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My First Short

Hi guys,

I recently finished my first short (wrote, directed, edited), I'm not posting the name because I'm still waiting to see if it makes any short festivals.

https://vimeo.com/214884283/5d676b65be

Any opinions are welcome. I'm looking for a screenwriter to make the next one, or someone who has a script that can be made on a low budget. I'm also working on my own new stories, but writing the stories is a bit of a challenge for me and i thought it may be smart to team up with someone else.

I can't figure out how to embed vimeo on here!

I'm afraid I didn't have the patience to watch the whole thing, I have short attention span. But I think this could be better if you edited it down to maybe 10 mins. There's at least one dialog scene with a lot of dead space in between their dialog & if you trimmed a second or two from the shots it would speed things up (definitely the scene where she's painting & talking to another woman).

And the scene near the end where they bump into each other doesn't quite seem believable. If she's been afraid of a stranger following her I think she'd be aware of the guy approaching her. The shot makes it seem that she'd totally see him ahead of time. And when they talk, she doesn't recognize him? And the very last scene after the credits just seems tacked on, too short. Maybe if you put that before the credits & give it enough space so that it becomes a more obvious climax to the piece. There might be something missing in the writing that makes it unclear, or maybe I skipped over something important.
It's a solid effort though, keep going. I hope this helps.

The end was really the beginning of when they first met.

Thanks for the input. Cheers.

Yeah, the reverse chronology doesn't follow too well as a viewer. It just confuses things. I kinda wanted to think that's what you'd intended, but it just doesn't work. There needs to be something earlier in the film that connects those dots. Hell, we don't even learn that she acts and paints until that last scene! Something that gives a nod to her acting, even her first big audition, earlier in the film... the last scene would have made a little more sense.

Not a fan of the overblown highlights for sunny scenes outdoors. The glow of blown-out edges is just distracting. Doesn't take much to fix... a flag or scrim to knock down the sun from behind, and a bounce to bring up the shadow side a little. Unless that was an intentional and stylistic choice, in which case... ?

Sound is the biggest weakness here, to be honest. Several reasons...

Dialog recording isn't really that good. Sounds like camera mic? Sound goes off-axis as they turn their heads, and we can hear (very clearly) people walking on concrete/pavement in the background... plus all the birds and other things that sound like they're right up next to the mic.

And there are scenes where the voices distort. Is anyone listening during recording? That stuff needs to be called out during production, and another take done with audio problems fixed. Can't fix that in post.

Mix levels are all over the place, but are too loud. I kept turning my speakers down as the film went on. I know it's the Internet and all, and there aren't really any formal standards for mix levels, but treat it like broadcast. If your mix is pegging in the red, constantly, it's WAY overblown. And if that mix goes to theatrical screening, it's gonna blow out a speaker or two in the theater (not to mention eardrums...).

Sound design sticks out like a sore thumb.
- "Room tone" changes from shot-to-shot in the same scene. With a camera mic picking up all the dialog, it's also picking up everything in the background. And if the camera angle changes, so does the background noise. Cutting the shots together makes that obvious. A properly-boomed mic is gonna favor more of the dialog and less of the background, and that'll be easier to edit in post. Get dialog clean, then add the ambient bed later and keep it consistent from shot to shot.
- There are scenes especially indoors where there's no ambient noise floor, and that just makes bad sound effects editing even more obvious. When she's sitting in front of her bed and clicking around on her laptop, all we really hear is the added effect track of computer keys. There should be other movement sounds, including the laptop being folded up - not just the sound of it clapping closed. That whole post-shower sequence starting at 10:40 is nothing but post sound design. Where's the sound of her movement through the house... footsteps, the towel wrapped around her? Where's the basic ambient noise floor?
- Any added sound effects are totally obvious - multiple clicks of light switches are obviously the same sound over and over. Some of the effects have their own background noise (like the laptop keys), and lack of an ambient track means we hear that and the effects sound pretty much like library sound effects.
- A lot of the added effects need reverb added to make 'em sound like they're happening in the scene. The car unlocking in the parking garage? That should have a cavernous reverb like all the other stuff that happens in a lower-level garage. Same with the effects of the car shifting into gear and speeding away. The light switches clicking as she walks around out of the shower need to sound like they're in the hallway or the room.
- Sound effects are also too obviously loud in the mix. They need to blend into the space. That's on top of having an ambient sound bed for the scene and adding reverb where needed.

