Wife and I watched this over the weekend. We both liked it. She laughed a few times, and so did I.
Obviously, the "what could make this better?" criticism is worlds away from the "grading on a curve" criticism. On a curve, this is very good for a first film. Particularly, as TONGO said, the angles of the shots. It was all well lit, and for a short I thought the characters were pretty well drawn, too. Solid.
Thank you very much
The not-on-a-curve stuff: between knowing a handful of amateur filmmakers and watching a lot of MST3K (
), my wife and I are always talking about how early films (and/or low budget films) almost always have two things in common: rough audio, and overly lingering establishing or driving shots. And both were present here.
The audio was better than most, in that you seemed to at least have the principals in each scene sounding good. That's good, and stopped this from being a big problem. Anyone else was difficult to hear.
Yeah, we tried to get the sound as good as possible but it was surprisingly difficult in some scenes to capture everything as we wanted. Something to learn from and plan better next time.
The establishing shots weren't overtly long, just longer than they had to be. Our operating theory with this is that it's really hard to shoot even a short film and get it to a decent length, and that it's easy to forget how little people need for that transition to feel smooth, so a lot of what's shot ends up in the film. I think it could be a lot punchier with just a minute or two cut out from those parts. I also wonder at the internal logic of a documentary that shows the subjects driving away.
Fair enough on the establishing shots, I think there are parts that are a tad too long, but I don't know, when I watch The Office, for example, there are many scenes where the camera lingers on an establishing shot or post-scene moment for a little too long, or focusses on something unnecessary and not great too look at, I think it's kind of funny showing the kind of mundane, repetitive nature of the character's daily life.
On the internal logic point I knew that was an issue but left it in because I didn't think many people would notice it, but I guess this could be explained, even though its at a stretch, by the logic that the documentary crew would ask them to repeat certain scenes, or that when they leave to drive to a certain point before they catch up with them, something like that, so that they can get these sort of shots.
I do have one very big stylistic question: how dry was the humor supposed to be? The first few minutes, it was very understated, and I liked that a lot. Callum was relatively emotionless, but that's just what I took the character to be and I felt it gave us a handle on him very quickly. But there's a scene later where you're (I think it was you as the documentarian, yeah?) suggesting he change his CV, and the dialogue sounds like it's meant to be delivered with more emotion. My complaint is not that it wasn't, but more with the decision to have it there at all, since the rest of the interactions are all so restrained.
Yeah, I think it was meant to be delivered a bit more emotionally, but it was still meant to be understated in a way that he tries to act as if he doesn't care, but certain things do seem to personally affect him. I think this would have been better if I had one or two scenes that I originally planned in the film where certain things would trigger him to slowly get more evidently emotional/angry, and kind of break the cool persona that he may be playing.
I'm also not sure if the ending is supposed to be a cliffhanger, and whether or not we're supposed to think Callum has learned or changed (if he has, when/how did that happen?).
It's supposed to be a cliffhanger for a few reasons I guess. First of all I think him getting a job is too neat an ending, and him not getting a job is a bit too miserable and would make the film seem a bit pointless to some. I think I would have had more complaints if I went with any of them. Also whether he would get that job or not, wouldn't necessarily dictate whether he could get a job full stop, or whether he'd be successful at it. I guess the point is not whether he has got the job or not, but whether you think he has and if he has done enough to change and succeed, or maybe actually whether you feel you want him to get the job. Again, this when/how question would have been better answered had the film been as long as I originally intended, with a more gradual arc, or even as a several 20 minute long TV show, as touched on above.
Most of the film I felt like it was deliberately understated, and that he wasn't really changing or learning at all. Which I was fine with! I think that's the best part, and I think the film was best when it was most like this. But there are a few scenes that make me think maybe this wasn't exactly the intention, so let me know what you were going for there.
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive in that I think the point is his character will always be a lift carefree, laid back, a bit ignorant and silly, but that maybe it's kind of a persona used as an excuse to mask laziness/unwilligness, and that should he accept his flaws and put in the effort, there's no reason why he can't get a job. I kind of wanted it to be ambiguous in that you're not sure what the future will hold. The characters are all aware they're in a documentary, and who's to say if he doesn't get the job and there's no reason for him not to try, he won't just return back to "resting" and waiting for something to come along.
I almost laughed out loud when I saw my name because I forgot I'd contributed to it.
And it was funny because I saw a "Special Thanks" to a few names I recognized, too! Cool stuff.
Yeah there's quite a few MoFos mentioned there, so thanks again to everybody
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