New website with our shorts
 

Hey all. We just got our website up and running recently. It has our horror shorts on it that we've done so far. We used a Sony TRV18 Mini DV. They're pretty cheesy but a lot of people have found them entertaining. This is just something we do for fun as a hobby and have very little experience. But we have developed quite a passion for doing it. We recently got a Sony VX2100 and are working on a zombie short right now. It seems light years ahead of our other stuff and has lots of effects in it.
Anyways, feel free to check out our stuff at http://darkhousemovies.com/
and leave some comments if you like. Go to the projects page. Thanks guys.

Laughing at the thread title. Like I really want to look at your shorts. Who cares if you wear boxers or briefs? ;P

Thanks. Will check out as time permits.

Well shucky darn! I never even noticed. Yeah it's nothing to do with our pants or undergarments!

Why thank you sir! The bands name is Minutes too Far. They are out of Oklahoma City.

www.minutestoofar.com

ALL about our new feature (Video Montage inside)
 

Hello everyone,
After lurking in the shadows for awhile, I finally I broke the barrier and registered an account! So first of all, a shout to to everyone here. . .this is a great place.

Ok, let me first explain what the movie called 'Do Not Disturb' is about(without giving it away) so you're not totally clueless before watching a 'making of' montage. It's about a couple, the night before their wedding. They check into a hotel and are to spend one last romantic evening together(until midnight) before they marry each other. After a visit from a bell-boy, an old friend of the groom. . .a series of secrets are revealed and send the amazing night into a downward spiral of confession. . .and after realizing all these new things about one another, it's as if they don't even know each other. . .so what is the call, will they decide to get married?--Or call off the whole thing?

It's a small budget indy of coarse (small budget as in less than $1000Cdn) and 90% of the movie takes place in a single hotel room. It is shot with a DVX100a all with natural lighting in only 5 days. We documented the entire making of, with a website that we posted 5 video blog updates per day from that day of shooting along with hourly picture updates and a live webcam on set so people could watch the making of in progress. It was a really cool experience!! (unfortunately I didn't get to let you guys know about it before we started. sorry!!)

So yeah, now that I went on and on way more than I intended. . .Here's the video montage I completed last week reviewing the progression of making the movie(Vegas 6). . .this was mainly targeted towards the cast and crew as a keepsake but I figured I would share here it aswell. The actual footage clips in the montage have a timecode and are in a 16:9 ratio. (not color corrected yet or anything though of coarse).
Do Not Disturb Beautiful Love Montage(WMV)
Do Not Disturb Beautiful Love Montage(MOV)

You can also still check out all of the video blogs, pictures and directors journal entrys from the movie at http://www.mimetic.tv/donotdisturb We're hoping to have the final cut completed by June but we'll be entering the rough cut into film festivals early this year.

Thanks for taking the time to read my novel! haha. Please feel free to leave some comments/feedback, It's always appreciated.

Hey Steve,
I watched all of the video blogs and I'm really glad to see that you did that! I think it's great that you are making a low budget feature in the first place. The documentation of it is really cool and was quite intersting, I had no problem watching them all.

I'm excited to see the finished product. How will I be able to get a hold of a copy when it's done?

Looks great, love the documentation. I wish great success to all of you. I'm learning so much from this forum and seeing what every one is doing, how it should look, the blood, sweat and tears put into every production. Keep up the great work, it'll pay off.

Nothing but good things to say here, it looks great. The thing that sticks out the most to me is that you all look like your having great fun and that rubs off on the final film. the actors look very good and the composition of your shots looks good...well done.

I noticed the guy on the computer, was that just your sound engineer recording the audio or were you editing as you went? cause editing as you are filmming is something i'd like to try on my next project, could save alot of time later. all the best.

Andy.

Diet Coke parody commercial
 

"Diet Coke Parody Commercial"
Running Time: approx. 1 minute

The Story: Parody of the Diet Coke commercial "Loft," as seen in theaters Winter 2005 and online at www.dietcoke.com.

Production Notes: Pretty simple story for how this came about: it's winter break 2005, we're bored, we see this commercial in theaters and decide to parody it. Shot in about an hour, edited in about an hour. Not much, but hope you enjoy!

Download: http://www.amfproductions.com/dietcoke.mov (4.45mb)

Sweet Lord Jesus in a birch-bark canoe!

