Project of mine, wish I had Scarlet

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSm57G_jfTo

Hey all, nervous posting here, but I am always nervous showing my work.

Here is a no budget Proof Of Concept for a project my company is developing. Please give me your thoughts!

Shot on a T2i I bought with the money I had saved end of last year for Scarlet :-(

Good news is this and a couple other things I did have gotten me enough interest to possibly make a movie and buy a Red or Epic, if its out in time.

 

[Joe G.]

"Please give me your thoughts!"

Okay, here they are in no particular order.

Overexposed outdoor scenes.

Lack of character development, no clear central character.

Very ambitious project, budget?

Clunky dialogue and plot.

Attacking horde far fewer numbers than the society (of warriors) they were attacking, doesn't add up.

Much better fight choreography needed and sound enhancement. Train the actors to use the weapons better.

Some fight shots would have benefitted from a longer lens.

The big one is to have some scene at the beginning where we would care and take an interest in one of the characters more than the others. Need a strong goal/purpose, preferably something we haven't seen a million times before.

 

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

Interesting feedback Joe G.

I stated already the budget of this was basically $0, we did feed people. The budget for a feature would be MUCH more, looking in the $2.5 million range, which would open up a more appropriate toolset.

One thing to clarify is that this is a Proof of Concept, not a short, so its more akin to 14 minutes from episode 11 of the first season vs a short with a beginning, middle, and end.

 

[Jeffrey T. Morgan]

Oh yeah, many of the choices you critiqued were done on purpose (number of attackers, blown out highlights, etc). There is no one right way. Just thought that might be helpful to you.

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

Similar project I worked on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-opBr7R6js

I thought the visuals were pretty impressive, considering lack of budget. I had more issue with the crushed blacks indoors than the clipped highlights outdoors. Especially with the compression, those indoor scenes look very posterized.

Script seemed seemed very generic though, and the acting wasn't very good either.

Audio was really bad, the recording quality is awful and the lines were mixed way too low. I would ADR everything before using sound like that. For a low-budget project audio can boost your production quality much more than a camera, so get a better recorder and mic and spend a lot of time on the mix.

 

[Richard Foster]

I agree with the comments on dialogue and acting above and also of course sound and script, but hey you did it and for no budget, and you learned a lot. Good for you; it was an ambitious no budget shoot with a lot of people involved. You proved you can produce.