"Silhouette In Flight"
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater10.html

"Silhouette In Flight part 2"
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater26.html

"Water Games at Sea World"
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater23.html
I recent won 3rd place with Water Games in a worldwide video contest.

"A Love Painting"
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/iMovieTheater25.html
A short video of my wife and her Love bird Jade.

"My main video home page"
http://homepage.mac.com/richsheikh/Menu17.html
You'll find some of my other work.

I moved your thread to our "see my work" section.

Great job on that reel. I enjoyed the layers you added to the video. What software did you guys use on it? Was that done on after effects?

I enjoyed the way that the reel ended with the slow-mo and the the beeping sounds.

:)

it was editing using only final cut pro 3. thank you very much all of you for your kind words.

Bad ass!

looks good, I noticed lots of slow-mo, I didnt really get the feeling of speed tho because of the slo-mo.

You might take some cues from a DVD called "Speed Tribe" its about Lemans racing, check it out!

http://speedtv.com/programs/147/
http://www.dance.com/speedtribe/st-video.html

I only noticed one slowmo shot I think and I liked that one
personally. Overal very nice, and nice angles indeed! Liked the
camera at the back of the bike too. Did thought it was a bit
too long for my taste though.

This most recent paying gig, done to promote an upcoming technology levy for a local school disctrict. I had to yield some creative control in some of the portions, but all footage and editing was done with my new PDX-10, Frezzi Mini-Fill, Samson UHF One, G4 450DP and FCP4 and DVDSPro. All said and done just over 100 hours to film, capture, edit and output. Not the most exciting subject matter, but overall the district was very happy so I guess that's all one can ask for in the end.

http://www.fifeschools.com/news/newsitem/techvideo.html

Ryan

I've moved your thread to our "showcase" forum and merged
the two posts into one.

Although I'm on a 2 mbit ADSL line the movie is really unwatchable
for me (a lot of stuttering and waiting in the video) so I only saw
the first 20 seconds or so. Would be great if you could put up a
direct download link.

One note from the opening. If I'm not mistaken you are using the
THX sound. This is probably not "legal". Just so you know.

You know it's interesting that you bring up the THX soundbite, that was one of the creative decisions made outside my control as was the intro logo and the use of some stock footage shot by others where there were some quality issues from lower end cameras. The argument is that the THX sound was within fair use because it was so short and used without the THX logo. Anyone have a concrete answer? Also, what advice would you have for someone in my position when a client wants changes right near the end of a project, I mean outside of just pulling the plug or causing a client to be really dissatisfied? Thanks!
Ryan
Ps. sorry about the streaming issues and I think I'll be sticking to more exciting and more self directed/controlled work in the future

I think it isn't legal for two reasons:

1) you are using the "music"/"sound" without the logo (I'm pretty sure it is meant to be together

2) the piece isn't being made by THX standards

Most probably you will need a license to use it anyway. If it is
something the client wants then it is their responsability as well
I'd say (which perhaps could be written down with a signature
to cover and legal action against you). But if you want a more
definitive answer on that, make a thread in our Taking Care of Business (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=40)
forum. Some people in there are a lot more qualified than me
to answer such questions.

Clients wishes are always a difficult thing. I don't do video work
for clients (yet), but have to deal with them in my professional
work (building websites) quite often. We always write a
specification about what is going to be build and how. The client
has to sign this. Within reason we will allow people to deter from
the spec, but only up to a point. If there are too many changes
they either are going to pay (which happens usually, or the
changes just simply don't get in) or the project is cancelled (never
had that happen).

Ryan,

First I'm very impressed. Your sound is good your lighting is good and the piece is cut together well. I thought it was a little long, but I assume your client wrote the script.

I was particularly impressed with the closing scene where your host is standing by the bus. She is obviously in the shadow of the bus but lit up perfectly. Did you use HMI lights for this?

If I were you I would find a cheap stock sound effect to replace the open or create one yourself using a sweep and some reverb(maybe make it go the other way: high to low) then offer it to the client. "You could purchase this from my SFX library for only $20." If they say they would rather go with the sound stolen from THX, then you should smile, with a gleam in your eye that says I love working for you guys, and ask kindly if they would mind having their lawyer write you an indemnity.

