VERY GOOD TEASER!

First of all, the light was great.

I liked the harmony of the yellow tones too.

The cut is cool, following that heart-beat-like sound.

And the better thing is: I´m curious to know what is THE SKRYPT!!

Tell us about your light kit and how you did that shot from a very high place.

THANKS!

The shot from above was simply taken from a balcony about 4 meters high of an old warehouse where we shot the movie. We just went up and shot handheld from up there. Btw, all exterior scenes play in this circle of light you see in the teaser. The main light came from a long board that we extended from the balcony and it just pointed straight down. The lightsource was a cheap 500W construction light with some blackwrap around it to create the lightcircle on the ground.

Close-ups in the exterior were shot with this light and the help of one 150W construction light which was bounced from a piece styrofoam to reduce contrast on the actors.

All interiors (the table scene and the fighting) were shot in one room with a single light source: A lamp that was hung above the table. The lightbulb was a 150W Halogen (exactly the same as the bulbs in the construction lights, just in the form of a normal lightbulb, I don't know the english word for Halogen lamps, thats just what we call these things here in Austria).
In front of the bulb we taped one sheet of a Rosco Diffuser gel to eliminate the harsh light of the lamp and get softer shadows (I don't remember which diffuser, I bought a sample kit that had 17 different sheets and we just played around with them). For the action away from the table we just cheated a little bit by lifting and turning the lamp to get a little more light on the actors.

Summary:

1x 500W construction light (Halogen) ~7 Euro
1x 150W construction light (Halogen) ~5 Euro
1x 150W Halogen light bulb ~7 Euro
1x handy piece of styrofoam ~zero
1x diffuser sheet kit from Rosco ~40 Euro
plus a long board, some cables and a little blackwrap.

We also built a very very simple crane for about 15 Euro and a little bluescreen which was lit by 2 extra 500W construction lights(haven't keyed the footage yet, so no idea if it worked..) for another 9.99 Euro, but these shots are only in the final film.

You can see the lights on the productions images on the website. At least the interiors, I don't know if we have pix of the exterior online... there are so many. And if the movie turns out NOT as a complete desaster we might release a DVD of it with a really long making-of.

Cheers, Peter

PS: The yellow tones are out-of-the-camera, there was no color correction. The xl1 white balance was just set to indoor and that was it. The final film will look a little different because I will make some minor color correction.

That trailer was kicka$$. I'd go see the movie. I'd probably also pay for a DVD with the extensive making of stuff. I love that kind of stuff.

Can't really say I saw anything in the trailer that I would change, and trust me, usually there's something I can develop an issue with. d:-)

Great job!

Ok, first of all: I can only watch half of the teaser( there is apparently something wrong with my player;).

But I saw half of it and thought it was GREAT!

I like the light and the editing a lot.
It gives the film a really mysterious feel and it is just making the big question bigger: WHAT IS THE SKRYPT?

GREAT JOB!

(looking forward to wathing the whole film)

Peter,

Great job... the look and feel is very nice... it really brings you in. The lighting is exceptional. Sometimes simplicity rules.

How long is the final film going to be? What language is it in? When will it be complete?

Good luck and keep it up.

Wow, THANK you so much for the positive reviews! We really didn't expect it to do so well!

We just finished shooting 2 days ago and I guess we will be ready sometime in May. The language is English (with accent as we are no native speakers) and the length should be around 10-12mins.

Cheers, Peter

A teaser for a little action/comedy i'm putting together. Tell me what you guys think about it.

http://couchpotato.no-ip.com/stored/DeliveryBoy-teaser%5Bwww.smpfilms.tk%5D.wmv

For those of us who like to store a movie on our cpu, it's easier to download if you make the URL clickable, like this:

http://couchpotato.no-ip.com/stored/DeliveryBoy-teaser%5Bwww.smpfilms.tk%5D.wmv

Check out the short YES, BUT SO WHAT... that my friends from film school made. I dp'd for it and i know that they would like some feeback.. whatever you can give em will be good. thanks alot.

www.smiley-films.com/yesbutsowhat.WMV

Feedback:
The Framing was nice throughout the film.

The Actors preformances were good.

