The Art of the Deal

Well done for winning the unofficial creepy character smile. I was pretty lost for most of this lol I'm sure you guys know exactly what was happening, perhaps it was just cut a little too short? who knows maybe you were tight for time, shame about the DQ, better luck next year!

Two students meet up at the library to study but are pestered by a creepy, smiling self-help(?) promoter/salesman. I kept missing exactly what the creepy guy was actually pushing but I liked the idea of how his influence spread. Some good camera work in this and an interesting colour grade. The story doesn't really go anywhere though and kind of drifts out and before we know it we're into a credit sequence - albeit a very cool one! Loved your intro! Seigan was not impressed.

lots of long drawn out shots of people walking places. the only part i can really remember is the extended gag of the guy moving to sit closer to the characters and the reveal that its a MLM thing. credits were rather self indulgent Creepy head turn was very well done i was mostly pretty lost the whole time story wise

I know this team has a lot of talent behind it and a lot of that shines through here, especially in the acting. I think what kind of let it down was the... colour grade? There was something very intentional but very odd about the way this film looked. I also am not too crazy about the story, I guess this is one of the downfalls of Real Time- it doesn't really give you too much to work with storywise, but someone sneakily trying to recruit someone for an MLM isn't exactly riveting stuff. I liked the credits! TITLE REVIEW: The Art of the Deal! Funny. Good stuff.

There's not a lot I can add to from the other reviews, but there are a few main points I want to hit on. Firstly, I definitely agree with the sentiment over the color grading. There was just something off about it -- it's clear that you were intentionally going for grim, scary, whatnot, but the grade felt obvious and almost oppressive. Whatever camera you were using, it was also considerably over-sharp, and it really brought out the quality issues in the recording I think. It's tricky to make comments on the cinematography because it felt like everything about the camerawork was trying to hide what was actually happening, which somehow didn't work for this setting in a library. The split-screen idea as a solution to keep to real time was pretty cool (not sure why you were DQed, but that part I liked), and the credits, while mayyybe being "self indulgent" were at least very eye-catching. Sadly more eye catching than the rest of the film perhaps, and that is exactly the sort of thing you don't want to hear. I liked that you were whispering in the library. It felt real, in a film which seemed so adverse to realism.

I get the feeling you understood the story you were trying to tell but it was somehow lost in delivery. I know that the title is the same as a book by Donald Trump but I'm not familiar with the book, with the whole business angle I'm wondering if that was some sort of deliberate tie in but it's all a bit of a mindfuck to me and I see from other comments that I'm not alone, what I was left with was the two girls trying to get away from the creepy guy and then him snaring one of them. Then we ended with the phone flicking through whatever social media platform (I'm a Facebook only social media dinosaur) and my guess is the disqualification happened because the judges were unconvinced that all those posts could happen in real time.