Maybe I'm over reacting.

The movie was very nice. It was very good at communicating the plethora of ways that Fife has incorporated technology. And good for them. The only improvement I can think of is with content: I would like to see how students in Fife are doing academically compared to that district before the introduction of all that technology and compared to surrounding districts and national averages--is the integrated technology really helping them?

But overall, very well done.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ryan Morris :
... The argument is that the THX sound was within fair use because it was so short and used without the THX logo. Anyone have a concrete answer? ...-->>>

(I apologize if the tone is aggressive, please don’t read/take it that way)

Yes, it’s illegal. The TXH logo/sound is a copyright of THX, Ltd. They allow cinemas, multimedia creators, hardware manufacturers, etc. to use that logo/sound as an indication that the product has passed THX certification. Your video, from what I understand, did not. Just using part of their copyright makes it no less illegal.

Fair use is incredibly misunderstood. Fair use, in my not professional understanding (disclaimer-this ain’t legal advice coming from a lawyer), allows you to show the THX logo/sound if you are, for example, making a documentary about the movie process and certification standards. Fair use allows you to quote from a book when writing a review or critical paper on that book. Fair use does not allow you to use the THX sound as part of a logo.

Quite frankly, schools need to pay more attention to the law (most of them, after all, are public institutions and if they get sued, the taxpayers pay and less money will go towards education). Stuff like this and especially theater departments--way too many film their productions without paying the appropriate licensing fee and that’s if they even pay for the permission to perform that play or musical.

Yes, copyright is broken. Yes, the RIAA is making a foul out of themselves by suing their customers. But copyright is the law.

Here are two short promos for a video I'm creating for some friends down in Naples Florida. Nothing special or anything but I'm learning I guess...

The first one....
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer.wmv
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer.mov

The second one...
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer2.wmv
http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/naplestrailer2.mov

Like? Dislike? What can I do to improve? The cheesy "film" effect in the first one is horrible. It was my first time playing around with the Cinelook plugin. Although I wasn't really aiming for anything to be extremely genuine looking. Just something different that I've never played with before.

Liked it at first I thought Oh! How original the faded look and all was that it. BAM you hit me with some good music, very good biking and I did like the cuts from your point of view.

Meaning I should have just watched it and see what the outcome would be and not say I’ve seen it.

I liked the crossover, but the music was a bit too much for my
taste. Overal it's nice work. The worst part where the slow
motion pieces. Those jittered all over the place and looked very
bad in my opinion. Rest was fine.

The slow motion....Yes it is horrible. I never noticed it untill I already uploaded the clips onto my server. What happened was somehow my export settings were set to deinterlace everything. I fixed it a couple days ago but now my server keeps timing out when I try to upload the fixed version. Try the wmv versions if you can. I don't think they were deinterlaced. Thanks for the feedback.

www.wimm.be/showreel

This is a trailer I made last week. All the images you'll see are shot with an XL1S. Editing was done with FC4 on my G4 dual 1.25 G.

Last year I made 16 documentaries for a commercial belgian television. Due to the succes of the serie I have to make another 20 documentaries, starring international stars this time.

The start of this new serie will begin in march.

Enjoy watching this show-reel.

I liked the reel. You had some good images and shots in it.
However, I didn't like the voice and I thought a lot of his lines
shouldn't be in there, like:

"amazing camera work"
"breathtaking images"
"and shots you've never seen before"

That's something you should show the audience, not
tell the audience in my humble opinion. That's also the
advice you hear a lot for screen/scriptwriting.

Let the pictures and sound/music talk for themselves! Also, I
think you should've sticked to calling it a Trailer and not show-
reel. A showreel is a short video that you show to people who
are interested in your work. A trailer is meant to create interest
in a product (in this case the show) instead of someone's work.

Anyway, I liked the pictures!

