R.A.C.E - A short film on student lives on 9/11 crisis (true events)

[SilverlinePro]

This is an old short film we made durring our learning aspects of film-making. It illustrates true stories of the lives of students shortly after the regrettable 911 crisis. the film is set to clarify to a young boy that fighting does not unravel anything. moreover, violence increases the possibilities of abuse and hate by racist gangs.

LINK
RACE Short Film! - YouTube


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[TimStannard]

I imagine it's difficult to make a "worthy" film without it coming across as preachy or trite.
I thought the concept was quite good, and the script reasonable, but rather let down by moments of extreme cheesiness - especially the ending.
The acting was quite good in places. I thought the protagonist was generally good and I got the impression he really believes in the message of the film. The main racist bully was also very believable (which must be quite difficult as presumably you don't get involved in an anti-acism/anti-bullying film of you are one!).
It was rather let down by the younger boy. Some of his looks were quite believeable but his delivery wasn't - not helped by the fact some of the lines he had to say didn't seem very natural for someone of that age.
The scenes of violence would have been better done without us seeing the kicks - they looked like someone trying to kick someone without hurting them! Try putting something on the ground like an old pillow or pile of rugs, weighted down and get the actors to really let rip into that and only show them from the waste up. No only will we see the actors putting some real effort into it, but not actually seeeing the contact can often make the violence seem worse. You can, of course cut in shots of the guy doubled up on the ground and feet dabcing around him.

Technically I thought you had a reasonable number of angles to cut between and the pace of the editing seemed to match that of the film. The film did feel like it dragged a bit, but I rarely felt you held on to any shot for longer than necessary so this was a faut of the script /acting/direction rather than the editing. Sound was poor. I think in some cases you'd tried to increase the levels and reduce background noise in sofftware as theer were some artifacts - particularly on the young boy's lines.

I quite liked teh attention you payed to using sound to create different atmospheres - it's just a shame you hadn't recorded it as well as you might have in the first place.

But well done for taking on a difficult subject and making an interesting film from it.

[Midnight Blue]

I agree with Tim that it's not easy to take on a subject like this. Unlike Tim, I thought the acting was the weakest part (sorry). The only really believable character is the bully. I did find myself getting into the story which is a good sign and so I didn't notice the sound issues Tim mentioned BUT if he says they were there, I’m sure they are. The camera work was mostly ok with only a few shots which could have been framed better. The pace was slow which was required for the piece but could have been more varied to keep interest as there was plenty of opportunities to go up and down with the different scenes of story line.

Well done for taking this on.