It was a lot of talking heads. I watched the first 10 minute or so then skipped ahead to see if there was anything interesting.

I thought it was really a fun short. A little rough around the edges in a few places but considering they improvised a lot of it, it was cute. Some of the commentary was a little drawn out. The sister comments were really funny.

As far as not getting any feedback here, I wouldn't let that get you down. I've seen material posted on this forum where there were very few or no responses. I've been trying to figure that out. DVINFO is a great place to learn about video technique and equipment ... my favorite ... but not a very good place to post your video for critique.

But that's just my opinion.

Hey, just a suggestion...make it more obvious what the post is when creating a subject line. I skipped over your post because it didn't really have a "call to action".

An example: "Hey, please download my new short and tell me what you think!"

That would get way more replies I'm sure. I just stumbled upon your post now and I'm downloading the clip....opinions to follow...

UPDATE:

Ok, watched it. Overall good job! Here are my opinions:

Shorten the whole thing by 50% if you can. The visuals in the beginning are cool, so why not show a few of them while people are talking? You know what I mean? When someone is talking on camera (aka "talking heads") it gets boring, so cut to some of that circus footage for a few seconds. Also, I'd use more "sound bites" instead of every last word they say...an example would be, "Ernie is great!" - CUT TO - Ernie doing something great?

There were some good tripod shots - can't underestimate the power of rock solid tripod shots. If you do handheld, always get your locked off tripod stuff too...no matter what. There were a lot of MEDIUM CU's of people. Next time vary it up a little and if possible get some EXTREME TIGHT and WIDE stuff. That way when you edit you can be all over the place. The standard MEDIUM shot is used by every Tom, Dick and Harry.

The audio sounded good on my tiny speakers in my office. If they sound good here they probably sound good everywhere. Just a huge tip to while I'm at it...audio is always more important than video when shooting. If you think that way you won't have the dreaded "no audio??!!!!!!" when playing back your footage.

Good job.

Murph

Nothing wrong with the piece techinically, I just think you need a better script. Like, what does a night club have to do with winning a lottery and getting rich? Besides providing the music of course.
Like Rob says, it needs to make you WANT to go play the lottery to be successful. The best ones I see are the ones that show the results of what sudden riches can do for your life. Cars, bling bling, big houses, quitting jobs, etc... I'd look to take that element and work it into your urban theme.

thanks for the comments!

a lot of the camera angles were because i had just a few minutes to grab someone between their shows and was worried about getting the shot wrong if i did anything too fancy.

there is a new tighter cut that is a good bit shorter.

i would really appreciated a second look and some more feedback on how it is now compared to the other version.

matthew

www.atomicworkshop.org

Feel free to check out the various media available on the website.

a group of my frineds and i entered a 48 hour film festival down here at school in florida. check it out and let me know what you think:

Rules:
Prop: Key
Plot: Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal
Time: Less than 2.5 minutes (not including a small credits section)

let me know what you think.

i'll say right off, the lighting was horrid, it looked fine on the camera, but when we started editing, it looked much worse on the larger screen, so i am sorry for that, but besides the lighting what do you think of it?

http://fatkidstudios.com/video/meaning_of_love/meaning_of_love_med.mov

I thought it was nicely done, especially in the time you guys had
to do it in! I did feel a bit removed from the acting and thus it was
a tad unbelievable in that regard. The woman seemed too much
at ease at then suddenly reject him. But it was a good watch!

I'm with Rob with the acting. Also, the reality tv show style of sticking with LS after LS along with the acting does remove one from the real emotion of the situation. You did have a great number of shots and cuts that worked well, I just took issue with the lack of variation of shots. I thought the strongest point of the short was the editing however your credits were so fast, they were pretty much unreadable. You gotta give those who worked hard on your crew their limelight ;)

<<<-- Originally posted by Bryan Roberts : I thought the strongest point of the short was the editing however your credits were so fast, they were pretty much unreadable. You gotta give those who worked hard on your crew their limelight ;) -->>>

yeah the rules was less than 2.5 minutes, with a SHORT credit section they said, so i wasnt sure how short SHORT was, since they used captial letters for it, so i am prally going to release a slightly updated version and change the credits slightly

Nice work for a 48 hrs project. I wasn't thinking anything about the lighting, I found the audio could need more work. But we cannot always have a sound guy with a boom microphone, so you did the best you can with the on board mic, right?
Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older.
You did a good job keeping the movie within the 2.5 minutes. The editing contains good work.

