I guess I'm in a similar place to you guys: I love Adam. His books make me laugh out loud (woke up my wife laughing several times while reading his books at night). I subscribe to his podcast, actually pay money, because I wholly support the Pirate Ship in both its concept and its execution.
However, Road Hard should have been better. There is nothing more amateurish than shooting a conversation and the person talking is out of focus. In the scenes when he's having conversations in the car, they should be AT LEAST racking the focus between the two people talking, but instead they leave Adam in the background, out of focus, having his half of the conversation. Sometimes they cut to a different shot, but for so much of it, he's back there out of focus. It was really really bad.
The other problem is that there was just too much space between the jokes. These kinds of comedies need to be a lot more dense, and you can peel back every so often to give the audience time to breathe, but this movie plods along very slowly. I also felt that there needed to be followups to some of the scenes and they never came. Part of this was due to the fact they only had certain actors for a half day at the most, but I still think with some more careful planning the thing parts would hang together a lot better.
Also, having his daughter go to Bennington? Yikes! Bennington is pretty much everything that Adam hates about education. They don't really have grades. They barely have classes. You don't learn anything about hard work at all there. Just seems like a strange choice.
Anyway, feel like it should've been better. Maybe the script needed to be tighter. Maybe he shouldn't have tried for the serious stuff. Maybe he should've ended up as a podcaster like real Adam. (he can do that from New Hampshire!)
Shrug.
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ebright99
9 years ago
There is nothing more amateurish than shooting a conversation and the person talking is out of focus. In the scenes when he's having conversations in the car, they should be AT LEAST racking the focus between the two people talking,
Is there anything more amateurish than showing a rack focus during a conversation? That would look like a mistake more than anything. Stop Monday morning quarterbacking.
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rickert
9 years ago
Racking between two conversing people is common practice, but you'll notice I said "AT LEAST" in there as a qualifier. It would've been best to either go with a larger DOF to keep them both in focus, or just shoot it from each side and intercut.
You really think it's okay for someone to speak lines while out of focus? That's truly amateur stuff there.
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smoko
8 years ago
@ebright99 Is there anything more amateurish than showing a rack focus during a conversation?
Yes: showing someone talking while out of focus.
Changing focus to the person who's talking isn't too much to ask.
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smoko
8 years ago
@rickert Yes, I noticed that Adam was talking out of focus with Sarah in her Volvo - after the woodshop scene and at the end. Was changing focus too much trouble?
What really stood out was the bad foley work when Sarah laughed at Bruce's joke about his neck still smelling like her friend's Jägermeister. That was like watching a badly-dubbed foreign film.
I guess it shows how important production is, but I don't really notice it unless it's done badly.
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