We open with the alarm clock ringing, character getting out of bed, followed by a 2 minute breakfast montage. With plenty of close ups of coffee cup and toaster.
Hey, if the adult industry gets a free pass with their 35-year-old "teens" and stepsons 10 years older than their stepmoms, I don't see any reason why indie filmmakers can't be as chronologically flexible.
As a highschool media teacher, if I get one more 'My depression/anxiety manifesting as a dark ominous creature that follows me around only to later reveal itself to be me', I'm going to start manifesting real life demons.
i was at a screening for my former uni to see my friend's film that i worked on and it was very good, but he decided to play the credits TWICE (2x). once as a one-name-per-slide thing and then again rolling. it's funny how you can physically feel the audience sighing even if not a sound is made
“I’m waiting for middle credits” they already did that in End of Evangelion. It was hilarious when I saw it in the theater and people who weren’t familiar with the show started getting up to leave
Several more alternative story elements: - It has all been a drug trip - The protagonist commits suicide - One of the characters is dead and only visible to the protagonist
Wait… I’m not a filmmaker but I’ve been into short films recently cause there are a lot of tips in this field that are applicable to other medias such as comics, writing etc. One of my short story involves the suicide of my protagonist. Is it that bad ? I know it’s cliche anyway, but the way you depinct it screams « don’t »
@@JerkyTrickk Who? How? Why and Why now? Any story can work so long as you write an effective story. We're just telling you not to follow the usual trope that has no substance. Instead of writing a story about your protagonist going through it, why not start with the protagonist already dead and we follow his best friend that is trying to understand the how, why and why now. It's all about perspective
As a film student I did indeed have my 19 year old actor wake up to an alarm ringing as he got ready for his 9-5 which he's been in for 30 years. His boss does in fact ask for those DAMN REPORTS and my character falls into a psychosis. To wake up and find it was all a dream!
After the wake-up scenes, and don't rush it, show a close-up of a dripping tap. A good 1/3 of the film should be devoted to these crucial scenes. Now you have your audience truly excited, have your protagonist walk the 12 miles to where the story starts. Show him or her climb up steps, go through the park, wait at a stop sign, and then walk some more. By the time he/she arrives, it is time for the closing credits. You can all thank me later when you win Sundance.
Needed this big time, our last film was actually pretty good and can't let that happen again. But at least the film had all teenagers playing adult roles.
I have a great idea for a short film! What if the characters REALIZE they're in a short film, and it's all meta and cool?! How awesome and original would that be?! I feel an Oscar coming on...
I studied film in Chicago, so perhaps this one was glossed over because it's really specific to the urban campus. Homeless people as either main characters or a topic. Nothing goes together quite as well as short films and homeless people.
It's a great idea to stop the film for a breather and include the performance of a three-minute song in the film, especially when the performer is the director's girlfriend
i made 3 minutes credit for an 8 minute film just to meet the 10 mins timemark (it was an assignment and had to be 10-20 mins) idk why i thought that would fool the professor
Back in the early 2000s I ended up crewing on the same short film about 6 times. Main character wakes up and starts to get flashbacks of a fight with their significant other only to finally remember that they murdered them and somehow forgot and fell asleep. Some times drugs and alcohol were involved. 😂
I took a film class once and our teacher banned us from making any short involving a character that wakes up to their alarm clock. However, it became very apparent that one guy had not paid attention at all when his very first film assignment started with exactly that.
For my 48 Film Projects, I always used the full 59 seconds for credits for my 7-minute movies, because I mostly wanted to thank the unpaid team members of those 2-day exercises. But I knew the credits are typically boring, so I got local musicians to contribute their own music (to also promote it), and shot footage just to be in the credits. If I were making a "real" movie, I wouldn't do things the same way, but the 48 Hour Film Project is its own animal.
and then at the end u should pull out from a tv as if u were just watching the movie on tv and go "I'm determined to make a short film with every one of these"
@@btm96 I definitely think handheld can be useful in very specific situations. But I’ve worked with a lot of people that just say “it’s for the ascetic” when really it’s just because they don’t want to use any equipment
It's always good to try to make your film "look like an A24 movie" even if you don't know what that means! Just go ahead and put different colored bulbs throughout a house for no reason!
