Thread: 3rd Short Film - The Liberator - Low Budget Sci-Fi

In what way do you feel it didn't turn out exactly how you would like ? I would agree this is an achievement. You have managed to get the atmosphere of desperation across very well. I found it hard going to watch for so long before there was any dialogue. AND I couldn't make out what the kid said. Not because it was badly recorded, I just didn't understand it.

Although I realise there are some subtle parts in the movie like the bed wetting. I still feel as though it is laking something of the human element in the relationship between the boy and the woman. At first he wanted to get revenge but the film doesn't show us why he didn't go through with it. Which to me is the whole point of the movie or have I read it wrong.

It's very well produced. You obviously had a good crew around you.

Well done.

Originally Posted by Midnight Blue

In what way do you feel it didn't turn out exactly how you would like ? I would agree this is an achievement. You have managed to get the atmosphere of desperation across very well. I found it hard going to watch for so long before there was any dialogue. AND I couldn't make out what the kid said. Not because it was badly recorded, I just didn't understand it.

Although I realise there are some subtle parts in the movie like the bed wetting. I still feel as though it is laking something of the human element in the relationship between the boy and the woman. At first he wanted to get revenge but the film doesn't show us why he didn't go through with it. Which to me is the whole point of the movie or have I read it wrong.

It's very well produced. You obviously had a good crew around you.

Well done.

Thanks for the Feedback, I appreciate it!

It didn't turn out the way that i wanted because of a mistake i made, which was casting an actor who couldn't deliver dialogue, and i immaturely thought that I'd be able to coax a performance out of this actor, i tried many many different direction techniques to get it to work, we had a very comfortable set for them both and the other actor did a great job, but the problem actor was very closed down, and wouldn't allow themselves to open up. the script i wrote wasn't by any means dialogue heavy, but it had some stuff that showed why he didn't go through with it a bit stronger, i didn't really have choice, i either had to try my hardest to change the script in a few days to try and show what i was going to tell visually, or leave in the bad acting. so i chose the former.

so I'll tell you what i tried to do haha, i basically tried to make it so the boy (Kane) was leaving her alive as a form of torture, you can see when she's tied up she's progressively getting weaker and weaker throughout the film, Kane is trying to sustain his image of being a man and when the moments of innocence come through i.e.: wetting the bed, killing mouse and feeling bad, she sees his innocence and it shows her some true humanity, but she still killed Kane's brother and he wants to see her suffer, so the thing that turns him around to feeling something for her is really at the end when she shoots the guards and basically sacrifices herself to save him. So it's about kane trying to balance the fine line of getting revenge but trying not being able to get past his innocence and the though of him becoming what he hates about her.

but i do agree with you, i feel like it could've been stronger and I've known this for a while, but we were so far into production at the time and had so much to do still that we couldn't go back as much as we would've liked, especially as this bad actor was getting angrier and angrier at how long we were taking to make the film, because of us trying to fix the problems, i felt like a bit of a failure after that because it was my first attempt at writing and directing a large scale short film (the two films before this were small 3 minute dramas) and the script was really good when we went into production, but that's just how it goes haha, on to the next i suppose


P.S. at the en kane says "I'm Kane"

thanks again for the feedback, i really appreciate it

That explains the missing something I observed. Well you can chalk that up to experience, learn from it and move on. I still think it's a very good production.

Originally Posted by Midnight Blue

That explains the missing something I observed. Well you can chalk that up to experience, learn from it and move on. I still think it's a very good production.

yeah, that's it haha, it was a great learning experience and where we failed in some parts we succeeded in others, so i'm still happy with it, just not as happy as i can be :P

i love it when the story is told visually and you've done a good job here. Sadly, though, presumably because of the missing dialogue for reasons you've explained, we are missig the exposition. We dont know who the military are, we don't know the relationship of the children to them, we don't know why they're being fed, we don't know why thy're being killed and we don't know why Kane wasn't killed.

There are also some implausibles - are we really to believe that Kane could tie a fully unconsious woman to the wall in a standing position? Why did the military, when they broke down the door to Kane's hide-out, not immediately kill him (you could have conciocted a reason by way of them being distracted by the woman or something)? Where did the bandage on the woman's thigh come from? Kane wasn't interested in putting it on and she was unconcious (or so it appeared) between being hit on the head and awakening to find she was tied up, and Kane certainly wouldn't have done it if he was after torture. In a different area, the muzzle flashes looked a bit cartoon like. i'd suggest turning down the opacity on them a tad.

These are all little things which make the film a bit less believeable. Leaving those aside, i thought it was very well done. The music and atmosphere were good and the acting was excellent. I did feel it began to drag a bit in the iddle but it picked up OK. Very impressive - expecially if this is your third film.

Originally Posted by TimStannard

i love it when the story is told visually and you've done a good job here. Sadly, though, presumably because of the missing dialogue for reasons you've explained, we are missig the exposition. We dont know who the military are, we don't know the relationship of the children to them, we don't know why they're being fed, we don't know why thy're being killed and we don't know why Kane wasn't killed.

There are also some implausibles - are we really to believe that Kane could tie a fully unconsious woman to the wall in a standing position? Why did the military, when they broke down the door to Kane's hide-out, not immediately kill him (you could have conciocted a reason by way of them being distracted by the woman or something)? Where did the bandage on the woman's thigh come from? Kane wasn't interested in putting it on and she was unconcious (or so it appeared) between being hit on the head and awakening to find she was tied up, and Kane certainly wouldn't have done it if he was after torture. In a different area, the muzzle flashes looked a bit cartoon like. i'd suggest turning down the opacity on them a tad.

