Show Your Work 2006

[Tim Borek]

I appreciate the feedback, guys.

I plan to keep shooting. I come from a concert/event background, so directing is all new to me. Looking back, I wish I would have pushed the talent more, but we were both tired or rushed whenever we got together. We both have full-time careers, wives, (and two kids, in my case), so scheduling was a pain. Dealing with the day-to-day of "real life" definitely zapped some of our initial enthusiasm and energy, which unfortunately made its way on screen. We had delays in securing a rooftop location and a convertible, too, so the shooting took place over six weeks when it could have been done in three days.

Still, I learned a lot from this experience and look forward to doing it again. Most importantly, I learned the importance of having a PA, even if it's somebody updating the slate or cueing up the song. Most of the time, it was just the talent and I on location, which required a lot of extra sweat.

T.J.

[Henrik Holmberg]

Looks like a nice drama. The trailer looked "indie professional." Best of luck!

[Jason Dirks]

Dave,

Looks great. Really dig the transitions you've used with your exisiting footage to give folks an idea of what you can do. And you've definitely put some great footage in here as well. The only thing I thought that kind of slowed it down a bit was giving the "InDecision" logo it's own screen. The first couple of viewings I wasn't sure if it was a plug for the band or a demo of what you can do from a titling perspective, but I think I would put it over the footage of the band.

I liked the "and strange" part personally . . . but I do think you could cut it in half . . . looked like a loop anyway.

Nicely done.

[Dave Perry]

Thanks Jason, and everyone else, for the input.

Jason, I think I agree about the Indecision logo and it does feel like a promo for the band, but I have a lot of footage of them compared to everything else I've shot.

The end is a loop and I'll cut it down some. I gotta keep it in there though because I AM strange, and want to publicize it.

If a client wants straight stuff, they can go to my employer, Carter Media. If they want strange, they can come to me. Actually, I'd just send them to Carter Media and do the work through them.

I also must say that one of the owners of one of the more affluent and influential agancies we do work for, saw this and loved it. I was trying to get an idea of what kind of feel he was looking for and when he saw it he said "That's what I want!"

It really is nice to get a different take on stuff like this from folks who don't know me and are more objective. Thanks again everyone.

[Louis Wilson]

Short film I did a couple of years ago on an XL1

About to shoot my first feature (next week!) on an XL2 so any thoughts would be great....

www.louisfilm.com/eternalfilm.html

... and please get past the credits, there rubbishness irritates me. It's something that will definitely be worked on for the next one.

[Andy Graham]

Originally Posted by Louis Wilson

About to shoot my first feature (next week!) on an XL2 so any thoughts would be great....

I recommend reading this thread, you may learn a thing or two of what to look out for and what to avoid when you start your feature.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=73454

Be sure you have a good sound team cause it's what takes up the most time on set by far and getting good sound is a hard thing to do even with great gear. And I cannot stress enough how important it is to take a slate after every take...if you do things like mix boom with lapel mic write on the slate who is wearing the lapel mic and who is on boom, It will save you a lot of heartache and work in post.

Anyway good luck and most importantly enjoy it.

Andy.

[Ernesto Mantaras]

Allright, it was shot on a Sony DCR-TRV250, Digital 8 format.

I edited it on Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and color corrected it with it too. It has some cool music, and it's three "crush-on-her" stories and a love story. It's basically the story of a guy's pain in love. It's quite sad actually.

Maybe I should have promoted the short that way, "[I], a Sad Love Story".

One thing to note is that there is no dialogue whatsoever. It's a cry out of loss. Images and music.

And I'd really like to hear what you have to say about it, 'cause this short is very important to me and I need to know whether I succeeded on conveying that feeling of loss or not, if I got to create that (in lack of a better word) atmosphere.

Please, I need some criticism, I trust you.

[Djee Smit]

A friend and I made a short (ode to) film noir and it's selected for the Dutch Online Film Festival

http://www.filmfestival.nl/index.php?id=295

It's in English. Would love to hear some comments, and if you have some spare time left you might want to register and vote for my film :-)

[Cole McDonald]

Well shot...one little bobble on the camera move in the last shot. Coloring was really neat, what did you do to it to keep the color but make it black and whiteish...The end of the cigarette is still glowing red and there are still some flesh tones. Nice audio...good movie guy voice. Funny little concept. Nice set design.

in short...well done.