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Sieben : Nice work for a 48 hrs project. I wasn't thinking anything about the lighting, I found the audio could need more work. But we cannot always have a sound guy with a boom microphone, so you did the best you can with the on board mic, right?
Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older.
You did a good job keeping the movie within the 2.5 minutes. The editing contains good work. -->>>

yeah i would have loved to have had an audio guy with a boom mic, but the mic i would use for that has some of the roughest audio, i would need a new one, and a fishpole of somekind, but yeah it was all on the camera

what do you mean by "Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older."?? slight confusion on what you mean

thankyou for the editing comment, that is what i want to do when i get out of film school, it is my favorite thing to do next to directing, and directing is harder tog et a regular job doing.

Hi Andrew,

What I meant was that you see movies that have roles that are more believeable when the actors who play them are not too young. In your movie I'd would suggest that when you have a male person that has a job and a girlfriend, but also has a kind of coming out with a male lover in secret, actors from around 30-40 years old would make everything match better. Like having a grandmother role in a movie that's played by someone who's around 45 years old.

It's a personal opinion ofcourse...

Peter

Has anyone heard anything about, or used, Without-A-Box? It's a single-form service that distributes your films to film fests. It takes care of entry forms, press kits, etc.

http://www.withoutabox.com/

I'm editing a doc right now and would like to enter it in the film fest circuit. I'm tempted to join this service. Any feedback would be appreciated.

I know the St. Louis International Film Festival uses them but I thought they were an application helper/distributor. I don't think they distribute the films themselves.

My producer has just started using them.
They partner with quite a wide selection of film festivals.
You fill in a one-time entry form and submit entries to all participating festivals. You get a tracking number to which you tag to your screening copies(which you send yourself to the respective festivals). There are some pros like discounts and extended deadlines for members.

They have an extensive list of festivals but there are still some notable ommissions.

Worth a go if you want to track all your submissions in one central database.

A couple of weeks ago I was on a shoot for the University of Central Florida's athletics program. The shoot was on a Panasonic Varicam HD camera, outfitted with a Pro35 and Panavision lenses. I was supremely impressed by the footage that we got out of this rig, and for the first time ever, I just couldn't tell that a piece of footage was digital. At all. The colors, the depth of field, etc. Just amazing. I'm not taking credit for it, by the way - the camera rental came with a very adept operator. My only relationship to the material is that the ad (and site) is our brainchild at my day-job company.

Now while seeing this on the web is no comparison to seeing it live, here's a link. It's just a Flash video file and admittedly a little dark - we're going to adjust brightness to compensate for computer monitors soon. The spot has already aired on a local news station here in Orlando, as well as our local ESPN affiliate, and the response (traffic to the site) has been tremendous.

http://www.ucfgetmotivated.com
Click View Commercial in the middle of the page.

Oh... and I'm in there as an extra too. Guy with blue shirt sipping coffee and slacking in the back, before we 'get motivated'. Hehehe...

Hey guys,

I new to this board.

I just wanted to introduce myself and tell you guys about my new movie "Might of the Starchaser". Its a 24min animated short in the tradition of "Thunderbirds". By that, I mean I used 5 inch figurines as my cast. I shot it on an XL1. It was hard shooting cause I never used that camera before. Please, take a look at my web site at www.starchaser.ca and take a look at the screen shots to let me know what you guys think. Again, thanks and have a great day.

Looks great. Congratulations on the Sundance selection. I'd kill for that. Nice lighting. I'm a big fan of stop motion stuff.

Hey everyone -

One of my shorts is now up on Ifilm.com! It's an action short, following three cons in Atlantic City. We set out to produce something entertaining and exciting - be sure to check it out.

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2641663

Check it out and let me know what you think!