It's Quaylar!

Nothing says comedy like a kick in the McNuggets™.

You have made me laugh.

Not as much as last night's Family Guy, mind you, but close.

"...freshly shaven leg."

Dear God in heaven I thought I was having a stroke, I laughed that hard.

BTW. Nice job for a quick knockoff.

sincerely,

ian

"Andrew Isaac for Prime Minister©"

"Long Brown Coat" short shot using Mini35/dvx: check it out.
 

Hey ya'all.

www.atomicworkshop.org is hosting two of my films, "Long Brown Coat" and "Gasoline". They are torrent files with enough seeds. They are mp4's so go ahead and check them out, if it please ya. (ignore the blog related website -- unless you care about it, the site is changing over soon)

"Long Brown Coat" just wrapped its "festival" circuit. Pretty interesting short all around. Shot using the dvx and mini35 with some old Cooke 35mm lenses.

The tale told is pretty wicked, deals with dream worlds and metaphysics. Anime inspired, dark tower inspired, sort of has an surreal pulp pop tone... don't ask me, see for yourself.

Might also be interesting from a craft perspective. A large part of the success of the film comes from the art direction, which you can judge for yourself. Everything was designed and built from the ground up - so I got the chance to build a world.

Really proud of the sound design - I recommend watching with good speakers if you have 'em.

"Long Brown Coat" has its own little website if you want to see some photos and stuff while the torrents download. www.longbrowncoat.com

Rock and Roll. Worked hard on them, hope it pays off for you. Do me a favor; if you liked it, or thought it was interesting pass it on to a fellow.

Dean "Fireman by trade” Bull

P.S. Bear with me on the the web hosting... right now they are in mp4 but I am gonna try and get a few types of compression up for those who can't view that format.

The first day of school was fun to watch. Especially when the boys were tying their shoe laces and the youngest got it down but still needed to "torque" the laces down a few more inch pounds <ha>

Thanks.

Thanks! If you wanna see others please just visit:
www.bigeyedeamedia.com
tell me what you think.

Help Needed - Footage Request
 

Hi everybody. I need some help aquiring some footage. I don't have the time to shoot this myself otherwise I would. I need timelapse footage of clouds, city life, cars passing. I've searched enough to know that I get it through stock-footage sites. The problem is...I'm just a student and have tutition etajdgfju4tasdjfasj and all that. So...I can't really buy any. Plus its just for a small non-profit project anyways. So I figured I'd ask for the board's help. I'm sure people on here have timelapse footage. Looking for urbanish. Needs to be full-res DV, prefer 3chip cam source, prefer 24p (but I can always make 30i into 24p so no real pref there)

PLEASE HELP!!! Id love you all and give credit.

There's a station in Vancouver that did a ton of that footage! It's called Channel M. Maybe you could contact them and ask for a mini-DV dub of their footage. This is their website: http://www.channelm.ca

Thanks very much for the feedback guys, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to check out everything that was on the website!

We figure that the final edit of the movie won't be ready until the summer and it also all depends on how it makes out with film festivals aswell, but when it becomes available. . .I will be posting where you can get a copy on here.

There were 3 different guys on computers in the 'control' room which was across the hall from the set room. One was our web-updaters, One of the guys was our audio engineer; recording everything directly to the computer. One was me, I was editing all of the blogs and although I wasn't actually editing the movie right then and there. At the end of each day, both directors would sit down with me and I would show them rough edits and it would give them an idea of how it will end up turning out.

Documentary about Kino-groups and Kino-Kabaret
 

The following is a cool and short documentary about the Montreal Kino-Kabaret event which took place in October. The event allowed a large group of filmmakers from around the world to converge in one place and write, shoot, edit and screen short movies over the course of 10 days.

The documentary was made by Tona Williams from Wisconsin, and screened at the first screening of the Kabaret. It's a good introduction to what Kino and Kino-Kabarets are about.

http://www.wis-kino.com/films/good_kick-williams.html

The next Kino-Kabaret season will start soon, with upcoming events in:
Louisville, Kentucky, USA (February 9th - 11), www.kinolouisville.com/
Adelaide, Australia (March 9-18), www.kinoadelaide.org/
Vienna, Austria (May 20-28), www.kino5.net/
Hamburg, Germany (June 2-10), www.hamburgerkino.de
Quebec, Canada (May? June?) www.kinoqc.com
Brussels, Belgium (sometime this Spring), www.kinobelgique.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA (sometime this Spring) www.wis-kino.com

Stay tuned, there will a lot more during the Summer.

