre needs a twist, therefore you went for it, and rightly so.

I think you should assess what resources you have available to you. As you stated yourself, you're young; therefore, would it be an idea to create a story more plausible for people of your age? You can still work towards creating great images, interesting post, and get a chance to act, but maybe you need to start telling different kinds of stories.

Hey Henry,

I totally understand your arguments and this is also what we don´t like about our own movie.
The story was created in half an hour, because we were just in the mood making a little flick. We tried to make the best of the simple idea and just wanted to entertain, but also to test the equipment. This is the result and we are really happy, that there are many people, who like this short, but we also understand those, who have problems with the actor´s age and the simple story.
Thanks for your helpful comment!

Alexxx11 said:

Hey Henry,

I totally understand your arguments and this is also what we don´t like about our own movie.
The story was created in half an hour, because we were just in the mood making a little flick. We tried to make the best of the simple idea and just wanted to entertain, but also to test the equipment. This is the result and we are really happy, that there are many people, who like this short, but we also understand those, who have problems with the actor´s age and the simple story.
Thanks for your helpful comment!

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Great attitude....How refreshing