Well every year my friends and I have a BMX contest in my friend Jimmy's backyard. We build ramps out of old scrap wood that we find laying around, spraypaint it up and have a big bbq. This year was probably the best yet, we only had the police come out once but when they figured out that we were willing to put up a fight, they left (we had 50 people against them). Anyway, it was a blast. Lots of people just hanging out, drinking, riding, and just having a good ole time. There were a few bad crashes but nobody died, and I was hit a few times while shooting video of the contest. Footage may be a bit shaky because I'm sprinting around the course with my camera to get the shots, with no tripod, and the exposure of the clips may change slightly, thanks to Florida weather (cloudy one second, bright the next) and no time in between to adjust my settings.


Enjoy...

http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/jimjam.mov

Hi,
First of all, the short is in Spanish, so I don´t expect much feedback on the story, but if anyone can watch it, I´d appreciate input on image, editing, etc...

The short was shot with the Canon XM2. It was edited with Vegas 4.
A few cokin filters where used (ND and difussers).
There are also a few shots done with the Sony PDX-10.

I might add subtitles in english if I get requests on this, I just don´t have enough time now to do that and not have at least a few english speaking persons watching it.

www.efedib.com/videos/porqciegos.mov

Hi Federico,

I just watched your short, but unfortunately I only know 4 maybe 5 words in Spanish so it was a struggle comprehending. :]

It would be nice to see subtitles, but I can understand how much more work that would be. However you'd probably get more fruitful replies if you did, at least on this board.

* Can you talk a bit more about how you put this together? (mics, lights, editor, etc.)

* Did you shoot this all in a day?

* What other kind of gear did you use indoors and outdoors?

* In the dialogue shots between the two characters sitting at the desk, did you stop down after each person said their line, or did you have the first character do a run through, then repeat the whole scene with the camera on the other person?

It's pretty hard to determine the quality because of the compression, but I understand that posting a better quality version of your short would take up a ton of space and bandwidth.

Could you post a few high res stills?

Thanks!

Hey Jason I just watched your short and i hope you wouldnt object to me offering some criticism. I'm by no means a expert, but a few things in the video jump out as being unproffesional. One of the largest and most common problems with amateur films is that people forget to record nat sound. Before you shoot a scene in a given location, record the surroundings for the duration of the scene. This comes in handy for maintaining continuity during cutaways. It makes you very aware that you are watching a movie when you hear a car one moment and the next do not.

One more very imporant thing would be to get a tripod or possibly a steadicam. I also have a gl2 and i know how hard it is to hold a little cam like that steady. This film does not benefit from a documentary style, because the subject matter is rather surreal. It just reminds you once again the action on the screen is being shot with a camera, which is a bad thing in this case.

And lastly, I would reccomend that you take more time in pre production to plan out your story and your shots. Some points just dont make sense, like where the girl stomps on the villain's toe and he is suddenly turned around both physically and emotionally. You undertook a very ambitious project with this story. You could have easily taken these plot points and expanded it into a feature. If you plan to make a shorter film, I would take on less action and add more character development. i know you were trying to tell an exciting story, but we had no idea who these people were or what was going on so the events had no meaning, and were very hard to get interested in. But all these points aside, I commend you for getting out there and making film, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and thats what its all about!

Some stills:
http://www.efedib.com/videos/ciegosstills/
(Jpegs 100% quality)

Ok... a bit more about this:

* Production, it was shot in three half days, 1 for office, 1 for park, and 1 for streets. Not more than 15 hours alltogether.

* Dialog: I let the first character tell the whole long lines on it´s own, and I let him improvised a little, so these where prett long shots.
After that, all dialogs with replies, where done bit by bit, maybe a few lines each. Mostly because the second guy, the one with the laptop, is not an actor, and was a last minute replacement so we had to rehearse almost line by line.
By the way, it works wonders, when you tell that it´s just a rehearse, and don´t let them know you are recording. More than half of the shots of this guy where recorded rehearse.


* Lighting...
- Indoors used two 500w work lights, some blue gels to match sunlight coming from the windows, and some homemade white reflection boards.
- Outdoors... just the white reflection boards.

