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Reviews for:
CharmingNewSociety, "Speak of the Devil"
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AvatarRedhandStudios
Reviewed on January 10th, 2010

ok...I really dig this short but there are a few glaring flaws that I feel I should address.
1) The fight was 3 minutes long...not six plus minutes long...
2)Posting with 5 days left really cuts into your viewer time. :)
With that said, I like this one alot. :) The lighting on "Satan's" dome is a bit harsh, especially for your above shots of his shiney noggin. The "dark" shots were cool, but a wee bit underlit to see what was going on.
Aall in all great work. I will be checking your website for sure!
--Todd--

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 10th, 2010

Thanks for the review. Your critique on our lighting is appreciated. We know it was a weak spot on this one. As for the comment on length and lateness, we know. That's why we assume we were light weighted, and we knew that going in. We thought up this short because of this month's fight, but along the way decided to do our own thing with it and not do it as a film fight video. This way we wouldn't be constrained by length and whatnot. But at the last minute we decided to upload it anyway for the sake of sharing with you all, not being concerned with being in the HW or our chances of winning. We enjoy this community and haven't participated in a while.

AvatarJeremy
Reviewed on January 12th, 2010

You should consider a making a film fights cut and a director's cut. Takes some extra time, but I think you guys would have done really well as a HW in this fight. Still glad you decided to share it with us. I really enjoyed it.

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 12th, 2010

Jeremy, that's actually a great idea that never crossed our minds. May definitely do that in future fights if we run over time but still prefer the original length.

AvatarBalls
Reviewed on January 10th, 2010

Yeah, a nice surprise that this shows up here at this point. I get a feeling that you are one step away from creating something truly awesome. Perhaps using a logline as you write could be what makes the difference?

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 10th, 2010

Thank you. we're hoping you're right. We have some big plans for things to come.

AvatarJeremy
Reviewed on January 11th, 2010

Well, this was cool, but goddamn is was long. I think you could have cut out a lot of the beginning. I like the camera work outside. The wind on the second outside scene could have been cut out. The little fires starting as Satan walked in was a nice subtle touch. The fake avangelistic TV ttielwork was convincing. I liked the chots from behind the camera (although I think one would have done it). You could have used some suplimental lighting in the office to compliment the existing lights. The actual line "you are so going to hell" gets cut off abruptly in an edit. Hell was done GREAT! It sounds like you filmed it in a small room, though. That Devil make up was freaking amazing. The acting was very good throughout. Especially for how wordy the dialog was. The was a super awesome flick. Needed to be cut down, some. Even if it was not in the fight, I think it would have been paced better as 4:30min movie. That, some extra lights in the office, and touching up some of the audio would have made this movie perfect imo. I still really, really liked it. I voted before this was submitted, or I would have voted for this.

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 12th, 2010

You know the thing about length is that we ignore the notion of "internet attention spans", quite intentionally. 6 minutes may be long for an internet film, but it isn't intrinsically long for a short film in general. We've all seen 10, 15, 30 minute shorts. The problem with the length I think was in running over the set time for the fight. We did in fact cut it down from closer to 10 minutes, but really wanted to keep intact the bulk of the Paster's speech to set up his ideologies and foreshadow the characters who appear in his personalized Hell. Anyway, thank you for being constructive with your critique on some of our technical issues such as sound, lighting, and editing. We did recognize these problems and worked around them the best we could at the time. Thanks so much for the compliments on the acting, story, and especially the makeup fx (which we are continually practicing as it is an area of interest we love, both related to filmmaking and aside from it). You "would-be" vote means a lot as well. Glad your enjoyed it!

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 12th, 2010

Bytheway, you mentioned the titlework for the evangelist's show... you can actually call that number and leave a message. Love to hear some of you guys interact with the character. :)

AvatarJeremy
Reviewed on January 12th, 2010

Ha! Are you serious? That is awesome!

AvatarWesScog
Reviewed on January 15th, 2010

You guys definitely loved working on this, and I think it shows. This was good, and I won't say it was too long, as I felt it was the length you wanted, but I think that there is 3:00 worth of material here that could have won it this month.

The acting was good, I liked your cinematography, and the devil was really creepy and believable, and the make-up job on him in hell was great.

Loved the lighting and CC work in hell, and I think the little dialogue at the end is a nice touch. The transvestite was also hilarious, the look on his face as he transforms is great.

Other than it being too long, I think you did a good job, and it was a good film that could have been a contender this month if it had been trimmed down.

Other than that, I guess I just wanted to question a bit of the philosophy of the film. I guess an eternity of suffering is a bit steep of a punishment for a character whose only crime is one of ignorance. I guess I would have felt like the punishment was more apt, or due if you had established that he was a very rich/popular pastor who had a big audience and a lot of influence, or that he had been inspiring people to violence or something. He just felt less like an "evil" character and more like simply an ignorant one.

Logically though I had a few issues, I think if it had explained why the Devil revealed himself in the first place, it would have made more sense. If the Pastor was doing his work by making the world a more hateful place, wouldn't the Devil have motivation to keep him comfortable and successful, so he can keep doing the "good work". If it had explained that the Pastor was about to die from a heart condition or something anyway, and the Devil was there to "collect" him, or if there was some other reason he was there rather than just to murder him, it would have made more sense. As it is I was confused about why the Devil was there to begin with, if it had established that the Pastor was actually evil rather than just ignorant, and that he had done something to bring the Devil there, I feel like it would have made more sense.

Also, if it's evil to be intolerant, is it also evil to be intolerant of intolerance? Just wondering about the internal morality of the films' Universe.

Overall, great job, can't wait to see what you do next, liked the location variety, liked the acting, cinematography was generally good, and effects were good. Looking forward to next month!

AvatarCharmingNewSociety
Reviewed on January 15th, 2010

You know, I'll be honest, we really didn't put too much thought into how deserving it was that he go to hell. Just the mere fact that he, and real preachers like him, decide that others are going to hell for much less (in just being who they are) we thought it would be interesting to turn the tables. And it wasn't the devil that murdered him, it was fated he'd be hit by a car that day (I know we didn't really set that up though). I think a lot of our story's continuity and characters' motivations were a means to an end. Our short (at 7 mins as it as) might have been a full 10 in length if we addressed these aspects of the story. Besides, we meant it to be taken less literally and more metaphorically. The moral being taken as simply as "what goes around comes around". It's really just a parable on karma.

Anyway, thank you for your great compliments. Next fight we submit to I think we'll make an extra effort not to go over time or break any rules. People have told us both this and our last submission could have been strong contenders if they hadn't gone over in length. If our films are heavyweight quality then it may be nice to actually compete next time.

AvatarWesScog
Reviewed on January 15th, 2010

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for getting back to me about that!

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Title:

The Worst Way To Die

Genre:Any
Time:0:30
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