watch Static - full film

A few months ago I posted a trailer to my short film "Static" (http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=6687&highlight=static) and I really appreciated the feedback.

So here is the final film. It's a thriller taking place entirely within a 100 year old abandoned farm house (scary stuff!)

Though it is for sale at Indieflix.com, I wanted to let you guys have download access to it. Again, I'd love to hear feedback. I appreciate every bit of it. Here is a link to a higher res. version (120 meg) since the embedded one is pretty small (30 meg):
larger file: http://explosiumfilms.com/static cut4chop.mov
[QT]http://www.explosiumfilms.com/static%20new.mov[/QT]
http://www.explosiumfilms.com/static new.mov
It has a 24 minute runtime. I hope to hear some feedback! thanks again.

Tyler Hisel

Downloading it now! 120+ Megs...

Loved it! Sound was well done. Acting was good. Concept was quite freaky. Handheld work was really stable...whoever did that deserves applause!

The only change I would have made would be to cut down the scene with sean kicking the door. I felt that got a smidge long. The point of his anger/frustration/fear was made about halfway through that sequence.

Light in the daytime?

I liked it too. I thought it was done really well. Great job. I thought that part was a little long too, but figured it was showing the mentality of the character. Like at the zoo some caged animals keep hitting the door, or side of the cage for long periods of time. I took from it that he was scared, wanted out, and still wanted to believe that it was a joke.

The part that I was confused on was the very beginning.
It was a good film though. Many great parts to it. Very enjoyable. I'll tell every one I know to check it out. Great work!

response to cootdog's spoilered text

I must not have caught that. You know, kids wanting something, looking for headphones, plugging them in so I can watch it.. I just must have missed that like. Thanks

No problem...I'm always here to point out people's deficiencies I was having poblems watching it too, wife is ill and was stopping me every couple of minutes to get her something. I understand your plight (HA! I used plight in a conversation...I get 4 points in the "use underused words" game!).

knightly said:

(HA! I used plight in a conversation...I get 4 points in the "use underused words" game!).

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That game is so incongruous and extraneous.

Downloading the film now.

Poke

Thanks for the great feedback guys, I really appreciate it!

knightly said:

Loved it! Sound was well done. Acting was good. Concept was quite freaky. Handheld work was really stable...whoever did that deserves applause!

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Yeah, the entire film was done handheld, very tiresome! I've got hands of stone, or maybe it was just too cold to move! Either way, thank you.

CootDog said:

I liked it too. I thought it was done really well. Great job. I thought that part was a little long too, but figured it was showing the mentality of the character. Like at the zoo some caged animals keep hitting the door, or side of the cage for long periods of time. I took from it that he was scared, wanted out, and still wanted to believe that it was a joke.

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I see what both of you are saying with regard to this sequence. Like you said, the goal was to convey the mindset of Sean in this situation. Both terror and desperation.

Poke said:

Downloading the film now.

Poke

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Eager to hear what you think

Anyone else have any feedback? Positive or negative? I'm a big boy, I can take it!

Great production values, decent pacing and acting, cinematography. Would've like to see more face shots, it's where you really see the terror! As a writer, though, I really have to say the script wasn't making it for me. I know the genre doesn't really demand it, but I think at least taking out some of the more expositional dialogue would've tightened it up. People don't often state the obvious, they just do things. Sean wanders around back to find another door, Joe says, "Hey, where you--" but is interupted by the tow guys on his phone. Sean just turns off the light, cause of course it's time to turn in, he doesn't have to tell Joe. Or when their car won't start "Great, now I'm missing my sister's wedding"- maybe Joe blames Sean for the breakdown, introducing a little sub-conflict which raises the tension. And you really can be scary, without blood writing on the walls, video ghosts, and freaky harlequin dolls. Unless you can tie them all together somehow. A nicely crafted piece, in any case.

I must admit... Static freaked me out. This was a great concept and very well done.

If it were me in that house and I saw blood all over the walls like that, I would have dove out the window like Superman. Once I hit the ground, I would have ran so fast it would take three days for the sound to catch up to me.

I thought the pacing was a bit slow. I can imagine this same concept being pulled of in less than five minutes, easily. There seemed to be a lot of walking around at the beginning, and even in the middle . To me this has the ability to kill your audience (no pun intended). There was more than one point where I desperately wanted to just fast forward to the end.

