FalTorPan asked for my critique of Astronuts, so here we go:
First off, there's an impressive amount of work in this. I'm in the middle of a greenscreen compositing nightmare, so I appreciate the effort to thing like putting a big head on a tiny body, virtual backgrounds, etc.
Given when this was shot, I'm not going to comment on the technical aspects of the chromakey. However, looking at the Storyboard to Screen version, it seems you were shooting against blue. Green is often a preferable color to shoot on for video because the green channel typically has the most information and the highest detail level and the easiest to cleanly separate (unless you have spill).
My biggest problem: the sound. As I've said elsewhere, sound trumps picture. Next time you do a film get a decent mic and record to something other than the camera. It'll make everything better.
Comedy is tricky. The script has some funny ideas in it, but some of the humor is really obvious. The bit around using the flazer <sp?> guns to escape the prison doesn't really work because the characters seem obtuse and the timing is flat. Playing the characters as dumb is easy humor, but also very easy to make unfunny. The scene might've worked better if the Captain was trying to MacGyver his way out with the objects at hand, trying to be too clever when the answer was right in front of his nose.
There are some fun ideas for the characters, but they all felt underutilized. What's the point of Gummier Snax in the story? None, really. If you're going to put them in and have them be quirky in some way make sure that quirkiness is in service of your story. Have that something unique to each character play intro complicating or resolving the story's problems.
There're some basic camerawork problems throughout, many of which I covered in the Fan Filmmaker's Primer. When doing this stuff in future, make sure you observe the 30-degree rule. For instance, at 1:40 you're doing an axial cut, and since you're basically punching straight in, the fact that none of the actors are in the same position after the cut is really jarring. It's one of the good reasons people apply things like the 30 degree rule...it hides some continuity problems in addition to making the cutting more interesting.
The TV style title sequence is too long. This is the era where people click away from anything that loses their attention for a moment. Slam the title up there and save the credits for the end. People interested enough to see it through may want to see the credits, but if people lose interest during the titles, they won't care about the names anyway.
I like the blue hand holding up its pinky as it drags the ship. Cute touch!
Too many things don't pay off. For instance, it seems like the crew's opening ad should have been what got Bupkis's attention. They advertised, and now they reap what they sowed. I assume this is what happened, but it's never stated as such in the film as edited. That’s basic narrative though-line.
The wind-up key in the engine room is a great gag, but it's squandered because it's sort of stuck up at the top of the frame. A better way to play that gag would be to have the engineer turn to look O.C. then go to an OTS (Over The Shoulder) of him looking at this ridiculous piece of equipment.
When shooting on greenscreen it's really easy to mess up eyelines. For intense when at 3:58 the Captain turns to speak to Thugg is a good example of this. He looks off to screen right, but Thugg is behind him and a hair to camera left. When the actors are shot on a process screen, feel free to move them around in post to get a better composition.
It's better to cut between shots that are compositionally very different. For instance at 4:23 you go from a sort of 2-shot to a wide shot, when it would have been better to cut from a CU of the Captain out to the wide shot of the bridge because a) it would be more interesting and b) it would avoid another jump/axial cut as happens now
Cute Plan 9 in-joke at 14:47!
The payoff of the "I’ve got a sandwich bag" etc., should have used all the items, or done something unexpected. The mirror was too obvious.
No one bats it out of the ballpark on their first try, but this is a big effort, and I have little doubt the next effort will show considerable improvement.
