Music: Bone - E. 1999
Mood: Restless

David's posted a pretty funny video documenting a bit of the making of Emulsion. A bit. Pretty funny stuff.
- posted by Brendan @ 8:31 PM 0 comments

 
Crash test dummy


So then - it's been a couple days since Emulsion began showing and I've gotten a pretty wide spectrum of "reviews". Oddly enough, largely because of how negative the initial fallout was over SR, the more negative remarks aren't really bothering me as much as I expected them to. Well.. that's not really true. The initial reaction is the pit-in-your-stomach response. That knee-jerk rejection feeling that everyone's had. But after a couple moments that goes away and I can either appreciate why that person didn't like it, or rule out their opinion as uninformed and not worth that time (as both cases have come up.. where someone has rejected it outright - but made valid remarks that completely and utterly support his conclusion. And then there's the "That movie was fucking shit." comments. Oh well.)

I'd like to share some of the remarks I've been getting, both from friends and from strangers - in no particular order (and sic):

"All in all, it's ambitious, but underdeveloped. "

"Okay, I'm usually pretty forgiving of amateur film but that was pretty badly executed. You have a good premise and the payoff at the end is satisfactory, but your pacing would make even David Lynch check his watch. "

"I watched student screenings all weekend and this is better than a lot of them."

"If your goal was to create an 'atmosphere', then you need to majorly brush it up on the technical side. The camera was shaky and you need to severely redo your audio track (either make it silent or add music, the background noise screams 'microphone on top of the camcorder'). "

"I like the dark/industrious soundtrack you have for it, but alter the volume at it, Or better yet try and work on getting some mics (i understand your on a limited budget) to enhance the dialouge. Either or would be fine."

"that was a bit of a suprise ending. very inovative."

"that was awesome."

"It was a lot like David Lynch's Lost Highway, only really, really gay."

".... I liked the idea and the execution of it. Good job. "

"Its so meandering. Maybe I'll watch the rest tommorow. But for the first 7 minutes....meh"

"I was most impressed with the setting and lighting in the movie. Unfortunately that's all I really enjoyed about the movie."

"nice shooting and editing, though. and i liked the ending, quite unexpected. "


I'm beginning to regret, to a certain extent, that I took on a film like this to be my so-called "debut". Malaise would have easily been more palpable because it's a linear story, with real characters and real dialogue and real.. well.. meaning. However, it also would probably have run about 90-120mins. It's easier to get opinions from people over a 10min film than a much longer one.

Overall, I'm happy with it, but I may re-edit Emulsion to a shorter running time and make things tighter... I'm starting to see why filmmakers use test screenings and do change their work. Because it's always more satisfying to hear "Good job" than "that was the gh4y". :-
We'll see.

Anyhow, next short will certainly be a more straight-forward narrative (though, obviously, not too staright forward). I may opt to use different actors too - because Pat & Co. may get a little repetetive...

ALso, if you were staying away from it because it's in Real and you don't like Real - a WMV version is now online.
- posted by Brendan @ 11:04 PM 0 comments

 
A suspension of a sensitive silver salt or a mixture of silver halides in a viscous medium forming a coating on photographic plates, film or paper.

Emulsion

now playing

- posted by Brendan @ 2:04 AM 0 comments