The concept - two guys have the misfortune to end up in a haunted house - is not an unfamiliar one. I liked the twist of having But it felt like nothing more than something added for the sake of "coolness." I know it's a short, and backstory for a TV set is a tricky thing to handle, but it could have been brilliant if .

There was some goos lighting and camera work, but in the end the short fell flat for me.

Poke

davidchecker said:

Great production values, decent pacing and acting, cinematography. Would've like to see more face shots, it's where you really see the terror! As a writer, though, I really have to say the script wasn't making it for me. I know the genre doesn't really demand it, but I think at least taking out some of the more expositional dialogue would've tightened it up.

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Thanks for the compliments. As for your comments on the script, I can see where you are comng from. I made a decision from the time I had the concept that I wanted a very minimal amount of dialogue, with a strong emphasis on visuals. As a result, I believe you could be correct, the dialogue may have turned out a bit 2-D.

mrde50 said:

I must admit... Static freaked me out. This was a great concept and very well done.

If it were me in that house and I saw blood all over the walls like that, I would have dove out the window like Superman. Once I hit the ground, I would have ran so fast it would take three days for the sound to catch up to me

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You're suicidal! A two story fall into the darkness? Ouch! The way I see it, the demon-cloak man would catch me quicker with two shattered legs!

Poke said:

I thought the pacing was a bit slow. I can imagine this same concept being pulled of in less than five minutes, easily. There seemed to be a lot of walking around at the beginning, and even in the middle Spoiler: after the guy disappears. To me this has the ability to kill your audience (no pun intended). There was more than one point where I desperately wanted to just fast forward to the end.

The concept - two guys have the misfortune to end up in a haunted house - is not an unfamiliar one. I liked the twist of having Spoiler: the guy see things through the TV set, and the ghost man being on the set but not visible in the room was well done (save for the guy either yelling "no" or "Joe" too many times). But it felt like nothing more than something added for the sake of "coolness." I know it's a short, and backstory for a TV set is a tricky thing to handle, but it could have been brilliant if Spoiler: the TV set had some reason for trying to spoil the bad ghost man's plans - like say it's inhabited by the ghost man's first kill, and it is trying to warn people.

There was some goos lighting and camera work, but in the end the short fell flat for me.

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Ok, I see what you're saying here. With regard to the pacing, you aren't the first one to thing it was a bit slow. I knew I wanted to make this film have a very deliberate pace, which some have felt it slow.
I will say this, watching on a computer screen doesn't help that perception. When played in the theater, I recieved no negative feedback about pacing. I;m not saying you would change your mind, just that the nature of the medium tends to encourage the feeling you had.
Thank you for your compliments on the TV room (which gave me many headaches in the storyboard phase! I really appreciate the thorough feedback, but we'll agree to disagree on some points! (if we didn't, we'd all be making the same movie wouldn't we?)

Thanks again for the comments guys, they really help!

Poke said:

I thought the pacing was a bit slow.

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I took this as building suspense, Hitchcock style. While watching Static, I never looked at the clock, a sign that the pacing was acceptable for me. I have a short attention span.

Poke said:

I liked the twist of having the guy see things through the TV set, and the ghost man being on the set but not visible in the room.

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I agree! I found this to be creepy and very well implemented. Also, the editing was seamless during this scene.

Kudos to this great production!

HomerS3 said:

...watching on a computer screen doesn't help that perception.

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Yes, I think when displaying things on the web a filmmaker needs to be aware that the web calls for a shorter run time. It's a commercial type setting - tell a lot in a short time. That being said, fi you choose to slow the pacing down, that's acceptable for me...but I think you could have built suspense and went at a slower pace without having the long/static walking shots.

Poke

Nice work! Good use of camera angles and lighting. And a GREAT location! Very well done overall.

A few nitpicks:

I also felt the pace was a bit slow throughout. Taking time to build suspense is important, but if the entire film is so slow, then it takes away from the moments where the slowness really counts.

I personally would have waited until evening to shoot the exteriors. With a good moonlight, that house would have looked a thousand times creepier.

The blood on the wall looked a little too much like paint and not real blood. Maybe it's a tweak you can do in editing? Just a thought.

