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One of the things that was clearly important to the filmmakers was to try to have a number of good mics and pay for an audio person. This is an awesome thing to focus on and, by and large, allowed their sound mixer to create dialogue that was pretty easy to understand without much background noise.
Unfortunately, there were some inconsistencies related to planning and editing. One of the notable inconsistencies occurred during Tiffani’s birthday party/slumber party when some of her friends are running around screaming their heads off. The mic volume redlines with the shrill voices and literally hurts the ears. While this might be mixed down some more, for future films, planning needs to be taken to have people scream at lower volumes in production (or plan on redubbing it in post later). Another issue arises from transition audio between music and dialogue, which feels very artificial. Many times there is a cut from music to speech with no transition. You should always record consistent dialogue, even if you aren’t going to use the dialogue so that mixing can be done in a more consistent manner. That way dialogue comes in while music fades out, so that it doesn’t seems like the actors were just pantomiming until the dialogue “starts.” This is most noticeable in a garage sale scene in which the music cuts out, leaving two people pantomiming "talking" for fourteen seconds before actual dialogue begins!
Another audio issue comes from the volume at which sound effects are mixed. Essentially, they’re too loud, especially later in the film. The most noticeable situations occur when they are packing to move, where the sound effect volume for the rustling, packing papers seems almost on par with thunder. While sound effects are often mixed to –6 Db (compared to –12 Db for dialogue), if they are designed to be underneath dialogue they should probably be mixed to –18 Db (which is a common level for music beds).
The overall music works fairly well with the subject matter, even though there’s a pretty large divergence between the types of music used. They had two songs professionally recorded and mixed for the film, which is pretty cool.
The $9,500 budget was used to pay all actors that worked more than a day, certain members of the crew, audio post production, having two songs professionally produced, and insurance. These are all good uses of the budget, but, for future films, extra time and money needs to be allocated for refinement of the script.
Even though I’m part of the very demographic this film is aimed at (and I love Dave Ramsey), I’m afraid that, in its current state, Class of ’91 has almost no lasting appeal for me. If the film started half way in and was turned into a short (with some flashbacks to show their past life), it could have a lot more lasting appeal.
I think it’s great that Sharon and Fred Wilharm decided to target this demographic with their film. The subject is definitely one that deserves to be explored in depth! While this first attempt has quite a few first-time filmmaking flaws, I’m quite impressed by the parts they did well—such as the overall visuals and the overall audio. As such, I look forward to seeing what they work on in the future as the weaker concepts are improved upon.
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Content |
3.0 |
Visual
Look |
8.0 |
Use
of Audio |
7.0 |
Use
of Budget |
6.0 |
Lasting
Appeal |
2.0 |
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5.2 |
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The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was recently released by MWP to very favorable reviews. When he's not working as Editor-in-Chief at MFM or writing books, he continues to direct and write films through his production company, Viking Productions. |
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