The Consultant

Alex Mizin · March 14, 2009

Hi everyone,

We've recently completed our second short The Consultant and would love some of you to have a look.

Alex

Matt Read · March 14, 2009

Alex,

Right away, the opening shot has too much head room. This continues through the rest of the "documentary interview" and into the meeting with the Williams character (though all of the shots of Williams seem to have fine headroom). However, this is really the only major problem I saw. One other thing was the lighting when Williams was modeling the brightly colored soccer (football) jersey. He was lit with hard light and cast a huge shadow on the wall. Had he been blocked 6 feet further from the wall or the light had been softer, this wouldn't have been a problem. Besides that, I didn't care for the zoom in on Williams. I think a dolly in would have looked much nicer.

The camera had a nice arc. It started out fairly locked down and generally wide. By the end, it was handheld and tight. It complemented the story arc nicely.

The lighting was very nice as well, with the already mention exception. It was soft and expressed all tones from highlights to shadow nicely.

Outside of the cinematography, both actors were good and the location felt authentic and appropriate. I did notice that the consultant's suit was slightly ill-fitting, especially when he put his hands behind his head. This could have been a deliberate choice, but I feel that there wasn't enough else ill-fitting (not necessarily his clothes) in the production design to make it work. The story was interesting and not too cliche.

Alex Mizin · March 14, 2009

Alex,
Right away, the opening shot has too much head room. This continues through the rest of the "documentary interview" and into the meeting with the Williams character (though all of the shots of Williams seem to have fine headroom). However, this is really the only major problem I saw. One other thing was the lighting when Williams was modeling the brightly colored soccer (football) jersey. He was lit with hard light and cast a huge shadow on the wall. Had he been blocked 6 feet further from the wall or the light had been softer, this wouldn't have been a problem. Besides that, I didn't care for the zoom in on Williams. I think a dolly in would have looked much nicer.

The camera had a nice arc. It started out fairly locked down and generally wide. By the end, it was handheld and tight. It complemented the story arc nicely.

The lighting was very nice as well, with the already mention exception. It was soft and expressed all tones from highlights to shadow nicely.

Outside of the cinematography, both actors were good and the location felt authentic and appropriate. I did notice that the consultant's suit was slightly ill-fitting, especially when he put his hands behind his head. This could have been a deliberate choice, but I feel that there wasn't enough else ill-fitting (not necessarily his clothes) in the production design to make it work. The story was interesting and not too cliche.

Hi Matt,

Your comments are dead on. Most of the things that you mentioned are due to the technical and space problems that we had. The headroom shots (in the interview at least) were used due to other takes where the framing was a little better were lost due to sound problems. The harsh light on the soccer jersey shot, we wanted to make it harsh but yeah it probably was a bit too much so. The dolly on Williams instead of zoom would have been good also but we just couldn't fit it on the other side of the table (which we couldn't move, it weighed a ton!!).

Funny you should mention the suit. The actor was a bodybuilder so no-matter what we put him in, when he put his hands behind his head, it looked too small. In the end we felt that he needed to be in the suit, even though it didn't quite fit.

Thank's for you comments mate,

Alex