I'm so glad he mentioned Arial font. I've read of typographers and font designers watching a movie, and afterward contacting the production company to scold and educate them about their cringe and lazy font choices, because they were that bad. Dune 2 used a variant of Futura for subtitles; not super original but it's good and fits the movie and historical context of the 1960's sci-fi book. If they used Arial or a default Adobe font, I would have flipped my shit.
Imma be a hater here and say not using Arial or a basic font for subtitles is a horrific and annoying choice. It gives the vibe that you haven't put in enough work to make the actual story good and now you're hoping that the subtitles cover up the problems. Also it can be very hard to read stylized fonts as subtitles when your eyesight isn't very good. To the point where I have had to drop multiple shows because the fonts aren't stylized well.
@thezackast2752 The designer’s job is also not to use overly stylized fonts for things like subtitles. There’s lot of metrics for a font. Legibility, readability, balance, appropriateness for the film, and a general sense of “does it look good”. Arial is unbalanced and ugly; a good alternative is Helvetica. Futura is pretty good for Dune; it’s contemporary (ish) to the writing of the book, it has some of the modern themes the story deals with, and it’s German and I suppose you could argue there’s some Nazi imagery going on there. If you’re going to be lazy and use a default font, use a good one like Helvetica. Ideally you should pick one that ticks all the boxes of “good” while also stylistically fitting your film. Is it a period drama? Futura will look really weird. Is it a comedy? Maybe pick something with a bigger X height (height of the lowercase letters) since those tend to look more laid back. Is it set in 1940? Might be weird to use something designed in 2007.
I’m part of a film club in my city where people meet up and make short films. One of the guys created a poster for his film, but his name was on it SEVEN different times 😂
Middle credits: Gaspar Noe's "Climax" has a legit (and admittedly pretty cool) credit roll some 35-40 mins into the film and then just picks right back up where it left off.
@@Jupa I agree. Noe is definitely self indulgent as a filmmaker but his films are also such a unique experience that it's easy to disregard & even defend his "pretentious" excursions.
I personally hated it. The movie is not the best in my opinion, but those logos and credits flashing on screen is my least favorite part of the movie. It took me out of the haunting experience and all I could think was “this is so fucking stupid”. I am a big fan of experimentation and weird cinema, but that was just a tad ridiculous to me.
@@yt.byliam thats fair. in retrospect, think they served the purpose of dividing the film into two parts (set up & payoff) but even in real time i liked them because I'm a font nerd.
Starting to figure out my first short film… so glad I saw this video before getting too far. It could have gone terribly good but I know what mistakes to avoid now. Thank you!
I just made my first short film recently and I am guilty of a lot of these things in the video lol. Even though my film is not perfect, all you can do is to try and improve, but also appreciate that you're still making something too. Great video btw.
You missed one of the key ingredients of Excellent Terrible Short Film making: it _needs_ to be a breakup drama with a romantic montage in the middle that's a logistical nightmare to schedule, ending with the guy leaving because he got "the job" on the opposite end of the country.
Great video! You forgot, get your friends and family to play all the characters. Also, I should make one of these for my color grading channel. “Starter Pack for a terrible grade” 😊
I thought I was a genius once when I accidentally placed my sister in the shade while the background was all strong sunlight and the source of the shade was out of the picture because it looked like I had access to a greenscreen. I didn't, so I felt like it made the movie look more professional - by having bad greenscreen in a shot that did not at all require greenscreen. I would also do things that I hated to see in professional movies just because it made it feel like a "real movie".
Also be sure to add laughter sound FX over every funny part so the audience knows the theme-also keep your key light coming from the same direction as the camera is pointing.
God the camera/sound budget ratio is too true. Safe to say I learned my lesson. Great video Kent! I really enjoyed your sarcastic witty commentary on this video. Keep these styles of videos coming!
