'Advice' by Rowena Woolford

Second Edit

Rowena Woolford is a new director, she has been creating her own short fictional films since she graduated East 15 Acting School in July 2012.

Read 'Advice' HERE

First Cut Comments... have YOUR say!

Comments: 0

'Advice' by Rowena Woolford

First Edit

First cut: Producers notes for the filmmakers

  • Try remixing with music much lower
Comments: 12 (Discussion closed)
  • #1

    Adolf El Assal (Sunday, 04 November 2012 13:45)

    you should edit it much, much tighter and lower the music

  • #2

    Rowena Woolford (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 12:09)

    More comments on how to improve it would be helpful please!

  • #3

    Stephen Cooper (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 16:42)

    Think the music is up a bit to loud. It dominants the whole piece. Could do with tighten up the edits and work on the transistions between the two chcaracters. Some of it feels quite jarring at the moment. Think once you sort the sound out and edit it a bit sharper you will notice a big difference in it.

  • #4

    Michael Cheung (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 16:49)

    I don't necessarily agree with Adolf's comment of being much tighter. For me, I'd say ditch the music firstly. It takes away from the genuine nature that this encounter is meant to be. Also, steer away from cheesy sound effects. Go back to the story and what you're trying to say about these two characters and let us know what they are feeling. Is he nervous about this meeting? He seems pretty confident. How is she feeling? Without knowing these feelings I find it difficult to relate / engage with them.

    I was confused about the geography of it all aswell. It seems like the friend was in the same place at first, but I'm guessing it's in a completely different location.

    If it's his story (as he is the person who seemingly wants something from the beginning) then he needs to dominate more.

    just my initial thoughts.

  • #5

    Shaun Bond (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 17:05)

    I feel it flows quite smoothly and wouldn't necessarily benefit from a tightening. However, the music is quite dominating and I struggled to hear the dialogue. Similar to what Michael said too; the movie space was a bit confusing as I thought the friend was in a separate location were it not for her grabbing him at the beginning to sit him down.

  • #6

    Michael W. Penny (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 17:08)

    I actually liked the "cheesy sound effect" where she first grabs his shirt and pulls him away. It put a comedic tone to the piece pretty quickly.

    I thought the transition from the diner to the nightclub was interesting, in a kind of way that the nightclub is "present day" and all the diner scenes are in his mind's eye, where he's listening to the advice and picturing how it would play out if he actually took said advice when he talked to his crush, so I think that device was cool.

    In particular, I think the comedy of the guy getting slapped segment would play better if you removed the fades and made them hard cuts to speed up the pace ever-so-slightly in this section. To the point where the slaps almost come back-to-back-to-back. It's nearing the end of the film so you want to kind of rev it up a bit to move forward to your denoument. I'd give it a try to see if you like it better that way.

    Comments about the music playing too hot are accurate. Unfortunately the dialogue is a little hollow just because you had to use the onboard mics I'm assuming. So you'll have to compensate by bringing the dialogue up a bit and lowering the music to make sure it's the dialogue we hear primarily, and the music secondary. As long as we can hear what they say, it'll play better.

    Good effort, and good luck on the second cut!

  • #7

    Rowena Woolford (Tuesday, 06 November 2012 17:20)

    Thanks everyone for your feedback, I'll take it into account as I work on my 2nd edit. I'm glad you understood the 'imaginary situations' element, Michael. The sound is a little hollow because of the filters I used to minimise the background noise as we were in quite a noisy location. I plan to rerecord and dub over the sound to improve it. Thanks again for your comments! R

  • #8

    King (Wednesday, 07 November 2012 03:20)

    Excellent effort. Although the locations were minimal settings, you actually conveyed the spirit of the story quite accurately. For me the main shortcoming was the framing when the protangonist just barely creeps onto the screen from the right side of the frame. Too much empty space on the left. Very distracting.

  • #9

    Rocko Paolo (Friday, 09 November 2012 14:56)

    Is that "Blue Moon" playing at the intro? The music is definitely too loud and the two scenes where the actor is facing away from the camera we cannot hear him probably more due to the loud music. Otherwise the film works. I would also lose the fade out effect at the end.

  • #10

    Rowena Woolford (Friday, 09 November 2012)

    Thanks for your comments Rocko and King, the opening is called 'That Thing We Do' by Mike Stobbie but it is probably inspired by Blue Moon! I've worked on the sound levels and a new version should be up by Tuesday next week, I hope you'll comment again and tell me what you think!

  • #11

    Oni (Tuesday, 13 November 2012 17:47)

    I think the video has captured the main actress's sexy part of her body; her lips, her feet and her eyes, I specially like the camera went to the leg angle. Also, the choice of music is proper, even though sometimes the music is too loud to hear the lines. And I think the editing is nice, especially in the last part; the girl hit the guy's face, the tempo is good.

    However, I also think there are 3 things that need to be improved; the imaginary part and the reality should be distinguished easily, for me it is difficult to understand when is the time of coming back to reality, maybe the imaginary part with the girl at the cafe and the reality with the girl in the cafe should have a slightly different vision capture, or a different texture of shooting. Secondly,it is about the imaginary girl pull the man's shirt, they seem they need some actions, otherwise I do not know their relationship; when the man turn around and see the girl's face, I thought he should talk first. The third part which needs to improved is the man eventually does not had any changes, so I do not know why do I need to know the guy's thoughts in the pub with his imaginary girl or friend.

  • #12

    Louise McCooey (Monday, 19 November 2012 15:05)

    I enjoyed this but I found the music quite loud and wonder how it woudl be without any music?