First experience with 16mm, VERY small short
 

Well, if some of you remember my last short "on the flop" it is still in the works as we speak. The version everyone here saw was heavily re-edited and it should be completed in the next month.

Anyways, I had an assignment in my Film Class at college to create a 1-2 minute long short film that had no dialogue (because our film cameras don't capture sound) using one or two 300 foot 16mm daylight spools. I chose BW to help ease lighting constraints such as matching color temps etc. My original storyboard was a very straight forward with nothing experimental. The shoot went horribly bad though, we ran out of light half way through shooting because I received my camera late the only day we had the camera available from a group member and one of the key talents in the film had to be dropped because she had to leave town an hour before the shoot. So we had basically trashed the footage we did get. Well I was frustrated last week and spent some time making what I could out of the 3 minutes of raw footage I had. I was quite pleased with what turned out considering the incomplete amount of footage I had to work with. The short is rather experimental now so be warned. By the way this was edited on Premiere 6.5.

I only have space on my account for a Windows Media 9 version so sorry mac users!

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Duality Small.wmv

Excellent work Bryan!

good pacing and editing overall ...
IMO the gun isn't needed for the 1st 80% ...

off hand what are film schools saying about using copy righted music ? as i see you use 9 inch nail music but do not show who has copy right on music ? you list who it's by and performed but COPY right ? .......... i see you do copy right the project ..

are schools covering the use of copy right material ?

I get a Windows "System Cannot Find The File Specified" error.
Is this my system's fault?

Thanks for the replies: Seriously, I love all feedback. If you hate it, let me know. If you love it, let me hear it!

Don - I'm not in a "film school" yet. I'm currently in my last semester at North Carolina State University for my undergraduate degree in Business Managment Concentration of Marketing with a film minor. NCSU really has nothing to do with film, their program is minute: I originally came for engineering and business. What my film teachers always say is that you just need to give the artist credit for the song as long as you don't plan for a festival submission or to distribute a short for money. The goal is to inform people that you didn't compose the piece, that you used someone elses work. They also say for us to give our own pieces a copyright to send a message to any would be stealers of a short for say admittance into a Film School that we understand somewhat about copyrights. I just do what they tell me to :) . I hope that helps. FYI on me: I'm applying to a handful of film graduate schools in the next month or so for hopeful attendance next fall. My sites are set on Florida State but that is a finger crosser as well as a nail biter. I'll need all the luck I can get for it.

Dylan - I'm not sure, that is a wierd error. I would say try to right click and save as, then save the file to your desktop. Then see what happens. If you're on a mac, then you wont be able to see it. I would guess that perhaps your codec isn't updated to Windows Media 9? It's a free upgrade from Microsoft. I hope that helps!

If that's what you can produce when things go wrong, I can't wait to see what you can do when things go right! Very nice work!

Great work, Bryan. The black & white works very well. Must have been a lot of editing in Premiere to make it like it is.

Bryan .. IMO business background is excellent for going into FILM as bottom line it is a business. success comes easier to those that can combine the two ... let us know what college you go to and looking forward to seeing your next project.

How did you get your 16mm footage into your PC NLE?

Thanks guys.

Paul - well, this is one of those wierd things that just comes together somehow. When things do go completely as planned for me, they usually have too much of a structured feel to them, but that's changing as I gain more experience.

Peter - you know I've always been a fan of all your work and readily await a chance to view your next project.

Don - I sure hope you're right. I had a great internship in the business field a few years back and I'd consider myself quite adept at the field so I hope it'll come in handy.

Bruce - when we had our footage processed from the lab, we had them do a digital transfer to mini DV tape. It cost a bit extra but it was the only way we could get our footage onto the Media 100 systems but I always opt to take mine home for editing on the home pc running Premiere.

I can't wait to see this! It's taking awhile to come down but I'm going to leave it and watch it in the morning..

This Wednesday I'm beginning my first 16mm shoot, I'm crossing my fingers!

To me, this looks exactly like footage captured from an Xl-1, and not 16mm.

How much did you pay for the processing/transfer?

-Nori

Nori - well I'm not sure what the exact costs were. As a class, we split the shipping costs and transfer/processing fees. I personally paid something like $74.

Trust me, it's not XL1 footage. The one quick flash of a white circle, was actually the lead hole on the film that I received from processing. I just left it in because it looked cool. Also, the shot from inside the trunk when it's first opened, I didn't add any effects to this. I shot this shot too early on my second daylight reel before the exposed film had a chance to reel through, so it ended up all whited out like this. Originally, I wanted to have the shot completely black, and then we see the trunk open but we lost the opening of the trunk from inside because it was the first shot on the second reel so I had to show the MS from behind of the trunk opening and then cut to inside.

I get a Windows "System Cannot Find The File Specified" error.

Right click on the link and use "Save Target As" When I opened the link normaly, I got the same error as you.