watch Mustang Justice -- Our 1st Movie

I’m new to this forum, but I like what I see so far. I am also coming off the NYCMMMM buzz and wanted to post our 1st round non-winning entry. I was DP on a fairly lame entry last year and kept thinking about running a team this year. A month before the start I mentioned it at a party and several friends wanted to do it. My wife was really fired up about it, so two weeks before the competition start, I sent an email to 30 friends inviting them to a 2-week movie making party. Unfortunately, almost everyone sent regrets.

Bad news, good news, Friday before the start of the madness I handed over the Canon XL-1s to be sent in for service. Good news, I bought a Canon GL2 as a backup camera. Of course this was all for the corporation I work for, but the cameras are at my disposal--unless in for repair!

Anyway, my expectations were low for this project, but I think it turned out OK. We had a blast and became addicted to filmmaking. I have been making corporate stuff for years and teach at a technical college. Thank goodness for the 22 year-old student who played the main punk and edited the second half. The band (16-18 years-old) we found was great. We just needed a real studio for them.

We have lots of war stories, and we have a “making of” in the works. We shot the whole thing in 12 hours Sunday and Monday. Lots of planning, but we continued to work almost full time at our regular jobs. Editing was a couple all-nighters and I handed it in with 6 minutes to spare!

Sorry, I love to type.

Honest feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks!

http://homepage.mac.com/stevev/iMovieTheater33.html

That was a really good flick, Mr Ascoli.

That was a pretty rough category/genre to peg down in two weeks.

I think the transition from exterior of courthouse (to interior) could have been done in a single cut, and still made sense. The "dead-air tv" cuts had me a bit confused. Covering up bad jump cuts? Revelation of reality-tv setups? Satellite feed to another planet interupted? I had no clue. Obviously it all made sense 30 seconds later, but that Twilight Zone jump would have been just as effective with a simple "now outside, now inside" cut.

Great use of the Mustang idea, and equiv thereof in the second half. Really good story, overall. Left open for a possible sequel, as well. That would be good to see resolved at some future point.

It makes me sad that the only bad thing I can say about it is a simple transition.

I hope your addiction to filmmaking continues, and you'll have more to share here. Rar! Excellent stuff.

Zensteve said:

Left open for a possible sequel, as well. That would be good to see resolved at some future point.

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Wow, maybe that's our second movie. We really wanted to develop the "chase" but we just didn't have time. I'll see if it's possibile.

Your comments on the transition cracked me up, since this was recommended by the person who I worked with last year. I put it in for two reasons: 1) since I snubbed him out of every other part of this project it kept a friendship alive by taking his recommendation; 2) it helped cover up that my wife was standing in for the second punk walking up to the city hall. Your right it is too much.

Thanks for the positive feedback, I am very self critical.

The premise of car theives who go through some sort of portal and become horse thieves is an interesting one. There were a lot of problems with the short, however. Bad acting, bad dialogue, and bad sound were the main things. And I agree with Zen that the time shift was confusing the way it was done.

But that's why we do these little shorts, to learn what does and doesn't work for the audience.

Poke

Sound

Poke said:

There were a lot of problems with the short, however. Bad acting, bad dialogue, and bad sound were the main things.

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Thanks for the honest feedback. Bad acting yes, we need to find a source for acting talent. Bad dialogue yes, we need writing/editing help.

Was the sound that bad? How can I make it better? We didn't get very good location sound (no one to even hold the boom) so we over-dubbed the voices. (except the end clip). I recorded the band using a couple of condenser mics and a mini mixing board. We were in a small bedroom and it was ear splitting loud. The singer's house amp stunk. Most other background was recorded on a decent mic during shooting and mixed in.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Ascoli

Ascoli said:

so we over-dubbed the voices.

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That's what I was referring to. I felt the dub was bad.

Poke

Good premise, as said before, with the Mustang thieves becoming horse thieves. As someone who is on a Sergio Leone western kick and trying to produce a modern day western short film myself I liked waching this. This would be a tough genre to draw as cinema doesn't do westerns hardly at all anymore. I'm surprised it would even be a genre in a contest.

The western scenes, were those filmed in Sepia on you GL2 or post production work?

The dubbed sound was obvious. Making the audio my chief criticism.

The "dead-air TV" was odd choice to use for the transistion in this genre.

Overall, an interesting twist on a tough genre. Did you see the winner in this genre?

On a side note - if you would have used the fact that the car belonged to the judge in the film and not as an outtake at the end would have been a nice added twist to the story.

scooter said:

... As someone who is on a Sergio Leone western kick and trying to produce a modern day western short film myself I liked waching this.

The western scenes, were those filmed in Sepia on you GL2 or post production work?
... Did you see the winner in this genre?

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Thanks for the comments.

The sepia was done in post production.

This winner in this catagory was not posted, but the 1st runner up was. It was from Brazil and was very good. It had a real Sergio Leone fell set in modern day Brazil. You can find the link on the NYCmidnight.com forum.