The Job Hunt - My Short Film - Out Now

Somehow I was completely absent during these "heated moments" and "natural tension". I don't really know what it is with movies, not just this one, where drama between modern Englishmen is portrayed as unemotional and monotone.

I'm just being honest. Frankly, it bothers me that the sharing of a personal project should somehow automatically deserve exaltation and resist criticism without being entirely litotized into "nitpicking".

Good on Dan for having the guts to put himself out there. And the reason why he has the guts is because doing so openly marks himself as a target for criticism, like mine. And criticism ain't the easiest thing to take.

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

I think Daniel will take any criticism on board as long as it's constructive. He's really not someone with thin skin and i don't think he thought or wanted everyone to just say oh good job mate. I don't know much about filmmaking so i couldn't comment on that aspect much. I enjoyed it.

Well, if I had to choose between hearing nothing but sunshine, or constructive criticism, I know constructive criticism is the one which improves me.

Dan do you like alot of Kevin Smith or Wes Andersons work? Also check out a movie called Winters Bone with Jennifer Lawrence (before Hunger Games), and The Apostle with Robert Duvall. Both films they made excellent use of normal people, non actors. With the nonexisistent budget you have to work with, every trick and nuance helps.

I'm actually really curious what Daniel thinks of Wes Anderson now you mention it. Think Daniel is one of the people here i pay the most attention to but i really don't remember what he thinks of Wes.

There is a difference between nitpicking that barely makes any sense and constructive criticism.

Omnizoa there are ways to be less douchey.

And yea, it got more edgy between several of the characters, and you could see Callum's frustration more clearly. It wasn't all like that but there were moments

And Omni's willingness to put himself out there by criticizing Daniel's work, opens Omnizoa up to criticism. If you're just a guy on his couch looking for stuff to pick apart, it makes your criticism weaker.

It's not like you've offered up some amazing advice or anything

Think this will be what Daniel will be most offended by when he sees it

Yeah, I take my rep back Omni hmph

Seriously though, this is like driving your car for the first time in a parking lot. This is nowhere near Dans best by far, he didnt wreck it, and completed the course.

That's interesting coming from you.

Shoot.

A. It doesn't.
B. You assume I'm a guy with a couch with no evidence of either.
C. "Looking for something to complain about" is an attractive accusation to make when it's unfalsifiable.

Implying I'm in any way obligated?

If I criticize someone's acting am I responsible for giving them acting lessons?

I couldn't think of a better word.

Thank you. I had considered adding some music, but I think it's something difficult to pull off properly. I know some of the silences might have lingered too long for some audiences, but I wanted it to feel real, uncomfortable, awkward in parts, emulating the kind of humour that is in some of my favourite influences for this, like The Office (UK).

Yeah that's true, acting not coming across as natural as possible was mainly down to time constraints. One of the biggest things I learnt hen making the film was the difference between the expectations of making a film and the reality of it. Beforehand I expected to just keep the camera running a lot, pick up a lot of stuff, natural happenings that were funny. When I spend time with these people in real life there are lots of moments where I laugh a lot and thing how I wish I could capture that on film. I expected the filming to be quite free form with lots of improv but in fact it was really the opposite. Every shot was blocked quite carefully with multiple lights and the camera taking up a lot of room, capturing sound was a lot more difficult than I ever would have guessed, and even when replicating incidents that occur in real life, acting wasn't that straightforward and we used a lot of takes. That didn't make it stressful or less enjoyable, as I said, I learnt a lot, and it actually contributing to the fun in a way too. Some of the ruined takes and botched moments are some of my favourite laugh out loud moments. In between takes we mainly quoted our favourite comedies and sang Dean Martin songs, for some reason.

Thank you. That guy is actually the dad of my DP/Editor, we needed an older male part and it happened that he actually ran an entire building of offices, so he offered us to film and his and for him to do the part. I enjoyed his enthusiasm too.

Evolved, what were you before?

That's fair enough, I'm sorry you feel that way on the dialogue, but I can assure you that most of the dialogue comes from real life experiences, even if it is exaggerated, or is meant to come across as slightly cringey and awkward. As I've mentioned, The Office (UK, although I love the US one, UK is more of an influence style wise) is one of my favourite shows and biggest influences. I know people who don't laugh at all or that or struggle to watch it because they find it cringey.

Yeah, I know when I was making this that my sense of humour wouldn't appeal to everyone. I think it's dry and subtle in a lot of parts, many people would probably say British. I don't find every moment laugh out loud funny but trying not to be biased and there are enough moments in there that I actually do find funny and enjoy. You seem to have watched the film expecting something that you were never going to find, looking at it from an odd perspective, in my opinion. You're entitled to, but if you go in to a 20 minute comedy expecting it to to make a super serious point and deal seriously with some sort of moral issue(s) then I think you always set yourself up for disappointment. That's not to say I didn't touch on the frustrations and real life experiences that people experience, or the emotions of the characters, but I'm wondering what sort of point you expect this, and every film for that matter to make. Can't a film just be made to be enjoyed?

