Not bad.

Did you get any shots from the jetty?

Next time that would be cool to get a downward angle on things.

Fire Academy Video
 

Hi Ya'll

Been off shooting so Ive been gone a bit.

Anyone care to comment on some of the footage I took of our local Fire Acadmey?

These scenes were taken from the 10 min. grad. video I can post more if you like.

www.pixel-mesh.com/131st/video.html

- AR

Hey, Roger & Rob. Thanks very much for the comments. I do appreciate it. It's an eclectic piece, and I really can't get the feedback in my neck of the woods to find out what works or doesn't. Every time I watch it, I only see the technical stuff, and I'm not sure if I'm doing as well getting the story across.

I just learned that using a cheap mic on a 1-chip may not be the best solution. That sometimes the onboard is better, since the external mic pics up a lot of hum. I'm looking to try to jury-rig a poor man's dat with a minidisc and investing in a really good mic.

Thanks again.

Episode 2 is up!

Anybody game for the Lottery
 

Hi guys, I'm new to this posting thing. My production company recently produced a 30sec commercial for the Kentucky Lottery. Our instructions per the lotteries request was to center the production around an urban theme.
So please take a look at our production and give me your thoughts.

http://www.dubproductions.com/movies...ialdemo_01.mov

I made your link clickable and added 'V' at the end (was missing).

I thought it was okay but like most commercials didn't want me
to do anything or something. Then again, commercials never
really worked for me. I didn't like the sound of the guy's voice
too much though.

i've got to say i'm kind of disappointed...i haven't gotten a single feedback message to my posting about my first short.

matthew

Hey Craig
Yeah, it was good enough. I buy the urban theme, and it's cut and shot well enough.
However....
It just doesn't sell me on needing to play the lottery.

I'll add a comment for ya... some constructive criticism. Don't take this personally.

First of all, who the heck is "Ernie?" This question is probably at the root of why there seems to be a lack of interest. Watching 12 or 13 people talk about some clown I don't even know wasn't very interesting (sorry). Others may know who he is but I don't.

Secondly, when I started to watch your not-so-short short, my first thought was that it's slow. If you're going to talk about someone that your audience may not know, you might want to pick up the pace a little. Actually, try to pick it up A LOT. The narrative style is fine but you definitely could have used more camera movement to give the audience the feeling of being "there." Especially for a documentary-esque piece like this. But if you're gonna keep the camera on a tripod, consider more angles and cuts to keep the viewer's interest. I counted 23 cuts (not including the slideshow) in this 00:19:29 minute short, give or take a few cuts. I'm a one man show too (my tripod is my best grip), but don't let the audience know that :).

Lastly, if you've got old footage of "Ernie," throw some in there and show us who he is while these people are talking about him. If you DON'T have any, create re-enactments from the stories these guys are telling about him and cut them in with the interviews.

I'm no pro but this is just my take. From one amateur to another... keep at it!

David

PS. My tripod piece can be seen at: http://www.studiotigers.com/damn/

What ideas do you have...or what suggestions could you give that could have made this better. Maybe better script for the jingle? Open to ideas...

It was a lot of talking heads. I watched the first 10 minute or so then skipped ahead to see if there was anything interesting.

I thought it was really a fun short. A little rough around the edges in a few places but considering they improvised a lot of it, it was cute. Some of the commentary was a little drawn out. The sister comments were really funny.

As far as not getting any feedback here, I wouldn't let that get you down. I've seen material posted on this forum where there were very few or no responses. I've been trying to figure that out. DVINFO is a great place to learn about video technique and equipment ... my favorite ... but not a very good place to post your video for critique.

But that's just my opinion.

Downloading now..
 

Hey, just a suggestion...make it more obvious what the post is when creating a subject line. I skipped over your post because it didn't really have a "call to action".

An example: "Hey, please download my new short and tell me what you think!"

That would get way more replies I'm sure. I just stumbled upon your post now and I'm downloading the clip....opinions to follow...

UPDATE:

Ok, watched it. Overall good job! Here are my opinions:

Shorten the whole thing by 50% if you can. The visuals in the beginning are cool, so why not show a few of them while people are talking? You know what I mean? When someone is talking on camera (aka "talking heads") it gets boring, so cut to some of that circus footage for a few seconds. Also, I'd use more "sound bites" instead of every last word they say...an example would be, "Ernie is great!" - CUT TO - Ernie doing something great?

There were some good tripod shots - can't underestimate the power of rock solid tripod shots. If you do handheld, always get your locked off tripod stuff too...no matter what. There were a lot of MEDIUM CU's of people. Next time vary it up a little and if possible get some EXTREME TIGHT and WIDE stuff. That way when you edit you can be all over the place. The standard MEDIUM shot is used by every Tom, Dick and Harry.