These are all little things which make the film a bit less believeable. Leaving those aside, i thought it was very well done. The music and atmosphere were good and the acting was excellent. I did feel it began to drag a bit in the iddle but it picked up OK. Very impressive - expecially if this is your third film.

Hey, thanks for the feedback, i appreciate it

I'll try and explain the things that you've outlined here to the best of my ability haha.

I agree with you that some of that exposition was missing, this being my 3rd film, i naively thought that a lot of it wasn't needed, i liked the idea of all this action taking place in a world, but not needing to explain the world, because we would be focusing on the characters, but we had definitely established a very detailed world,which we just didn't really explain, The idea was that Kane was a young boy who was desperately trying to be a rebel (one of the people in the firefight) the rebels are fighting for control of their country (Australia in this case) after nuclear war damaged the earth and and umbrella company to the UN formed the NALF (New American Liberation Force) who set up operating cities around the world under the guise of liberating people from the new world's pressure when actually they are only there to steal resources and support themselves. this is the world story in a nutshell, it was more in depth but i dont want to write it all down at the moment haha.

The bread they are feeding them is actually poisoned, the people they are feeding the bread to are mostly civilians, but the NALF see it as "if you're not with us you're against us".

About the implausible things, her being tied up, to be 100% honest was simply artistic license haha, i didn't think too many people would care, or notice. when the military broke in there was going to be something where she basically said "leave him to me" (except it was better than that dialogue haha) but the delivery of the line was awful, the bandage actually was Kane, the reason being, major injuries in the upper leg cause a lot of blood loss that will kill you and he patched it up so that she would stay alive so he could make her life more of a hell through torture.

Anyway i do really appreciate your feedback and these are definitely things i can improve on in the next film, it was an amazing learning experience and i'm really proud of everyone who worked on it for trying to do something really ambitious on such a low budget (this film was our whole crew's 3rd film), the biggest thing i've learned is to spend more time in casting haha.

Thanks Again
Edward

One of the skills of a scriptwriter would be to get all thet information about the world across without it seeming like "I'm giving you the background". There are two really bad ways of doing it: textual introduction (a la Star Wars), or "voice of god" introduction ("In the year 2025, two years after the nuclear holocuast in the souther hemisphere ...." so i'm really pleased you didn't resort to that. However, I do feel we ned to know a bit about the world in which it takes place. this is essential in order for us to discover the relationships between the characters. I like the fact you'd thought through the wrld (though they all seem to be military, surely they need people "with" them to labour - slavery or death would seem to be the way to go with the outsiders rather than just killing them).

We weren't aware the bread was poisoned - and wouldn't the rebels know this anyway (don't drink the poisoned water - but i'm so thirsty ...would be an exchange that could get this accross- obviously far better scripted)

The bandage - I actually thought of this blood loss excuse myself, but again we needed some indication.

I'm not saying it's easy - I certainly can't do it - but it's really satisfying when you can produce motivations for every line, every scene, every movement.

I really look forward to what you do next.

I agree with Tim -- a classic case of over-explaining a movie is the original version of Blade Runner which featured a voice track of Harrison Ford narrating everything because the studio didn't think people would "get it" -- the director's cut eliminated the voice track and it is a much much better movie for it.

I watched your movie and really enjoyed it. For me, the only problem was the lack of dialogue. I worked on a (small) production where one of the actors just had a terrible voice. We ended up having him say the dialogue as best he could and then replaced it all later. The po' boy's way of accomplishing this is to have all the dialogue happen off-camera -- you could probably insert several pages of dialogue into your existing movie by simply having a male voice say things while the camera is on the female character and vice versa. Just a thought.

Zam

Originally Posted by zamiotana

I agree with Tim -- a classic case of over-explaining a movie is the original version of Blade Runner which featured a voice track of Harrison Ford narrating everything because the studio didn't think people would "get it" -- the director's cut eliminated the voice track and it is a much much better movie for it.

I watched your movie and really enjoyed it. For me, the only problem was the lack of dialogue. I worked on a (small) production where one of the actors just had a terrible voice. We ended up having him say the dialogue as best he could and then replaced it all later. The po' boy's way of accomplishing this is to have all the dialogue happen off-camera -- you could probably insert several pages of dialogue into your existing movie by simply having a male voice say things while the camera is on the female character and vice versa. Just a thought.

Zam

Hey, Thanks for the feedback

Yeah we tried some ADR as well as what you suggested, but unfortunately no one we showed the film to was buying that they were actually saying the stuff we put there, majority of them picked that it was dialogue replacement, so we couldn't really do that either.

The coordinator of the film department at my school was telling me i had to put a voice over in to explain it better, a "voice of god" one, he was very forceful, telling me i was going to fail if i didn't do it etc. hahaha but i felt too strongly about it making the film much worse than it could be, i hate the idea of spoon-feeding an audience information and would prefer to try and tell my story visually, it's certainly a pity that the dialogue didnt work out, because it would have cleared up a lot of the confusing parts, but that's just the way things went, and now i know what to do so it wont happen again haha.

Thanks!