It works. But I think you could have made the computer funnier. I mean you have it and then the voice over makes it seem like something everyone has tried. But in reality, no one has done that and that's why it's funny, because it's absurd. But you use it like it's normal.

The Sony thing at the bottom right hand corner is distracting. And unnecessary.

Just my opinion.

Well take all this with a grain of salt, hindsight's always 20/20 and somebody always "knows" how to do something better ... anyways here's what I think.

I liked the basic idea, it works and it's a decent start, but you should work on "cheating" your production values to up the perceived quality:

a. The sounds are okay, but the voice over really sounds amateurish. It has too much room sound. Try using a car, closet, or build one of these voice over boxes. I thought your voice over diction and intonation worked fine though.

b. Great if you win $500! but using that song might become a big problem. Unless the contest got permission ahead of time, you should do a little research on getting permission to use music in your video.

c. You could really fix the lighting in the computer sequence. It screamed amateur (hey I know, I am one). Lots of ways to fix it, I'd start by trying to diffuse the light. If you can, get some craftsman work lights at Sears. I saw they were on sale the other day, $20 for 1000 watts, heck get 3 and you're set. A cheap set of reflectors would help enhance the light as well.

The minidisc and running shots were decent and worked. I liked your dolly shot and the handheld shot throwing the minidisc.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah luckily we don't have to worry about copyright issues since it is an educational based project and contest :) One of the perks of being a student. When you said the lighting shots with the computer, did you mean the PC when it was taped to my back, or when I was picking it up. Ironically enough I was using the halogens lights you described haha just bought them from home depot for 9 bucks!! I only had ten days to write film and edit, so we are given leniency, I definitely agree with you the lighting in the shots with the PC on my back is really bad. As far as sound goes... I know... The bain of my existence. The nouse is actually computer noice from filtering the sounds so much.... I took out a muffled sound, and my voice is a little naisely... Thanks so much for checking that out!! I'm glad no one had trouble with the concept!

Where's the story?
 

Fred -- the key to holding the viewer's interest is telling a story. Everything hinges on the story concept. The beginning works, but you don't carry it through.

Even if you aren't going to change it now, think about how you could have carried the theme through the entire commercial.

Why don't we meet computer guy again?

How could you have used him through the whole production?

Could you have had him jogging down the street meeting people using the MiniDisc player?

Could he have met a pretty gal at the end using one? What twist could you throw in to make the story complete?

It's all about the story. It seems like humans are wiring to look for and enjoy being part of a good story.

Ben

Yeah thats where I was struggling. I felt like him coming back into the the story was a bit cliche. I was trying to come up with some new way of seeing it, but I just ran out of time.

I am definitely open to ideas. The best thing I could think of his him getting into a car with the comp on his back... Seems like something that has not been addresssed before.

movie projects to view
 

I've received a lot of help from the DVinfo forums over the last couple of years as I have begun to make some short dramatic (maybe "melodramatic" is more appropriate!) movies as a hobby.

In case forum readers would like to check them out I have put the two completed projects online in Windows Media format. They are currently set up as 300kps files -- I will work on proper streaming etc.

You can find them at: http://ball.tcnj.edu/movies/

I just completed work on "Lieder" with my GL-2/Premiere Pro. "Point of Separation" was done last summer on simpler equipment.

I'd be happy to take any feedback

Bill Ball
ball@tcnj.edu

Fritz - A rockumentary with the latest swedish musical sensation
 

Synopsis: "Watch the Swedish west cost band Fritz talk about their past and future. Hear what motivates Danny to write the hit singles that astound the people of Poland and most of the former eastern block. Find out the story behind the mysterious band member Calle Nilsson. What happens when the band gets of the stage...all is revealed. As the band aims for further success in the land of the rising sun, Japan we follow them through fire and rain."

Have a look at it:

Download Fritz. If you find it to be too dark get this gamma adjusted one instead

I also put up some full resolution screencaps from the DVD!

It's a standard mpeg-4 video, tested to work in Quicktime 6 and Video LAN Player, (VLC) on mac and windows. It's about 17 minutes long and the smallest some what acceptable file I could get was slightly below 35MB with Apples Compressor, at medium VBR setting. It's hosted off my home server for now (about 70KB/s uplink) so I recommend saving it to disc.

Since it's in Swedish I had to add english subtitles to the DVD but the only way I could get these in to the web-version was dubbing the DVD with the subtitles turned on to FCP over s-video and my cameras anolog->dv input. Because of this they are quite small, sorry about that.

This is my most ambitious project so far. I worked with four classmates from a course in "Cinema science" I took at the university. Our end term assignment differed from other parts of the course since it wasn't only theoretical, we were asked to make a documentary. It was shot last fall (2003) and edited & finalized and showcased and finally put on to a DVD back in February of this year. It was basically a huge learning experience for me, getting comfortable with planning, shooting interviews, (getting by with what's available) lighting and most of all editing and DVD authoring.