Didn't quite like when it changed briefly to color. It's not that going to color was bad but the timeing on it it didn't seem right.

The story.....well, it was good. I liked the part about his tie. The ending isn't clear to me. Did someone steal the thing or was this guy just so damn boring it came to life and crawled away :)

One more point, what ever the audio in the background was at the end. if it was someone speaking or if it was important I couldn't make it out.

-Kris

There are two cuts, back-to-back, at the end, that make no sense to me in the trailer. When the delivery boy wipes something off of his shoulder, and then the subsequent clip of the gum in the wrapper. I just don't get why those are in the trailer. I liked it up until that point.

You misspelled package, although i probably just misspelled misspelled......... unless thats the way package is spelled in your country (pacage).... in that case all that happened was i misspelled misspelled.

I liked it. This stuff comes with practice.

Eddie

First: I love the production companie's name, funny!

For my personal taste it was too long. I liked the twist at the
ending (I had hoped on some twist earlier) and was thinking
more along the lines maybe she was real but he couldn't face
himself to cheating on his wife/girlfriend or so.

It was too long for me. Moved too slowly. I can see why it is
moving at the pace that it is, but I had to work a bit to not loose
interest. As with Kristopher I was thrown out of the movie with
the color sections and the police siren.

Well, I liked it overall. I especially liked his failed 'attempt' at suicide. I think the movie could do without the scene where the other guy comes into his office. It's just one of those scenes that doesn't add anything to the story.

I have mixed feelings about the switch to color. I realize why the film switched to color (at least I think I do - it switches because he finds some hope in his discovery of the manequin[sp?]), but it switches to color before he makes that discover, and that is distracting. Beyond that, the switches back to b&w make sense to me.

Overall all the film was a little long, but I didn't really mind. It was necessary to feel what this guy was feeling. I liked the ending. It's totally unrealistic, of course, but it's very good use of dark humor (IMO). I didn't really understand what the talking at the end was supposed to be. My guess is that he's supposed to be hearing his conversation all over again, but I can catch some of the phrases, and it doesn't seem to add up to that.

The police siren came off as a cheezy sound-effect clip to me. I would have either left it out, or made it much quieter so that it wasn't as obvious.

But bottom line, I liked it. Nice job.

<<<--it switches because he finds some hope in his discovery of the manequin[sp?]), but it switches to color before he makes that discover, -->>>

that beter describes what i meant also.

Just finished a short called "The Daily Grind" and interested to see what some of you think. You will need to go to www.triggerstreet.com to watch it and then go to "Recent Uploads" or just do a search for "The Daily Grind."

I tried to play around with the color, but could never get it the way I wanted, so I just went with original color. I shot it with DVX-100, edited on FCP.

If anyone has a good color receipe they would like to share, please offer it up!

thanks,
EPP

I didn't really get what was going on but it was shot and edited well. I'll watch it again some other time

The Delivery Boy "screener" is now online for a limited time. The reason we are calling it a screener is because some scenes will be shot later, around june. This version of the movie is 6:44 min long, but the final version is going to be about 10min. So, we wanted to put this screener online to get some feedback. The dialogue is in swedish, but a txt file with subs are included in the rar file, which is 30mb in size. All comments are welcome, good or bad.

http://couchpotato.no-ip.com/stored/Delivery%20Boy%20(screener).rar

A better comment would be to convert the film into wmv, mpeg, avi, divx, mov or something that is standard. I would love to take a peek but my past experiences with Real Player have been no good and i decline downloading it. Divx is a good format but requires the codec most people have. I would suggest mov, though quicktime adds on some sort of blotch to the footage it is very easy and takes up tremendously less bandwidth than Real Player. It is your film, format it the way you wish.

Where are you adding the scenes? I hope at the end! Up until the end it works fairly well, if not a bit slow in some places (i.e when he's tailing him in the park, I don't think we need to see so much of it). I'm also confused about why the first guy hired the second guy, but maybe that's something that will come with the new scenes.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dmitri Henry : A better comment would be to convert the film into wmv, mpeg, avi, divx, mov or something that is standard. -->>>

The file is encoded to divx, it is only packed to a rar file to include a txt file of the subtitles and make the size smaller. To unpack the files you can use winzip or winrar.

