new video by me: Book Report

"Book Report." Enjoy people, number six in my epic filmographies. Somehow inbetween all else I finished another little movie assignment.

Let's constructively criticize shall we? There is good and bad in here, I need to learn, hopefully I can be objective in evaluating myself.

First I'd like to note that I rushed through this ridiculously. I shot it in three hours and edited it in four hours. Perhaps I'd be good at doing 24-hour film projects eh?

I hate DPing. I really hate it. I did not worry about lighting at all, which accounts for speed of the shoot. Usually that's forgivable for something with crappy online resolution. But there are a few cuts that have very terrible lighting continuity errors. No excuses, that was bad.
But the composition is pretty nice, overall. Headroom and leadroom and rule-of-thirds and stuff. I dare say that most it is plenty visual appealing.

I definitely think the editing is great, if I can self-congratulate. You know, usually student films are way too slow-paced and just boring. I don't like that, I want to give in to the ADD MTV generation and cut as quickly as possible. Everything needs to be fast-paced or its not interesting. When I shoot I make specific story boards and always consider the edit. Perhaps its the comic panel similarity, but cutting up a visual story is so much fun to me.

And my actors did a good job, I'd like to thank them for working hard with only a Chipotle meal as compensation. Percy is a pro with lots of experience. His cousin Russell helped out who didn't have experience but did good work. I appreciate their timeliness and listening to instruction and everything. Finding good actors is hard.

Unfortunately, what I didn't take seriously enough in making this movie, was the story. This is what makes it all suffer. Sure its clear and decently structured, this protagonist with a motivation and then conflict via antagonist providing obstacles with a resolution at the end. The initial premise of doing a book report is just not very interesting. There's no way to fix that after the fact, I should have written something better in the first place.

Also, the music. I just used more of Ramsey's music he sent me a while ago. Thanks Ramsey. Thing is, this music is way too good for this little film! I don't know if it fits. At least I didn't steal anything and learned more about original scoring.

Like most of my other stuff, I predict that people involved in film will appreciate what works, but people who don't understand what goes on behind the scenes will not analyze it and go with an immediate first impression. Which is perfectly fair, thats what regular audiences do and thats what we got to learn to deal with. Sadly, that immediate first impression is probably not going to be too kind. Let's see.

At least I finished the assignment and I'm getting through the class. I did my job and everything worked out, and I can complete a task I set out to do. Hopefully for all the flaws I'm getting a little bit better every time.

Bloody hell, I don't even want to be a director. I just want to write. I do write, but somehow my real scripts and my student shorts don't ever overlap.

Enjoy nonetheless.

(by the way, for anyone new, do check out my Youtube for more)