Short Comedy Critique

  Script/Narrative/Story
A. The story shows a good kid that gets so caught up in helping people that he forgets to do his homework and has never been in the situation of being in trouble. He must write on the board as a punishment and sees the teacher choke near death. He walks out and starts his journey of helping others once again. 

B.The video gives you that sense of how someone gets so involved in helping people that by the time he realizes he hasn't done his homework, its already too late to start. The issue makes you feel for the character because he does nothing but do good things that hes over punished by a teacher which ends up choking and for once in Willy's life he just doesn't care and walks out of the classroom.

C. Willy is a very good kid, but as the story shows he is helping people and forgets to worry about himself which leads to him getting in deep trouble with the teacher. I feel the story goes step by step leading up to his "date" with trouble.


D. There was no dialogue in the video because it was too much trouble having to worry about what to say so instead we had the characters just express it. Gestures helped us get the audience understand what the character was thinking or how he/she was feeling.

E. The climax is quite interesting because the character always helps people but since the teacher was mean to him he doesn't worry about the teachers fate on whether he survives or not. 


  Casting 
A. The actors are pretty well matched with the characters and it also makes for a little fun video to see a big tough guy crying or a tall guy walking without a care in the world. Putting these little details in makes the video funny to watch and not boring.

B.The actors do a very good job in playing there parts and get into character very comfortably on camera. But it wasn't very easy to get into character when some of the actors only had to act for about 10-15 seconds.

C. Each character in the story has there own problems to deal with and Willy goes around helping everyone he runs into without hesitation. You can see the characters know what they are suppose to do on camera and make it look pretty easy.

D. No, all the characters look completely different and can't be easily confused in any way shape or form. They wear different clothing and have their own personal traits that defines them from the other actors.

  Acting

A. Willy has the ability of making the audience feel sorry for him because all he wants is for people to be happy and they can depend on him to make their day better. When Willy is punished by his teacher you can tell he made an honest mistake forgetting to do his homework. In the end you see Willy not care much for the teacher and just walks out peacefully.

B. The characters are able to play the parts but not get totally into character except for Edward who played Willy. The other characters just had a 10 second part and didn't have the time to get into their character.

C. Willy is able show his emotions and gestures to show the audience how he feels or what situation hes in. The other characters are able to make gestures as well and are able to show how Willy's kindness helps them feel better.

D. There is no dialogue in the video. The music and gestures pretty much does it all for the audience and shows them the emotions of the characters that are acting in the film.

E. The editing was pretty easy after we got all the shots in and the characters to help shoot in the video. There were two mistakes I spotted in the video like when Deejay drops the binder in the hall way there are two doors that were open and when the camera goes back out for a LS the doors are closed which gave me a little problem.

F. No make-up was used or needed to be used for the filming because it was just for a normal day at school. Make-up would have made the editing a lot more complicated because we would have had to worry about the wardrobe change if we didn't finish shooting in one day.

G. The only costumes were the clothes that the actors had on. School was the scene so it wasn't a problem worrying about how the actors should dress up. There was no needed uniform in the video which was really helpful in editing the video.

H. No make-up was used for any of the shooting. The make-up would have cause a problems because if we needed to continue a shot from the previous day the editing would have been delayed from different uniform change.

  Music and Effects

A. There weren't many sound effects in this video, only music that got the audience into the characters feelings and showed the emotions they were in.

B. The music isn't a distraction from the video at all, it goes along with the story so it wasn't much of a problem to edit into the video.

C. Like I said, the music helps for audiences to feel for the character and act like they know him/her and feel sorry for him/her if something bad were to happen. Like how Willy is harshly punished for not doing his homework for one of his classes.

D. The music gets the audiences attention and gives them a feeling of happiness and joy when the character helps out other actors in the short film.

  Staging and Props

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B. The lighting was from our surroundings and we didn't have to worry about it. We did try our best to keep everything in the shot the same but the doors closing was something we were unable to fix.

C. The surrounds didn't affect the attention from the actors or anything so that wasn't too much of a problem to deal with.

D. The separation from the talents, wardrobe and set element isn't a problem to figure out. The depth in the shots separates and eliminates this problem.

E. The homework scene was easily visible for the audience to see and helped to pull of the scene for Willy to help with the homework.

