DVC #8 - Bill Gardner "The Remote = Control"
 

Feedback thread for my film, in case anybody wants to comment on it.

Cheers, everybody,
Bill

Bill:

Love the concept, including the reverse logos and text viewed from back of screen.... Always wondered whether someone could be watching from the other direction...... Also, time span, and life stages were nicely woven into this short. Great film... with great production values, as usual...

Hi Bill!
 

I'm honored to be the first to comment. :) lol...Well done!

I believe you have captured the sad state of affairs in the typical home today. Enough said. (Don't want to give anything away for those who haven't seen it yet)

Great use of props to show all the situations i.e.,. the bachelor, the single woman, the newly romantic couple, etc.

Loved some of the dialog/writing most especially the bit you did at the end with Viagra. lol Hilarious. (I absolutely despise drug company commercials and you did a great job slamming them).

Zoe - was that your daughter? She did a great job! Plus, the RailHeads rock dude!

This one was a lot of fun, and very interestingly done.
I agree with Chris, great production value!

Looked great!

I laughed quite a few times.

Nice work,

Mike

What a crafty, original idea! That kid can act, too! I can always tell when a movie is good because I smile through the whole thing. Clever way to use television to show their relationship’s progression (and regression) and how it is affected by who maintains control of the remote. SPOILER: However, the end was a bummer. I wish you ended it on a better note.

Thanks for the nice comments, folks.

Yes, Zoe is an attentive 3 year old and is one of my 3 kids. She has a twin brother, but he's not quite ready to focus on the instructions of the director yet. :) Maybe next time (or next year?)...

An unrelated side note: if you want to see a bit more of Zoe (and Alex, my oldest son [kid vampire from the Love Bites/Sun Burns films), you can check out http://www.wrgardner.com/film/KidWars

Bradley: glad somebody noticed the props. I wasn't sure if folks would notice that detail. After he moves in, the plants start to go away, etc., etc... :)

Re: the ending. Yeah, we went back and forth on this. We had another ending which was where he turned on the TV and another "Match-You-Up" ad was on, and he jotted down the number again. I think that this could have been funny if they didn't have the little girl, but with the kid it seemed a little too harsh.

Perhaps we should have ended with one last scene after he "makes the final call" where they're happy again sleeping in the bed? :)

Cheers,
Bill

Ha ha.. loved it! :) Very smart props and the reverse text was a nice touch to.

I had some problems downloading the files but the youtube-viewing worked better.

Could you not get the download started or did the download crash in the middle? And did you try to save it locally or did you just "click" the link and use your media player to open it?

Any data you can provide on this would be helpful, and if others had similar problems please let me know.

Thanks,
Bill

Bill, I looked at it on the YouTube stream, because I had issues with both the .wmv and .mov files. When I clicked to try to stream down or clicked to try to save as a target, I got bad results. I got a small file downloaded in the target attemt for both, but the download was only 20 kb or so, and when opened just showed some code.

Yeah, I got the same results as Chris. Just two small files. And I right clicked and used save as.

Bill,
Good one. Good idea with the reverse text, nice off camera dialog from the commercials, good wrap around "Circle of Life" story.

Overall: Well executed, good idea. I liked it and saw nothing negative to comment on.

Sean McHenry

Funny
 

I loved this one! Great concept and everything, well done!

Now I am wondering what the TV sees in my house..... Probably my wife on her gateway laptop and I with my dell laptop sitting on the bed. :)

Entertaining movie, Bill! Tell me, did you and your friends have a GREAT time doing the voice work? :)

Yep. :)

Bill

i enjoyed your film a lot, i particularily enjoyed how you told the story without the need for the two characters to communicate verbally. it's challenging to do that and you did it well, their body language and actions more than made up for it. and like it was mentioned previously, you did a great job showing how time has passed.