Pasi: to the best of my knowledge Winzip DOES NOT support RAR
compression. A lot of people do not have RAR, so you are seriously
keeping a lot of people out of this.

Why not add the english subtitles to the movie? It is very
difficult to watch in it's current state. Then just put the AVI up.

I'm sorry but I didn't follow the story at all. There seems to be
no motivation for why the delivery guy wants him gone. The
guy who gets the job isn't believable in his actions and I'm
completely lost at the end.... What happened?

There is a Discovery Health Channel program called Plastic Surgery Before & After airing through the month of May. This episode was shot in Atlanta back in December 2003. The shooter was Gregg Therieau, the person that brought you Gladiator School (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?threadid=17939), and I was the p.a./relief shooter when that big ass camera got tiring is surgery. Just that lens alone was enough to wear you out. Gregg shot for hours and I only shot for 15 minutes or so and it made my elbow sore. I don't know how he did it. A PD-150 was supposed to be used but the rental house was out of stock so they gave us the Sony DSR-570 with an HD wide lens for the same rate! What a deal even though we weren't paying. A couple of months later, the follow up was shot with the PD-170. I couldn't tell that much difference in picture quality other than a $27,000 price difference in cameras/lenses. Anyway, the link to the schedule is below in case you miss one you can see it again. The episode name is Body Cuts.

Air Date Schedule
www.health.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?series=106909&gid=0&channel=DHC

Behind the Scenes: Resize images for higher resolution

Me, relief shooting
http://198.65.158.133//images/production/surgery/surgery4.jpg

http://198.65.158.133/images/production/surgery/surgery6.jpg

Well, 2:19 to be exact.

All of my work goes through Dante’s levels of hell in terms of the people and committees that need to see and sign off before it goes live. And I suspect all of them would say "I watch TV, I know what good video looks like." But that’s not the same as getting reviewed by people who actually know what good video takes to make. Feedback from peers would be nice.

This one is on it’s last level of review this week. I shot the interview and did the editing, but the dance footage and photos were provided from various sources.

DTH - Mitchell on the effect and artist can have (http://play.rbn.com/url=kennedy/kennedy/g2demand/test/balvid_mitchell_effect.rm&proto=rtsp)

You need Real Player to see it.
Thanks tons for looking.
Smile,
Kris

Here are my thoughts, for whatever it's worth:

1. Overall nice piece. Great speaking voice. That guy is a dream interview as far as audio is concerned.

2. I thought the music came on in an odd place. My personal feeling would be to either limit it to only the dancing footage, or let it run through the entire thing.

3. I'm not a fan at all of transitioning from a shot to the same shot, like in an interview. You've got one part where right after we come back to the guy you do a blur or motion transition to get to another part of the interview. I personally much prefer to cover these up with B-roll. That's more of a personal thing, I know it's a style to edit interviews with those kinds of transitions.

Those two things are pretty minor, I did like it and I listened to everything he said.

Can you post it in a format other than Real Player. I absolutely hate RP and refuse to put it on my machine. It just never seems to work. Personal opinion though.

Very good indeed. Wonderful message.

One thing I thought of is that if he had any picts from Russia they'd be nice to see. I thought the picture panning go just a little too long toward the end.

But overall, very nice.

Can I ask how this is going to be used?

Thanks for your thoughts. This one is done unless my last reviewer hates it for some reason. But it's good to know what people like and what people react to for all the things I'm still in the middle of.

Peter: it will be on the page that promotes the upcoming Dance Theater of Harlem event, plus the About the Company and About the Artist pages for DTH and Mr. Mitchell.

Jonathan: sorry, one of the things I inherited with this job was an agreement with Real Networks. They host all our stuff mostly because we don't have the bandwidth to deal with the thousands of hours of Millennium Stage performance archives. We are looking into doing some of these feature clips in Flash, but our Flash guy recently quit and hasn't been replaced yet so that's all on hold.

Bryan: He was a dream interview. He looks good, he sounds good, he has a message he wants to get out. The biggest challenge was taking the hour and 15 minutes that he talked to us and sifting it down to 2 web length clips. If I had more and better b-roll I could have made 10 of these.