- Jay

a local band that i am friends with asked me to shoot a video for them over a year ago, the project fell apart when we never got together to shoot again, plus i thought i lost the live footage, but i recently found the MiniDV tape, and captured it. then edited it into a music video for the song we had talked about making it for.

so here are two versions a med and a high:

Quicktime Med:
http://www.fatkidstudios.com/video/bls_waking_up/bls_med.mov

Quicktime High:
http://www.fatkidstudios.com/video/bls_waking_up/bls_high.html

You need a lot more footage most everything besides the vocals are off by a mile.(no offense) if you would have gotten more footage this would have helped) but the lead singer has a great voice.

<<<-- Originally posted by Kyle Kauss : You need a lot more footage most everything besides the vocals are off by a mile.(no offense) if you would have gotten more footage this would have helped) but the lead singer has a great voice. -->>>

yeah i know about the footage issue, the stuff that is black and white is supposed to be off by a a mile, and this is really just a project that i felt like doing causei had the 36 minutes of video of them and found it recently, just decided to edit it for fun really, after ig et back home from florida, we will do a real shoot for a music video.

i only had 1 take of the song that we did teh video for, so it is quite random footage for the rest of it. thanks though for the review =] i appreciate it a lot

Very cool! You're right, I'd like to see it a touch brighter. Thanks!

Congrats, Jason! And welcome to DV Info Net.

Hey Jason, are you the same guy I chatted with a while back at Cutler Camera in the Deptford Mall? We conversed about Wedding Videography and After Effects. Anyway I was in there yesterday and asked for you. If I'm mistaken please forgive me.

Either way welcome to the board!

Thanks marco,

actually, its not a stop motion movie. Just moved the characters around like in thunderbirds. Though, i did hear that Trey Parker is making a simular film now.

Hello,

This is my first post submitting something to watch, not sure why I never did it sooner though... I"ve been visiting a about a year now...
Anyway. Here is a 30 second ad i did for my com class, I could potentially win $500.00 bucks with it. But first i need some constructive criticism.

I'm looking for first impressions. What you get, and what you don't. And overall impressions.

Thanks so much (ahead of time).

www.hazardousproductions.com/films.html

It's the second one, you can either click on low or high bandwidth.

p.s. THe contest is at the University of Rhode Island and we don't even have a film program so the competition is SLIM!

Ah, finally got a chance to brighten that spot. Also, got the second spot up now too! It's also shot on the same gear.

No one?

It works. But I think you could have made the computer funnier. I mean you have it and then the voice over makes it seem like something everyone has tried. But in reality, no one has done that and that's why it's funny, because it's absurd. But you use it like it's normal.

The Sony thing at the bottom right hand corner is distracting. And unnecessary.

Just my opinion.

Well take all this with a grain of salt, hindsight's always 20/20 and somebody always "knows" how to do something better ... anyways here's what I think.

I liked the basic idea, it works and it's a decent start, but you should work on "cheating" your production values to up the perceived quality:

a. The sounds are okay, but the voice over really sounds amateurish. It has too much room sound. Try using a car, closet, or build one of these voice over boxes (http://www.presentations.com/presentations/technology/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1850395). I thought your voice over diction and intonation worked fine though.

b. Great if you win $500! but using that song might become a big problem. Unless the contest got permission ahead of time, you should do a little research on getting permission to use music in your video.

c. You could really fix the lighting in the computer sequence. It screamed amateur (hey I know, I am one). Lots of ways to fix it, I'd start by trying to diffuse the light. If you can, get some craftsman work lights at Sears. I saw they were on sale the other day, $20 for 1000 watts, heck get 3 and you're set. A cheap set of reflectors would help enhance the light as well.

The minidisc and running shots were decent and worked. I liked your dolly shot and the handheld shot throwing the minidisc.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah luckily we don't have to worry about copyright issues since it is an educational based project and contest :) One of the perks of being a student. When you said the lighting shots with the computer, did you mean the PC when it was taped to my back, or when I was picking it up. Ironically enough I was using the halogens lights you described haha just bought them from home depot for 9 bucks!! I only had ten days to write film and edit, so we are given leniency, I definitely agree with you the lighting in the shots with the PC on my back is really bad. As far as sound goes... I know... The bain of my existence. The nouse is actually computer noice from filtering the sounds so much.... I took out a muffled sound, and my voice is a little naisely... Thanks so much for checking that out!! I'm glad no one had trouble with the concept!