Hi aucoustic,

Thanks for the input. This was my first film. I have never studied film or been involved with film in any way other than helping a friend with his first 2 shorts.

I filmed this with a canon 70d and a rode mic. I was the writer, director and editor (lightworks). I did everything myself except act. There was no crew, just me and the actors. My wife helped in one scene. It cost me $0 to make and it was my first project. So you can understand it wasn't possible for me to have serious production sound.

Nevertheless I got a lot of nice comments on the film, especially visually.

In the second scene she goes to the acting audition. In the 6th scene she is in painting class. So we see she acts and paints.

Many of the comments by Al aren't things that cost anything. Different editing options, colorgrading, lighting fixes. Also ambient noise helps to bring the environment to life. It can be done very simple by just recording an empty room or filming location. The fact that you actually have a rode mic is more than most amateur filmmakers have, including myself.

Because you have no experience, take the comments above as points to make you a better filmmaker. Not harsh critiques! Good luck on your next project.

Which scene example would i record ambient sound for? I mean for the empty room example you gave. I didn't realize about having different audio tracks until I read up on festival requirements, like I said, its all new. So to get seperate sound for the park for example, i would first record the environment seperately and then later record the dialog. With the exception of the scene by the pond where the environment is too noisy, i didnt really now how to get better sound with my mic. I tested it very loud with my home speakers and amplifier and it didn't get distorted.

jbarranz said:

This was my first film. I have never studied film or been involved with film in any way other than helping a friend with his first 2 shorts.

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The fact that you had the initiative to try and tackle sound design at all is impressive, especially as a first-timer. So kudos for that!

Take this as a learning experience, and read up on sound design practices. It's all about layers of sound, and mixing them to blend. Just like picture editing, if it stands out as an edit, it wasn't done right.

jbarranz said:

I filmed this with a canon 70d and a rode mic. I was the writer, director and editor (lightworks). I did everything myself except act. There was no crew, just me and the actors. My wife helped in one scene. It cost me $0 to make and it was my first project. So you can understand it wasn't possible for me to have serious production sound.

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There's always a way to work around/within limited means.

Sound recording is always a challenge wirh DSLR. Most DSLRs are pretty crappy when it comes to recording quality, and the 70D is missing a pretty critical piece: headphone output. If there's no way to listen, there's no way to know what in the world you're actually recording. Might as well aim the camera and hit record without watching the screen.

My advice would be to invest in a simple, lower-cost audio recorder and a good set of headphones. You can put your Rode mic on a boom pole and recruit someone to be your soundie. It'll be that person's job to keep the mic in the roght spot, and to listen for quality as each take is recorded. It's not that big a deal to match audio and video files in pos, and it gives you a better film.

jbarranz said:

In the second scene she goes to the acting audition. In the 6th scene she is in painting class. So we see she acts and paints.

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Missed that. My apologies. Though, I still wasn't clear on the swapped timeline when all was said and done.

jbarranz said:

Which scene example would i record ambient sound for? I mean for the empty room example you gave.

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Close your eyes right now and listen for about 90 seconds. What do you hear?

Every space has a noise floor. In a bedroom, it may be the sounds of the neighborhood outside (wind, traffic, etc.). And there may be a faint whir of the cooling fan on the laptop. What about air conditioning?

These are all things that you don't want to record with dialog. These are the layers you recreate when you edit your sound.

jbarranz said:

So to get seperate sound for the park for example, i would first record the environment seperately and then later record the dialog.