And as Mark and many others point out, my primary reason for writing this was to get experience of actually making a film.

I think this is addressed above. I'll make a post below though going in to something a bit more mainly related to time constraints.

I'm just going to be honest and say this is the part of your post that I really don't understand. I mean really? You don't see why it was shot as a mockumentary and what the benefits of that were? It was definitely the best choice to make in terms of capturing the comedy that I wanted, laughter comes from the fact that these are real life people, or at leat to an extent represent them, whether it be representing themselves or all of us in one way or another. Documentary gives the character motivations to want to change and go looking for jobs, it gives motivation to his friends/family to give interviews, it gives the opportunity to capture scenes in subtle/secret ways which in my opinion adds to the comedy, like Callum giving his sister money.

I don't know how this film was about making a film. But okay.

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Thank you Nostro, it means a lot, mate. I know that you might not be flavour of the month around here with your political standings, but I would like to think that outside the political thread we're all friends, and want everyone on this forum to do well. I'm glad that you enjoyed it, and wish you the best of luck in any of your own projects. I'm glad you enjoyed the more heated moments. Maybe some people will miss them, as I tried to keep them relatively subtle, and kind of hint at underlying emotions underneath the surface that characters may be slightly embarassed to admit to a film crew (Callum getting defensive in the CV scene). I think it can be easy, especially with comedy to go for a quick/obvious scenes where the character is clearly angry, or crying, or whatever, but what I like about my favourite characters is the way documentary-style is used to show these people as real people, the way they act around friends and family, and especially the way they act in front of a camera.

Thanks a lot for the whole post Swan, and all the support you've given me for this project I'm glad you enjoyed it, and really appreciate your feedback. I'm glad you like Cuffe's acting as I was 50/50 as to how that would go down with others, whether they'd appreciate that humour or not, he's a really nice, sensible guy, but something like that hat scene is not far off reality. We always seem to be sitting around, normally at Jake's house, and he shows up unannounced out of no where with something to say or show us (Heyooooo! - Camo will get this reference). Once he came in with a bell. I'm glad you liked the sister bit as well, I was really impress with her acting, she did here talking bit in one take pretty much, and I thought the secret camera capturing the handing over of money was funny. Originally I intended to have more kind of secretly captured moments.

As I said, people are entitled to their opinions, it's cool. You're all entitled to disagree with them. I do find some of the complaints odd, but I've attempted to tackle them and I welcome any more questions and feedback which I can use to improve.

I don't think the film is perfect myself. Originally I had a 45 page script, and also expected as mentioned above, the shooting style to be more fluid. I expected us to have a lot more time together, which we didn't, because of other commitments.

The natural negative consequences of all of the above, for me were the development/emotional arc of the story, mainly Callum going in simple terms from bad guy to good guy, was a little bit rushed than intended. I originally had three interview scenes and a few more kind of self reflection/improvement moments that would show a more natural progression to wanting to do well, and there's the acting, some scenes weren't perfect spot on, but we often didn't have a lot of time, especially not to practise, so we had to use them. I think a lot of how well you view the performances is down to personal taste, and that is evident so far too when you view all the posts in this thread who seem to have different favourites.

I'm really glad you enjoyed it Camo, you were one of the people I was looking forward to hearing from most, because we're both British and we both have a similar taste in TV shows, especially comedies. I've actually rewatched about 4 seasons worth (from 3 to 8) of Philly with my brother recently, it's amazing how every episode is pretty much hilarious. I think it would be my top comedy now for number of laughs per episode.

I'm really glad you liked my brother. That's exactly what I went for with him, a laid back, care free approach where he didn't actually say much unless asked, and would try and say something smart/makes jokes to the camera about the other people. I thought this kind of style, in conjunction with Jake who I gave a more exaggerated, loud, over confident persona would mix well together.

I was a bit worried about Jake at the start because I thought he was overracting. His character is based on real life, but when we started practising it was impossible for him to capture his character how I wanted and I thought it was too over the top, so what I did was write his character to be more over the top, confident, elitist etc.

Yeah The Office was a massive influence Yeah, as mentioned I wanted to have more of these kind of scenes that would catch the characters off guard and show us the difference between Callum in the camera and Callum off it.

Glad you liked the lingering reactions, Callum's facial expressions were some of my favourite parts in the film. In that hat scene, where Cuffe says "The only job Callum can get is in the circus", and we see him look up to the camera, looking confused. Or after the Football Manager scene where he seems slightly gutted that his mum doesn't care about what he's just done on a computer game.