The audio sounded good on my tiny speakers in my office. If they sound good here they probably sound good everywhere. Just a huge tip to while I'm at it...audio is always more important than video when shooting. If you think that way you won't have the dreaded "no audio??!!!!!!" when playing back your footage.

Good job.

Murph

Nothing wrong with the piece techinically, I just think you need a better script. Like, what does a night club have to do with winning a lottery and getting rich? Besides providing the music of course.
Like Rob says, it needs to make you WANT to go play the lottery to be successful. The best ones I see are the ones that show the results of what sudden riches can do for your life. Cars, bling bling, big houses, quitting jobs, etc... I'd look to take that element and work it into your urban theme.

thanks for the comments!

a lot of the camera angles were because i had just a few minutes to grab someone between their shows and was worried about getting the shot wrong if i did anything too fancy.

there is a new tighter cut that is a good bit shorter.

i would really appreciated a second look and some more feedback on how it is now compared to the other version.

matthew

Atomic Workshop Short Films and Videos
 

www.atomicworkshop.org

Feel free to check out the various media available on the website.

48 Hour Film Festival Film - The Meaning Of Love
 

a group of my frineds and i entered a 48 hour film festival down here at school in florida. check it out and let me know what you think:

Rules:
Prop: Key
Plot: Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal
Time: Less than 2.5 minutes (not including a small credits section)

let me know what you think.

i'll say right off, the lighting was horrid, it looked fine on the camera, but when we started editing, it looked much worse on the larger screen, so i am sorry for that, but besides the lighting what do you think of it?

http://fatkidstudios.com/video/meani...f_love_med.mov

I thought it was nicely done, especially in the time you guys had
to do it in! I did feel a bit removed from the acting and thus it was
a tad unbelievable in that regard. The woman seemed too much
at ease at then suddenly reject him. But it was a good watch!

I'm with Rob with the acting. Also, the reality tv show style of sticking with LS after LS along with the acting does remove one from the real emotion of the situation. You did have a great number of shots and cuts that worked well, I just took issue with the lack of variation of shots. I thought the strongest point of the short was the editing however your credits were so fast, they were pretty much unreadable. You gotta give those who worked hard on your crew their limelight ;)

<<<-- Originally posted by Bryan Roberts : I thought the strongest point of the short was the editing however your credits were so fast, they were pretty much unreadable. You gotta give those who worked hard on your crew their limelight ;) -->>>

yeah the rules was less than 2.5 minutes, with a SHORT credit section they said, so i wasnt sure how short SHORT was, since they used captial letters for it, so i am prally going to release a slightly updated version and change the credits slightly

Nice work for a 48 hrs project. I wasn't thinking anything about the lighting, I found the audio could need more work. But we cannot always have a sound guy with a boom microphone, so you did the best you can with the on board mic, right?
Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older.
You did a good job keeping the movie within the 2.5 minutes. The editing contains good work.

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Sieben : Nice work for a 48 hrs project. I wasn't thinking anything about the lighting, I found the audio could need more work. But we cannot always have a sound guy with a boom microphone, so you did the best you can with the on board mic, right?
Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older.
You did a good job keeping the movie within the 2.5 minutes. The editing contains good work. -->>>

yeah i would have loved to have had an audio guy with a boom mic, but the mic i would use for that has some of the roughest audio, i would need a new one, and a fishpole of somekind, but yeah it was all on the camera

what do you mean by "Often you see this kind of short movies with young(er) people acting, that play a kind of serious roles in a story you'd expect actors that are a bit older."?? slight confusion on what you mean

thankyou for the editing comment, that is what i want to do when i get out of film school, it is my favorite thing to do next to directing, and directing is harder tog et a regular job doing.

Hi Andrew,

What I meant was that you see movies that have roles that are more believeable when the actors who play them are not too young. In your movie I'd would suggest that when you have a male person that has a job and a girlfriend, but also has a kind of coming out with a male lover in secret, actors from around 30-40 years old would make everything match better. Like having a grandmother role in a movie that's played by someone who's around 45 years old.

It's a personal opinion ofcourse...

Peter

Film Fest Distribution
 

Has anyone heard anything about, or used, Without-A-Box? It's a single-form service that distributes your films to film fests. It takes care of entry forms, press kits, etc.

http://www.withoutabox.com/

I'm editing a doc right now and would like to enter it in the film fest circuit. I'm tempted to join this service. Any feedback would be appreciated.

I know the St. Louis International Film Festival uses them but I thought they were an application helper/distributor. I don't think they distribute the films themselves.

