Result of my boredom this evening...
 

Earlier today I was a little bit bored out of my mind so I put together this little piece. Its me riding my bike. All the camera work is done by other people (except the tripod shots) so its not the best. Also the clips of the wall smiths (where I hit the wall on top of the ramp with the back tire and front peg) had no sound because my friend forgot to turn on the mic so its all makeshift audio effects. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/dustinsmix.mov

http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/dustinsmix.wmv

Do let us know what your professor thinks of the shorts!

I thought it was really good! I liked the mistery of not "seeing"
(too much of) the dispatcher. In the end I was quite interested
in what would be coming next. Liked what you did with the
titles as well. Any tips on that?

Good job!

So how far was that drop besides the road? <g> Was a funny
short movie. I liked what you did in the beginning where you
freezed the jump and displayed the "titles".

Hi.

I did the titles in Final Cut Pro with the standard text generator. I decided the flashy text you can create with Live Type just did'nt fit the mood I wanted.

I used the ripple dislove from CGM-Online (www.cgm-online.com) for incoming text and a regular disolve on the outgoing text.

The "bong" drum hit was done in Apple's Sound Track (all the music was scored with ST). I thought there needed to be something else when the transition of clips happend.

Made it more dramatic.

All the radio traffic was recorded from calls we had run.

The drop is approx. 15 feet. Thanks for the compliments.

I watched the film. I was impressed with the effort you put into this film. I mean, a people lose their limbs in this film!

You do need to work on the audio a bit and you probably could recut this film so that some of the edits on action don't look staged. In fact, i take back probably, you should recut this and retime everything.

Another idea is to cut the action sequences to the timing of the music, which will really make it jump.

Trailer for my doc up and working
 

Hey guys--The trailer for my documentary is actually up and working now. The web address is:

www.bicoastalfilms.com

Enter the site, click on "investors" and type in the password: bicoastal (password protected so that people who appear in the film don't see trailer before film is done...very touchy subject). You can read more about the story in the "press" section.

Tech specs: Shot with DVX100 over course of about 6 months. We have about 87 hours of footage and are editing on Xpress Pro with G5. No color correction on the trailer. The music is from the Hours so don't tell Phillip Glass or Miramax. The trailer is basically being used to keep those who have invested money in the film happy, and to attract other investors, though we've really aren't spending any more money. We will start submitting to film festivals as soon as the film is done editing (maybe about 4 months) and then see what happens. OK, curious to hear the feedback.

peter

Peter,

Looks great. Footage looks good except the scene w/the students. Interesting subject. I can see both sides.

Looks like you have a compelling concept. The trailer is scary in some ways - the last line where the older guy compares changing mentality to Hitler is shockingly ill informed. In fact, it's basically the opposite of what he says. What's your take on this as the director?

A new little BMX video.
 

Its just me and my friends riding bikes. Again. Its a bit flashy with the effects but thats kinda what I was aiming for.

www.bmxbums.com/videos/dlwshort1.mov (mpeg4)

www.bmxbums.com/videos/dlwshort1.wmv

File size is kinda big. 15 megs and a little over 2 mins I believe.

not bad by any means, a couple things tho; The music is dated and dosent really fit the theme, when you make a video you are telling a story, what exactly were you telling? and the music should fit that. The font was simple which is ok, but it looks unprofessional just using the regular font MSwindows comes with. Your shots looked realy smooth G/J!, however I felt unattached to the film because you were far away for alot of the shots, but the ones where you did get closer looked good, I see you used a fisheye lens thats good but only when you get close to the subject. Your rider friends are pretty good, Im sure they had a few wrecks tho, those clips are great to include with the other footage. the night shots were the best so far, next to the light sculpture was cool, but very fast, didnt really have time to absorb how great the shot was untill I paused it. The night shots of the bowl under lights were great. The blue effects were ok but I would reserve the effect as a segway for the riders instead of having it as riding content, like remove the white fades and put the blue art effect there instead but dont show any riding, maybe have it introduce the rider with their face?

Im a hard critic, just one favor I ask; when I post a vid please be as honest as I was to you to me.

Oh yea, What camera/NLE/steadie cam? did you use?

Happy filming!

John thanks for the comments. The music is just something totally different than what you normally see in BMX videos. I get really sick of the norm easily so I try to throw in some weird stuff every once in a while and I just liked the laid back feel of the song. I didn't want to go too fancy with the fonts as I made this clip specifically for the web and in my opinion simple fonts are a must as the text tends to become distorted in compression. Everything else you mention is basically how the full length is going to be. This was just something I threw together with random clips just to pass some time today. The full length will have lots of crashes (dvd bonus!), and proper introductories to riders.

Shot with a Trv950 in all of the shots except for one, Adobe After Effects, Premiere, and Photoshop on a Dell Demension 4500, no steady cam believe it or not. I have a home made one but it tends to be more of a pain to use. Especially when I'm on the go and hitting up a quick spot.

You say you like the night shots best? Hmm. I hate them. I love the daylight shots though. The lights at that park are horrible and cause really bad vertical smears which you can see in the video.

Zwahhh...

That was awesome. I love strange movies. I'm looking forward to a part 2 as well.

I thought it was pretty cool those guys were really good on the bikes