When Sean first sees himself on the screen and looks up into the corner, you really need to put an insert of that empty corner. As it is, his reaction doesn't convey anything about what he see, and we don't finally see that there is no camera there until he is up on the chair.

There are a couple of instances where Sean looks to the tv then at where the camera should be. I think you should edit down that sequence some... it feels like too much.

My biggest nitpick is with the script. Mostly the fact that I had no idea who these guys are and who they are to each other. Where are they going, where did they come from? They were written as simple cardboard cut-outs. Adding in a little backstory about them, make me understand and relate in some way to these guys on a real level and I will care so much more about the situation they are in and what happens to them.

You stated that you wanted minimal dialouge... but SO much information can be conveyed about a person with just a few words or expressions. For example, early on when Joe says "Go around back and check for an open door", Sean can give him a look that says "f**k you, I'm not your bitch", to which Joe would then reply, exasperated "Please!". It would up the ante a little on their situation and friendship... is it strained? Are they even friends? Is there a issue that one or both of them needs to reslove about the other?

Just some thoughts.

Robert said:

You stated that you wanted minimal dialouge... but SO much information can be conveyed about a person with just a few words or expressions.

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I found the best example of this in the episode of CSI directed by Tarentino! The very opening of the show has Nick Stokes driving in his SUV singing to some country music. I learned more about his character in that 10 second sequence than I had the previous 3 seasons of watching the show every week with my wife and discussing it afterwards.

Poke said:

I think when displaying things on the web a filmmaker needs to be aware that the web calls for a shorter run time.

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Forgive me for disagreeing, but are you suggesting that filmmakers purposely cut and hack up their vision just for the sake of download time?

If I ever get to make my 300+ page vampire script into a full length film, I will not compromise my integrity and slice it up into a "commercial TV edit" to acheive a quick download. I'll find a better compression algorithm.

I don't think he was talking about download time. Stories are viewed/percieved differently on a computer screen than they are on either a TV or a movie screen. In this case, a viewer of this piece on a larger format of delivery (tv or cinema) will be more "sucked into" the world of the story and will need more time physically to look around the frame as it is larger (read - "in the blink of an eye" by Walter Murch). On the computer, the image is generally much smaller and the detail can be taken in all at once, hence the need for faster story telling. Television changed the way we recieve storytelling data. Computer video is doing it again.

In the golden days of the cinema, filmmakers found you could compress time using cuts and crossfades to jump forward in time. The viewer knew that if a character was reaching for their coat and keys, they were going to get in their car. You didn't need to show them getting into their car, just the preparatory action and the result. So the directors back then compressed time to be able to point at just the pertainent elements of a story. A good filmmaker/editor also led your eye around the 60' screen to direct your attention and keep you engaged physically but unconsciously in the picture.

When television arrived on the scene, the viewers eyes no longer needed to physically move to take in all the information in the scene. Television is less interactive than cinema just due to the scale, so more information could be taken in at once. If you watch old movies in a theater, they are amazing...slightly slower than we're used to, but amazing in how easily you get "sucked into" the emotions of it. If you watch older television, it looks slow and clunky. Much of this is due to the fact that the earliest TV directors were used to the pacing of cinema. They found it was uneccessary to linger on shots as long on the television as the brain could assimilate all the information on the screen much more quickly due to the size of the screen. edits became faster.

MTV came to be. They proved you could show a story in unbelievably short cuts. Watch an old video form the original MTV times sometime. That once revolutionary style of editing now feels slow and plodding. I feel this due to the fact that we are now used to the pacing of computer video, due to the size constraints placed on the content, they eye has even less to do...you don't even need to look outside your sharp focus region to collect data now.

A cinema projection of a perfectly cut web video would be nigh unwatchable due to your eyes' inability to move around the screen fast enough to take in all the information that you can get from the smaller version on the computer screen. When cutting your story, keep in mind your target distribution destination. The physically smaller the screen, they shorter the cuts need to be lest the audience get bored with your story.

We are wired to move our eyes to take in data once we've assimilated the information in our field of view. If the viewer has taken in all of the data on a shot...it's your responsibility as the director/editor to move their eyes (virtually - by changing what happens in front of them) for them. If you don't they will...I can see my e-mail window behind this one asking for my attention.