It's very much based on real life characters and experiences, but exaggerated for the purposes of the story. Don't worry about anything you've said, I think you got all the stuff about my brother spot on, which makes me really happy. They are in fact my real mum and sister. My sister really wanted to be in it, and eventually I came up with the idea for her scene a half, which I was happy with. My mum was a bit more reluctant to take part, but in such a documentary I'd have to get the opinion of his parents. I actually really enjoyed her interview scene, I was surprised by how natural (at least to me) her and my sister came off.

Yeah haha, I do actually have some potential ideas for a sequel set in the future, but I don't know if I'll ever do it.

Thanks again for all the comments, really makes me happy that you really seemed to see my brother and the documentary-style pretty much as I see them.

Referring back to the time constraints and that, I actually think the story would have worked better as a TV series. Like The Office, with 6 20 minute episodes. That way you could have Callum like going to a different interview, trying something new to help himself, every episode, but you'd have more time for the overall arc.

Yeah I'm really happy to get constructive criticism and have tried to encourage people to give me there responses if they can. I don't have a problem if I feel it's justified and helpful.

Never actually seen a Kevin Smith film although I know a lot about Clerks and how it was made. I really like Wes Anderson, I'll take about him below.

I've seen Winter's Bone, or at least most of it, but it was a while ago now. All I remember is that it was decent, Jennifer Lawrence was good and that Cheryl Lee was in it. The Apostle seems interesting and I think I'm writing in saying it's one of Yoda's favourites? I'll try and check it out eventually, thank you

Yeah I like him and think I rate all his films I've seen between and , probably ranked something like:

1. The Darjeeling Limited
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. Rushmore
6. The Royal Tenenbaums

I rewatched Moonrise Kingdom recently as it was on Film4 and probably enjoyed it more than the first time, the first 4 on that list are hard to seperate for me. Budapest Hotel is probably the funniest, but I love journey/spiritual side to Darjeeling. Someone actually told me that my trailer reminded them of him.

I probably ought to watch both versions of Bottle Rocket, for indie film making purposes.

I do generally dislike The Office in that respect, but I was more referring to the line delivery which... actually let me pick at a specific moment.

At the 12-minute mark Main Guy gets off a phone call, where I imagine the guy on the other end could hardly get a word in edgewise, and the camera quickly zooms out to encompass the two as if predicting the ensuing conversation about what the phone call was about. This meta-awareness combined with the fact that the characters are standing stock-still instead of walking, or leaving, or throwing rocks off the cliff, or really anything do little to convince me this isn't staged...

It's just a setting for a scene involving a conversation, the sole purpose of which is to setup the next scene. In fiction, any given scene should ideally serve more than one purpose, but in a documentary format where the idea is to follow developments organically, whether you're faking it or not, you would do well not to sacrifice realism, or at least learn to recognize what will stick out to audiences.

I realize there are probably many things you'd want to account for, but it's worth remembering that even bold reveals can be well concealed.


There are certainly comedies I enjoy that don't make me laugh. British ones included. I'm not sure what you expect my expectations to be, but I wasn't expecting a comedy.

I wasn't even sure it was a comedy at first. It sets itself up with this heavy topic and then it sort of meanders about in mildly awkward detachment until it ends. What was the point of The Job Hunt? Did he get hired?

If he didn't, then we're back at the premise which begs the question of why we needed to see any of that.

If he did, then I might be able to say that it's uplifting and encourages people to "try, try again". I've enjoyed such stories, but...

That's not conveyed and even if he did, Fridge Logic implies that there remains a question of whether he could even maintain one, which comes off as nihilistic at best.

All of that tells me that a lot of weight was riding on the humorousness of the dialog, which I simply did not get anything out of.

Obviously. But I guess this is that terrible terrible moment where I say I didn't enjoy your movie. *shoots self*

No harm in that.

That's a good example that takes advantage of the format. I'd say more of that.

For the record, my movies are cringey as hell too. Particularly thanks to the effects I was way over-ambitious with.

But, documentaries are staged? A documentary film crew doesn't just let people do whatever they want, they ask them to do certain things, alert them that they want to film them on camera, ask them to face it and talk to them etc. the logic behind the scene is would be that they decided to drive out to this place, the interviewer tells them he's going to ask them why they've came here, and then they're interrupted by the phone call.

The fact that he his the one on the phone, the only one properly talking, is why the camera would focus on him. The fact that Jake would be naturally curious as to what was said over the phone would explain why the camera then moves to contain both of them in the frame.

Also zooms and pans and such can be added in during editing anyway, so that would logically explain a lot of them even if the logical/instinctive shooting style doesn't.

But even if the documentary film crew filmed all sorts of footage and realitsic scenes following them around, asking about stuff, he's going to get the phone call eventually. There's no need to show stuff superfluous to the story or his character, yet all the need to show the phone call to logically set up the scene.

And as I've mentioned originally the script was longer for his development/the story to happen more organically and not feel as forced.