Pro tip: indicate siblings by having either mention "mom" or "dad" without specifying "your mom" or "my dad". That is fundamentally how siblings are related: they have the same parent.
This is great and absolutely true. It takes me back to my first film school lessons. 😆 And you are right, people shouldn't get discouraged by these things. Even the best have done these things before and you really need to appreciate them as a milestone in your learning curve. Great stuff, good video !
Waking up is always an option but what's really important in a short film is making sure we spend AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE in the protagonist's normal world. You need to really sell how everyday and plebian their life is so that the inciting incident is a contrast! I recommend at least 25% of the short film's runtime but the pros can pump it up much higher.
the "it was a dream the whole time" can work if the plot its focused on the development of the character,maybe beating a trauma. the events didn't happened,but they did for the main character,he changed as a person
I'm so glad I clicked on this. I almost discredited using a tin can and string for sound but after watching this I quickly realised great audio is a mistake! Thank you! (Although, to note - some of my earlier films defo sound like a tin can and string 🤣)
Waking up, getting out of bed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, taking a dump and going through the rest of Bob's daily routine for the next excruciating 7 minutes. (It's funny because my next short film actually has a dude waking up and getting ready 😅)
As a bad film director myself, here are a few more helpful tips: You don't need actors, just play every part yourself or maybe cast a friend or family member if you truly have no other choice. No one can tell you your script sucks if you don't have a script. No one can tell you your film makes no sense if you call it "surreaslistic" or "experimental". You want to show something that's way out of your budget and skills (like some cool action scenes or a tense murder)? Just use crash zooms, quick editing, a bunch of unidentifyable close-ups and of course the old reliable shakey cam. Create the Imdb/Letterboxd page for your films yourself. How could a film be bad that's literally on the same website as The Godfather? For more tips and tricks just watch literally anything I have made so far, because it all kinda sucks.
Don't forget the the clock ticking over from 5.59 to 6.00... Or the never-ending trapped on a (college) staircase, going up to the next floor to find yourself on the same level. Or the deliberate continuity issues to be edgy and 'break all the rules'... Chuck in some droning sound fx and muffle out the voices to make it super sinister 🤔
Retraining in my 40's, this took me right back to film school and being stuck with 18 year olds. The most educating thing about it, was not turning up and working in the field with professionals. I now work as a visual journalist creating content for the national news... The others in my class, well.....
I have used "it was all a dream" one time, but it was in school. the teacher gave us a starting paragraph about like-- climbing a mountain or something-- but I didn't care for that, so I made my character wake up from a dream and made the story about something completely unrelated to the prompt. I don't have it anymore, so I don't know if it was any good, but I recall at the time being proud of how I narrated the vauge and blurry transition from the opening paragraph's dream state to the beep of the alarm to waking up. very stereotypical in that sense, but subverting the troupe by putting it at the beginning of the story instead of the end, I suppose
Don't forget to make your movie about how you don't have any ideas for making a movie. Have the main character (bonus points if it's you playing the part) stare at an open word document before slamming it down in frustration.
Maxed-out film grain plugins, y'know, for the filmic look. 'cos everyone loves the look of film, right? Even though this was shot on a borrowed DSLR or someone's iPhone. Also "Do we really need that many expensive lights? Let's just shoot with practicals and crank up the ISO"
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Was having some fun with this video, don't take it personally or let it discourage you! I'm guilty of almost all these 😅
This is a really creative "don't" list. Great job.
Me too! At 50 years old and just starting film school, I thought I was immune! Lol! Apparently not!
GTFO. You need to reconsider your position on Eunuch Unicorn Productions
Just got my first ever laurel from a small festival, was proud until this video
@@linkmusicnow still be proud! You made something and got it seen!
We open with the alarm clock ringing, character getting out of bed, followed by a 2 minute breakfast montage. With plenty of close ups of coffee cup and toaster.
Was that the new movie? Or a new vlog by [popular RUclipsr name redacted]?
