Morbus said:
Without any kind of destructive criticism, here's a few tips from a guy who knows very little about making movies:
- lighting is crucial in setting a mood. Maybe playing around with it (as well as simulating the sun instead of showing the actual thing) would be a good idea. It's relatively cheap and effective.
- camera work is of utmost importance and things like camera shake should be avoided at all costs, unless intentional. There are a few cuts that could use another angle, I think.
- dialogs should be written previous to shooting. And "pacing" is an interesting concept
Here's a constructive response from someone who spent the last 7 years studying movie making
Don't take any of this as me being defensive/hostile: you're points are all very valid.
-If you want to see awesome lighting, go to my youtube channel and watch the
Dr.O movies. In
Mad Nation I very deliberately wanted to use as much natural light as possible. Notice how there's so many openings and glass in the back wall of the shack. The only additional light we chose to use here was a defused 400k that I put up in the rafters to brighten up the shadows a bit.
That being said, I will admit straight up that the lighting in this scene isn't great: it was shot in my first year at film school and I didn't know what I was doing yet with lighting.
-Camera work: what you see is intentional for the most part. The one camera mistake I left in is that there's one pan (turn) in a close up of Marcus that's a bit jerky, but I left it because it was the best take we had and we'd already had to shoot this scene a second time due to a hard drive crash so I didn't want to do it again.
-Acting/writing: the scene was scripted, and as far as dialogue goes with this movie, I was going for a more melodramatic, film noir kinda sound. This was Pat's first time on camera (he played Marcus, the doctor), and I personally liked his performance. It's not really supposed to feel natural here, since one character is very uneasy and the other is slightly insane. But yeah, it's not perfect, to be sure.
-Pacing: as I mentioned in the comments on Part 1, the pacing is all screwed up since the scene is taken out of the context of the whole film: that happens when you break up a 47 minute movie into 2-5 minute chunks. The scene is paced the way I wanted it to be, for better or worse. That being said, part of the reason this scene seems a little disjointed in the dialogue is because I cut about 2/3rds of it out, since the complete scene dragged too long. This scene was actually really hard to cut: there were a lot of little fuck ups that basically amounted to not having enough useable angles and footage. I feel like it came out pretty good for what I had to work with, however.
alec said:
Morbus makes some sense, but still: I like it, Taranto-Kent.
The acting is amateurish, but hey: I didn't expect Bradd fucking Pitt to show up, so that's okay.
Dialogue! Morbus is right. It doesn't sound natural at some times. Sure, you write out your dialogues before shotting, but you should always aim for a natural way of bringing that dialogue into the film, even if that means changing it somewhat. Here I just hear two actors who studied their part. I don't get two different personalities. The wanderer should sound more gritty, probably. The doc somewhat pervy. My two cents. I still enjoy what you present, though.
Part three. NOW!
I wanted the Doc to be more of a subtle kind of crazy. Notice how he drinks the bloody whiskey. It's kind of a shame too: I had big plans for his character that ended up getting minimized because I ended up cutting a whole scene involving him. As for my character, we've got another 40 minutes or so of movie left to develop him.
I really appreciate the constructive criticism, however, just as much as I appreciate the enthusiasm. If you like it, give it a good rating: apparently so far nobody rating it likes it haha.
And you can expect Part 3 in two weeks. I might release 3 and 4 at the same time, however, since the bloody stuff starts in part 4.
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