  Lighting

A. There were no big changes in lighting in any of the shots. It was pretty constant, an the changes in lighting weren't very visible.

B. The lighting showed some parts like the expressions on both Willy and Mr. Olsen the teacher. it helps the audience get in the mood of good and bad.

C. Shadows were not at all a problem in the shooting of the film. The low lighting that was in the shots and the angles we filmed didn't pick up any back shadows or anything to give us much of a problem in editing the video.

D. The shots were all taken around the same time of day giving us the perfect lighting to seem like it was one whole day that the happy Willy helped all the other students out.

  Titles and Credits

A. The titles are standard from final cut pro for the making of the video and are really easy to see, not at all fancy or hard to read.

B. On a low resolution TV it wouldn't be difficult what so ever to see the titles and credits in the video for all audience members.

C. The credits are after all the video so there is no interference in the video from the credits and video.

D. The credits move at a fast pace and are for more fluent readers that won't have a problem being able to read all the names and credits for things and people that were in the filmed video.

  Camera Operation

A. The filming is really down to basics such as close ups, long shots, getting depth into the shots. The shots could have been worked on some more to make the film even better but we were running out on time and needed to start the editing soon.

B. We used tilting a lot to show a lot of details in the film. The zoom was used to show Willy's expression when he realizes he forgot to do his homework for his 7th period class.

C. When Willy walks over to the choked out teacher i jerk the camera a little bit an don't give him enough head room which makes the top of his head look like Frankenstein but without the bolts in his neck.

D. We planned the camera shots before hand and were able to do the necessary adjustments to make sure we had little to no camera jerks or anything that the audience would easily catch when watching the video.

  Sound

A. We didn't have problems with any microphones because we didn't plan on putting any dialogue. We just planned on gestures to show the emotions an feelings of the characters instead of having to plan on what the actors would have to say during their part.

B. I didn't catch any awkward or weird sounds during the editing of the video. There aren't any sound spikes in the audio or music that's playing throughout the video.

C. Audio in the video is crystal clear and can be heard by any audience that is watching or listening to it.

D. There is no filming equipment in the film. We made sure everything was out of sight before filming and double checked it. Sound wasn't a problem because I cut out all the audio during editing and just put music to set the right emotions of the film.

E. The editing was pretty smooth throughout the entire film and I watched it a few times before submitting it to the achieve. I used a cross dissolve only once to show that time had passed in the time Willy walked up to the bored until he started writing "I will do my homework" over and over again so I wouldn't waste time filming.

  Editing

A. The cuts and transitions I used in the editing made the video flow a lot smother then it would have if the transitions weren't added in to it. I used cross dissolve to show time passing by instead of having to recording the whole time with wasted time.

B . The filming goes from a shot to the character walking and make sure to have the character shown before going into a first person point of view or an over the shoulder shot of the character.

C. There was a lot of editing for me to do to make the film flow extremely smooth without making any mistakes or the possibility of confusing the audience as well as me when i was doing the edits.

D. As you watch the video you can start to see what is going to happen next even if you haven't seen the video before. Like when DJ drops his binder you see Willy in the background and you already know he is going to run over to help him and pick the binder up for him.

E. The shots in the film are like something you would personally view from your own eyes. The shots were easy to do once we had a script to follow.

F. The editing makes the film very smooth and is something you could expect from a good short film production. Editing this film was also sort of a challenge because we got shots in sections because we didn't get all the shots in one day. It was spread out through a week so we had to figure out what we were going to put next in the final version of the film.

G. Jump cuts weren't put into the film because they are really difficult to work with at times and are also unnecessary in certain videos or films. Jump cuts make things very choppy and don't look good when your trying to show somebody that goes around to help people with problems. Its easier to speed it up so it gives the main character an image of liking to help people out.  

H. Editing is smooth and is hardly noticeable throughout the entire video. The edits skip from one point to another to show time passing and Willy helping out person after person until he has to try and help himself.

I. All unnecessary shots from the video have been edited out so the story makes sense and doesn't confuse the audience or myself during the presentation of the video or the editing of the film.

J. The story is pretty easy to grasp and you can follow along pretty easily. The story doesn't move that fast, its like a summary of someones day but only shows the important parts. We also decided on not making the video too long to the point of boredom. 


Now please enjoy the video!