@@Ropetupa peter doesnt even film or edit anything on his channel anymore lol
@@SaxSpy I am afraid that you have to be more specific than that. There are lots popular Peters in Tube...
Such a classic
And after a short drug trip and murmured deep thoughts our character wakes up, realizing it's been all just a dream.
The 16 year olds playing 40 year olds is a nice balance for the decades we had to watch 40 year olds playing 16 year olds.
This is literally what my friends and I were doing in high school. One film had us all playing middle aged men
I literally just did this one for a final project ayyyyy
(at least I pretentiously worked it into the point kind of)
I rewatched Christine recently and I was shocked to see a dudes in their 40s in high school. Lol
Hey, if the adult industry gets a free pass with their 35-year-old "teens" and stepsons 10 years older than their stepmoms, I don't see any reason why indie filmmakers can't be as chronologically flexible.
@@nenoman3855 I’m no expert on the topic but I heavily doubt the adult industry is held to the same standards as the rest of the film industry
instructions unclear, I won an oscar
this :)
i think if you won an oscar you did the job way too well....
@@Smougda right
Lol
Oscar for bad films ig
Don’t forget to write a crying scene for your actor who definitely doesn’t have that in their range!
Oh of course! Because you shouldn't hire actors either. Just get your friends to do it.
lol, for my only film i just told my friend to laugh. because laughin and crying are basically the same
LMAO i actually make my friend cried because i tell them they couldn't do crying acting
@@burnedmozzarella that’s awsome
"lets film the protagonist opening the fridge from the outside"
"i have a better idea"
"let's film the fridge opening up the protagonist"
"I have a butter idea"
“lets film the fridge coming inside the protagonist”
"I have a bitter idea"
"lets film the fridge protagonisting up the open
As a highschool media teacher, if I get one more 'My depression/anxiety manifesting as a dark ominous creature that follows me around only to later reveal itself to be me', I'm going to start manifesting real life demons.
Dammit
At the end of the movie, the real life demon turns out to be the fucking Symbiote
Dude you're not gonna believe who the demons you manifested just turned out to be
What if the demons turn out to be the friends we made along the way?
@@hectormontes7056 sorry bud good luck next time
Thumbnail: *shows the exact editing software and microphone I use*
“Terrible short film starter pack”
Shots fired
f 1.4 only 🤡
Fr lol
Using capcut is sacrilege
well it's only up from here i suppose lol
i was at a screening for my former uni to see my friend's film that i worked on and it was very good, but he decided to play the credits TWICE (2x). once as a one-name-per-slide thing and then again rolling. it's funny how you can physically feel the audience sighing even if not a sound is made
Reminds me of writing essays for school with a minimum page count requirement😂
Tbf maybe I wonder if he forgot to chop off one of them
“I’m waiting for middle credits” they already did that in End of Evangelion. It was hilarious when I saw it in the theater and people who weren’t familiar with the show started getting up to leave
Damnit! I wanted to copy that! Sounded like a hilarious idea! 😀
No matter what point people leave that movie, it's surely leaving on a pleasant note. 👍
The cinematic genius of Hideaki Anno is unmatched.
Also climax by Gaspar noe
The normie filter.
Make sure you put all the 5 min bloopers at the end of a short 3 min film, the audience will love it as much as you and your friends did making it!
I can confirm … As a sound guy, I often get paid with couch coins, which come in handy for pinball nights and laundry
You get paid???
You get paid???
“You might get to bust out that fish eye lens” god dammit stop. I have a family. You’re killing me.
a son and wrinkless wife i presume
Forgot the teal and orange look
Isn’t that every major motion picture?
@@DFMoray i mean they use the right look for the each story..But beginners use teal and orange for literally everything
Exactly why I didnt use it for our school project short film, it's.. pretty overused 😅
Never seen the movie version of Wiplash's piss filter?
Oh, that's the Michael Bay film starter pack.
Several more alternative story elements:
- It has all been a drug trip
- The protagonist commits suicide
- One of the characters is dead and only visible to the protagonist
- The protagonist wakes up in an insane asylum.