Okay, fair enough. Most people on here have heard me talk about the film before, or seen the trailer, and the description/categories for the film wherever it's shown describes it as a documentary-style comedy.

Yeah, it's supposed to deliberately start as if this was a real person that happened to be selected for a part in a documentary. Apparently people didn't know if The Office was real or not when it first started. If this was a real documentary and I watched it I would still laugh because of the way the characters speak and act.

Again why does a film have to have a point? I just wanted to write a film that I would enjoy watching and hopefully others would too, and find funny. Why should there be a mega important serious point to it all?

And did he get hired? Don't know, up to the viewer to decide.

In real life though my brother had actually been without a job for between 6 months to a year, and it worked out that just after I finished the script for the film he got a job. That was about January 2015, he's still there now. Obviously he's different to the character, but funny how things worked out. Now I'm the one in real life in his situation, a University graduate with no job and loads of time on my hands.

As I said, it's up to the viewer decide. Feel free to ask yourself these questions and decide for yourself whether he got a job, and whether he'd be able to maintain one. The point was not to brand him a success or failure, but just to spend time with characters who were funny and hopefully show a character who had flaws but was actually a decent person who by the end wanted to work harder towards finding a job.

It also leaves open the door for a sequel, should I want to use the characters again sometime.

Correct.

Wife and I watched this over the weekend. We both liked it. She laughed a few times, and so did I.

Obviously, the "what could make this better?" criticism is worlds away from the "grading on a curve" criticism. On a curve, this is very good for a first film. Particularly, as TONGO said, the angles of the shots. It was all well lit, and for a short I thought the characters were pretty well drawn, too. Solid.

The not-on-a-curve stuff: between knowing a handful of amateur filmmakers and watching a lot of MST3K (), my wife and I are always talking about how early films (and/or low budget films) almost always have two things in common: rough audio, and overly lingering establishing or driving shots. And both were present here.

The audio was better than most, in that you seemed to at least have the principals in each scene sounding good. That's good, and stopped this from being a big problem. Anyone else was difficult to hear.

The establishing shots weren't overtly long, just longer than they had to be. Our operating theory with this is that it's really hard to shoot even a short film and get it to a decent length, and that it's easy to forget how little people need for that transition to feel smooth, so a lot of what's shot ends up in the film. I think it could be a lot punchier with just a minute or two cut out from those parts. I also wonder at the internal logic of a documentary that shows the subjects driving away.

I do have one very big stylistic question: how dry was the humor supposed to be? The first few minutes, it was very understated, and I liked that a lot. Callum was relatively emotionless, but that's just what I took the character to be and I felt it gave us a handle on him very quickly. But there's a scene later where you're (I think it was you as the documentarian, yeah?) suggesting he change his CV, and the dialogue sounds like it's meant to be delivered with more emotion. My complaint is not that it wasn't, but more with the decision to have it there at all, since the rest of the interactions are all so restrained.

I'm also not sure if the ending is supposed to be a cliffhanger, and whether or not we're supposed to think Callum has learned or changed (if he has, when/how did that happen?).

Most of the film I felt like it was deliberately understated, and that he wasn't really changing or learning at all. Which I was fine with! I think that's the best part, and I think the film was best when it was most like this. But there are a few scenes that make me think maybe this wasn't exactly the intention, so let me know what you were going for there.

I almost laughed out loud when I saw my name because I forgot I'd contributed to it. And it was funny because I saw a "Special Thanks" to a few names I recognized, too! Cool stuff.

There's a difference between expecting "real people" to make concessions for a film crew and putting on an act for the film crew.

If the idea was that the crew had brought them out to this cliff for a scenic backdrop, then it breaks consistency to preempt it with that overhead shot of the two of them standing alone. This suggests that they're at this location of their own accord, not for the purposes of the documentary.

Logically yes, but the timing is suspicious and the characters, namely Main Guy seem entirely at the service of the script. This is why I think Elitist Snob is a better actor because during this scene he's making emotional noises and gestures like trying to talk over the phone call, sighing, and tapping his finger while his attention is fixed entirely on Main Guy.

Meanwhile, Main Guy is brutally aware of the camera and seems to be making a desperate effort not to look at it. When he hangs up the phone you can see he's at a loss for what to do beyond blankly parroting lines. Something as minor as looking away or at the ground with a deep breath would have sold the scene way better. He just doesn't know how to disappear into his role as well as the other.

Makes sense.

Yeah, I haven't read any of those posts.

Enjoyment is a point. Comedy can serve that point. I don't think you're distinguishing between "purpose" and "message", both of which can be described as "point"s, but only one of which is necessary.

Of the two probable results, neither appear terribly attractive.

It's difficult to telegraph that sort of irony to the screen.

Regarding if he got hired or not, I thought it was obvious.....

My points as well.