For anybody interested, the show "Mad Mike and Mark" tonight on Animal Planet is entirely originated on vintage Canon DV. It's all about photographing lions, elephants and cheetahs in the African wilderness. Enjoy,

This is currently also playing here in Japan. Just goes to show you don't need the biggest and latest to get good shots.

Hey everyone, I haven't been to the site in a long time - due to a computer crash losing the favorite forever - but luckily I've stumbled back upon ya'll.

We have a few new shorts at www.american-ocean.com since I've been here. "It Happened One Ass..." a short that should be cautiously shown, please - please, oh please - heed the disclaimer. We also did a little commercial parody with "Blue Dog's - The Test"... check 'em out but don't let your milk get spilled.

Yeah, we know we're not the most visually stimulating film makers out there, it's hard enough to get actors to come out of the woodwork for free, let alone a crew that knows what they're doing! I know some of ya know what I mean...

One Ass wasn't my kind of movie. I thought the commercial
was better, especially the last part with the "nice client". Heh.

I do think audio is your weakest link for sure. I had to krank open
my sound to almost full with all of the stuff I watched. Also
on a lot of shorts (especially One Ass) it looks washed out and
if there is little contrast (if somebody put some veil over the lens
or so). I saw this in The Italian trailer in a couple of places as
well while the rest there looked a lot better.

Thanks for your reaction Rob.


As you noticed my english is not that good, so thanks for making me clear the difference between a show-reel and a trailer.


Bye!

I spent three weeks videoing in Africa, unbelievable,

Your comments are greatly appreciated. After the first reply I was a bit worried about what peers would think, but I knew it was pretty good and everybody else seemed to like it. For me, the big issue and most difficult challenge after leaving a active studio environment while in college, is to get honest critical input on work from peers. So, thanks again for your opinions, keep them coming and I will be making a directors/portfolio cut! ;-)
Ryan

Hello Rich,

I liked the creativity in your videos. What source do you use for your sound tracks?

Keep up the good work.

Thanks

Joe Pitz

Fellow San Diegan

In the spirit of sharing, here is the first draft of what hopefully will be a career change for me and the first steps of larger exposures for the guys performing......but than again, I'll let you guys here decide whether I should keem my day job :-)

http://www.rafalkrolik.com/youngcasanovas1.wmv

Well I'm not going to be the one responsible for your career change but I'll offer my thoughts on the video!

Some of the shots are static for WAY too long, throw in some more shots of other things to break it up. Try cutting to short clips of in the club like you had at the beginning, or the girl in white dancing towards the end. A couple key times I'd recommend cutting to other shots is when they are dancing in front of the Hummer and part way through the shot you adjust the tripod and pick it up.

Right now: Static tripod shot in front of Hummer.....Tripod adjusted...Fade to the beach

I'd try changing it to something like: Static tripod shot in front of Hummer (with some cuts to the club in it)...Cut to Club (instead of seeing the tripod adjusted and picked up at the end of the shot)...Cut to beach.

Since you have Vegas I'd try using the color correction it has on the some of the shots like the outside stuff with the Hummer. Try and match the look of some of the similar videos on MTV.

Looking good so far, let us see the next draft/final version when you get it complete!

Cheers,
Brian

Thanks a lot Brian. You are absolutely right . The more I view it, the more I see the need to break things up and that fade to the beach looks very bad.
Color correction in the hummer scene? Hmm, any particular examples you have on your mind? My immediate thought would be to do some contrast adjustments but maybe there is a better idea out there.
OK, back to editing "table".
Thanks again for you critique.

I've barely used color correction stuff myself (I have Premiere 6.0 that doesn't have it) so somebody else can likely make more helpful comments. But, the exterior stuff at the very beginning of the Hummer pulling up and with the guys in front of the Hummer just looks like it needs a little something tweaked about it. I think it's because of the flat light from being overcast. Maybe try giving it a bit of a colder look by adding a little blue and then maybe desaturating it a bit, also messing with the contrast could help. I don't have MTV right now, but I have Snoop Dogg's Lay Low video on my computer and it has a bit of a cool blue desaturated look to it that I like. Try playing around with it and see what you can come up with!