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Get the dialog as clean as you can. Period. That's what you focus on in production. You can go back later with a handheld recorder and grab a few minutes of the sounds out there, or use other sounds. Record your own, or buy stock SFX. Again, layers: traffic, wind through leaves, birds, footsteps of people walking/jogging past, the distant "walla" (nondescript human voices) of other people in the park.

Create an ambient track that unifies the scene, which helps you hide some of the slight inconcsistencies in the dialog edits.

I like Al's comments. I shot a park scene too without knowing how to capture good dialog. I had to re-record the dialog indoors trying to make it fit their mouth movements in editing. I used some of the park audio but kept it very low to give it atmosphere. Your audio here's actually better than mine was but it could be improved if the park sounds were lower so there's more focus on the dialog & there's less noise difference at a cut. It's extra work but it makes a big difference.
Watch some park scenes in TV/movies & really listen, the voices usually stand out from the environment, unless the director wants to shift your attention to something else.
Looking forward to seeing more from you.

Al... ok thanks for the input. My friend used a zoom recorder. for his I didn't want to have the extra work of syncing the audio. I tied the mic to a broom stick for one scene but then we had a shadow on the actors from the mic, one of many bloopers!. There are so many details you don't notice when filming.

I'll definitely have a small crew next time so we can get the mic close, it was a struggle just to schedule my few actors at the same time. The only actual actor was the girl (my cousin), the rest were friends with no acting experience.

Now I have a better idea how to get sounds in the different channels.

About the story, In case you were wondering (Since no one understood it!). Before the last scene (where they bump into each other) she wakes up. It was all a dream/nightmare of things to come, but she didn't remember the dream and she meets her future husband the next day. The idea was for it to be a bit unclear so people would make their own interpretation. Was she crazy? Did she lose her memory? Is he a bad guy or is it just her perspective? Some people liked interpreting what happened but I think most people are just confused and I should have used the original straightforward ending I had. The scene after the credits is her remembering the dream after she is married to him.

Before the last scene (where they bump into each other) she wakes up. It was all a dream/nightmare of things to come, but she didn't remember the dream and she meets her future husband the next day.

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Interesting. So everything before 14:00 was a dream?

jbarranz said:

The only actual actor was the girl (my cousin), the rest were friends with no acting experience.

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That's the other thing that stood out to me, and I wonder why you chose to make the film in English with Spanish subtitles. Many of the actors come across as trying to act, and it seems to me that they're having to concentrate on delivering lines in a secondary language to the point that they're not able to focus on all the other things. A couple of them really seemed to be struggling with it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a Spanish-language film, subtitled in English if needed, especially for a film shot in Spain and with a Spanish cast and crew. And your cast may feel more comfortable that way, which can translate to a better on-screen presence.

What happened was that originally there was very little dialog. No painting scene, no long end scene and they didn't have to talk much. Even the shady husband and friend didn't speak as originally it was just beatriz observing without hearing. So almost no one had to speak, just my italian friend and the main character in the last scene (a much shorter simpler scene) and beatriz and julianne.

What started the idea was me walking through central park and thinking what if i keep seeing the same person again and again throughout the park? So I had a very simple idea for my first short film and it was very basic. I actually did much more than I expected for the first one.

I know that accents were too much but that's how it turned out after I added all the talking. I'm half American, half Spanish. I hate Spanish films but after this issue I decided to make the next one in Spanish.

buscando..yes. Originally it was te reflect a big problem in their marriage and when she woke up the truth was going to come out.

That's an interesting idea. So maybe you did this as practice for the longer film?
I like how you're playing with time, it reminds me a bit of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, where a man sees bits & pieces of his future. And also Steven Soderbergh's The Limey, the story jumps around like how our memory does when we look back. There's some nice editing there of music & images that shows that nicely. Take a look if you haven't seen those, you might like them.

Ok, thanks, I'll check it out.

This was just practice in general! No longer film for same story planned. I liked memento a lot.