5 minute short..The Infected
 

This is my second short film, one man crew, two actors. Any feedback would be appreciated.

YouTube - The Infected (Short Film)

come on guys..

Sure...

First.... I thought your audio mix was excellent! Definitely brought some tension into the film.

The editing was also solid and flowed from shot to shot.

The part where it lacked was the story. Nothing happened. No payoff. When you write, you need to ask yourself "why does the audience care, and what do they get out of this?"

And, I can safely say, having seen about 284 zombie movies (282 if you don't count the 28 Days/Weeks movies), it didn't really give anything I haven't seen many times before. Person keeps infected spouse tied up.... it's a cliche. Give the audience something new.

The following has *spoilers* for those who haven't watched yet.

I'm with Dylan on this. "The Cleaner" had this smart idea that worked perfectly for a short. This one is lacking that. I's also very hard to pull something like this off while shooting in a regular home. It's been over a year, and everything looks so clean. Even the bed and everything surrounding it. Even the lady on the bed. Surely it would be extremely hard to keep her and her surroundings nice and tidy? So maybe he took extra care to clean things up that day (he is wearing his suit, after all), but in that case it would require an explanation. The setting simply lacks a "there are zombies out there" look.
Also, I think what he does at the very end is not supposed to be physically possible. Built in survival instinct kicks in and overrides the willpower. He would have simply ripped the bag open.

Thanks for the feedback. I will use every bit to make my next short even better.

James,

I thought the sound and editing were pretty good. but the short definitely lacked in art direction and story. It looked good, but the story and the look weren't cohesive, and I would suggest not shooting people up against walls if you can.

You noted on youtube that you shot in 6 hours and cut it in 8. was that all in one day or over a few days, how long did you take to plan it out?

Well, I was moving out of my apartment building, and said to myself, why not just put something small together, and make another, so I did. Wrote down the concept, then the script, and shot it two days later. I shot it in 6 hours, 4 hours on the first day, the actors came in a little late so the sun went down, and 2 hours on the next day to capture the balcony scene. It took me 8 hours over 2 days to finish editing.

Thanks for all the feedback.