Sunday, December 30, 2012

Science Fiction Shorts

Jonathan Newman turned me on to the best sci-fi shorts this year.
Groovy.
There's "Memorize":
I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is with this movie. The locations are cool enough but there's something that just looks limited in the budget. And I realize that things like muzzle flashes and 2D fire always look a little... funky. But there's something else that's bugging me. I don't know what it is. Otherwise it's a fine-looking picture with good sound editing.
Factory Fifteen made this movie, sort of a future alt history. Sort of what I was thinking about for that war-between-worlds picture.

Hmm... I wonder if the frame rate of "Memorize" is higher than 24fps?

4 comments:

Cunningham said...

The actors don't have an emotional reaction to anything going on - the editing / directing doesn't have any reaction shots in it so we as the audience don't feel anything.

No emotional investment.

Andrew Bellware said...

That's a really good point. Yes. I read later that it's just all the filmmakers and their friends in all the parts. No emotional investment.
The thing that spurred this post was that the very first shot was... there was something wrong with it. And I don't think that was the acting.
But yes, you're right about reactions to things.

Cunningham said...

It's a stuttery editing technique, that's not using the full scope of the shots. As if a pan was cut off in mid-pan, making it incomplete.

The lack of reaction shots (cut out?) and the incomplete edits gives it a cheap feeling. It's like the new TRANSPORTER TV series where the moving car edits also seem incomplete. In that case, it's not the emotional reaction shots, but the lack of the "sense of space" that's too blame. You have little idea where you are on the streets of Nice, Berlin, or wherever else you're supposed to be.

Andrew Bellware said...

Yeah, I dig what you're saying. The trouble I have with it feels to me like something else though. The frame rate YouTube reports is 25fps, so I don't think it's that.
There's certainly some rolling shutter. And everything's in focus (which is odd because it's a Canon 7D I believe and it usually makes less stuff in focus than 35mm motion-picture).