Trailer for my short "Hector". For critique

[siouxfire]

Hello Gary,

I enjoyed the visuals but the trailer isn't coming together for me. I think a good trailer should either get the audience to identify with a character or story, or ask questions that will spark interest in seeing more. The only question that came to mind while watching this is "What's going on?"

As a trailer is so short, everything has to be there for a reason and the pacing needs to be thrifty. Just like a movie there should be specific beats. It all flowed really well until the point that we join the woman in the hall. It's obviously not 6am anymore; perhaps another cut to the clock would help smooth that out? Then again, it's a little hard to specify without knowing what's going on.

And for a non-action movie, I think it's especially difficult to build a trailer without dialogue. It prevents the audience from connecting with the characters.

Take this all with a grain of salt. I hope I don't sound overly negative, but this trailer didn't give me the itch to see this. I am itching to see this as I love it when people from our profession do their own thing, but the trailer didn't enhance that in any way.

[snoopg]

thanks for the constructive criticism!
i can see it being very vague from the teaser. i guess it is more of a collage of images than telling a story... i am eventually planning on posting up with a more well defined official "trailer" and i hope by then people will get a better picture of what this film is about. however, i still need to work on quite a bit of shots to make that version of the cut happen :( i'm just throwing out what i have so far to get some feedback, perhaps it is too early at this stage.
i find your response really helpful. i would love to be able to get opinion from you when my trailer come out in the near future.

cheers

G

[siouxfire]

Phew. Thanks for the reply. I really get tense that my comments might be taken the wrong way sometimes. So where are you at in production? Have you filmed all the 'live' stuff already? Is the CGI work done? Are you working on your own and if not, what support do you have?

And more specifically, is Hector the penguin toy or is it the company? Just an idea, a nice conclusion might be to zoom fully on the name on his chest, stop, and invert so you have the same Hector(in white) on a black background. Just a thought. I think any way to blend the cuts helps the flow.

[snoopg]

well the project should be completed around spring of 2007. most of the shots are pre-comped already but not finalized. all the "live" stuff are shot long ago with a sony F900 camera. the rendering time for bg is really what is taking forever. plus i have a full time job outside of this... i'm working on this myself mostly with help of 1 or 2 friends who occionally gets time here and there.
Hector is the name of the company, and the penguin toy is given out to employee as gifts during the film.
haha! good call! the idea of going in to the chest of penguin did came across my mind when i was doing the trailer. i believe why i didnt carry it out got something to do with rendering time... i mean the shot in the teaser was just build for the teaser and nothing more, so less frames to render the better :)

if there's anymore questions please let me know

G

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.