I finished this spot for the American Cancer Society and would like to hear criticism (positive, negative, or both). It's a quick download, even for those of you on dialup - just 2.8mb. It's the 2nd spot, the one to the right.

http://www.dreambigproductions.com/videoproduction/whatdone.htm

Special thanks to INTERNET VIDEO MAGAZINE's TOP TEN COOLEST SITES of 2004. Not only was Sonnyboo.com in the top ten, but Sonnyboo shorts have appeared on 8 of the top ten sites. SEE STORY HERE
www.internetvideomagazine.com/Articles-2004/042804_Spring2004WebSites.htm

Congrats to all the filmmakers & short film sites that made this year's Top Ten!

www.BROWNFISH.com
www.TRIGGERSTEET.com
www.FILMWATCHER.com
www.3Btv.com
www.bushin30seconds.com
www.REELMIND.com
www.sixtysecondfilms.com
and more!

Thanks to getting Sonnyboo.com listed as one of the Top Ten Coolest Sites of 2004 to see videos online, now my ONLINE MOVIES PAGE has been tweaked. CLICK HERE www.sonnyboo.com/othershort.htm

the rest of WwW.sOnNybOo.CoM gets a bit of the Nip/Tuck too. I've added several more ROYALTY FREE SONGS FOR DOWNLOAD, plus several filmmaking articles, plus tons of free SCREENWRITING Templates, STORYBOARD sheets, plus every form of paperwork needed for a production ranging from DV shorts to full SAG/DGA feature films. CLICK HEre : www.sonnyboo.com/music/music.htm

http://www.sonnyboo.com/images/boocan.gif
DRINK IT UP!
www.Sonnyboo.com

I liked it, it had the uplifting feeling that you get from watching this type of commercial. May I ask what program you used for the animation and compositing?

I liked it too. I didn't like your site though.. It looks too much like a pop-up for my taste. ( I almost closed it down thinking it was one!) I'm sure you can do better. ;-)

:Alain:

Glad it came across as uplifting. That was the idea. For the animation and compositing I just used Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.



:Alfred:

Thanks for the input. I never expected to get a review on my website, especially not a bad one, but that's cool. I appreciate the honesty. I won't be changing it anytime soon as it has already taken a year to get it to this point. But again, thanks for the input. That's pretty funny that you thought it was a pop-up (oh no!!!). d:-)

I am strictly an amature. Just followed my kids around one saturday with my new pdx10. I'm sure it is boring since they are not your kids but the target audience is the relatives.

Any suggestions on how to improve are much appreciated. Even though I am just making home videos, I would like to make them to the best of my ability.

long version (14 min)
http://www.vanemery.com/~sroff/2004/satweb.wmv

1 min version
http://www.vanemery.com/~sroff/2004/sat1min.wmv

Honestly, as far as family home videos go, that was really good in my opinion. I actually watched 10 minutes. Considering that I don't know your family and didn't understand half of what they said, holding my attention for 10 minutes is certainly an accomplishment.

The most common killer of amature video is shakey and poorly framed shots. You kept the camera steady and everything was framed well, so good job there.

I like the way you edited the video into little scenes with cuts between close-ups and wideshots. Cuts make the video much more watch-able by keeping the pace up.

Next you might want to impliment more matched action. That is timing the cuts so that it looks like motion never stopped. For example, with a wideshot on the boy as he is reaching for the butterfly, right before he grabs it, cut to a close up of the butterfly as the he is grabbing it. Then back to a wideshot after he's picked it up. This is one of many standard "rules" to making professional looking videos, and can definately be implimented into your home movies.

Also, I recommend going through the tutorials on InternetCampus.com (http://www.internetcampus.com/tvp_ind.htm). This website is a very helpful learning tool for those starting out in video production.

Overall, I think you should be very pleased with the production as I'm sure your family will love it.

Nicholi - thanks for your suggestions, I really appreciate the feedback.

I think I understand what you mean by matched action but it doesn't seem trivial to implement. Have to capture the right kind of video in the first place but being aware of what to tape is probably half the battle.

By the way-the little boy is a little girl- she just has a short haircut :)


Thanks again for the help.

Oh man, I'm sorry. I'm pretty good at putting my foot in my mouth. This time I just put my keyboard there too ;).