Fred -- the key to holding the viewer's interest is telling a story. Everything hinges on the story concept. The beginning works, but you don't carry it through.

Even if you aren't going to change it now, think about how you could have carried the theme through the entire commercial.

Why don't we meet computer guy again?

How could you have used him through the whole production?

Could you have had him jogging down the street meeting people using the MiniDisc player?

Could he have met a pretty gal at the end using one? What twist could you throw in to make the story complete?

It's all about the story. It seems like humans are wiring to look for and enjoy being part of a good story.

Ben

Yeah thats where I was struggling. I felt like him coming back into the the story was a bit cliche. I was trying to come up with some new way of seeing it, but I just ran out of time.

I am definitely open to ideas. The best thing I could think of his him getting into a car with the comp on his back... Seems like something that has not been addresssed before.

I've received a lot of help from the DVinfo forums over the last couple of years as I have begun to make some short dramatic (maybe "melodramatic" is more appropriate!) movies as a hobby.

In case forum readers would like to check them out I have put the two completed projects online in Windows Media format. They are currently set up as 300kps files -- I will work on proper streaming etc.

You can find them at: http://ball.tcnj.edu/movies/

I just completed work on "Lieder" with my GL-2/Premiere Pro. "Point of Separation" was done last summer on simpler equipment.

I'd be happy to take any feedback

Bill Ball
ball@tcnj.edu

Synopsis: "Watch the Swedish west cost band Fritz talk about their past and future. Hear what motivates Danny to write the hit singles that astound the people of Poland and most of the former eastern block. Find out the story behind the mysterious band member Calle Nilsson. What happens when the band gets of the stage...all is revealed. As the band aims for further success in the land of the rising sun, Japan we follow them through fire and rain."

Have a look at it:

Download Fritz (http://www.taft.se/fritz/fritzweb.mp4). If you find it to be too dark get this gamma adjusted one instead (http://www.taft.se/fritz/fritzweb2.mp4)

I also put up some full resolution screencaps (http://www.taft.se/fritz/screencaps) from the DVD!

It's a standard mpeg-4 video, tested to work in Quicktime 6 and Video LAN Player, (VLC) on mac and windows. It's about 17 minutes long and the smallest some what acceptable file I could get was slightly below 35MB with Apples Compressor, at medium VBR setting. It's hosted off my home server for now (about 70KB/s uplink) so I recommend saving it to disc.

Since it's in Swedish I had to add english subtitles to the DVD but the only way I could get these in to the web-version was dubbing the DVD with the subtitles turned on to FCP over s-video and my cameras anolog->dv input. Because of this they are quite small, sorry about that.

This is my most ambitious project so far. I worked with four classmates from a course in "Cinema science" I took at the university. Our end term assignment differed from other parts of the course since it wasn't only theoretical, we were asked to make a documentary. It was shot last fall (2003) and edited & finalized and showcased and finally put on to a DVD back in February of this year. It was basically a huge learning experience for me, getting comfortable with planning, shooting interviews, (getting by with what's available) lighting and most of all editing and DVD authoring.


Technical details:
Video: Canon XM2
Audio: Crummy external mic on a home made microphone boom-pole
Lighting: Big hot ass orange theatre light (color interviews), various old tripod video lights (black&white interviews)
Editing: Final Cut Pro 4
DVD authoring: DVD Studio Pro 2.

This is what the DVD cover (http://www.taft.se/fritz/fritzdvd.jpg) looks like :)

I'd really appreciate any feedback on it. Let me know what you think!

/Benjie

I've moved your thread to our showcase forum where it belongs.

Thanks. I couldn't seem to remember where that was when I posted.

The videos do stream at various bitrates now.

Hi, my friend would like me to post his short film in here cause he doesn't get the access. His name is Charles Lee, the director and editor of "The Passion", I am just helping him for sound and music edit. It shoot by a one CCD Sony camera.

