Suspense Piece...

[silentman1994]

Hey everyone. I have been real busy with many things in my life that I haven't been on this site in a long time. Last time I was here was a few days after Halloween.  After throwing around movie ideas for a few years, I've finally made a short suspense piece.  I don't have a title for it right now.   I know people here are tough critics but this took too long to make.  My original crew decided to quit the night we were going to start the filming so I quickly through together the beginning football scene.  The writing is not up to par, yet I wanted horribly stupid reasons to interrogate someone.  A mostly innocent man that is.  Anyways, thought I'd post it and I'd really enjoy some comments back about this.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p8ZnG3XoEk8

Oh, the second song in the piece I put together myself for the scene.  So yeah comments would help. Thanks people.

[Poot Bort]

Given your working conditions, I'd say not bad.

One area that needs some work is the sound, though. When the first shot cuts away to the POV of the kidnappers, the sound changes radically. It also changes during the interrogation scene when we see the wide shot of the kidnapped football player.

There's a couple of ways to combat this for future projects- One way is to record about one minute of  what we call "room presence". That is, have everyone stand still and record the sound of silence in the room. It may not be totally silent; there may be the hum of fluorescent lights or a vent blowing in the background.

In any case, you would use this as a layer of sound to help cover any inconsistencies. It also helps if the microphone is always the same distance away from the actors.

Also, in the editing of the sound, put a quick dissolve between the shots where the audio is. Sometimes this can help smooth out the sound if it changes abruptly.

The pacing of the piece is good, although I think a better resolution is needed- it's a bit short.

Hope that helps.

[silentman1994]

Thanks for the comments.  Well lets get into the details of how this was made.  It was originally supposed to only be the interrogation scene.  Once the people that I was supposed to film that with decided that they didn't want to participate I had to wing the opening scene that night.  So thats what happened there.  I wasn't prepared to shoot that. End of story.  The interrogation scene I shot once I replaced the cast with 3 people who had no clue what it was about.  They said they'd do it and we took a about 3 hours to shoot and reshoot that scene.  But in doing this so frantically I never thought to put in a mic for the audio and just used the GL's audio from the different angles.  I shot it in a studio with no sound air conditioners or what not.  It was a closed set.  I totally agree with about everything that was said.  Although due to the limited amount of shooting time I had to make it shorter and a bit dumber than I wanted.  But its pretty good for a beginner.

Any more feedback?

[Muse32]

i thought the shooting was good, the acting let it down, but looks promising, if you can find some better actors then you'll probably make some good movies in the future