I just watched the color correction stuff on the "Seven" DVD and it was amazing to see how fast the guy could switch around scenes and tweak the look of it. Really cool stuff and now I have color correction on the brain.

Cheers,
Brian

Hey, I'd say the same thing...a little more cutting.

A few more thoughts:

Get more shots of the chicks in there. The one wearing the white with the black background is nice. Also, the beach scene is cool...maybe break up the whole thing with some extreme closeups of the girls eyes that dissolve into a sea shell or something? You've got a lot of med to extreme wide shots, so I would just get some closeups to break it up. The turntable thing is a little chessy - if you are going to use it - I'd put a half naked girl in there. Wait, i just re-watched it and there is a girl in it!

Just a little suggestion - videos seem to always be about color. If you can get some random shots of things that are prudent to the video, but have extreme colors - it'll be really good eye candy. Even if you shot a few more girls wear sexy colorful clothes.

I shot a music video one and used aluminum foil in an old storage building - the kind that have all the large pipes exposed inside. We covered all the pipes and weird looking pieces with the foil and pointed red and blue lights everywhere...it made it look industrial. Ironically, we ended up on a beach scene too!

Also, I would stay in 16x9 mode more through everything except the beach scene - the 4x3 doesn't work as well elsewhere. I know why you can't use it on the beach stuff - you'll cut off the guys.

Oh, it's not a mistake that I'm mentioning more girls...cause the girls sell the video not the guys. No one really cares about guys to much - music videos are a place for the guys to go "hey, look who i can get in my videos". Other than that - they're just standing there looking stupid. The girls don't look stupid...they look nice and everyone wants to watch that!

Anyway, get more of the girl in white...I like the way you lit that shot and its to short!

Murph

Christpher, I look at the video and see what you mean. You really think the turn table is cheesy? Maybe I can do something with that part. I do have one problem though, since majority of the girls that came to the shoot were pathetic, I have very limited shots of the good looking ones that actually knew how to dance. What was happening through the night is everytime I started shooting on the dance floor, the ones that didn't know how to dance and had the most cellulite to offer would shove the behind into the lens and make their attempts at gyrating...well, you would not atract anyone with what they had to offer. I'll try though. The colors will be a pain because as you have noticed, it was an overcast day and late summer thus all the leaves were deep green, the limo was black, the park was industrial. I might just do the whole thing in a high contrast, washed-out look.
Thanks for your comments.

I'm looking for some colouring advice for our Lady X project.
http://www.ladyxfilms.com/theater/e13/episode_13.shtml
The first two minutes of our movie are set in ancient Japan, and I'd like to make it look different than the modern setting, which is the rest of the movie. I use Vegas 4, and have tried the Film Effects filter, which is not what we are looking for. Tried, black and white, but it doesn't really suit it, as I don't want to lose the colour of some of the buildings and forests, which are nice.

Can anyone suggest some looks that I could try? Combinations of Vegas effects/filters? I wanted to do this for the Lady X competition, but never had the time.

Thanks

Have you tried a slightly warm, or golden look? I've used that effect from Magic Bullet for a couple of times when I wanted to show an earlier time.

Also, and this is totally an unsolicited critique, but I think the '2 Days Earlier' super is not necessary. It's clear from the setup (guy by the water) that the castle scene is a flashback and having that much text on the screen so quick to the date introduction really threw me out of the moment.

Otherwise, great fight scene. Looks like you really got some great stunt guys.

I would like to share with you our new trailer for John Melon. The short film will be available in April 2004. Visit the site and enjoy the full experience. You would need Flash and Windows Media to see the clip. There is also QT version (smaller). I would like to hear your feedback.

I used a XL1 with a P.S Techik adapter, for lighting I used some Kinos. I'm very gratefull for the technical advise from this forum. It certainly made my life a little easier.

Thanks


www.nothingmanproductions.com

the trailer
www.nothingmanproductions.com/trailer/melonpreview.wmv

I liked this one a lot.

I agree that you don't need the 'two days earlier' or the name of the castle title... I think it's fairly obvious it's a flashback.