A film about violence in school, it is a school assignment.

http://www.appleidea.com/movie/passion_eng.wmv

Great demos, Brett! I have 3 questions for you; 1) was the aerial shot the only one captured with a DVX100, 2) where do you have your site hosted, and 3) what did you use to compress your demos? Your demos downloaded very fast for me. As fast as Apples movie trailers.

Great DP work!

It looks like a big project, congratulations on pulling it off. However,
it didn't really maintain my interest for more than a couple of
minutes. The first "interview" looked like the guys really did NOT
want to be there and it was very hard to watch, some more
editing and perhaps pruning might have helped greatly.

I was expecting someone to talk about their love and passion to
be, I don't know, perhaps more entertaining or more enhusiastic
about it. I just didn't get the feel of that which I think is due to
them and not you and the team who made the movie.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't get myself to watch the full piece with
all the work I have laying around.

Thanks for watching Rob and for taking time to let me know you did!

I understand what you are saying about the beginning. It's a bit long and umm..boring ;) I'm very happy with the visual side of it though. I guess we only have ourselves to blame since WE play the band members. We had some basic character guidelines that we had made up that we tried to follow but other then that we were just improvising what to say. I actually think the close up individual interviews are kind of funny.

I don't expect anyone to look though it from beginning to end so here are some recommendations if you decide to sample a few scenes.

03:00 - The stuff this guy comes up with when improvising is just plain weird. I have a bunch of clips with him where he says equally strange stuff but that I couldn't use since everyone cracked up.

05:16 - Interviews with people (unknowingly) praising our band. Can you guess who they are really talking about?

10:51 - A music video I made in the last stages of my editing work for a song one of the guys made. Also check the end of it, at 13:43 for some time/movement experimenting.

14:22 - The ending/credits sequence plays to a song that another guy from the "team" made. Some Swedish knowlege is required to appreciate the unusual lyrics.

As a side-note, another couple of guys from school made a "real" band documentary with an actual band for the same assignment. These guys did some heavy (but quite transparent to the viewer) manipulation with their interviews to fit their theme of a trash talking, fighting band. Also these real band members weren't all that more interesting/didn't have a whole lot more to say then our made up characters.

Anyways, for those of you who take a look, I like comments, even really short ones...

Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though!

<<<-- Originally posted by Benjamin Taft : Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though! -->>>

Hi, this is Charles Lee, the director of the movie.
Regarding you didn't get the connection, the reasons I did not specify the reason of killing his roommate is because I want to reveals that some people killing others without a reasonable reason, like some countries do in a year ago.
Beside, I am tend to reveal that the violences can be happen in everywhere, even in the place that should be peaceful. The violence is not too far from us, maybe someday, your buddies in school or workplace will hurt somebody without any good reason, and you cannot predict...
I hope my video can remind the concern of violences.

BTW, thank you for watching my movie.
There is another movie I made, and actually it was my first movie.
http://www.appleidea.com/movie/last_december.wmv
I am pleasure to hear the comments from everyone.

Hi Charles! I loved the choice of music in your movie! If I'm not mistaking, is it from Infernal Affairs?

Great movie, man!

-KiN

What's up Glenn. Yeah, that was me. Sorry for the late reply - been extremely busy lately. And for the record, Vegas is just ok. I went with PPro instead.

Check out the movie and let me know what you think.

<<<-- And for the record, Vegas is just ok. I went with PPro instead.
lol...that's cool- to each their own.

Check out the movie and let me know what you think. -->>>
Will do man. Meanwhile here's a post with some of my work..and a description of how I achieved some of the shots in Vegas. I'll be posting some wedding related clips soon...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28846


Great to hear from you again- hope to see you around.

I can encode my videos to any format, but what are some of the easier, decent quality suggestions out there? Till now I've been rendering as .wmv files set for 256kbps transfers, with 16 bit, mono audio. They come out ok, but some of the previews I've been looking at here look really good.

I'm preparing to shoot a short film "Music Box" towards the end of this month. Below is some of the test footage using the mini35/XL1s edited into a one minute piece for your viewing pleasure.

www.starcentral.ca/trailers/MusicBox.mov

Enjoy!

Dennis,


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