*FILM* Stolen Moments (for virgin media shorts)

[Barryo]

Hello,

I made my first short film with a friend of mine for virgin media shorts the other week, it cost us both a £100 each to make and it was a one day shoot. Do I need to say Shane is my favourite director or is that generally a given seeing as I'm posting on this website....

Anyways, have a gander here and let me know what you think,

Cheers,

www.virginmediashorts.com/film/1632707022

ohh, and the brief was to make a 150 second film, (that's why it's so short) ;D

[Dave]

Fucking hell! In a good way like!

**SPOILER**
The beginning is mentally good. Brilliantly directed I thought because it had a realism too it. Captured the chaos and disbelief of something traumatic happening in real life I thought.... plus I was entirely unaware of the camera and what it was doing, so it must have been the quality of directing.

An interesting twist to proceedings, but didn't the audience deserve a bit more of a complete resolution than that!? haha Just me.

[dude]

nice awesome shock value

[Snoog]

That was really good mate, really well done. The chaos after the accident was especially well directed and shot. Great performances too.

[wiggy]

top drawer that matey! very very impressed, at first i thought it was like a health and safety video we see at work but that twist changed my mind.
good luck with it

[salvador]

Amazingly well shot mate... great performances too!

[Gareth]

fantastic, I'm sort of with dave on the resolution though , but then again the film focuses on a brilliant dilema that parent faces, feels like the whole idea could be explored further in a longer project!

[shindig]

I can't stress how awesome that tracking shot looked. Sound was a bit borked to begin with and it's nice that you use the interior shot of the truck to prevent the need to actually wheel the pram out into the middle of the road.

That tracking shot was smoother than a bairn's arse.

[Barryo]

Didn't expect such nice comments, what a great bunch you all are ;D

Dave, we ran out of time for a complete resolution, maybe we'll stick one in the directors cut

Gareth, the short is actually based on a 20-30 min script (written by Paul womack who I made the short with) which goes into a lot more detail with the characters.

Shindig, the tracking shot was my missus driving our car with me leaning the camera out the window, the poor girl had to put up with my verbal to get the timimg spot on, SPEED UP, TOO FAST, SLOW DOWN, TOO SLOW, SPEED UP she nearly took the head of me! ahh well, it was the only time I could get away with it ;D
Also virgin media's upload of the video is corrupt hence the freeze frame at the begining and borked sound, and a few other things too.

[wiggy]

get it uploaded to vimeo, the quality is ace!

[Barryo]

We didn't make stage 2 'the long list' for virgin media shorts BOOOOO!

I was thinking to myself that what we made wasn't really the type of thing they where looking for. It looked and felt (as a few people have mentioned) like a public awareness clip. There wasn't really a character driven story just a short sharp shock with an explanation.

This little project has been a great learning curve and apart from feeling sick with nerves for the first few hours on the day of the shoot I really enjoyed it.

Now I’m wondering how could I have made something similar with a cinematic feel to it and not public awareness?

I would be grateful to hear any criticisms/opinons on this.

[shindig]

Give the players involved something of a backstory and you'll be set.

[Tom]

I would say that, to me, that public awareness thing doesn't really stand. I mean, it didn't seem like that to me, so don't think the film didn't make the cut on lack of 'cinematics' per se, as that's just a cursory idea.

The truth is, you made a good movie, but for whatever millions of possibilities, it wasn't chosen. That's not an indictment against the film, it's just that a big part of high profile film competitions means you ultimately play the numbers game. I'm sure a lot of exceptional films will not make the cut. I'm running a small film festival this September, and we've had tons of films sent, most of which are incredible, but we just don't have space for them all. That's the sad truth of filmmaking - places of exposure are massively over-subscribed.

Two things that I think your film lacked were:

1) Plausibility. Although it's not meant to be 'real', the look was very raw (which I loved) and the shot of the pram under the van shot, with the mother screaming and being dragged away was great. But there was no clue of a missing baby, or chance for the audience to experience the shock of the baby not being there. We go through the sheer intensity of seeing the pram hit, but are robbed of the missing baby reveal. A real shame, especially as you tell it to us in a news report voice-over.

2) There was no shot of the baby being taken. I loved the idea, but I didn't believe it, especially as there's no moment shown on screen where it could've happened. The mother wasn't distracted enough to have the baby snatched from under her nose. Of course, you can show that post the event, but I thought it was too random without seeing some indicator or even suggestion that there was a moment available.

That said, it is a good, solid idea, but it needs more flesh, especially around the events post-crash. But stick with it, because it's striking.

Oh, and the description on the side of the film told me everything about the story, but the film didn't. It should be the other way around.

Best of luck.

Tom.

[Tom]

Scrub that bit about the baby being taken, just re-watched it and caught it that time. Apologies. But the reveal of the baby not being there is still not clear enough.

Tom.

[shindig]

Branson's a cunt, anyway.