My producer has just started using them.
They partner with quite a wide selection of film festivals.
You fill in a one-time entry form and submit entries to all participating festivals. You get a tracking number to which you tag to your screening copies(which you send yourself to the respective festivals). There are some pros like discounts and extended deadlines for members.

They have an extensive list of festivals but there are still some notable ommissions.

Worth a go if you want to track all your submissions in one central database.

Panasonic Varicam HD TV Spot
 

A couple of weeks ago I was on a shoot for the University of Central Florida's athletics program. The shoot was on a Panasonic Varicam HD camera, outfitted with a Pro35 and Panavision lenses. I was supremely impressed by the footage that we got out of this rig, and for the first time ever, I just couldn't tell that a piece of footage was digital. At all. The colors, the depth of field, etc. Just amazing. I'm not taking credit for it, by the way - the camera rental came with a very adept operator. My only relationship to the material is that the ad (and site) is our brainchild at my day-job company.

Now while seeing this on the web is no comparison to seeing it live, here's a link. It's just a Flash video file and admittedly a little dark - we're going to adjust brightness to compensate for computer monitors soon. The spot has already aired on a local news station here in Orlando, as well as our local ESPN affiliate, and the response (traffic to the site) has been tremendous.

http://www.ucfgetmotivated.com
Click View Commercial in the middle of the page.

Oh... and I'm in there as an extra too. Guy with blue shirt sipping coffee and slacking in the back, before we 'get motivated'. Hehehe...

Show Your Work 2005
 

Hey guys,

I new to this board.

I just wanted to introduce myself and tell you guys about my new movie "Might of the Starchaser". Its a 24min animated short in the tradition of "Thunderbirds". By that, I mean I used 5 inch figurines as my cast. I shot it on an XL1. It was hard shooting cause I never used that camera before. Please, take a look at my web site at www.starchaser.ca and take a look at the screen shots to let me know what you guys think. Again, thanks and have a great day.

Looks great. Congratulations on the Sundance selection. I'd kill for that. Nice lighting. I'm a big fan of stop motion stuff.

High stakes and big gambles with a GL2
 

Hey everyone -

One of my shorts is now up on Ifilm.com! It's an action short, following three cons in Atlantic City. We set out to produce something entertaining and exciting - be sure to check it out.

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2641663

Check it out and let me know what you think!

- Jay

BLue Lite Special - Waking Up Music Video
 

a local band that i am friends with asked me to shoot a video for them over a year ago, the project fell apart when we never got together to shoot again, plus i thought i lost the live footage, but i recently found the MiniDV tape, and captured it. then edited it into a music video for the song we had talked about making it for.

so here are two versions a med and a high:

Quicktime Med:
http://www.fatkidstudios.com/video/b...up/bls_med.mov

Quicktime High:
http://www.fatkidstudios.com/video/b.../bls_high.html

You need a lot more footage most everything besides the vocals are off by a mile.(no offense) if you would have gotten more footage this would have helped) but the lead singer has a great voice.

<<<-- Originally posted by Kyle Kauss : You need a lot more footage most everything besides the vocals are off by a mile.(no offense) if you would have gotten more footage this would have helped) but the lead singer has a great voice. -->>>

yeah i know about the footage issue, the stuff that is black and white is supposed to be off by a a mile, and this is really just a project that i felt like doing causei had the 36 minutes of video of them and found it recently, just decided to edit it for fun really, after ig et back home from florida, we will do a real shoot for a music video.

i only had 1 take of the song that we did teh video for, so it is quite random footage for the rest of it. thanks though for the review =] i appreciate it a lot

Very cool! You're right, I'd like to see it a touch brighter. Thanks!

Congrats, Jason! And welcome to DV Info Net.

Hey Jason, are you the same guy I chatted with a while back at Cutler Camera in the Deptford Mall? We conversed about Wedding Videography and After Effects. Anyway I was in there yesterday and asked for you. If I'm mistaken please forgive me.

Either way welcome to the board!

Thanks marco,

actually, its not a stop motion movie. Just moved the characters around like in thunderbirds. Though, i did hear that Trey Parker is making a simular film now.

MiniDisc ad for COM class
 

Hello,

This is my first post submitting something to watch, not sure why I never did it sooner though... I"ve been visiting a about a year now...
Anyway. Here is a 30 second ad i did for my com class, I could potentially win $500.00 bucks with it. But first i need some constructive criticism.

I'm looking for first impressions. What you get, and what you don't. And overall impressions.

Thanks so much (ahead of time).

www.hazardousproductions.com/films.html

It's the second one, you can either click on low or high bandwidth.

p.s. THe contest is at the University of Rhode Island and we don't even have a film program so the competition is SLIM!

Ah, finally got a chance to brighten that spot. Also, got the second spot up now too! It's also shot on the same gear.

No one?