I wouldn't bring in the initial title so quick or so big either and I think I'd leave out the graphic that sets the modern date. it's also obvious it's modern day although if you want to include the city I'd do it over the shot after the shot out the window.

As to the flashback footage I might give it the 'bleached out' Saving Private Ryan treatment. Or pick a primary color to tint the footage as well as blow out some of the highlight areas.

The action sequences might serve better if they were trimmed a little to take out the hesitations of the actors between strokes.

Qucker cuts might make it more 'tense' as well.

Good variation on the usual Lady X senario. Congrats!

Dylan: see some very detailed descriptions on what I've done
on my Lady X episode in this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14250&perpage=40&pagenumber=1).

Basically I would stay away from the one button magic filters and
work with the color curves and color correction tools. Those can
be very very powerful.

What kind of look do you want? You can desaturate the look
without loosing some vibrant colours (so not go completely
black and white -> I did that on a lot of shots). Also you might
use the secondary colour corrector to adjust only certain things
or leave other bright colours as they are.

If you want shoot me an e-mail with a full size frame with a
description of what you want and I'll see if I can get that for
you on my Vegas 4 installation.

This is a Star Wars Fanfilm that I have known about for awhile and a figured I would post it so U guys can check it out. It was made by a guy named Nick Hallam.

The film and the documentaries were all shot with a PD150p.

http://brokenallegiance.net/media/video.html

Hey all, I've finally got my short, "Outpost_Theta", up on the net. Check it out and let me know what ya think.

watch it at: http://www.brownfish.com/

sound on that piece is fantastic

Interesting where the full film will go to. I didn't like the titlecards
with the red on white though. That didn't look professional to me.

One comment about the web site intro.

Please, PLEASE add a SKIP INTRO button.

Some people don't want to watch an intro or have a slow connection and haev to wait forever. Others may not have flash.

- AR

Besides the sound (effects) I thought it looked great as well,
some nice lighting and such. It was a bit "weird' though, but
that was okay.

Once I create a few dozens o DVDs I' will submit to various festivals. Most likely I will get a few runs at the NYC Film Archives, since I've showed my work there before. I agree on the titles, I think the effect that I was looking for gets a little blurred out. I'm still experimenting. The skip will be added shortly. I used the Swish Flash editor, but the trial time expired, and I didn't have enough time to add the skip button. I'm buying the full version today and that will fix that annoying part. Hey, I don't want to be called the Flash Intro Nazi :)..

Thanks

I shot 2 videos for the same band in similar conditions...One in 35mm and one on the DVX100....Endo "Suffer" is 35mm...
Check out Endo "Simple Lies" and Shalim" which are 24p.

http://www.tedlederman.com/work.php

First off, very nice site. It's one of the few Flash sites I can stand, because you know how to use it - good mix of Flash and HTML. And it's not lacking in the aesthetics department either! Awesome colours and navigation, I love those little trails of light moving along the negative. Nice touch.

I'm downloading 'Suffer' and your demo reel as we speak!

Theo, great work! I really like Shalim ... nice feel to it.

Great videos! I have a question for you though, what did you use to stabilize your camera? The shots were very smooth and perfect, was it a crane or dolly or something? Thanks!

Ted, really, really impressing work. I admire your lighting very much. Are all of the projects shot on the DVX100? If so, congratulations, great job.

The only note I would have on the demo reel is that the first band may be a bit intense in their presentation to have such a prominent initial placement. A client who is looking to sell Noxzema might not make it past the guy with the noose around his neck, which would be a shame because you have a lot of strong beauty images later on.

I've just done a major recut of my own DP reel during the process of joining a new agency, an done of the results of that (with feedback from the agents) was a 45 second montage at the beginning of some of my stronger images. It allows the prospective client to see your total range at a glimpse, so they might see exactly what they want and stick around to check the rest. As you know, advertising is an exceptionally fickle business--"thanks for sending your pasta reel, unfortunately we are shooting linguini and you seem to have shot mostly rigatoni..."

Best of luck with everything, really, it looks great.