Wait… I’m not a filmmaker but I’ve been into short films recently cause there are a lot of tips in this field that are applicable to other medias such as comics, writing etc. One of my short story involves the suicide of my protagonist. Is it that bad ? I know it’s cliche anyway, but the way you depinct it screams « don’t »
@@JerkyTrickk Who? How? Why and Why now?
Any story can work so long as you write an effective story. We're just telling you not to follow the usual trope that has no substance. Instead of writing a story about your protagonist going through it, why not start with the protagonist already dead and we follow his best friend that is trying to understand the how, why and why now.
It's all about perspective
As a film student I did indeed have my 19 year old actor wake up to an alarm ringing as he got ready for his 9-5 which he's been in for 30 years. His boss does in fact ask for those DAMN REPORTS and my character falls into a psychosis. To wake up and find it was all a dream!
Nah the age one is so true 😭 my buddy finished a film assignment and his gf plays his mom lmao
oedipus
When you call her "mommy" one too many times
Freud?
mommy kink?
Thats just a kink actually
After the wake-up scenes, and don't rush it, show a close-up of a dripping tap. A good 1/3 of the film should be devoted to these crucial scenes. Now you have your audience truly excited, have your protagonist walk the 12 miles to where the story starts. Show him or her climb up steps, go through the park, wait at a stop sign, and then walk some more. By the time he/she arrives, it is time for the closing credits. You can all thank me later when you win Sundance.
And remember kids, unsynced, mismatched sound and video isn’t just for badly dubbed 1970s kung fu movies.
Needed this big time, our last film was actually pretty good and can't let that happen again. But at least the film had all teenagers playing adult roles.
When i see the thumbnail cluttered with film festival laurels, i immediately don't want to watch their short film.
Laurels only bang in food, i dont need them on my head
Literally. Especially for an animation.
Middle credits? Metal Gear Solid V by Hideo Kojima. Full of starting credits, middle credits, and ending credits.
Wait, those credits had a MGS game?
End of evangelion has middle credits in as well lol
Yeah but like there was cool music
Except for the quiet one but whatever
This was somehow painfully insulting and incredibly eye opening at the same time.
I have a great idea for a short film! What if the characters REALIZE they're in a short film, and it's all meta and cool?! How awesome and original would that be?! I feel an Oscar coming on...
I studied film in Chicago, so perhaps this one was glossed over because it's really specific to the urban campus. Homeless people as either main characters or a topic. Nothing goes together quite as well as short films and homeless people.
The good old homeless/prostitute that teaches the main character a moral lesson should be considered a genre of its own.
It's a great idea to stop the film for a breather and include the performance of a three-minute song in the film, especially when the performer is the director's girlfriend
Always the worst
Shit I wanted to do the song thing in my next short film so bad.
i have this urge to put radiohead song in every movie i've written
i made 3 minutes credit for an 8 minute film just to meet the 10 mins timemark (it was an assignment and had to be 10-20 mins) idk why i thought that would fool the professor
gotta make sure your name is listed 13 different times lol
The film school version of increasing the space width and line spacing to fill more pages?
We need more montages of people making coffee.
Frick me, you got me with this one, my current scrupt has a sequence lined up with coffee making
“Color grading? You’re gonna grade my color? What is this elementary school” legendary line
Back in the early 2000s I ended up crewing on the same short film about 6 times. Main character wakes up and starts to get flashbacks of a fight with their significant other only to finally remember that they murdered them and somehow forgot and fell asleep. Some times drugs and alcohol were involved. 😂
this was literally what i had planned to do.. now i gotta come up with something else fuck, and i thought i was a genius lol
I took a film class once and our teacher banned us from making any short involving a character that wakes up to their alarm clock. However, it became very apparent that one guy had not paid attention at all when his very first film assignment started with exactly that.