3 x Music videos
 

Hi,
I'd love to hear any feedback about a few music videos we made last year - all shot on DVcam. The video for "Mind my Creps" was produced by my production company Candyfloss and Razorblades Ltd, the other two videos we worked on in various areas such as lighting, facilities, grip etc. There is a dedicated site set up to view them at www.eye-saw.co.uk and my company website is www.candyblades.org.uk (although the site is not totally up and running yet)
Thanks
Paul Jefferies

Riley this kind of footage is VERY sought after and very expensive. It is not all that hard to shoot but requires a lot of time. I shot lots of time lapse for a show opening and it was hit and miss... sometimes you have to get lucky with the weather, etc. FYI, most time lapse stuff wont be 24P if it was shot on video. The best looking stuff comes from shooting it in real time and speeding it up in post.



ash =o)

Nice nice nice. ..... very nice.

I liked the special effects, what editing software did you use to achieve that?



Oh by the way, I watch the video where the rat was speeding on the streets of London I believe, uhmm, how come the rat did not get photographed by those cameras on the streets of London, I got one when I was on vacation 2 weeks ago.

Mind my Creps was cool - where can I get me some of dem shoes :)

Who did the edit, who shot it, etc? I take from your site that you prob were the DP and your other partners directed and edited? The edit was nice. Really nice pace and stepping up and back with the shot selection

Hi,
Thanks for you kind words,
The DP on these shoots was Martin Fickling, who also directed/co-directed two of the videos. My role was more along the lines of production co-ordinator, although on low budget jobs like these everyone does everything! I did some 2nd unit camera, and some of the Jib shots were mine (yes, including the wobbly ones!) The effects were done in After Effects, with the editing in either Avid Xpress pro or Final Cut.
As regards getting caught by the speed camera, in fact you may see in one of the scenes that a pair of motorbikes overtakes the camera car, these were police bikes and this take ended with the car getting pulled over (fortunately they were understanding about a car driving through London at night with a camera strapped to the roof)

Someone has definately been watching alot of Anime and Miike movies lol. Very well done piece. Excellent effects work and cinematography. There were a few parts where I didn't really like the created sets and props. It was sort of too created --as in I couldn't stop thinking about the gold leafing on the gun-- but it did sort of fit in with the dream-like vibe.

The shot at the end with the window curtain blowing and the single light bulb...absolutely amazing.

Ha-ha – sometimes what is real doesn’t look real. Lesson Learned. That blunderbuss is actually made out of hammered copper, and then aged with vinegar. So, in defense of the prop, if a mystical blunderbuss made out of hammered copper actually existed, then it would look like that. The other thing to consider is this... had I used just a typical shotgun, would that have not been completely out of place in the film? I appreciate your comments... I think next time I will use a resin cast, or something more solid. All in all, I still have the prop hanging on my wall.

Also, thanks for taking a look, perhaps others may view the thing based on your review?

Lol so you actually put alot of effort into that particular prop. I agree a shotgun would have looked out of place. I don't know that, and the casket just sort of looked funny, and some of the walls in the hallway -- and the gray spray n' tips on the guys forehead lol. But overall its an amazing looking video.

Unfortunately, my impression is that not alot of people on this board like torrents, so you may want to make a compressed wmv or quicktime as an alternative viewing method, though its understandable if you don't think you have the bandwidth.

That’s a shame you couldn't get into the design of the project. However, for all the things that didn't work for you, many other folks have commented the opposite... just showing that once a film is finished, it goes on the chopping block for somebody to buy or not.

That’s a shame about torrents. As media producers on this site, I would think that more people would be keen to embrace the "new wave" of media distribution... its come people!! Torrent video on demand! In broadcast quality.

I am gonna get a divx hosted soon -- and then, more people might be more likely to check out the thing.


