The Grey was a short film I made for a multimedia school project a couple of years ago. It was my first attempt at making a short film, and I hardly planned it out. I wrote the script a week before the shoot, barely did any storyboards, and improvised most of the lighting / camera angles as I went along. Because of my lack of planning and experience, the movie suffered quite a bit in terms of cinematography and pacing. People also tell me the acting could have been a lot better, but I used the resources I had at the time. Anyway, despite its problems, the movie was an amazing learning experience for me and I had tons of fun making it. It provided me with a lot of creative satisfaction and I decided that I want to continue making movies, even if the hobby never becomes a career. Now I am about to finish shooting my 2nd short film this week and thought I would share The Grey with the DV community, since they provided me a lot of good advice for shooting the film. Thanks guys.

YouTube - The Grey - Short Indie Film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zztnNdtvsTM)

I only had time to watch 5 minutes or so, but...

The good:

* Smooth editing

* Excellent visual effects for low budget

* Some good foley

* Pink Floyd is always good.



Some things I would work on:

*intro/credits are too long for a short film on the internet

*the opening scene bedsheet audio is too loud and scratchy like you just rubbed it over the mic. It really stands out.

*background audio "roar" comes and goes from scene to scene during dialogue. You could ADR it to get cleaner dialogue audio. This is the biggest thing that drops it a level of production quality from short film to student short film.

Overall nicely done. Good story, nice editing and some good scenes set up.

The sound was probably the partneeding more work. The video was pretty darned good... I liked your blue lighting for darkness, it was well done.

Some observations. Your foley track was a little loud and not well selected to my ear - You picked high heels on lineoleum for a barefooted guy for example. The gravel crunch on what looked like lawn was a little odd. Dylan picked up on the fabric noise. These comments are not meant to damn, just help. Soung caneasily be 50% of the movie experience.

The camera was apparently on auto, and that hurt a little in certain scenes as you transitioned. Your dialog suffered from being recorded on camera.

Someof the long pauses in the movie caused my mind to wonder what was going on.... and as mentioned the intro was a little long.

All that said... if this was your first short, I'm impressed. hang around the site and learn and share.

Chris Swanberg