Technical details:
Video: Canon XM2
Audio: Crummy external mic on a home made microphone boom-pole
Lighting: Big hot ass orange theatre light (color interviews), various old tripod video lights (black&white interviews)
Editing: Final Cut Pro 4
DVD authoring: DVD Studio Pro 2.

This is what the DVD cover looks like :)

I'd really appreciate any feedback on it. Let me know what you think!

/Benjie

I've moved your thread to our showcase forum where it belongs.

Thanks. I couldn't seem to remember where that was when I posted.

The videos do stream at various bitrates now.

My friend's short film "The Passion"
 

Hi, my friend would like me to post his short film in here cause he doesn't get the access. His name is Charles Lee, the director and editor of "The Passion", I am just helping him for sound and music edit. It shoot by a one CCD Sony camera.

A film about violence in school, it is a school assignment.

http://www.appleidea.com/movie/passion_eng.wmv

Great demos, Brett! I have 3 questions for you; 1) was the aerial shot the only one captured with a DVX100, 2) where do you have your site hosted, and 3) what did you use to compress your demos? Your demos downloaded very fast for me. As fast as Apples movie trailers.

Great DP work!

It looks like a big project, congratulations on pulling it off. However,
it didn't really maintain my interest for more than a couple of
minutes. The first "interview" looked like the guys really did NOT
want to be there and it was very hard to watch, some more
editing and perhaps pruning might have helped greatly.

I was expecting someone to talk about their love and passion to
be, I don't know, perhaps more entertaining or more enhusiastic
about it. I just didn't get the feel of that which I think is due to
them and not you and the team who made the movie.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't get myself to watch the full piece with
all the work I have laying around.

Thanks for watching Rob and for taking time to let me know you did!

I understand what you are saying about the beginning. It's a bit long and umm..boring ;) I'm very happy with the visual side of it though. I guess we only have ourselves to blame since WE play the band members. We had some basic character guidelines that we had made up that we tried to follow but other then that we were just improvising what to say. I actually think the close up individual interviews are kind of funny.

I don't expect anyone to look though it from beginning to end so here are some recommendations if you decide to sample a few scenes.

03:00 - The stuff this guy comes up with when improvising is just plain weird. I have a bunch of clips with him where he says equally strange stuff but that I couldn't use since everyone cracked up.

05:16 - Interviews with people (unknowingly) praising our band. Can you guess who they are really talking about?

10:51 - A music video I made in the last stages of my editing work for a song one of the guys made. Also check the end of it, at 13:43 for some time/movement experimenting.

14:22 - The ending/credits sequence plays to a song that another guy from the "team" made. Some Swedish knowlege is required to appreciate the unusual lyrics.

As a side-note, another couple of guys from school made a "real" band documentary with an actual band for the same assignment. These guys did some heavy (but quite transparent to the viewer) manipulation with their interviews to fit their theme of a trash talking, fighting band. Also these real band members weren't all that more interesting/didn't have a whole lot more to say then our made up characters.

Anyways, for those of you who take a look, I like comments, even really short ones...

Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though!

<<<-- Originally posted by Benjamin Taft : Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though! -->>>

Hi, this is Charles Lee, the director of the movie.
Regarding you didn't get the connection, the reasons I did not specify the reason of killing his roommate is because I want to reveals that some people killing others without a reasonable reason, like some countries do in a year ago.
Beside, I am tend to reveal that the violences can be happen in everywhere, even in the place that should be peaceful. The violence is not too far from us, maybe someday, your buddies in school or workplace will hurt somebody without any good reason, and you cannot predict...
I hope my video can remind the concern of violences.

BTW, thank you for watching my movie.
There is another movie I made, and actually it was my first movie.
http://www.appleidea.com/movie/last_december.wmv
I am pleasure to hear the comments from everyone.

Hi Charles! I loved the choice of music in your movie! If I'm not mistaking, is it from Infernal Affairs?

Great movie, man!

-KiN

What's up Glenn. Yeah, that was me. Sorry for the late reply - been extremely busy lately. And for the record, Vegas is just ok. I went with PPro instead.

Check out the movie and let me know what you think.

<<<-- And for the record, Vegas is just ok. I went with PPro instead.
lol...that's cool- to each their own.

Check out the movie and let me know what you think. -->>>
Will do man. Meanwhile here's a post with some of my work..and a description of how I achieved some of the shots in Vegas. I'll be posting some wedding related clips soon...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=28846


Great to hear from you again- hope to see you around.

What is best encoding for web previews?
 

I can encode my videos to any format, but what are some of the easier, decent quality suggestions out there? Till now I've been rendering as .wmv files set for 256kbps transfers, with 16 bit, mono audio. They come out ok, but some of the previews I've been looking at here look really good.

edited test footage for upcoming short
 

I'm preparing to shoot a short film "Music Box" towards the end of this month. Below is some of the test footage using the mini35/XL1s edited into a one minute piece for your viewing pleasure.

www.starcentral.ca/trailers/MusicBox.mov

Enjoy!