You're absolutely right about having to plan out the edits before shooting, and its not at all trivial with this video. I just figured it might be something to try out next time. Either way, good job.

Hey Everyone,

My name is Anthony Faust and I am a film producer in the Washington D.C area. I put up my film, Hunter's Quandary, on my site. It's about a disgruntled college student, 24 hours away from his college graduation, who goes on a life-altering deer hunt. It was shot on DV, and is 11 minutes long. Check it out here.

http://www.anthonyfaust.com/hq/view_film.html

Look forward to getting any feedback.

Cheers,

Anthony

I liked the "ending" of the film and the story it had to tell. But
I thought it took too long to get there. The editing might have
been a bit faster and more active (in general, certain scenes
were well edited!). The conversation parts where the most
difficult I think editing and pace wise.

Well done Anthony! It's looks good. I can agree with Rob that it is a bit slow at times but it didn't really bother me..
What shook me a bit though was the scenes with the animals. Why would he shoot at the horns? That the camera didn't go down more felt like a give away that there was no animal.. only horns.. (I understand your problem here and I'm not sure how to make it better.. just telling you how I felt like =)

Other than that it seems very solid! (I haven't seen the ending yet.. it won't load for some reason.)

Excellent premise. I like the mood you set.

You take too long to get to the "inciting incident", as McKee would say, but you should spend more time on the choices your protagonist has to make afterwards.

The conclusion was a let down. His choice wasn't bad but it came off as weak or lame. But that can be fixed if you work on it.

Anthony, good work. As for whether or not the film is slow at times, "you have to be patient."

Keep it up.

Nice job.
I also thought the editing could have sped up the movie. There were lots of lingering shots that could have been cut by 1-2 seconds and helped.
But overall I enjoyed it.

In case anyone is interested, the creme de la creme of reality programming, PBS' "_____ House" series is back with "Colonial House." Third in the series, Colonial House has 17 volunteers living for 4 months as colonists in 17th century America. It's an extremely accurate historical recreation of the circumstances of life in early colonial America, cast as an experiment to see how 21st century people cope with the primitive conditions. Previous seasons were "1900 House" -- life in turn-of-the-century London -- and "Manor House" (my personal favorite), a real life Upstairs/Downstairs set in early 20th century England. At least here in San Francisco, 1900 House is being re-run after the Colonial House episodes air.

The show is shot, as most reality shows, with multiple video cameras and features some rather extraordinary camera work, sound production, direction and editing -- the elements of production are never seen and never intrude, despite capturing intimate details from multiple angles in incredibly cramped conditions.

This is a high-class production in every sense of the word, and my wife and I find it riveting. It's well-worth watching, for both the technical production and the content.

It's also being shown in HD on the local wetahd channel in the dc metro area. Very impressive.

Hey, I like the scenery, where'd ya shoot it, geographically? was it near D.C.??

I'm working on a documentary of sorts for a band in Virginia. My latest clip from their last show can be seen at:
http://www.indecisionthemovie.com/media/sound_check_2.shtml

This is part one, the pre-show activities, of that show. I have part two, the live stuff, I'll be posting soon but am waiting for the audio for it.

Others can be seen at the site as well, including an attempt at a "trailer". Please help this newbie out by giving some constructive criticism. This is my first attemp at a "movie". They eventually want me to author a 90 min DVD to be sold along with their CDs.

TIA, Dave

Hey, I was watching that show this weekend. It trully is a very interesting and well done production.

The various "House" shows... Colonial, Frontier, Victorian, Blitz... are easily the most "realistic" of all the so called reality programming. These people commit to spending five months in the settings, and there's no "payoff" to speak of. No million dollar prize, no big commercial deal.

I want to volunteer for the "Medieval" house if they do one.

Hey, everyone. I just heard about this forum and it looks great; it's nice to be joining you.

By way of introduction, I'd like to know what you think of this little zombie flick I whipped up using a Canon GL1, FCP4, and a lot of fake blood:

http://stout.hampshire.edu/~pmc02/thestory.zip

It's a zipped .MP4 file which (once unzipped) QuickTime should play like a charm, as should VLC. Windows Media Player will need the free 3ivX codec, available at www.3ivx.com.