The biggest visual thing I noticed, however, was the exteriors. The scenes where Russ was in his car while walking up to Megan’s house were over-exposed so that the footage appeared a little washed out. The scene walking up to Megan’s would have been easy to fix with an ND filter, but shooting inside a car is a lot trickier. In this case, the interior of the car looked to be balanced right, but the exterior was a bit overexposed. Often it just takes shooting on a less-sunny day or in the early evening or morning if at all possible. Even using a car with a bit of window tint could help tremendously. (A lot of gaffers will get ND gel filters and cut them to the size of car windows, so that the external scene isn’t washed out.)
I really loved the background music. It sort of reminded me of the theme song from the first season of Monk. It wasn’t overpowering at all, and really helped to lighten the mood of what might otherwise have been a rather depressing movie.
All of the dialogue in the film was great as well. It was perfectly clear and easy to understand, and I never had to worry about not understanding what was going on.
As one might expect for such a simple film, the budget is quite low. It was spent on Mini DV tapes, DVDs, and Kraft services. It’s really a well crafted film for such a modest budget. My only real complaints came from the previously mentioned overexposure issues, one of which could have been dealt with proper use of the ND filter, while the other one would have likely raised the budget for the cost of the ND gels for the car windows.
It’s actually not a bad idea for aspiring filmmakers to look first at movies like The Love Doctor. It’s a very simple story with a small cast, that doesn’t require a bunch of locations or post-production visual effects. It’s the sort of film that a beginning director should choose for their first film to shoot on the weekend. For more experienced directors, it’s a good thing to be able to do some straightforward short films like this one when one doesn’t have the time to do a longer one or the cash to do a really flashy one, as this is the way to continually hone your craft.
This was a clever and creative short film. Not only is it entertaining to watch, but the idea itself should be considered by all aspiring filmmakers – don’t wait until you have $20,000 to make your dream movie – just shut up and shoot something!
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Content |
8.8 |
Visual
Look |
8.5 |
Use
of Audio |
9.6 |
Use
of Budget |
9.0 |
Lasting
Appeal |
9.2 |
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9.0 |
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The
author of half a dozen screen plays, two novels, and a proficient
camera-woman in her own right, Monika
DeLeeuw-Taylor is Microfilmmaker's lead writing analyst and
one of our top film reviewers. When she's not writing a critique for
Microfilmmaker, she's writing screenplays for Viking Productions. |
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