To start, the story alone is good. It has the potential to work very nicely, and it was mostly shot well, aside from the fact that there were MANY times where the focus needed to be used to make one things stand out more than another.
Aside from that, there were a lot of problems. First, as others have said, the editing is poor; poorly paced and whoever's job it was should have cut a few specific extra shots. I can go into detail if need be. Also, half of the score was was not at all fitting. The actors were bad. I would do a quick rewrite, recast, get a new editor, and try again because it could be really cool.
That said, I know how much effort goes into these projects and I don't want or mean to take away from that.
I try to respond to most of these within the later Quote, but who do you think thought the editing was bad? There were a couple of comments about a specific scene (TUS about the opening) and UF (about the library transition), but overall, there has been high praise for the editing. Your comment about redoing the whole movie seems quite harsh and that's all I'll say about that, except if that were true, then there are lot of happy filmmakers at USC right now who are deluded and have thrown away lots of time and money -- not that it couldn't be a possibilty.
Ok first sequence is the dude running between black cuts and forest sounds. If she's going for a suspensefully paced thing (which I think she is), I would just slightly blur the picture, leave the black cuts running for a bit longer, and add moody music to replace the chirping birds. Also, instead of the same shot setup each time I would change positions to the side of him for one time and then an extreme close-up of half his face.
These comments are interesting, however the one about changing the camera positions is weird because the camera positions are changed during that scene. You want to blur the image and slightly extend the black screen as well as redo the sound by putting "moody" music in. Well, that's fine, but I don't inherently understand what makes it better. Just by trying to imagine it doesn't make me understand why it should be done that way. It seems like a personal preference without connoting any value judgment concerning quality. What does "moody" music mean? It seems like it could mean almost anything. Do you think those scenes in the forest ever really happened or only in Jethro's mind? It seems the way you want to do it would imply it's all fantasy from the beginning.
Next part, the party. I'm just going to focus on the main guy because the rest of the actors are pawns. He needs to do a lot less with his hands and more with his face, a lot of subtle acting would do this character justice, especially if he didn't look like he had a hangover every sequence. Question, why is he filming/photographing? In the shot where he's in-between the two faces, I would focus on the main character instead of having the whole shot in focus. Second question, why is it a knight who is the messenger? Also, at this point, the party music should turn down, but still be present, to make way for a moody score section.
You believe the Jethro character needs to be subtler, so how would acting with his face make him subtler in the party? He's photographing because he finds the party just as boring and pointless as the rest of his life, but at least he's got an artistic temperament and is trying to do something creative. Besides, it does highlight the fact that something weird is going on since he's actually recording "reality". The reason a knight shows up is because Jethro has seen
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Excalibur and the other films where someone goes on a quest and he associates it with knights. It's not for a religious reason unless you somehow believe those films are religious even though they aren't. The music in and surrounding the knight scene seems good the way it is to me.
Don't have another problem until the library. The scripting of that scene is just wacky, I don't know why he would be researching something starting with a question on graph paper. I also find it odd that his face still looks drunk and not curious. The cut to the "hallucination" page is unnecessary as well.
The actor brought his own graph paper notepad and wrote those words on there himself. If that's the way he'd do it, I don't get the problem. The key to that scene was to convey visual info from books. Sarah thought that using a computer and the internet would be far less-cinematic and she loves the look and feel of that library. As far as the guy looking drunk, he's not supposed to be drunk, but he is supposed to be having trouble sleeping and going through something bordering on an existential, if not an actual, life-threatening crisis, even though he's not that concerned about living at this point. Also, for all we know, maybe he does spend his free time running from some menacing danger and therefore looks sweaty and dishevelled. This is just my personal attempt to respond to such concrete complaints which I don't especially understand. It's a movie, and it's up to you to interpret what it means although the info is there for all to see.
Actually, I forgot to mention above that Jethro's band name is the Drunken Souls. That should explain him "being drunk" all the time.
Next section, when he is walking down the sidewalk with the posters, there's a long shot of him walking away with a poster in focus. The problem with this is that this is cut next to a "revealing shot" of sorts of the poster which we already saw 2 seconds ago, it's redundant. His smile is super awkward btw.
You really seem to miss the point of that shot. Yes, the audience sees the poster from the beginning, but Jethro does not. He walks by it several times never noticing it, but then his eye catches sight of it. Therefore we have the audience in on it before the "reveal" to Jethro. The reason that shot is in the movie for a few seconds is because both Sarah and Alex are very proud of it. Besides, the audience already saw a glimpse of that poster in the opening of the film although it didn't have any clear meaning at that point. As I edited in back at an earlier post, Sarah and her lead professor both love the smile, so it doesn't matter that you don't. I mean, sure it matters to you but not to them.
The sudden interjection of dialogue is fine, but something about it is off I'm not sure what. Also there's another part where the main dude is between two faces, I mentioned the focus idea before.
I've got nothing here because I don't see anything to comment on.
Next part; for an emerald forest, the music is kinda wimpy. Replace with some good score stuff. The part between the asian and black guy is too fast, dialogue-wise and pacing-wise with the camera. The music playing when the black guy gets shot makes no sense, not even in an ironic way. Actually I like the asian guy's acting.
You still have a difficult time explainihg what you mean regarding the music. I know you're a musician and a composer, so you probably hear it in your head. Using terms such as "wimpy", "Good score stuff" and "ironic way" don't make it clear what you mean. Maybe if you link to examples of what you mean, then I could understand your point. Sarah loves all the music there though, but I'd still like to hear what you're trying to get at. As far as the scene with the billionaire and his "minion", I agree that scene could have been improved with another line of dialogue and another character or two to bounce those lines off (as was originally intended). However, that scene also has some of the strongest acting the way it is. I mentioned before that the forest was remote and there was no cell coverage, so there was no way to communicate with potential extras or to even talk to me about possible additional dialogue ideas due to lack of cast members since I wasn't on set. The bottom line is that there was no time or way to film another scene once that location wrapped based on the time available for shooting and turning in the picture lock (the visual version of the film which MUST be used).
Ok he's running and stuff. I would add more of the dude stopping at different trees seeing these people, giving his own finding more intrigue.
The music he fronts is questionable considering his mindset.
And there we go
The basic part of the film (without credits) was supposed to be five minutes. Some of your ideas work better in a film with a little more time, but there wasn't the time and your ideas aren't Sarah's, so that's another reason why they're not there. The song used at the end is the same song playing at the party, just done with the full band. What is his mindset at the end? Has he eaten from the Tree of Life and been rejuvenated or is he still "drunk" and unengaged? This may explain why the music seems so different at the end.
Anyway, your comments are interesting but many are difficult to "answer" because your concept is different than Sarah's and even if people may be unclear what to take from it, I need to know why you think your changes would clarify what HER point is. I hope this doen't make me come off as some kind of defensive jerk.
To other people who have posted in here, I'll try to respond later on, but that took a long time and I'm busy now.