watch A film worth your time... maybe?

https://filmfreeway.com/projects/193636

Hey there, this is approximately a 15 minute short film which goes a little deeper into the psychology of why we do things the way we do in certain high adrenaline situations... say in this case, a house intrusion. Well maybe as a short film it just scratches the surface of this premise, but still, my hope is that most people would find this different and that it possess more depth than most cliched house intrusion stories.

What I'm really looking for here is for people to just watch it. And if you have feedback, I would love to hear what you guys think. If you loved it, I'd love to hear what you loved. If you hated it, I'd love to hear what you hated.

I just want honest feedback, about anything, really, because I'm tired of hearing from the typical friends and family: "Oh that was so great! Powerful! Yada yada ya..."

Hopefully you guys have something to say about it.

Anyways, enjoy!

Congratulations on having completed.

That's step 1. Will give you one critique to work on which is cutting it down.

1. I lasted 3 seconds before needing to skip forward. The intro is unnecessarily long as is the rest.
2. Whole thing is way too long for me. Very little happens so kept skipping forward.

Thanks for watching and the feedback!

Looking back, I would've shot the introduction much differently, but besides the intro, which parts would you've cut down of get rid of? Or do they just all require trimming in general?

beamazed said:

Thanks for watching and the feedback!

Looking back, I would've shot the introduction much differently, but besides the intro, which parts would you've cut down of get rid of? Or do they just all require trimming in general?

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General. You could've cut that down to 5 minutes max.

While I appreciate your passion to convey a message I am rarely
interested in “message movies”. But I watched the whole thing.
Your audio is quite good; something most filmmaker ignore. I was
put off by your use of focus. In and out in and out. Either a stylistic
choice that I found distracting or just poor camera work. I couldn't
tell.

It's too long. And I didn't get your message. There is no pay off. If
I hadn't read your “message” I would never have guessed this
movies goes deeper into the psychology of why we do the things
we do. The ambiguous ending is something very difficult to pull off.
You didn't do it. A lot of young filmmaker make a version of this
story – I did - and I see a dozen films like it a year at film festivals.
I don't think this even opens up the question of the psychology
of why we do the things we do.

Thank you for the feedback directorik. Very informative, and I appreciate that you took your time to watch the whole thing. Honestly. Thank you for that. Making this movie, it was really just me doing the sound and camera and directing, so it was practically impossible for me to decently control all those elements. (The focus problem being a technical choice, as if I had shot at a higher numbered aperture, there would have been a lot more noise.) I hope that with me getting into film school, I'll make those connections so I can have that help, with the camera, with the sound, so that I can focus on actually directing and putting together a cohesive story.


I thought that there were "hints" that would be able to sort of tell that backstory, or at the very least, explain why he did what he did. Both before the outbreak and after it. Where in the end it all came together and you sort of saw the bigger picture. I guess I ultimately failed in that aspect.

And I do realize, in fact while writing the script, I realized that this message is repeated over and over again by young filmmakers like me, but my hope was that there was evidently more heart into it, that there was just more thought put into it, and not just a house intrusion movie. Again, I probably failed at that as well.

The film, yeah, it wasn't that great, really, I get that. It has all the markings of an amateur who doesn't know what the hell he was doing. I have to make a bad movie before I can at least make an okay one haha.

But what I wanna know is...

Were there any glimmers of hope in this, that maybe you saw there was a chance of this being different, or was it cliched from beginning to end? I want to hear from you guys what I could have possibly thematically done, to make it more interesting overall?

Better yet, was there simply anything good about it?


Thanks again guys for all your time.

You're a film maker now and there are plenty of good things. You have a few things to work on now: Story, little bit of camerawork and cutting the thing down to a watchable timescale.

Just get better each time and in a couple of years you'll be telling us how to shoot stuff.

Directorik's a good guy to listen to as he knows lots of stuff.

What do you think of your short?

beamazed said:

Making this movie, it was really just me doing the sound and camera and directing, so it was practically impossible for me to decently control all those elements.

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Not true. Take the time. A "one-man-band" can control everything. It takes
more effort and more time. On your next movie take the time.

beamazed said:

(The focus problem being a technical choice, as if I had shot at a higher numbered aperture, there would have been a lot more noise.)

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Use lights. The tendency I see in movies today is for filmmaker to fall back on
the power of todays cameras. Just because you can get an image doesn't mean
you have created a good image. Lighting is important. On your next movie use
a few lights.

My advice is to keep it simple. Don't try to get a message across as you are
learning. Don't hint. Subtle storytelling in film is extremely difficult. Learn to
tell a story before you try to be meaningful and “deep”. I did the same thing
when I was starting out. I wanted to be "different" but I didn't have the basic
skills yet. So I went from trying to be different and deep and make a point
and deliver a message to trying to entertain. People liked my movies better.

What "message" short films have you seen and been moved by? Shoot me a
list so I can see where you want to be as a filmmaker.

beamazed said:

But what I wanna know is...

Were there any glimmers of hope in this, that maybe you saw there was a chance of this being different, or was it cliched from beginning to end? I want to hear from you guys what I could have possibly thematically done, to make it more interesting overall?

Better yet, was there simply anything good about it?

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Yes. I mentioned that your audio was better than most short films I see
here. But it was cliche from beginning to end. The camera work was good
and shows promise. You handled the actor well. I don't know what you
could have done to make this message film more interesting overall.
"inner demons" and the psychology of motivation is an almost impossible
"theme" to get across on film; even for the most experienced filmmaker.

I'd say you should make five more movies in the next six months. Lighten
up. Don't try to send a message. Don't worry about being cliche. Build a
solid foundation. THEN you can try to to get deeper into the psychology
and inner demons of characters.

Thank you, again, everyone. I found that feedback to be very humbling as well as enlightening in a way, as it gave me a fresh perspective on things, about not always having to worry about sending a message and what not. So thank you very much.

Answering gorillaonabike's question, about what I think of my film. Ya know what, as I hit the upload button to YouTube, I was really just ecstatic that I finally finished something. And for the most part, even now, I'm still proud of it. For a first project of mine, I thought it was pretty good. It was complete. And it told the story I wanted to tell... okay, at least.

But I made a crap ton of mistakes. Continuity errors. Technical errors. And some emotional beats that I either completely missed, or failed to get right.

I guess my biggest mistake though, was thinking that I was a better director/writer than I actually was. I would just assume that the audience would get what I meant through a very quick line of dialogue... or a very quick glance at something, etc. I didn't take a step back and think about what I could do to drive home that idea. To make sure people get it.

I don't know if you as an audience considered this film a failure/waste of time to watch, but to me, it wasn't. I learned from the mistakes I made. I learned my strongsuits. I learned my weaknesses. And now I improve, I get better.

I wouldn't trade this being my first film for any other one, even if it was, five stars better than mine.


Now time to make bigger and better things.