For my 48 Film Projects, I always used the full 59 seconds for credits for my 7-minute movies, because I mostly wanted to thank the unpaid team members of those 2-day exercises. But I knew the credits are typically boring, so I got local musicians to contribute their own music (to also promote it), and shot footage just to be in the credits. If I were making a "real" movie, I wouldn't do things the same way, but the 48 Hour Film Project is its own animal.
I'm determined to make a short film with every one of these
and then at the end u should pull out from a tv as if u were just watching the movie on tv and go "I'm determined to make a short film with every one of these"
The worst thing hearing on set in film school is "why don't we shoot the entire film in handheld"
To be fair, I'd argue a lot of films shot almost exclusively handheld are amazing. BUT, that's with professionals operating the camera.
@@btm96 I definitely think handheld can be useful in very specific situations. But I’ve worked with a lot of people that just say “it’s for the ascetic” when really it’s just because they don’t want to use any equipment
@@btm96 They're also big cameras designed to be stable when handheld.
It's always good to try to make your film "look like an A24 movie" even if you don't know what that means! Just go ahead and put different colored bulbs throughout a house for no reason!
I'm so glad he mentioned Arial font. I've read of typographers and font designers watching a movie, and afterward contacting the production company to scold and educate them about their cringe and lazy font choices, because they were that bad.
Dune 2 used a variant of Futura for subtitles; not super original but it's good and fits the movie and historical context of the 1960's sci-fi book. If they used Arial or a default Adobe font, I would have flipped my shit.
its not that serious lmao 🤣
huh
Imma be a hater here and say not using Arial or a basic font for subtitles is a horrific and annoying choice. It gives the vibe that you haven't put in enough work to make the actual story good and now you're hoping that the subtitles cover up the problems.
Also it can be very hard to read stylized fonts as subtitles when your eyesight isn't very good. To the point where I have had to drop multiple shows because the fonts aren't stylized well.
@thezackast2752 The designer’s job is also not to use overly stylized fonts for things like subtitles. There’s lot of metrics for a font. Legibility, readability, balance, appropriateness for the film, and a general sense of “does it look good”. Arial is unbalanced and ugly; a good alternative is Helvetica.
Futura is pretty good for Dune; it’s contemporary (ish) to the writing of the book, it has some of the modern themes the story deals with, and it’s German and I suppose you could argue there’s some Nazi imagery going on there.
If you’re going to be lazy and use a default font, use a good one like Helvetica. Ideally you should pick one that ticks all the boxes of “good” while also stylistically fitting your film. Is it a period drama? Futura will look really weird. Is it a comedy? Maybe pick something with a bigger X height (height of the lowercase letters) since those tend to look more laid back. Is it set in 1940? Might be weird to use something designed in 2007.
@@thezackast2752 Futura, to be fair, is a very legible font
The fish eyes lens should only be used to film skaters doing sick tricks while a 90s rock hand is playing at the background.
make sure the traffic noises outside your apartment (which is the only location) is as loud as, and preferably louder, than the actor's dialogue.
“Bad films can be so much worse if we work together” goes hard honestly
I’m part of a film club in my city where people meet up and make short films. One of the guys created a poster for his film, but his name was on it SEVEN different times 😂
Middle credits: Gaspar Noe's "Climax" has a legit (and admittedly pretty cool) credit roll some 35-40 mins into the film and then just picks right back up where it left off.
i love that movie LMAO
I really like that film. A more cynical version of myself might’ve called it pretentious but that film is a ride.
@@Jupa I agree. Noe is definitely self indulgent as a filmmaker but his films are also such a unique experience that it's easy to disregard & even defend his "pretentious" excursions.
I personally hated it. The movie is not the best in my opinion, but those logos and credits flashing on screen is my least favorite part of the movie. It took me out of the haunting experience and all I could think was “this is so fucking stupid”. I am a big fan of experimentation and weird cinema, but that was just a tad ridiculous to me.
@@yt.byliam thats fair. in retrospect, think they served the purpose of dividing the film into two parts (set up & payoff) but even in real time i liked them because I'm a font nerd.
My mind has been corrupted so much by videogames I inmediately thought of MGSV when I saw the lens flare.
