Night of the living dead (1968) Fan Made PROMO

[Night2008]

Hey Everybody!!

I have already posted this in the FILM MAKERS forum,
but I wanted to post it here too, so that hopefully everyone
gets a chance to see this.

This is a fan made Trailer/PROMO I made myself approx. 8 mins
I hope you like it, I would appreciate feedback :-)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CValUt13uE

[Thorn]

Well a couple of things.

The editing was overall pretty good, I did not like that you showed the "mother" up and about after she was stabbed to death by her daughter it is a sequential/sequencing issue that might confuse the viewer.

The neat labels you try to put on the principle characters really do not stand up very well, and you can not neatly bucket people in this time of film, especially not a Romero offering. Where all the humans are generally flawed in some way. The hero is also someone who is rigid, does not accept the opinions of others, asserts his will and dominance and hits women. Needed? Maybe so ;)

"The mother" is not really a type of character that I have ever seen billeted that way, yes you have motherly type characters in films but she was less motherly and more wall flower turned woman of action... until she laid on the ground like a log waiting to be killed by her daughter... with a spade... in the basement.

The music choices are decent but not "nails it" in my mind.

Also the font used is kind of generic and plain also it offers a stark distracting contrast to the movie in both style and color/crispness. I might try to change the font to something more 1968ish and mute the color choice a bit.

This is just my opinion, and all in all like I said it was fairly solid especially for a first effort technically speaking.
'
Keep at it!

[Night2008]

I appreciate your feedback. I am using a very basic program: Windows Movie Maker for Windows 7, so I don't really have much options to work with for editing, they are very plain its true...I wish I had a better program like Final Cut Pro, I could do A LOT more with a program like that. It would have been cool to have 1960s font style- I totally agree, and as for the color...I cant tone it down :-(

Thanks all the same for your feedback :-)

[SymphonicX]

yeah dude you need to download FCP or Avid and do this....WMM doesn't do shit for film makers and you can't really bash out a decent promo with it. However...

I echo Thorn's comments personally - the feedback there is pretty solid - a couple of things to add:

it's a good project and was definitely worth spending time on - so it's great you did it, not a lot of people bother to make fan promos or whatever so when something like this pop's up for Romero's work, it's nice to see.

Being an editor and working in TV, I've made a lot of promos - one of the LONGEST one's I've done for broadcast was one minute long. Your's is 8 minutes long, far far too lengthy.

here's a promo I did for Sky One last year (only one on youtube legally, hence why I've posted it previously)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpePyoqbtJ0

Notice it's choppy, lots of audio runs underneath the pictures which don't necessarily relate to it - it's also bookended by sections in a studio - and bookending your promo can be a nice way to start and finish it. For instance you can run the audio with George as the TV achor under the first few establishing shots, shrink it down, you don't need a comlpex editor to do this - just be as brutal as you can, end the promo on news items too - ominous stuff that doesn't betray the pacing of the piece. I can't think of any specific lines - layer the audio too, mix news item with news item, giving the impression that a LOT of stuff is going on.

Shrink the sections down to just the most poignant moments of each character - then freeze the picture before or after the poignant moment and add your captions. Make the text white, black on black and white pictures isn't visible....

Remove completely the captions which describe the set up to the story - the first one and the one about radiation etc - you should be able to get these points across just by using the footage and audio from the movie...

And finally - never...never....NEVER use mixes (dissolves) on your pictures.....ever ever ever. It's a bad thing to do. Also don't use star wipes unless you're George Lucas....

And then feel free to repost your new 1 minute promo to the forum! can't wait to see it, cheers for posting, really nice to be able to comment on someone's work and awesome that more people are doing Romero based projects.

-- -------- Post added at 07:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 PM ----------

and i hope you didn't find me too critical as I'm genuinely supportive of your work :)

[heidef]

yeah dude you need to download FCP or Avid and do this....WMM doesn't do shit for film makers and you can't really bash out a decent promo with it. However...

I echo Thorn's comments personally - the feedback there is pretty solid - a couple of things to add:

it's a good project and was definitely worth spending time on - so it's great you did it, not a lot of people bother to make fan promos or whatever so when something like this pop's up for Romero's work, it's nice to see.

Being an editor and working in TV, I've made a lot of promos - one of the LONGEST one's I've done for broadcast was one minute long. Your's is 8 minutes long, far far too lengthy.

here's a promo I did for Sky One last year (only one on youtube legally, hence why I've posted it previously)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpePyoqbtJ0

Notice it's choppy, lots of audio runs underneath the pictures which don't necessarily relate to it - it's also bookended by sections in a studio - and bookending your promo can be a nice way to start and finish it. For instance you can run the audio with George as the TV achor under the first few establishing shots, shrink it down, you don't need a comlpex editor to do this - just be as brutal as you can, end the promo on news items too - ominous stuff that doesn't betray the pacing of the piece. I can't think of any specific lines - layer the audio too, mix news item with news item, giving the impression that a LOT of stuff is going on.

Shrink the sections down to just the most poignant moments of each character - then freeze the picture before or after the poignant moment and add your captions. Make the text white, black on black and white pictures isn't visible....

Remove completely the captions which describe the set up to the story - the first one and the one about radiation etc - you should be able to get these points across just by using the footage and audio from the movie...

And finally - never...never....NEVER use mixes (dissolves) on your pictures.....ever ever ever. It's a bad thing to do. Also don't use star wipes unless you're George Lucas....

And then feel free to repost your new 1 minute promo to the forum! can't wait to see it, cheers for posting, really nice to be able to comment on someone's work and awesome that more people are doing Romero based projects.

-- -------- Post added at 07:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 PM ----------

and i hope you didn't find me too critical as I'm genuinely supportive of your work :)
________
I commend you!
You did a really nice job
You received a lot of great feedback/constructive criticism. Take it and learn from it.