New Webseries

Hello,
I've spent many nights lurking around here learning as much as I could. Now I've got something to show for it!
Just posted my new webseries "The Unemployment Of Danny London."

[www.dannylondon.com]

Love to hear what you think.

The parked scene:

the drive is waaayyy too long.
the split screen it too static considering the level of acting.

Get rid of some of the space between the monolog.

Use 2+ camera angles for every seen. When she is in the tub talking there could have been a shot of her at full screen with some say candles or a glass of wine. If you only had one cam a slow dolly or track roll could have been used to give the seen some movement.
The radio in the van or suv should have been on a a extremely low level or the window on the passenger side down to give some situational atmosphere.
If your actors are not strong then they can not command the frame so they need help with camera shifts and different zoom levels.
Having a friend drive back and forth on the same street bright lighting the suv would have improved the placement of that scene.
The scene is way to long with the same angles to hold interest.


IN THE KITCHEN:

There is no steam coming from the pot. That could be added with AE or Motion.
When the cook turns to talk she should have tapped the spoon on the pot and turned to speak with the spoon in hand but not in the pot.
The Asian lady that walks in her scene is relatively good.

License plate scene is good. The back up to see who that was is good but the relevance is not established. But otherwise too much time spent getting into the house and watching a car.

ALL of the scenes are too quiet. Not enough ambient noise. You could cut out about 1m - 2.5m out of the entire movie and it would be better.

BUT THAT DOESN'T Mean I am correct. It just the way i would do it.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

The drive in the beginning is a bit long. Given that it's the beginning of the show, you have some space for making us wonder, but you can probably achieve that same goal by cutting a few seconds out of that shot. I'm not usually an advocate for putting music all over scenes, but music would help there.

You are forcing your scene to be slow by insisting on the split-screen during the phone conversation. You probably designed it like that, but it's hurting your rhythm. Remember that this is a webisode; people's attention spans are considerably shorter. It also hurts the acting. I think the woman is fine, but the guy isn't completely believable, and you're making us watch all the beats he's trying to insert. Some of them aren't that great.

I would do a new cut by cross-cutting between the two angles. That way you can overlap dialogue, punctuate beats (cut some short, extend others for effect), use more than one take. Then figure out whether you can slip in the split-screen at certain moments, if at all. Some beats would play better in separation anyway -- for example his "This isn't happening" beat. You made the shots' "half-life" much shorter by imposing that artificial need to keep each one onscreen 100 per cent of the time in the split-screen.

The kitchen: You are "chasing the line" slavishly, always cutting to the character talking, and never to the character listening. There's no reason why we should be on the dark-skinned woman for the entire stretch of dialogue. I would probably overlap her first line or so with the woman with glasses (because you didn't show them in the same room, so connection between the characters for that whole chunk of dialogue is tenuous). Then use reactions from the woman with glasses to keep her in the scene. That wide two-shot is very flat, though -- do you have anything on the woman with glasses, closer to their line of tension?

Yipes...any way to cut down on that Japanese girl? She's unfunny, but acts like she thinks she's funny.

What's that shot at 5:30 doing there? It looks like the tail end of sunset there, but it's well into the night everywhere else. It made me think there was time passage (like it's now wee hours in the morning), but then you cut right back to the old time setting. It made no sense.

The shot of Danny waiting to go inside is too long. We get it. Cut out about half of it. If you're worried about continuity, just have him leave that position in the wide of the driveway we saw before. If you don't have that coverage, just cut from him about to make up his mind to the shot of the door. You don't need to be so literal with physical location -- we don't need to see him leave the car to get it.

Wide shot on the family reacting to his entrance: The cut can be crisper. All you're using is the woman's mother turning, and right now she's awkward. Just use the last tail end of her turn. It'll be a much crisper cut and the effect of the "judgment" will come across better.

The initial character relationship (woman in tub vs. man in car) is interesting, but everything after that isn't very strong. The kitchen and living-room scenes are slow, and distract from the main character.
Maybe seeing Episode 1 would help, but if I were watching this as a stand-alone piece (webisodes somewhat need that kind of autonomous ability to hold our interest without having seen everything before), it's not enough to make me want to hunt down Episode 1.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks for the input. Appreciate the feedback!

I agree with most of the comments made, but I few I don't. The scene where he leaves the car is great. It's nice to see someone take the time to give the actor a "moment". You could trim the end of that scene a bit, but otherwise it's great. I'm okay with the Kitchen scene. Would be nice to have a little more coverage but I know sometimes that's not possible.

I actually loved his performance in the car.

Have to total disagree with Derek, I really wanted to see episode one! Too many web series are skit base and I love that you slow things down a bit. Tire of short attention span shows.

Watched episode one which I think is stronger than 2, but I think you've got a great show and I will be watching