Technically Kojima pioneered the mid credits by introducing the voice actor's name along with the characters.
There was a purpose to the lens flairs in MGSV though, it meant that the light was making you visible.
No, that is not solid snake ❗️❗️❗️
Starting to figure out my first short film… so glad I saw this video before getting too far. It could have gone terribly good but I know what mistakes to avoid now. Thank you!
1:55 the end of evangelion actually just has its credits roll midway through the film
I laughed so hard at the "16yo acne ridden protagonist with braces coming home to his wife and child after another long day at the office" 😂
I just made my first short film recently and I am guilty of a lot of these things in the video lol. Even though my film is not perfect, all you can do is to try and improve, but also appreciate that you're still making something too. Great video btw.
This is my favorite video of yours. Thoroughly enjoy your dryness
Nothing like signing up for a newsletter about how AI will replace filmmakers!
for real though, I'm just so tired of hearing about AI everywhere and people acting like such an amazing and unanimously positive change... @_@
One of the things you really really want is to be able to hear the camera man breathing every now and then
Just lets you know a real human made this
That Eunuch Unicorn Pictures International intro kinda tough tho 😂
My friend once joked to me that every short film is about a "misunderstood guy" and we laughed about it for about 10 minutes.
Came for the starter pack, stayed for the sarcasm.
You missed one of the key ingredients of Excellent Terrible Short Film making: it _needs_ to be a breakup drama with a romantic montage in the middle that's a logistical nightmare to schedule, ending with the guy leaving because he got "the job" on the opposite end of the country.
Great video! You forgot, get your friends and family to play all the characters. Also, I should make one of these for my color grading channel. “Starter Pack for a terrible grade” 😊
Subscribed and looking forward to it- and the rest:)…
Invincible did “middle” credits in many episodes, works great, good fakeout, also confusing.
looks like I was always just determined to make a good 'bad film'
Everything everywhere all at once had mid credits revolutionary film they won an Oscar for that
I thought I was a genius once when I accidentally placed my sister in the shade while the background was all strong sunlight and the source of the shade was out of the picture because it looked like I had access to a greenscreen. I didn't, so I felt like it made the movie look more professional - by having bad greenscreen in a shot that did not at all require greenscreen. I would also do things that I hated to see in professional movies just because it made it feel like a "real movie".
Also be sure to add laughter sound FX over every funny part so the audience knows the theme-also keep your key light coming from the same direction as the camera is pointing.
My evil ass wants to make a movie with all of these flaws and try to make it atleast decent
I’m particularly a fan of 21 year old actors playing grizzled homicide detectives and mafia dons
dude, thank you for this. Really cheered me up!! 😊
God the camera/sound budget ratio is too true. Safe to say I learned my lesson. Great video Kent! I really enjoyed your sarcastic witty commentary on this video. Keep these styles of videos coming!
You know you’ve graduated from being a novice when you find a video like this and rush to the comments to mention “opening with an alarm clock!”
I was signing up to the newsletter as you were telling me not to, got a good chuckle out of that.
wide open aperture is such an obvious way to make suckers think they're watching something higher quality than they are. very common on RUclips
Hideaki Anno was doing middle credits all the way back in 1997 and the result was the 23rd highest rated film on Letterboxd.
Pro tip: indicate siblings by having either mention "mom" or "dad" without specifying "your mom" or "my dad". That is fundamentally how siblings are related: they have the same parent.
This is great and absolutely true. It takes me back to my first film school lessons. 😆 And you are right, people shouldn't get discouraged by these things. Even the best have done these things before and you really need to appreciate them as a milestone in your learning curve. Great stuff, good video !
0:56. Smooth.
Waking up is always an option but what's really important in a short film is making sure we spend AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE in the protagonist's normal world. You need to really sell how everyday and plebian their life is so that the inciting incident is a contrast! I recommend at least 25% of the short film's runtime but the pros can pump it up much higher.
If the "It was all a dream" ending is good enough for Fritz Lang, then it's good enough for me!
