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The Lost

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Push aside some audio glitches and The Lost is a very thrilling movie to watch.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

...so says the guy who made it. I'll have to check this out for myself...

"I guess Dan Gross was right" -Hill Dawson Kane
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Hey guys this is Ryan the director of the film. I'm not looking for fame or recognition on this site i just would like it if we could get as many critiques on the film as possible. If you liked it if you didn't like it, what made it good or bad? Please let me know what to work on for the next short film that we make in the group. Thanks a lot guys i really need you're help so please watch the lost and let me know what you think. Thanks everybody!
 
Cool concept, there are a few flaws. But hey, so does every film, eh?

Sound.
You already know what you did wrong, so I won't go into detail.

Video.
What kind of cameras did you guys use? It was very grainy. Maybe if you had more lighting, and then lowered the exposure. Also, the lens flaring from the headlights of the car were cool for a few shots, but it started to get annoying. Watch out, because too much of something, can be a bad thing.

Acting.
It was alright. When the guy is getting kicked, I notice he isn't adding that 'reaction' to all of the kicks, and it comes off as fake.
The V.O. could have been done better, it didn't portray this guy's fear of the 'wraiths' (sp?);
More emotion from his voice would have been more realistic.

There are a few other things, but that seems to be the bulk. I will post more if It comes to me.
Other than that, cool concept..
CONGRATS!

j-

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J.MICHAEL | COMING 2004
 
Interesting film guys, I quite enjoyed it although there were a few problems for me:

First of all, I'm not too sure about the story - were these actually supernatural beings or were they just sickos? They were wearing trainers (sneakers) & driving a jeep?
Also I wasn't quite sure about what happened at the end, they turned him into a pumpkin? And was he still alive inside the pumpkin or what?

At a stretch of the imagination I would guess that was supposed to be his chest that had been carved out, but it was too obvious that it was actually a pumpkin. I think that could have worked well had other elements been executed a bit better though...

Some other minor niggles for me (aside from the ones already mentioned by others) were:

a) The fact that he wasnt struggling at all when being pinned to the table by the 'wraiths'. This was not only unrealistic, but also didn't fit in with the message of the story concerning how we feel more alive just before we die. Surely adrenaline/physiological arousal would be a major part of that? Unless of course you meant to say he felt more alive as a pumpkin than he did as a human?
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I think it could have easily been fixed by maybe gagging him somehow and him letting off muffled screams or something.

And b) The question of how he came to be lying on the road unconscious with his top off. If these were actually supernatural beings then by a stretch of the imagination we could assume that they had something to do with it, but if like it appeared to me, they were just Halloween psycho's of some sort then there's no insight into it. Perhaps he was out with his mates on halloween and got mashed and went on a drunken mission? If so maybe some kind of flashback or brief montage (say when he was in the jeep, or a 'life flashing before your eyes' kind of thing?) could have helped establish the context for the story.

Also to pickup on J.Michael's point about the kicking looking unrealistic, I think perhaps you should have stayed with the long shot, because not only did it look a tiny bit unrealistic, the wraiths didn't look amazing close-up either.

Overall though I liked it, it was an original idea and it held my attention. It was always going to be difficult to light considering the camera you're using? So good work guys and good luck on your next film.
 
The ZR-45 will always be hard to light lol. Thankfully we should be using a GL2 for our next production and its during the day, so hopefully graininess will be much lower.
 
Gosh guys thanks for all the help. Uh i guess to not make excuses because i love all of your critiques, but to explain a couple of things that we tried to do with the film.

Well i came up with this concept on a camping trip over the summer and developed it for about three months with paul and will(my teamates). I was acting in two plays at the time of the film so my character for it was pretty week but we had to film around halloween because pumpkins don't hang around long and rot quick so our filming time was limited because we were all busy. We went on a 7 hour trip to back country tennessee to film it at my grandmothers house. We had two nights and three days. First night when we got there we scoped out where to film and the next day we built the barn set and rehearsed the torture scenes. We had to film all in one night cause we were leaving the next morning so the whole processes in about seven hours. We used 600 ft of extention cord to get 1 500 watt light out to the road to film. So yes poor lighting was inevitalble especially with our canon zr.

The original story was suppose to have a family consisting of two parents and two children. These were the wraiths in the pumpkins eyes. They were human and were evil. We were going to use cut scenes at the end of the movie with the actual family two film all the shots over with the pumkin instead of myself and have it show the same things to happening to the pumkin that happened to me with real people and flashes of the wraith. Our family that i got from my church cancelled on us on account that the kids had school on the monday following the trip and needed their sleep so we lost the family and had to make do at the last minute.

Well about the acting. I definetly should have developed my character a lot more. I was more caught up in the directing than the acting and i apoligize. The reason he didn't resist when being chained or didn't run when they got out of the car was because i was still a pumkin and couldn't run or yell because of that handicap(sounds stupid but i thought it would work). Also to explain him on the side of the road... Along with the family we were gonn do a shot of a truck carrying a bunch of pumkins and one rolled out on the road and a family was suppose to find it on the way home one night. Sorry i didn't explain that better.

We had a budget of about two hundred dollars and five guys to do the job. I have thought about refilming it next year when we have purchased a better camera and hopefully a mike so the sound won't suck so much. We edited the film on a computer at school in our film class and since we have to share the computers with other students our original audio plot was accidently deleted by a fellow student so we put it back together really fast and it wasn't that great and again i apoligize.

Thank you so much for all you help and comments and critiques. If there is anyone interested in filming with us next year when we do it again hopefully let me know if you live in nc, tn, or somewhere else around there. As crazy as it sounds i'd really like to meet more filmakers on the site you all seem really talented with great potentional. Thank you again. Any more questions just ask on here or email me at MovieSamurai17@aol.com

And if anyone else is interested in our next film that I am writing it is about a hostage situation in someones attic with three thugs and one negotiator sent to settle things.
 
So am I supposed to feel sorry for pumpkins? Just kidding.

Very nice work. My favorite shot is of him standing on the road and this bright light shining down on him. Very spielberg.

My only complaint is a little better lighting and your editing needs to be faster. Sometimes I was sitting here going" All righ, got the point, next shot please."

Oh, almost forgot, too many dissolves. It interrupts the coninuity a little too much.

Other then that, I think that whatever you do next could easily be 20x better if you keep making stuff like this.

"The way is shut. It was made by the dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut."
 

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