Again - I appreciate the critiques and feedback - but really (and I don't mean to be a pissy internet kid) I can't fully take them to heart given that most of them are just feedback on the first 10 minutes.
I get that - and in reality I am just some pissy internet critic who hasn't watched the whole film so I wouldn't expect you to take what I say too seriously. The best I can say is that it's my honest opinion, and hopefully it's of some use to you as one of many opinions on the film.
seems the only people who dislike the film are the ones who don't watch it all the way through.
Doesn't that kind of make sense though? I mean, if I'd liked it I would have watched it all the way through. How often do you stick with a film you don't like just to see if it gets any better at some point?
The truth is after I wrote my last post I felt bad that it was so negative based on just the opening scenes, so I tried skipping ahead to watch some more scenes throughout the film... unfortunately it all kind of felt the same to me.
Lol - our "Wow" moment is the first peice of dialogue that comes out the moment before we cut away from black.
How the opening line of dialogue didn't at least capture your attention is beyond me.
Thinking back on the opening scene the only thing I remembered was a line that was something like "we weren't always like this." I had to go back and watch it again because I honestly couldn't remember the opening line at all.
So think about this - I watched it, then I saw your comment about the celebrity death jokes, then I critiqued it and said I never even got to the celebrity death jokes, then you called attention to the opening lines, so then I go back and re-watch it a couple times and finally realize that's one of the celebrity death jokes you were referring to - and it hadn't even registered.
That's your wow moment? It's just not very memorable, nor very funny. It didn't catch my attention because it's not particularly attention-getting. It's a clever throwaway one-liner that has its place in the scene but acts primarily as a set up to the confrontation between the two characters. It's not much to hang the fate of your whole film on.
It might just not be your type of humor.
That's possible, although I tend to skew heavily towards 'inappropriate' humor. It's not the kind of humor I find lacking, it's the execution.
As far as the writing goes - I don't wish to be combative - but you are the first person out of hundreds to say it needed work.
I wouldn't take it as combative, and like I said - I'm just one guy on the internet. Feel free to ignore it, but I'll at least try to explain it a bit so you understand where I'm coming from.
I get what your intent was with the opening scene, I just don't think you achieved it. Typically the whole point of starting late in the story, and then going back to the beginning, is to hook people in with something exciting or intriguing. The interest this engenders in the audience buys you some breathing room to go back and tell the story at a more leisurely pace. I think it's actually a great device to use in situations where people might otherwise stop watching if you are trying to set up a complex story.
So my problem with the writing of the opening scenes has more to do with the lack of a hook rather than lack of 'wow'. You need to draw the audience in, give them a reason to stick around. You want the audience to ask themselves a question that they just have to know the answer to - and that can only be answered by watching the rest of your film.
What questions does your opening scene leave the audience with? Here's what I see:
"Who are these guys?" [a bunch of teenagers]
"What's going on here?" [they're having a party]
"Why are they acting this way?" [They're a bunch of teenagers. They're having a party.]
"How did things used to be?" [Pretty much the same, but without alcohol.]
"What's likely to happen next?" [Pretty much the same, but with alcohol.]
"Do I care?" [Not really. It's a bunch of teenagers. They party. Some are slightly more mature/responsible than others. The end.]
There's nothing there that the audience can't easily answer themselves, and the [answers] are pretty mundane. They don't suggest the possibility of anything too exciting to come, there's no real mystery, nothing too intriguing, nothing much we can't easily guess about the characters.
You've got a couple of jokes in there, but they aren't strong enough on their own to make up for the lack of anything else to hook the audience. It's not like we're laughing non-stop throughout that scene and hoping for more of the same. The opening scene just ends with the promise that we may eventually get to see how it came about - but it's just a few teenagers, having a relatively quiet party. Who cares how it came about?
So that's how I see it, make of it what you will.
