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watch WHAT'S OUT THERE - my short sci-fi-ish thing

M

mathismoney

hey guys. i'm new. I introduced myself over here!

WHAT'S OUT THERE is a little 25 minute movie I shot this summer on a set a couple friends and I built in my parents' garage, based on a script I wrote that began as an idea for a play but turned into something...not a play.

Number one influence for this thing is definitely THE THING, which is not to say they are similar or remotely comparable. I just love "Who can you trust?" stories and wanted to do one of my own. That ended up being perhaps a smaller part of it than I intended, but it worked as a jumping off point. It's a weird little dramedy.

Anyways, enough excuses, here it is to watch if you'd like!


Well I'm not sure the embed is working but here's the link!!
 
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mathismoney said:
It's a weird little dramedy.
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Definitely the right description! Perhaps this could have been a little shorter, but it flowed well and I liked it. Nice use of minimal details, where keeping story elements from the audience makes the viewer more curious. Some good camera angles and editing, too. You've got style. I also liked your low key synth score. What did you score this with?

Nice job!
 
At this particular moment, I don't have the energy to watch a 25-minute short, but out of curiosity, I had to check it out. I randomly fast-forwarded to the 5:30 mark, for the Dan/Daniel scene. I love it! I'll definitely be watching the full movie later.
 
i like the dialogue. thought lower angles and lighting could of helped the bland room, however nice little cast, the girl is a babe too! ;)
 
Not to shabby!

The biggest thing I noticed was that you focus too much on who is speaking at any given moment. This leads to an "I'm talking!", "Now I'm talking!", "Look, I'm talking!", sort of feel. Cut away to reactions more frequently.
 
escher said:
Not to shabby!

The biggest thing I noticed was that you focus too much on who is speaking at any given moment. This leads to an "I'm talking!", "Now I'm talking!", "Look, I'm talking!", sort of feel. Cut away to reactions more frequently.
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Great advice! I didn't shoot much coverage on this, which definitely affected how much I could do that, but it's something I'm certainly going to be more mindful of in the future.

Glad you guys are liking it!
 
Scoopicman said:
Definitely the right description! Perhaps this could have been a little shorter, but it flowed well and I liked it. Nice use of minimal details, where keeping story elements from the audience makes the viewer more curious. Some good camera angles and editing, too. You've got style. I also liked your low key synth score. What did you score this with?

Nice job!
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first of all, thanks man! I am 100% of the "the shorter the better" mantra, but I saw this more as a short full length than a long short, if that makes sense. It's definitely the longest thing I've ever completed.

and believe it or not, I did the score entirely in...GarageBand. That thing's a powerful tool if you look under the hood a bit!
 
mathismoney said:
Great advice! I didn't shoot much coverage on this, which definitely affected how much I could do that, but it's something I'm certainly going to be more mindful of in the future.
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I first noticed this effect in... oh heck, what was it... oh yeah! "Sasquatch Hunters"! Horrible, awful film. My friends and I are watching it and the "I'm Talking!" problem was rampant. I credit this film for improving my editing more than anything else I've ever seen or read, and it probably vastly improved the editing job I did on my own 25-minute short film.


and believe it or not, I did the score entirely in...GarageBand. That thing's a powerful tool if you look under the hood a bit!
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Does Garage Band let you import video directly into it yet? This feature was precisely why I bought Logic Studio to score my aforementioned film. Being able to time the music directly to the video is such a crucial feature that I can no longer live without it. :)
 
Nice. Whip smart dialogue delivered well by your actors. Fun short.




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escher said:
I first noticed this effect in... oh heck, what was it... oh yeah! "Sasquatch Hunters"! Horrible, awful film. My friends and I are watching it and the "I'm Talking!" problem was rampant. I credit this film for improving my editing more than anything else I've ever seen or read, and it probably vastly improved the editing job I did on my own 25-minute short film.
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Nice! That's a large cast. Has to be one of the larger casts that wee see here. You do have nice coverage.
 
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richy said:
Nice! That's a large cast. Has to be one of the larger casts that wee see here. You do have nice coverage.
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Thanks! We had a ton of volunteers and I think we shot about 12 hours of footage total. What funny is that we still didn't have as much coverage as we would have liked.
 
EDIT: ADAM FUNN lived up to it's surname. Tonally very interesting, as it began pretty light but really just poured on the horror as time went on, as absurd as it was...tonally there was a very interesting gradual shift. I appreciate scripts full of nonsense. I find myself writing stories that have definite character arcs, but that are built around vague or abstract circumstances. Does that make sense? Like how in ADAM FUNN there's this whole nonsensical system of fish and corncobs (I was kind of hoping it would end with him slitting his wrists with that thing), and we never really understand it, but Adam does...and so we believe there's some order to it. I've written more than one short where the details of an event that the plot is hinged on are completely vague. Sort of the RESERVOIR DOGS thing (post-heist) to the extreme.

escher said:
mathismoney, any plans for your next project yet?
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Actually, when I finished WHAT'S OUT THERE I was excited to finally be able to focus on a new project. Then I opened the script for my next thing and remembered that I had taken a little break during editing of WOT to start writing the next one....and so I opened up the first draft to find that it was almost complete!

It's a short of a similar length (20-30min) which is basically my psychological thriller WHAT WOMEN WANT -- boy meets girl, can read girl's mind, starts out useful but gets out of hand.

Planning on shooting this spring.

Out of curiosity's sake, how old would you say the actors in WHAT'S OUT THERE looked?
 
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