* Filters..
- Indoors, Cokin diffuser. (0820 I think)..
- Outdoors, Cokin ND 4 plus the one in the camera.

* Audio...
- Azden SGMX2

* Post, it was all done on Vegas 4.
- For the indoors, there was some colour correction done, and a few levels adjustment. But not much.

- For the outdoors, The "blue" And white grainy hard contrast parts, was done using some levels, and the film effect that comes with Vegas...
- Also there was a lot of time playing in Vegas


And that´s about it..

About compression.. well, I´m starting to hate quiktime..
If I ever get to do the subtitles I´ll upload it on WMV, which I appear to get a lot of better result with...

That's a really tough question to answer and really depends a
lot on personal preference, options available and audience.

Most commonly used format must be QuickTime and then WMV
indeed. Both formats are just place holders where you can use
different codecs. The question is then which codec are you using
and try some different ones to see what they do.

For AVI (and I believe you can use this with WMV as well) DiVX
or MPEG4 is quite popular as well. QuickTime can use it as well,
but most seem to still use a flavor of Sorenson there.

Expirement experiment experiment!

Regarding QuickTime and your video. You are already wasting
precious bandwidth and thus bits in your file by compressing
the letterbox (black bars). Cut those off for web distribution and
you will already loose 1/3 of your image for compression.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Regarding QuickTime and your video. You are already wasting
precious bandwidth and thus bits in your file by compressing
the letterbox (black bars). Cut those off for web distribution and
you will already loose 1/3 of your image for compression. -->>>

Mmmmm....
Now, why didn´t think about that?
It´s so obvious thing to do, it makes me feel stupid...
Well... afterall, I might end up doing those subtitles, so I have an extra motive to do that.

Thanx...

Federico.. sounds pretty cool. Thanks for posting the stills.

Sorry to hear you're having a problem with quicktime.. I love it and use DiVX when exporting video out from final cut express on my mac. Since you're using other programs and maybe a pc, it might be a bit more challenging though.

Looks like you have some vignetting in some shots.

Dave thanks for taking the time to watch it. I wish it was a little more exciting than just fields, but it was mainly to test the location and time of day of where the action will take place for the shoot. I hope to do some more test shots this weekend and will change the edit a bit to add some better excitement!

I used a ND grad for the wide shots but never took it off on the close up shot of the thistle. I think the vignetting appears mainly in that shot for some reason even though it should have been a solid grad going horizontally across the top. Post effects might have also contributed somewhat to the look of vignetting?

Good video Dennis, can't wait to see more of it. The colour and contrast is very good. I am still expertiment and learning to shoot landscape cause I still made mistakes.

I've also uploaded a WMV version because it is 15 times smaller (only 4MB) and looks pretty close to the Quick Time version (60MB) with the exception of the color saturation.

www.starcentral.ca/trailers/MusicBox.wmv

I have a few emails asking about camera settings and it was done. It was shot in Frame mode on the Canon XL1s (PAL version), -4 sharpness and -1 color tweak in camera, 0db Gain. It was edited in Premiere and colored in After Effects.

Great idea. Very funny:)

As others have said, the end of each commercial is usually unpredictable and quick. When the guy packed up, he should have walked down the street, etc and then end should've have take only a 1/4 or even 1/8 of the time spent on showing the guy with a PC.

yeah man looks cool, i could feel the tension!

what did you edit on?

good luck with sundance

tyler

I'm a new music video director. I wanted to share what I have. Let me know what you think. My website should be up by August 20th. Thank you very much for you time.

MDFilms

http://www.mdfilms.net/She.mov
http://www.mdfilms.net/MDfilms.mov
http://www.mdfilms.net/MDfilms3.mov

I looked at these and I thought the craftmanship overall to be very good. The pieces have an interesting look and distinctive style and come across as quite professional. On my Mac cinema display they were a little dark, but I think that prob. to calibration of my monitor and compression (which tends to darken).

I did have a little trouble following the narrative in the "She" piece. Is he dead? Is she dead? I was confused. I thought the intro a little too long. The intercutting at the start could go a bit faster, I thought. I also thought you were missing a bet visually: The women in bed in the blue sheets and the water at the beginning might be superimposed in interesting ways. Just an idea.

