Chris Chan Documentary.

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i havent read all the comments yet, so sorry if theres some repeat stuff in here; i loved this doc & thank you. i watch a lot of docs & share a lot of docs with a lot of people. i have been waiting for *something* to come along for a long time. sure, the entire cwc story cant be told in an hour, but im not sure the general public would honestly be interested in a 4 to 7hour introductory feature on this subject, at least not start off with. also, im sure many of us can agree that its hard to judge this from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the situation, but i think you did a swell job sir, especially for a high school student. bonus points for a pretty lulzy & non-annoying voiceover track. im sure you will get some haters for throwing in your opinions at certain points, but i loved it. thats the kind of stuff that lights a fire under people's butt's to create counter-documentaries. looking forward to teh final cut release.
 

Auto quality got fucked up, also I know the narration is muffled I re-recorded the audio at least 5 times to make it clearer there is nothing I can do untell I get an actual mic.

Remarkable bent genitals.

I'm quite surprised. I love it. It's well paced, well edited, funny as hell, informative (besides obligatory censorship) and to this day the best introduction for newbies/potential victims to Chris' universe. Classical music is a nice touch (like most of the soundtrack), although I would used Chris' albums and/or his favorite songs. Narration is great. Overall: a True and Honest Work with an ending full of feels. Congratulations, I'm gonna share it. And I want more.

Btw, I was expecting a 720p version. The 480p is the only available now. What happened?

PS: I want to make subtitles and translate them to spanish. If you send me the script I would be pleased to help you.
The guy from the interviews... he did a great work answering your questions and not laughing/jumping out a window. He seems to be pretty cool.

EDIT:
I did not mention the money people sent to christian, but I knew this kind of stuff would happen I honestly cant put everything in, there just wasn't enough time but like i said in da video I will re visit this with all of the things I have learned.

Any chance of a director's cut?
 
Long time lurker, and I just have to say, this was great. Its a really informative documentary that I have recommended to all my non Chris watching friends. Thank you for you efforts.
 
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Don't feel like reading through the entire thread to find out (have a lot of reading to do before class this morning, but @spylobster, what did you get for this project? I haven't watched it yet, but was wondering.
Edit: just got done watching it, and I thought it was really cool! Nice work for a high school project. Obviously you were working with time constraints, but I think you could tighten up some of transitions a bit, but I don't think it matters that much. What matters is you present a decent timeline of the events, giving cursory viewers of all the Christory a good reference point.
 
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Well done, sir. The only correction I have is that the Sonichu originals did survive the fire per a conversation Chris had with either Catie or Renee.
 
Just watched it - and I was completely held from beginning to end! Also delighted to hear you're going to be working on it some more - to be honest, I would have liked another 10-15 minutes! How about trying for some interviews with some Christorical figures? And as other posters have suggested, maybe a short section explaining the most-used CWCisms? Oh, and no problems with the narration - sounded good to me!
My only criticism (and it's a very minor one, and has already been made) - I did feel you were perhaps a little too keen to point out you wanted to be objective about an "internet phenomenon" (horrible term, but still) weren't just making fun of an Autistic person, wanted to let the viewer make up their mind etc. However, I can easily imagine you being fearful of your teachers and fellow students getting the wrong end of the stick regarding your intentions - maybe tone that aspect down in a future edit?

Anyway, bottom line, it was great - I was utterly enthralled, and I think it makes a great primer for anyone unfamiliar with Chris. Well done! :heart-full:
 
I already mentioned this in passing on your wall, but one more film you might want to check out is Grey Gardens, which may have been the world's first lolcow-documentary:


Forty years after its release, it's considered a classic of the genre, and a stunning portrait of bull-goose eccentricity and dysfunction. The entire doc can be watched on YouTube as well.

