1. Wind is diabolical. It knows when you're on a set schedule.

2. This challenge is full of comedians. Thanks for the laughs, guys! :)

I learned that the true victory is finishing strong - prizes are great, but showing up and delivering is the best. (I'm uploading at the mo...)

What have We Learned?
 

Get the boys together and just do it.

1. what great folks we have here at dvinfo, who were willing to step up and help me out in a pinch.

2. never mind, I already knew that.

3. never ever ever ever (did i mention never...ever?) try making a video entirely out of stills for a DV challenge. it is a complete brain hemorrhage, way harder than making video using moving images. i learned a few things though. i had tons of fun shooting stuff (or else maybe the memory quickly fades of shooting in a blinding snowstorm), but putting it all together was HARD! thank goodness we had a full month to complete this....

i guess that's why it is called the DV Challenge and not the DV Picnic in the Park.

I have learned the following: (some of you did too if you just admit it)

A). (everyone starts with 1) Give a man 30 days to do a project and he'll drink beer for 29 of them, plan for a solid 5 minutes, then do something.

B). Fear is a motivator.

C). My foolish thoughts of do it good or don't do it caved in a few days ago.

D). When I finally resolved my self to simply shooting an image of the skyline in a puddle (which would have fulfilled all the requirements by the way), 4 days till the deadline without a shot recorded, I had an idea that should take roughly 5 minutes to plan and a day to shoot. (see above)

E). There is always one more shot you didn't have time - money - energy - permission for that should win you an Oscar and make Speilberg and Howard your bestest pals...

Quiting time at work. Dinner with the wife and - more shooting.

Sean McHenry

If you try and do too much, you will leave too many things out.
Organisation is a good thing - but I'm yet to get better at that.
Weather dominates your plans for outdoors shoots. Wind is a pain. And voiceovers from indoors don't match even with the same mics. Maybe I haven't learned how to tweak things right yet. This will ring true if you watch 'Burnt' - but I probably shouldn't encourage you.

It's hard when you're the only person who knows how to use any gear. Delegating still means you have to set everything up - which is usually the bottleneck. I probably ended up doing half the work, with the other 5 people collectively doing half.

Experienced actors would be helpful. Would mean having more usable takes. And they might even learn their lines.
Having a JVC DV500 that requires surgery after choking on a tape is no fun. But it was enough work trying to coordinate one camera anyway ;-) PD150 is still good.

Editing takes time, lots of time, and lots more to get things looking acceptable. Encoding takes some time to get working - especially with temperamental computers. But uploading takes forever, maybe I need a better server to use. And it's so disappointing to see the pixelation from the suggested Quicktime settings. Don't know if my Xvid version will/was/is accepted - time zone confusion. But it's half the size and waaaay better quality.

The shorter time frame really will be challenge for next time. Time to get the DV500 fixed, and learn more fine tuning of video and audio.

What I learned from this one was how deceiving the camera can be. I mean, taking a look at the outtakes, where I indavertently left the camera running, you would think I was a real a**hole given the way the mic distorted my speech patterns, making me appear really edgy, clipped, and curt.

Since I'm really a sweet, nice, loving man, it was really illuminating just how distorted the lens can be. Like i heard how Tom Cruise is really only 4 foot six inches high, and had to stand on Oprah's couch to look her in the eye.

Amazing.

How many of us finished?

Dick, just started a thread asking how many finished when I saw you asked it here. Hopefully folks will join the thread. I'm quite curious given the huge number of folks that were in on this one.

Sean

- The camera is the only thing more lazy than me.
- Night owls have a hard time getting good video.
- Night owls have a hard time waking up.
- To shoot at night, one needs a budget for lights, and portable electricity.
- Don't be a night owl next time.

by the way, Dick, if you would have watched the "Actors Studio" with Tom Cruise, you would know that he's a robot.