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For what its worth...My first narrative film "WITE"
  • WITE Description

    Adam is afraid to go home to his family. He has wandered the streets in shock from recent bad news. One morning he prevents a strange man named Jacob wite attepting suicide who changes his life forever.

    Written and Directed by Andy Chesterman

    Music-Kevin Macleod ( incompetech.com)

    Adam-Andy Marc

    Jacob-Gaz Jones

    Mugger-Monika Kwiatkowska

    Doctor-Kerry Firth

    About the production. Shoestring budget film shot over a few days only when friends playing roles were available. I have no real filmaking experience and my first attempt at doing something narrative. Post took the most time as 85% of the audio had to be rerecorded from scratch and Fx work. Overall pretty happy with the result audio could be better but it is what it is. Please note that nobody is trained in any acting skills! ;-)

    Shot with Lumix GH1 Lumix GH2 Sony Nex 5n Sony HX9 compact "Have fun guessing which camera shot what!" Edited with Adobe premier pro

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • over a hundred views and no comments I must of done something right! ;-)

  • I think this is wrong forum to get feedback from your work. But let's make a deal; I watch your film and I watch your's, and then we give feedback to each other? ;)

  • I think this is wrong forum to get feedback from your work.

    Why it is wrong forum?

  • @tonalt Noticed you had no feedback either...ahh well.

    @Vitaliy Was thinking that myself..I thought there was some "friendlier" filmmaking crowd here that could give some feedback and im a member thats why I put it up here. ;-)

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev because people here are more interested about video bitrates than actual film making ;)

  • @Mimirsan

    So I'm breaking the silence and giving my penny's worth:

    I think it's a nice first effort and as you pointed out you had to do it with some pretty though constraints. IMO it works as a sketch for a film, rather than an actual short.. What you might have been able to control better (apart from the sound which you pointed out) would be a) the aesthetics, which now seemed a bit all over the place and I'm not surprised since you used so many different cameras / looks.. This makes it harder for the story. Some of the shots worked quite nicely, and in particular I think you did a pretty good job with the FX since many of those scenes helpes to sell the story and set a tone that fit the quirky characters.. b) the dialogue / monologue / script. I think you could have been more decisive in what to say and what to leave out (for the viewer to fill in him/herself). A suggestion would be to re-write everything with the experience you now have (how can you make it work with the conditions you have?) and go out and shoot it again. Or bring that experience into your next project if you feel you are done with this one.

    Kudos for going out and shooting though, I'm sure you will have learned a lot from the process!

  • because people here are more interested about video bitrates than actual film making

    how about start speaking for yourself and not other people here?

  • @RRRR Thanks for the good crit. ;-)

    I was originally going to leave a lot for interpretation (with no monologue) but showing a few people beforehand left them feeling the character of Adam coming across as a asshole or confused on his motivations..I tried to keep as little said (with the whole cigarette/coin aspect)...some viewers are on the ball but some need things spelling out a little so I tried catering for both with sacrifices ;-)

    Asthetic wise I do agree. This was an experiment to try different angles/shots/fx/cameras to gain a bit of experience. It was a case of grabbing a camera to hand when someone was available...would be interesting if one can tell what shot which.

    I doubt very much I will reshoot but will take what I learned (especially with the nightmare with sound recording) onto the next one once I get a few more peeps involved. Hopefully paid actors this time! If not im making a film involving puppets! ;-)

    @tonalt That is the biggest problem with some people when approaching making films these days sadly.