Hard News - A film I made.

[Walker]

For our final University project, myself and two others wanted to make a film and see how far we could get it. "Hard News" is a mockumentary taking a cynical look at broadcast journalism, depicting the efforts of a junior news team to put together a news report for the deadline. It is quite a short film, at about 15 minutes long not including credits, and was made on pretty much a budget of £0 - we used the University's equipment and facilities, didn't pay our actors, etc, our expenditure for props and other things probably mounted up to <£20.

As I say, we are trying to see how far we can get it. We are going to begin entering it into film festivals once we are happy with a final product and have handed it in to be graded. On the 28th we had a screening at a local cinema called The Star and Shadow, it coming on before Val Kilmer's "Top Secret!" as part of the cinema's 80s comedy season. Feedback we got from the people in attendance was very positive, so we are very happy with that, but we'd like more feedback from a wider audience. That is where you come in, EWB. Please give it a watch and leave some feedback, so we can at least address the problems and see if we can fix them before the hand-in. We are aware of some obvious problems, but don't let that stop you pointing them out.

Wrote and Edited by myself, so if you have an specific feedback relating to those aspects of the film that'd be great for me. Anything else I can pass on to the others.

Anyway, enjoy.

Part 1

Part 2

[LL!]

Just watched it. Alright stuff!

I can only think of some changes that you can do immediately. First of all, the pacing is a little off. It feels too slow. Some of the shots are held on a little too long. For example, in Part 1 where they go to the wrong house to tell the girl her brother has died, when you show the sign over the proper house, it's held too long. Another one, I'd say, is when they reporters arrive at the scene and you get a shot of the crew members getting out of the car, I feel like you don't have to show the whole thing. Have the main reporter get out then cut to them already walking down the road. It just feels like there's too much of nothing going on and it drags the scene down. Just scan the movie for pacing.

Color Correction would help your movie look waaaaaay more presentable. A lot of stuff is too blown out, and it will looks so much better if you're able to add some saturation to it and mess around with the colors a bit.

Finally, the sound comes unsynced towards the end when the news report is going on and you're showing the interview with the lady that talked about Titanic.

[Walker]

Thanks very much for the feedback.

I can see what you mean about the pacing. I'm going to take a closer look at that tomorrow. However, the walk from the car to the police officer is an issue I have the film but have been overruled by the other two, they are adamant that they want one long take. I actually want to cut it not only to get rid of that long walk, but also to get rid of the split second reflection of the director in the car window as he gets out of the car (don't know if you noticed it, but I hate it).

Colour correction is proving to be very frustrating because I can't seem to get it quite right - it looks how the director wants it on the editing software but doesn't when it is exported. It doesn't help that we filmed on a terribly bright day - which is why the vox pop scene looks so terrible. The audio in that is another thing that is frustrating me because the traffic drowned out both vox pops, so we had to record the lines again in studio and painstakingly try to sync them up again, I can never seem to get it exactly right both times.

[Colly]

Wrote and Edited by myself, so if you have an specific feedback relating to those aspects of the film that'd be great for me. Anything else I can pass on to the others.

Found an issue with your writing...

[Lint]

HAven't watched it yet, but the title alone sounds like a hardcore porn title..