Short - The Driver.
 

A short film we made recently for a two week film contest. We shot this short on a Sony NX5u in under two days with just two people. Edited with Final Cut and used lots of SmoothCam filters to make the camera movements flow well. Enjoy and please comment!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYzzYIzc8Q

A link might help :-) ?

Haha thanks for telling me I had copied the link but forgot to paste it!

Any feedback? Thanks

I actually quite enjoyed it! A short like this just goes to show that you don't need the top of the line equipment to tell a cinematic story.

I liked the capable steadicam work, although I think the lighting could be done better. In the opening, you have a very high contrast shot of the mysterious man hiring this "driver", but then the driver himself is also contrasty and mysterious. I have to ask, why all the mystery? I didn't personally feel anything was gained by that, rather it limited my ability to connect with the driver until later on.

The framing on some of the shots is spot on, especially the one of the car in the gas station. I don't know what it is about that frame, but it feels "right" to me, your DP definitely has a good eye for angles!

In all the piece works well, but it does linger a lot, could have been shot and directed to be tighter. Too much of phone ringing and answering, these are details that, once established as a repeated action, can be done away with by using clever workarounds.

The payoff at the end of seeing just a frame or two of the driver standing by the pickup spot as the crook is being taken away was priceless. Hilarious and clever piece, bravo!

-Nick Harris

Thanks for the comments! We actually did the whole film in a couple of hours over two days with just two of us. I played the thief and my friend Stephen played the driver. We switched off who was shooting and who was on screen. All the lighting was natural, and I totally agree about the opening scene being too contrasty. We reshot the opening scene of the thief twice and I like the reshoot better but it still isn't up to where I'd like it. I'm thinking we may someday produce this same story but with a bigger crew and everything. Again, thanks for the feedback!