That film is one of my absolute favorites. I do, however feel the need to point out one difference: Big Edie and Little Edie, despite their quirks and obvious mental issues, manage to come off as likeable, even endearing. It would be very difficult to portray Chris as a sympathetic character and even more difficult to make him appear likeable. Anyway, I don't think that's the angle @spylobster is going for and I too look forward to viewing the finished product.
 
Excellent. It was entertaining enough for me to sit through even though I already knew about all the material, so if I had never heard of Chris before this would've been the perfect introductory to him.
 
Disclaimer: I only got through the first 40 minutes because I am at work and have to do my actual job at some point. That said this is really good for a high school project, it flows pretty well and is thoughtful and thorough.

Thoughts:

- I think you should introduce all of it more as a weird internet phenomenon; emphasize the odd fascination people have with him because that's what is going to draw Chris virgins in. Don't talk so much about how bizarre he is. Let people discover that for themselves, right now you're telling people what to think rather than showing them. The show don't tell mantra is applicable here. Phrases like "proving how gullible Chris can be..." And "remarkably bent genitals" (although that was funny) shouldn't really be in here, it's not objective and gives off the wrong vibe.

- You can cut the whole disclaimer at the beginning in future versions. I understand why you need to explain that you didn't have anything to do with bullying Chris to your high school teacher, but in an actual documentary nobody is going to assume anything about you or associate you personally with the content (unless it's a documentary strongly defined by the personality of its creator, such as Michael Moore).

- You can cut some of the pre-internet Christian stuff, especially the Songs of Christian video. It isn't that interesting without already having context. I understand the documentary is based on a timeline so I get why it was all thrown into the beginning but I think some of it could be woven into the later parts, some doesn't need to be told at all or can at the very least be summarized more briefly. Remember, hypothetically we aren't your audience. It's got to pull in people completely new to this.

- Too many sagas, it's confusing to the viewer. For instance: The "Adam Stackhouse" saga doesn't need to be separately defined, include it in the Megan saga. I'm tempted to say you should do away with arranging the documentary by saga entirely because they overlap too much and it's kind of confusing in the context of the chronological format.

- It's pronounced "E.D." Not "Ed" I'm pretty sure.

Other than that I pretty much agree with all of @Hello Skinny 's points. It's a strong first draft and I hope I'm not being discouraging, this is just the editor in me.
 
I realize you are doing this for a class and not to win an Oscar or anything. That said it is a really very good first cut.

Here are my notes on cut 1:

* The different "love interest" sagas can easily be rolled into one general montage of "various trolls pretending to be in love with Chris". Maybe mention the Sonichu girls website.

* The documentary is in complete chronological order. You might want to break this up with little side notes, such as CWCisms, or an "Is Chris Chan Straight" segment.

*You do a good job at being fair but near the end you call Chris things like "manchild". You might want to change that.

Otherwise, I really liked it.
 
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I won't bother to give critique because I think the others have already done a great job at providing constructive criticism, so I'll just say that this was a great watch! I can't believe this was done for a high school project, it's so well-made! It's obvious that you poured a lot of time, effort, and attention into this project and for that I commend you.
 
There's an error I don't think anyone has mentioned. The documentary said that his gal-pals hung out with him out of pity and quoted an email at length. But those emails turned out to be fabricated by trolls. It's kind of a small issue I guess, but I thought I should mention it.
Unrelated to troll activity, they were hired by Bob.
 
Quality documentary! I made my girlfriend watch it with me and she was both puzzled and delighted.

If I made it I would probably focus on a few of the funniest/most significant sagas and provide more context, but it's your documentary and you did a really good job explaining the basics to anyone new to Chris. Only other real nitpicks were some typos and some stuff already mentioned here. I'm excited to see where it goes from here.
 
I still have to watch it, I been a bit busy today and haven't had a spare amount of time to check it out. I'll try in a few hours.
 
Pretty good. I would probably go into more detail about Chris and amend some of the inconsistencies, though. Although, it would probably be over 12 hours long if you covered everything Chris-related, ha.
 
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