As true "hollywood" style music videos, they aren't quite traditional -- but I noted several brilliant moments.

Can you tell us a little about your process? Tell us more about the production and post-production process.

Ben

What moments are you talking about then I can answer your questions better.

It has been a few days (and a hurricane ago) since I watched the vids -- but a couple of the effects I remembered that were nice included the smooth slow-mo and several light casting effects. It looks like you have deft control over After Effects.

Ben

Thank you Ben,

All the videos were edited with FCPHD. There was no use of AE.

Uh, not really that experimental. Maybe "unusual" is a better term? Anyway, I put way more time into this than I thought I would, so I want it to be good. I'm open to tips and advice. I'm wondering if the jokes are too "inside". I tried to dumb it down a little, but I might not have dumbed it down enough. You'll see what I mean.


http://www.joshbass.com/creditwm9.wmv

Have fun. 2 minutes, 2 megs.

Hey Josh, just wanted to give my 2cts.. that was actually pretty funny.. nice play on words and diff fonts etc... just a lil critique in that some of the shorter sentences were on screen for a while, but then the longer ones cut out really quick (the ones in the beginning not the end) but that may have just be a technical thing, not necessarily an artisitic issue. Regardless, i was watching from work (no music) and it still made me chuckle.. good job!

I wanted some objective opinions on that, actually. How long would you guys recommend leaving the longer sentences up? The shorter? I read faster than a lot of people (I think), so I don't want alienate potential viewers by only catering to my reading speed.

I meant to tell everyone, in addition, that you'll get more out of it watching it full screen than in a 320x240 window.

Sorry to do this, but I don't think my original subject heading was interesting enough for any folks.

I shot this short film 5 minute film using the MINI35 and Canon XL1se and this year it screened at a few film festivals which was really exciting.

I used English subtitles in the film, mainly to give the film more of that Euro-like imported type feel - not only that but the dialog in English is quite drab.

I would love to hear some feedback on this film, please check out the film and post comments/feedback on this post: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30460

Thank you all in advance !

Very funny Josh! Thanks for that. Quite "inside" indeed.

Actually I could read everything except the... uhm... credits <g>

Very nice Josh - had me laughing out loud there!
- think what you could have done with Lord of the Rings credits ;-)

Robin

Yeah. . .not supposed to be able to read the "real" credits. . .the ones that go by super-fast. It's just supposed to give you the impression that there's a lot of names.

Were these shot on a dvx? They appear to have that look but i could be wrong. Very nice production value, and interesting music anyways.

A Serious Documetary Trailer
http://www.noodlem.com/bubblegum/gumtrailer.mov

Enjoy...

here's a preview of a documentary we are working on.

http://www.turborocco.com/dubwar04

right click and save as.
higher quality one - divx
http://www.turborocco.com/dubwar04/dubwars04.avi

lower quality one - windows media
http://www.turborocco.com/dubwar04/dubwars04.wmv

shot with two DVX100's and lots of other little cameras

Gotta throw in a plug to http://Vwsport.com

Dan's the man for hooking us up for the webhosting!

GRUDGE MATCH, 4 minutes (www.slmfilms.com/grudge.htm)

Two good ol' country gals are documented as they have their bowling tournament against their arch rivals

CLICK HERE (www.slmfilms.com/grudge.htm)


A Sonnyboo Short, directed by Derek Rimelspach...

aren't you the same guy who ran that megasquirt efi on your car? small world, dude.

It is a small world. :-) Yes, i'm the same guy that ran megasquirt on my rabbit. "Wing Diode"

We currently have two videos for sale, and two videos in Post Production.

You can download and view the Teaser videos at:

http://www.donkeyworx.net

Hey Guys, ok so i'm finally taking the plunge and showcasing what i did for this year's 2004 Surfjam held in tofino, b.c. It's meant to be only a 2-3min trailer teaser to entice sponsors/people to come to the event and check it out. Any opinions and critiques would be MUCH appreciated thanx!.