Dean

Mustangs Mic'd Up (HS Football)
 

I used to work for the Jacksonville Jaguars. we did a weekly piece where we put a wireless microphone on a player and made a little 3-5 min pakcage out of the audio and corresponding video. I now ownand operate my company which produces highlight and recruiting DVDs for high school athletics. So I decided to see if I could make the package work for high school. My only regret is that the player I mic'd up was not as vocal as the nfl players we used in Jacksonville. I am open to both positive and negative opinions.

p.s. keep in mind the audio and video quality are a lot better when i export to dvd.

http://www.filelodge.com/files/hdd7/...%20up%20QT.mov

FX1E CF25 SD TEST footage
 

Hi Gang,

I have owned the FX1E for about a month, but I took a trip and didn't have time to test it until last weekend (not so sure you can call this a proper test though). I shot this by my self very very quickly to test the camera and the light (I plan to shoot in this space). My pc is falling to pieces and cannot handle Hd...so I had to downconvert on camera to be able to edit the footage in SD (to make things worst, my firewire stoped working and I had to make an analog capture). After I made some CC on after effects I had one more pleasent surprise...all compresion formats made my pc crash...the only format that held ALMOST to the end was a very very poorly compressed DVX/Xvid. You will probably wonder why the heck does the video suddenly ends...that was when I decided my pc was too evil to remain intact and I drove an axe into it (just kidding...the pc crashed again and it didn't work anymore). Oh, tech detail: shutter 1/50, CF25, f1.6, gain 0.

Finaly, feel free to enjoy this piece of crap while I go back to burning my pc and going to the store to buy a new decent one:

http://www.stickypod.com/stickypod_u...Unfinished.avi

PD150 TV footage...
 

Hello,

For anyone who's interested, on the following website you can watch a TV show filmed with PD150s. They are experienced cameramen and it's rather interesting to watch how they use those cams even if you cannot understand what the story is about. They have a rather interesting fast-panning style. There are two hosts (two cameras), they move around in the city and offer a free trip to famous resort places like Egypt etc. The trick is that the people who accept the offer have to get to the airport in 2 or 3 hours. However, only one person (sometimes with friend) will win the trip - the one who gets to the airport first and jumps onto the yellow circle on the floor.

Anyway, this is how to watch it: Go to the website http://www.tv.ee , find the yellow/red Channel 2 icon on the left side of the page and there's a great list of numerous different TV programmes. You will have to click on the very last one (Väljalend). Then the player will open, the last show will begin playing and you can switch between the olders via the right hand menu.

Looks like the link truncated so the page isnt loading

Does this one work?

http://www.stickypod.com/stickypod_u...Unfinished.avi

blinding Color (3 min short)
 

My wife and I wrote this short spoken word piece -- feel free to check it out at http://www.centerstreetproductions.c...ingcolor.shtml .

It's all still photographs edited in photoshop and then dumped into Final Cut Pro and given motion vectors there.

Thanks for looking! Let me know what you think.

if you can't get that to work, I posted it on google video too:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74443032987157

Need some criticism on these scenes
 

Hello all,

Here is a doc Ie been working on. This is a few scenes in the first 30 minutes. Id like to hear any opinions on the story and flow and any other criticisms you may have.

http://www.streamload.com/behindforg..._Sequences.mov

thanks!

It got tough for me to read the captions at the bottom. Are you planning on turning that into a VO?

yeah, the subtitles are small and havent been edited, also the yellow will be VO.

No response
 

Lots of hits on this but people arent saying much...is it that bad?

I dont think its a bad thing. Its a long video that not a lot of people are going to have time to watch. I watched the first 10 minutes and then paged through the rest. I dont know where this will be showing, if its a PBS kind of showing, the pacing isnt too bad. If its got a different type of dist channel, I'd definately think about picking up the pacing. Also, there wasnt a ton that grabbed me in the beginning and made me want to really find out what was going on. Maybe look to nail your sinker quicker to get me hooked. I'd also maybe pick up the pacing slightly regardless in some areas just to continue to keep the viewer on their toes. Take all that with a grain of salt of course. I was trying to watch this on the job so I dont exactly have a ton of time ;)

Short Trailer
 

Teaser for documentary short shot on FX1:

http://www.walkrobins.com/files/datinghabitstrailer.mov

How long until thats done... definately interested in seeing that. How are you shooting? As is do you have a lot of action mixed in with the interviews? That could be a really funny one, maybe you should pitch that to MTV, I could see something like that at least having a conceptual chance on M2 - HA