[James Huenergardt]

Hi,

http://www.reelinspirations.com/dornier.htm (running time, 8 minutes)

This is something I produced back in 2004. I shot it on a Sony VX1000, edited in Premiere Pro 1.5, After Effects and one 3D effect in Lightwave 3D.

This was made for DVD and I was viewing all output on my TV, so there are some green/screen shots that don't go all the way to the edge.

It requires Flash 8, and you might want to pause it, wait a while, then press play. Depending on bandwidth, it can stop and go a bit.

Enjoy,

Jim

[Djee Smit]

Thanks, we used a very improvised dolly which I had to operate while operating the camera, so not every movement went as smooth as we wanted.

The attached photo's show what we did with the colors.

[Cole McDonald]

Looks like you removed all the color from the mids, then desaturated slightly...very cool look.

[Dylan Pank]

Thoughts? Based on this film...

As Andy says, main problem, sound - the song at the start was to loud and ran counter to the scene - I actually thought it must be playing of another window on the browser until I paused the film. It drowned the dialogue and didn't fit with the scene at all.

Music choices felt completely arbitary. It does pay dividends to get at least a HALF decent original score. In your own mind the songs fit the scenes perfectly (in one's own head, they always do) but to me they disrupted the film. I couldn't feelthe reasons behind the choice of songs, other than if lyrics ("Unhappy Birthday") were meant to refer to the themes (always a bad idea, the DayTime TV approach) or for some rather over-intellectualised reason (the music from Le Mepris, because the film has lots of jump cuts, self reflexive references, etc. Just like a Godard film!)

Coverage: LOTS to say... For your feature, GET MORE. Too many scenes were shot from one angle, which may have been an artistic decision, but left you with loooong dialogue scenes that weren't particularly well delivered by the actors, especially the "best friend", that really could have been trimmed and tightened up if you've been able to cut to other angles or reactions. Also it's best not to shoot over-the-shoulder shots, as in the two scenes with the girl, in wide angle. It means your main character is a small figure loomed over by a massive back of the head in the foreground. Also in those over the shoulder shots, your to-the-camera character needs to occupy the side 2/3rds of the frame, not dead centre, as that large foreground character, large as she is, seems to be shunted uncomfortably out of frame. Generally you need to look into shot composition, especially the rule of 3rds, because a lot of the framing and staging in this film felt just slightly off.

The pace was all over the place, from long, meandering scenes to sudden jump cuts and self reflexive freeze frames, documentary style asides to the camera/grabbing the camera, and back again. There was plenty of stuff that seemed thrown in just to pad out the running time, like the climbing over the bar furniture and the scene with the sunglasses which was just f***ing creepy! I get the feeling the dialogue was largely improvised, it had a slightly directionless feel. Again, more coverage and cutting it down to about 5 minutes would have helped this.

In the end I found the central character rather... unsympathetic. I couldn't work out if this was deliberate or not. In the end the thought I had was "hmmm, do you wonder why she dumped him?" I wasn't really sure his "philosophy" was that coherent, after all, if the character is in his early twenties, then his parents probably got married in the 1980s, not the 1950s! So I don't think he's that different from his parents' generation.

Try a bit of restraint, there was a sense of "everything and the kitchen sink" in this film, long takes to fast cutting, freeze frames, long "steadicam" style handheld shots, voice overs, five pop sings in a 11 minute. There was no consistency in style, and the shifts seemed random rather that calculated. This is what made it feel like the movie was unscripted and largely improvised on the spot.

Have a look at Marco Van Belle's short - it's a lot more "high concept" that your film, which is more character based, but is a good example of script, visuals, sound and editing really coming together.

Hope you don't think I've been too harsh, but if you're making a feature this is all stuff you really need to be aware of. To be brutally frank, based on this short alone, I wouldn't think you're ready to do a feature yet.

[Emre Safak]

After much work, I am proud to share my first short with you. Tell me what you think of it, and whether you had any technical difficulties. If you do not have time to sit through the whole thing, there is a trailer. (The audio track is encoded with Dolby Prologic II so you can listen to it in surround, with the right setup)

That's Funny, Isn't It?

[Riley Harmon]

an in camera edit/audio mix art video for class. used only the camera, no external mics, etc. only used computer for end title and compression for web
www.rileyharmon.com/8_20_06/
click projects then electron dance

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