For the Lens Flare tipp I missed so much the Letterbox 2.35:1! :D
Oh man that "it was all a dream" part struck home, I did EXACTLY that for my first short film, and it's on my channel for you to see 😂
the "it was a dream the whole time" can work if the plot its focused on the development of the character,maybe beating a trauma. the events didn't happened,but they did for the main character,he changed as a person
I'm so glad I clicked on this. I almost discredited using a tin can and string for sound but after watching this I quickly realised great audio is a mistake! Thank you!
(Although, to note - some of my earlier films defo sound like a tin can and string 🤣)
Waking up, getting out of bed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, taking a dump and going through the rest of Bob's daily routine for the next excruciating 7 minutes. (It's funny because my next short film actually has a dude waking up and getting ready 😅)
As a bad film director myself, here are a few more helpful tips:
You don't need actors, just play every part yourself or maybe cast a friend or family member if you truly have no other choice.
No one can tell you your script sucks if you don't have a script.
No one can tell you your film makes no sense if you call it "surreaslistic" or "experimental".
You want to show something that's way out of your budget and skills (like some cool action scenes or a tense murder)? Just use crash zooms, quick editing, a bunch of unidentifyable close-ups and of course the old reliable shakey cam.
Create the Imdb/Letterboxd page for your films yourself. How could a film be bad that's literally on the same website as The Godfather?
For more tips and tricks just watch literally anything I have made so far, because it all kinda sucks.
So much brilliant advice in this video. I am so looking forward to following ALL of these for my next bad film production 🙂
The era of middle credits will surely come, once the movies are 4 hours long xD
I mean, that unicorn logo was pretty sweet...
Don't forget the the clock ticking over from 5.59 to 6.00... Or the never-ending trapped on a (college) staircase, going up to the next floor to find yourself on the same level. Or the deliberate continuity issues to be edgy and 'break all the rules'... Chuck in some droning sound fx and muffle out the voices to make it super sinister 🤔
Gold! I think this is your best video yet - absolutely hilarious! Love it!
Thank god my 4 twist villains idea wasn't mentioned.
Hell, the drug one and the production titles one are so real ong. You only forgot the "yellow teal" look for internacional scenes lol
yellow in Mexico, Orange in the middle east, blue in Eastern Europe.
Retraining in my 40's, this took me right back to film school and being stuck with 18 year olds. The most educating thing about it, was not turning up and working in the field with professionals. I now work as a visual journalist creating content for the national news... The others in my class, well.....
Me watching this a week after reading the same newsletter... 💀
'climax' actually has it's credits in the middle!
OMG i absolutely HATE those tiny film festival stamps on the cover
I have used "it was all a dream" one time, but it was in school. the teacher gave us a starting paragraph about like-- climbing a mountain or something-- but I didn't care for that, so I made my character wake up from a dream and made the story about something completely unrelated to the prompt.
I don't have it anymore, so I don't know if it was any good, but I recall at the time being proud of how I narrated the vauge and blurry transition from the opening paragraph's dream state to the beep of the alarm to waking up. very stereotypical in that sense, but subverting the troupe by putting it at the beginning of the story instead of the end, I suppose
Don't forget to make your movie about how you don't have any ideas for making a movie. Have the main character (bonus points if it's you playing the part) stare at an open word document before slamming it down in frustration.
never seen one of your videos before, this was very informative for my next film
Maxed-out film grain plugins, y'know, for the filmic look. 'cos everyone loves the look of film, right? Even though this was shot on a borrowed DSLR or someone's iPhone.
Also "Do we really need that many expensive lights? Let's just shoot with practicals and crank up the ISO"
Thank you for the work you are doing!
eunuch unicorn killed me
Everything Everywhere All At Once did throw a middle credits 😂
That was the smoothest sponsored segment I have ever seen
What I love about War and Peace is the dialog will remind you that these two are brother and sister AND a couple.
Kojima has been doing middle credits since 2015 man
On middle credits - this was actually done to incredible effect in "End of Evangelion".