Lord of The Rings

[Loren Simons]

I shot a little thing for our school tv channel, I'm the youngest in the film class (9th grader) and after this everyone seemed to come to me and asked if i wanted to get in on their project and shoot it! hahaha so im not sure if its just because they haven't seen anything really, or if its actually good, so comments and criticism are much appreciated!
Shot-A1-Me
Edited-Final Cut Pro 6-Me
Writen-Not me- well i co.-wrote
Directed-Me
BIO; It's to support the Sustain Silent Reading at our school (every 3rd period we read quitly for 13 mins, well at least we should be ;] )

http://www.vimeo.com/766988

[Dmitry Futoryan]

I'm impressed Loren. The story was entertaining, and I liked the whole experience.

Great work!

[Loren Simons]

thank you =) is there anything i can improve on though?

[Jerrod Cordell]

Holy crap?! 9th freaking grade?! You're crazy! lol. That was really cool. Maybe some more effects work would be good because it kind of seemed jumpy.

Hehe, I liked the guy's really crappy British accent and the hairy feet shot.

[Loren Simons]

=) thankk youu

[Bryan Gilchrist]

The only problem I saw was the effects shot where you went invisible, you can see the clouds jump. That and when you turn back you're laughing, but you're not visually laughing.

Excellent work, though! Hope to see your name on the big screen in the future!

[Paul Mailath]

Originally Posted by Jerrod Cordell

Holy crap?! 9th freaking grade?!

yea - I was thinking much the same thing.

It's fantastic! - I'm really blown away. The effects, the feet - seemed fine to me - it suited the piece.

My only comment would be that it wasn't initially clear to me that he was hitting the other character when he first put the ring on. Maybe he should have started with a poke in the eye (easy to mime) and that would give the viewer the idea and the rest of that sequence would fit better. I hope I've explained that properly.


As soon as you hit Hollywood I want an audition

[Loren Simons]

hahah yes the "hitting" was very last minute, we realized we needed something to make it more obvious, and yes, he was not really laughing =( but eh, its highschool television. hahaha and yea about the cloud jumps, do you have any suggestions on how to shoot that? Other than shoot it really fast, with like almost no gap between the two shots? Thanks!

[Doug Davis]

That was really great man... I'm very impressed... You made it just long enough where you actually want to see the end... Initially I was like 'Oh God a ninth grade project - guaranteed to be 25 minutes of exhaustion..."...

Couple of things just from an imagery perspective... The shutter in some of the shots seemed a little high (little choppy - may be encoding related)... and for the classroom shots there was basically two different colors of light from the outside windows to those fluorescent lights, so it made the white balancing off a little...

Other than those two minor things I really liked the project... Keep up the good work...

[Loren Simons]

hehe actually, we shot in three different class rooms, teachers were kicking us out cus they had to cover a class or some teachers would not go to the other class, so it was basically, first class scene one class but the teacher talking was a different room, than the last class scene was a totally different room! different wing of the building too. So as much as i would have liked one class, yeah, but some things just out of control, but ill make sure to plan better next time, were actually shooting again tomorow, but not all of the segment, so it'll prob be up in about a week. =)

[Steve Yager]

Good job, Loren. Make sure you don't cross the line. Meaning if an actor starts on the left side of the frame, keep him on the left. One of your first shots crossed the line and your actor jumped from left to right. And overall just watch your jump cuts. There was one edit where they were on the mountain were there was a huge jump cut. Use a CU shot or insert to cut in the middle, that way the audience won't see the jump

[Bryan Gilchrist]

Originally Posted by Loren Simons

hahaha and yea about the cloud jumps, do you have any suggestions on how to shoot that? Other than shoot it really fast, with like almost no gap between the two shots? Thanks!

I would have stayed with a close up of the ring and him disappearing at that point and then go to the wide shot and have the other kid realize that he disappeared and start hitting him.

Or you could have done a mask/split screen where the clouds were from the continuous scene and the lower half would contain the FX.

hehe actually, we shot in three different class rooms, teachers were kicking us out cus they had to cover a class or some teachers would not go to the other class, so it was basically, first class scene one class but the teacher talking was a different room, than the last class scene was a totally different room! different wing of the building too. So as much as i would have liked one class, yeah, but some things just out of control, but ill make sure to plan better next time, were actually shooting again tomorow, but not all of the segment, so it'll prob be up in about a week. =)

That's how most scenes are shot. One angle could be in one location and another angle could be in another part of the world completely...It's how the scenes are edited together that bring the two locations together to make it look like one location.

If you have any DVD's, be sure to watch all of the "Behind the scenes" stuff...they will give you a lot of ideas and insight on how things are done.

[Loren Simons]

thank you thank you=) and yea u know i've used the cropping method before with another dissapearing thing and it worked great, no idea why i hadn't used it here.... hahaha well live and learn. Thank you all for ur comments =) ill watch that crossing the screen thing ;)