A film that has potential, but doesn't quite execute.
The Pros:
-Beautiful atmosphere at times that completely highlights the story.
-Great use of color
-Good sound and quality
Cons
-Bad acting
-Bad direction. I hated everything after 7 minutes of the film because it seemed like you tried to add bits of irony with added black humor to your story and that wasn't needed (At least in my opinion)
But I could see that this overall project took a lot of effort, so congrats to you there! :)
Okay let's break it down because a lot of newgrounds users aren't seeing this..........
-1:40-2:20 is incredably cheesy. Why even add the muffled deep dialogue? It just completely deteriorates the entire effect you are trying to give off.
-6:47-7:20 I see a lot of David Firth inspiration there with his animated short "Take this pill" if you guys haven't seen it, then you should take a look at it to see how that segment was entirely unoriginal. Also, why even add that segment? I see what you're trying to convay an ironic message of how psychiatrists diagnose these wacky illnesses but is it really necessarily? It really contradicts from the entire storyline in my opinion.
-From 9:20-9:40
-7:20-8:05
it seemed like you tried to make your story humorous but the most humorous part about it was the acting. The acting was extremely bad and it dumbed your project down to a typical high school film project thesis. It didn't improve your film at all, the live action acting scenes only made this film entirely worse.
Also the ending....... So he killed his girlfriend and then he killed himself and ended up with her in a different life? This also ruined the animation for me because it completely destroys the entire message of the film "We just exist" and you're basically saying that we all only live for narcisstic desires and we are extremely self indulgent to an extreme of ending everything due to the nature of ourselves. Now often times, this is true. But why did he kill his own girlfriend? That completely dis orientates the entire moral meaning of the story. He kills his girlfriend, he's a murderer, and then kills his own self and he's happy and so is she in the afterlife............. Why? Just why?
What saved this animation (somewhat) was the beautiful art design at times and use of color like other people have said.
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I'm sorry you didn't like it.
It was interesting to see how you interpretted the film from your perspective.
I'm not going to say "THIS INTEPRETATION IS WRONG BLAH BLAH BLAH"
because I'd rather live things up for interpretation.
A few things i should note here is that i wasn't ripping anyone off with this film..
David Firth didn't even come to mind whilst i worked on the film.
However i did draw inspiration from art styles such as Waking Life, Superjail, Wallace and Gromitand i even
used some techniques that disney incorporate into their films.
" dumbed your project down to a typical high school film project thesis."
Well to be fair it was a High school project.
As for your interpretation of the ending.. i'm not going to say it's right or
wrong. But i found it interesting you assumed that when he jumped off the edge off the cliff
he was then in the afterlife.
also in response to "But why did he kill his own girlfriend? That completely dis orientates the entire moral meaning of the story. " SPOILER ALERT : They had a fight and she fell all the way down the stairs. The fight was over the fact she cheated on him. He didn't purposely mean to kill her.
Anyways that's about all the time i have to cover that.
While i didn't feel your perceptions of the moral and the message
of the film were entirely accurate to what i had originally envisioned i found them interesting none the less.
I can't imagine how much effort what put into this. The final product, visualy speaking, really is a polished piece of work... Except for some of the animation. This being said. The story feels disjointed and random at parts. I understand it's all metaphorical, and I'm not saying taking this direction is wrong, but the structure of this movie really would have benefited from a little coherence. And what I mean by that is that a scene is shown, exposing a fact, only to be left behind and never referenced again in the movie.
This movie is really, really creative. So much in fact, that I believe it hurts the narrative structure. Too much songs, too much style, too much moods, etc. Now you could say that this is only a matter of taste, and you could be right, but I firmly believe that with this movie going in all sorts of direction, we get this sort of disjointed, weird and random look at this piece. And we loose the emotional attachement we would get otherwise to the character and their struggle.
Also... This is just me, and you can completely ignore this criticism, but the whole boyfriend/girlfriend breakup death thing is a bit cliche. It kinda ruined the ending for me. I'm just saying, there are a hundred ways to make a love story more interesting than this.
So here it is. My point of view. It's not the truth, just what I perceived by watching your movie.
I think this video isnt question of rating, just reviewing. The work is..., professional, thats why i dont wanna rate. Idea is pretty common; irony of life. But its better than those american hollywood brainwashing, i mean american dream and heroism. Yes, it evokes sad feelings, but thats why i appriciate it even more. The Earth is cruel place and also life on it. There is much cruelity in this world done and those responsible dont want us to think about their crimes, eventualy the got to power and made this happy propaganda real. But hey it is not so bad, since its not my concern, right? Anyway none can stop those great powerful men, you can stop individuals and with great efforts, but there will be just more coming. You cant stop it, you cant prevent corrupters to be borned, if you know what i mean. Its human nature, greed/this everyones quest for power/this power wanton. The only way is to be happy is to play by their rules and so become one.
don't mistake arbitrary imagery for creativity
I didn't spend 2 years on " arbitrary imagery".