Specs:
Shot on: Canon XL1
Edited on: Final Cut Pro 3.0, Combustion
Music: Self composed on Soundtrack


Again, i would love to hear opinions, thanx!

http://www.slanted-media.com/surfjam04finalqt.html 14.1mb
or
http://www.slanted-media.com/surfjam04finalmp.html 11.3 mb

cheers!
Vish

P.s there's also a SlamCityJam vid on the site which i didn't shoot, but edited.

Hi Val,

Being a "regrettably" ex-off-roader, I can appreciate the hobby, expensive as it can get. A videographer friend of mine and me have made several videos in the years we've been with our off-road club. My biggest mistake was to overexpose a tad, and in run and gun, one can tend to overlook the zebra stripes, between rocks and mud. I am saying that because, a lot of your clips are slightly overexposed. But not enough to color correct efficiently.

Are you the only one shooting the events? What camcorder are you using? And do you have a rig of your own?

Hey guys. I'm launching a preliminary edition of Mask of the Antichrist. I shot this on a DVX100. Check it out. http://www.the4thbeast.com. If you're interested in supporting the effort check out my online store.
http://www.customflix.com/Store/ShowTtl.jsp?id=206005

This was shot on the DVX100 and cut on a Mac G4 in FCP. The special effects (the gun effects) are all done in AE. I think you guys will like it.

-Nate

This was made a few months ago and I finally realized that it never really got shown here. This little short was made in response to a scene workshop/challenge where the dialog was specified. The video itself could have/do/be anything, so long as it used the specified (deliberately generic) dialog.

This was shot with my brother at his work in just under an hour. About a week-and-a-half later, the one minute video, complete with several visual effects experiments, was finished.

Details and downloads on this page:
Workshop Video Page (http://www.jushhome.com/nick/media/tfn_wks/tfn_wks.asp)

Feel free to post comments, critiques and questions here. I'm curious to see what you guys think.

Have fun.

GRUDGE MATCH just got "Best Video of the Week" from Internet Video Magazine!

CLICK HERE for Internet Video Magazine (www.internetvideomagazine.com/BestVideosoftheWeek.htm)

That was quite nice and funny! The effects where a bit off at times,
but quite well done. Especially "the gun". Good job!

Very good.

Looked very nice and it got my attention. Interesting to see the
full thing! Nice job.

click on the link below to watch a video i made with my broken gl2, that thing can take a licking and keep in ticking. Luckly, its still under warrenty. Enjoy

http://www.pwctoday.com/viewtopic.php?t=42338

Thanks Rob and others from the other thread.

Had a preview screening last weekend to about 450 people and it was very well-recieved. Laughs and applauses at the end so thats a good sign (i think).

Based on feedback and audience reaction, i've cut it down further. Some scenes worked much better than others. The current cut seems much tighter and the dialogue more fluid.

The current trailer is now available on the link below along with more information on the film:
http://www.noodlem.com/bubblegum/trailer.html

I'll post a longer trailer for your consumption soon.

Thanx for listening and viewing.

That was just plain awesome.

- Robert

MDFilms.NET has launched. _Please check out the site but be aware there are many updates and small fixes being made. _Let me know what you think and if you have any problems on the site. _Thank you for your time as always. _I hope you enjoy the site. _
_
http://www.mdfilms.net
_
_
Michael _
MDFilms

Well, in going there, the window automatically resizes to a vertical aspect that almost doesn't even fit in my screen, and then nothing happens but a black screen.

Am I missing something?

It worked OK for me - seems to be using flash or something like that, maybe you need the plug-in? My screen is 1600x1200 so maybe that also helped :-)

Looks like an attractive site but during my quick visit I couldn't find much content. I watched the video "She" (I think) which was all I could find. One big problem was that the "mood music" that plays on the home page kept going right over the video which I imagine would drive most people away pretty quickly. I ended up closing the homepage window and just watching in the Quicktime viewer, which probably isn't what you'd want people to do either. Nicely photographed piece.

i didn't have a problem with the exposure for most of the butte vid, but the music sucked... you'll work up a lot more excitement with some motor noise and crowd reaction.