Short pilots online
 

These were generated for an online entity as potential ongoing series; they weren't picked up so I can now post them here. Shot with DVX100a.

EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!
I squirmed as they shook hands.....
Well done. :)

I think I forgot to point out that the links at the top of the page are to the other three pilots.

Man, "Birthday" is like the story of my life.

Thanks for apparently being the sole viewer, Dylan!

Hey Charles,

All of them were great but I loved "Elevator" very funny. That's why you always hold in the sneezes...or just spray it everywhere I guess.

Keep up the good work!

That one is my favorite too, Cory. I had fun with the sound design. Thanks for watching!

had a good laugh watching the Kung Fu one! Those are very cool. I've been thinking of getting the 100a (until i discovered there was a 100b) so it's nice to see what someone can do with it.

Everything was great. The quality of the images was great (ie. your DP background really shows), the cuts were great, etc.

Things i didn't like so much.

In the Elevator. I was initially confused about where the 2 employees were. I thought that after they pushed the button for the elevator, you cut to inside the elevator. This was because of the background they had. To me, it looked like the back wall of an elevator. When the boss guy showed up, i got confused. Also, the part where the boss turns around and says "GREAT meeting you"... well i'm trying to figure out what bothers me... i think it's the sound. When he says "great" it sounds too loud, so the edit doesn't feel as continuous. Otherwise, i loved it. The whole thing was shot and edited exactly as i would have expected any professional production to have been shot and edited. Great work.

Kung Fu i just loved.

Birthday i thought was ok. The idea itself i mean. The rest was great.

The only thing i didn't like in Cell Phone (aside from the acting) was the moment when the character realizes he lost his phone. There's a low-angle shot... why? He's feeling vulnerable and panicked, i think it should have been a shot looking down at him instead. Otherwise, pretty much flawless in my mind.

I don't know if you wanted critiques or a pat on the back... so i hope you didn't mind my giving you both. The work is really cool and i looked you up on IMDB and was blown away at how much work you've done (SCRUBS!!). Not to mention the high-quality of the pilots themselves of course.

Post more! I'd love to see more of this kind of quality!

Raji

the one fingered stance of Leopard (with soaring donut) is definitely my Kung-Fu move of choice when the odds are stacked against me and my blood sugar is a tad low.

Great stuff Charles !

Did you dolly in on those guys as they gathered round the donut box?

Raji:

Interesting note about the elevator--since the action was continuous I didn't find it confusing myself, hadn't heard this comment before. We were actually rather limited in our backgrounds, I had to shoot around some non-moveable objects that were not very corporate looking!

There is indeed something about the cut you mentioned to "Great to meet you"...I had opted to do a dolly move on this to give it a little more energy, but I'm not entirely sure it had the desired effect either. It might have been an issue of just slipping a few frames in the edit to improve this.

Ken:

Yes, that was a dolly in, using a Spider dolly with Flextrak.

Thanks for the notes guys! Much appreciated.

Good stuff Charles,

On second viewing the sound effect as they shook hands in "elevator" made me a little quesy.

My favourite was "kung fu." Very funny.

This just cinches my decision to buy the DVX100B in March. Well, two actually.

Again, nice work.

sincerely,


ian

I thought the elevator was the best in every way. It had really good photography.

In Kung Fu the camera work is good but it looks too much like video.

The other two were okay in most ways but the subjects weren't very captivating.

I also noticed the issue with the background in the elevator movie -
I thought they were inside the elevator and when you cut to the shot of the black guy with the plant in the corridor it looks a bit disorientating. Anyway, I thought this one looked great and could have fooled me if I saw it on TV into thinking it was shot with something better than a DVX100.

Interesting. I think the problem with the cut to the frontal shot has to do with the fact that it is only the second shot in the piece, thus as viewers we don't know how what the rhythm of the film is going to be; i.e. what would be something of a jump cut if the second shot did in fact take place inside the elevator would be fine if this was a quick cut piece that covered a lot of geography (3rd shot has them leaving or already outside the elevator, etc.). If I backed the edit point up a little bit so the action of the gent pushing the button was split between the two shots, this would help make the second shot more understandable, perhaps. Again, my backgrounds were limited and thus cheated--I couldn't use the reception desk that was the real background to the elevators for a couple of reasons.

Good note, thank you.

As I may have mentioned earlier, I actually had a mandate not to make these look too good (!) as the proposed series was so low budget that we would not have been able to deliver a high level look on a consistent basis. I "cheated" a bit with the elevator piece, with the result that the client requested a more guerilla look that resulted in the second re-enactment (cel phone). Even this wasn't guerilla enough for them...!

"Kung Fu" was also made purposefully low-end style, with flat lighting; I also thought that tinting it a bit green in post would give it a bit of edge but in a way it makes it look like poor white balanced video...!

in Kung Fu, i actually felt that the green-ish tint was deliberate, so i had no problem with it myself. Not to mention that the story was hilarious. I watched both Kung Fu and The Elevator several times. Both extremely good.

What you said about fixing the elevator issue thing would more than likely solve the problem, in my opinion at least. At this point, i'm guessing it's too late anyway, or is it?

once again, awesome work.