Dragwater
 

just letting you all know that i have completed another music video. It can be viewed here in 3 formats - www.smiley-films.com/dragwater.html

it has some really powerfull images in it... please do check it out and let me know what you think.

Colin, yet again some awesome stuff. The visuals in this are quite impressive, especially when I looked at the behind the scenes and most were literally just you sitting with a camera and the subject. I loved the use of subtle vertical starglows in the couple foggy white shots that blew out the highlights into stripes, and that studio shot where the singer comes into the light with the microphone. I've got a few questions about the whole thing:

Noticed it seemed, even though it was handheld, that you bumped up the "camera shake" to the beat in post. I've not explored this too much, but what is a good way to not make this look like a cheeseball 2d effect from AE? How'd you do it?

Also I noticed you were in a studio type setting for a few of the shots, saw some light kit action and some C-stand arms...was that filmed at your school cause I know you said it was shot on a 0 budget? Or do you have your own light kit?

The only thing that felt off to me was the matching of the lead's mouth the the vocals. It wasn't terrible, but it felt like you had to sort of construct some of the words from the shots you liked in post. Do you use playback on set to try to maximize ease of editing?

Great work,
Spencer Houck

68159500
 

the only extra camera shake added in post in in the first 10 seconds using the wiggler in ae.... the rese is shot shaky intentionally by myself..

no i did not shoot in a school.. i was flown to san jose to do the video.... they happened to have a really old spotlight and some gells in their workshop.. not studio... no c stands.

and no man your tripping out.. the mouth is lined up very very well to the vocals.. are you sure your file wasnt playing off sync.. sometimes interenet files do that.

Colin
Pro-quality stuff...
Again...

You know, I'm starting to get bored of all the really good stuff you do. Why don't you make something crappy so we can give you a good old fashioned flaming? I bet all this continous praise is going to your head...


:)

J/K, keep up the great work.

What did you shoot it on by the way?

He shot it on a VX2000. It shows him using it in the behind the scenes pics. http://www.smiley-films.com/behinddragwater.html

Great work, again!

What did you do in post? Magic Bullet? I noticed a focus spot effect. Am I right?

Other thing I noticed in some scenes was a "vey fast shutter" effect. Did you you use that?

Man, and the camera shakes were incredible. Looked like some king of shaking machine was attached to the cam.

shaky cam is hand held but very intentional. high shutterspeed with flash setting at lowest setting on vx2k

WOW, this tops anything you have done previously and that stuff was great. Your "making-of" shots are cool and a good idea tool. Keep 'em comming.

Colin,

That video is fabulous... I have seen some of your other stuff and really liked it, but I feel that this was a definite step up. The imagery is powerful and well-used. The framing was nice and the use of depth of field was really good. I loved the shots of the band both with a foreground element in focus and the band not, and vice versa, and I really liked the rear-view mirror rake focus.

Overall it looks like you are only a few clicks from shooting for MTV.

The pacing was really nice and energetic, which suited the music, but my only real critique was that I wanted to see the singer deliver at least one or two full lines in a single shot. Watching that communication is really powerful to me, and I feel that it would break up the faster cuts and make them all the more powerful by providing contrast.

How many setups did you use? How much source material did you shoot? It seemed like you must have had hours of footage to draw from.

How much of the band footage did you shoot with an eye to where it would be used in the song? Or did you just shoot the full song a bunch of times, and a lot of general imagery and put it all together in post?

Keep it up and keep it posted.

This was a fantastic music video.

That's really awesome that you were flown to San Jose. Must have been a great experience.

I'd still like to see some more work from you that is less edit oriented, along the same lines as new tape. But for right now you're doing a stellar job, and I can see you working on features in the near future.

I actually have a short film concept that I have partly written. I was holding out waiting to direct myself, but after seeing how you handle your camera and actors I thought maybe I'd run the concept by you. If you're at all interested, just say so and I'll run it by you. I think it would be really interesting to see someone of your talents take on my writing.

Trevor

sorry for the late responce.... in total i shot about 4 hours of footage for the entire video. I do shoot the full song for some parts but a lot i just sort of shoot what i know i want in my head... but it was all constructed on paper to the time of the song before i shot it.

i would be interested in reading your script trevor and possibly taking it on if interested.. but not right now - have a music video for interscope i am starting on in a couple days.

anyways thanks for the great responces towards the quality of the video. and ho it out some for me.

lata

Colin, what did you do to deinterlace the video? Did you turn it into 30p or 24p? Magic Bullet, DVFilm Maker or what?

Good luck with your new video!

bullet

new site
 

yo check out the new website.. totally re vamped... let me know what u think... www.smiley-films.com

Another great video colin awesome work