Dennis,


__________________

Jim Jam 2004
 

Well every year my friends and I have a BMX contest in my friend Jimmy's backyard. We build ramps out of old scrap wood that we find laying around, spraypaint it up and have a big bbq. This year was probably the best yet, we only had the police come out once but when they figured out that we were willing to put up a fight, they left (we had 50 people against them). Anyway, it was a blast. Lots of people just hanging out, drinking, riding, and just having a good ole time. There were a few bad crashes but nobody died, and I was hit a few times while shooting video of the contest. Footage may be a bit shaky because I'm sprinting around the course with my camera to get the shots, with no tripod, and the exposure of the clips may change slightly, thanks to Florida weather (cloudy one second, bright the next) and no time in between to adjust my settings.


Enjoy...

http://www.bmxbums.com/videos/jimjam.mov

Check out my new short
 

Hi,
First of all, the short is in Spanish, so I don´t expect much feedback on the story, but if anyone can watch it, I´d appreciate input on image, editing, etc...

The short was shot with the Canon XM2. It was edited with Vegas 4.
A few cokin filters where used (ND and difussers).
There are also a few shots done with the Sony PDX-10.

I might add subtitles in english if I get requests on this, I just don´t have enough time now to do that and not have at least a few english speaking persons watching it.

www.efedib.com/videos/porqciegos.mov

Hi Federico,

I just watched your short, but unfortunately I only know 4 maybe 5 words in Spanish so it was a struggle comprehending. :]

It would be nice to see subtitles, but I can understand how much more work that would be. However you'd probably get more fruitful replies if you did, at least on this board.

* Can you talk a bit more about how you put this together? (mics, lights, editor, etc.)

* Did you shoot this all in a day?

* What other kind of gear did you use indoors and outdoors?

* In the dialogue shots between the two characters sitting at the desk, did you stop down after each person said their line, or did you have the first character do a run through, then repeat the whole scene with the camera on the other person?

It's pretty hard to determine the quality because of the compression, but I understand that posting a better quality version of your short would take up a ton of space and bandwidth.

Could you post a few high res stills?

Thanks!

Hey Jason I just watched your short and i hope you wouldnt object to me offering some criticism. I'm by no means a expert, but a few things in the video jump out as being unproffesional. One of the largest and most common problems with amateur films is that people forget to record nat sound. Before you shoot a scene in a given location, record the surroundings for the duration of the scene. This comes in handy for maintaining continuity during cutaways. It makes you very aware that you are watching a movie when you hear a car one moment and the next do not.

One more very imporant thing would be to get a tripod or possibly a steadicam. I also have a gl2 and i know how hard it is to hold a little cam like that steady. This film does not benefit from a documentary style, because the subject matter is rather surreal. It just reminds you once again the action on the screen is being shot with a camera, which is a bad thing in this case.

And lastly, I would reccomend that you take more time in pre production to plan out your story and your shots. Some points just dont make sense, like where the girl stomps on the villain's toe and he is suddenly turned around both physically and emotionally. You undertook a very ambitious project with this story. You could have easily taken these plot points and expanded it into a feature. If you plan to make a shorter film, I would take on less action and add more character development. i know you were trying to tell an exciting story, but we had no idea who these people were or what was going on so the events had no meaning, and were very hard to get interested in. But all these points aside, I commend you for getting out there and making film, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and thats what its all about!

Some stills:
http://www.efedib.com/videos/ciegosstills/
(Jpegs 100% quality)

Ok... a bit more about this:

* Production, it was shot in three half days, 1 for office, 1 for park, and 1 for streets. Not more than 15 hours alltogether.

* Dialog: I let the first character tell the whole long lines on it´s own, and I let him improvised a little, so these where prett long shots.
After that, all dialogs with replies, where done bit by bit, maybe a few lines each. Mostly because the second guy, the one with the laptop, is not an actor, and was a last minute replacement so we had to rehearse almost line by line.
By the way, it works wonders, when you tell that it´s just a rehearse, and don´t let them know you are recording. More than half of the shots of this guy where recorded rehearse.


* Lighting...
- Indoors used two 500w work lights, some blue gels to match sunlight coming from the windows, and some homemade white reflection boards.
- Outdoors... just the white reflection boards.

* Filters..
- Indoors, Cokin diffuser. (0820 I think)..
- Outdoors, Cokin ND 4 plus the one in the camera.

* Audio...
- Azden SGMX2

* Post, it was all done on Vegas 4.
- For the indoors, there was some colour correction done, and a few levels adjustment. But not much.

- For the outdoors, The "blue" And white grainy hard contrast parts, was done using some levels, and the film effect that comes with Vegas...
- Also there was a lot of time playing in Vegas


And that´s about it..

About compression.. well, I´m starting to hate quiktime..
If I ever get to do the subtitles I´ll upload it on WMV, which I appear to get a lot of better result with...

That's a really tough question to answer and really depends a
lot on personal preference, options available and audience.

Most commonly used format must be QuickTime and then WMV
indeed. Both formats are just place holders where you can use
different codecs. The question is then which codec are you using
and try some different ones to see what they do.

For AVI (and I believe you can use this with WMV as well) DiVX
or MPEG4 is quite popular as well. QuickTime can use it as well,
but most seem to still use a flavor of Sorenson there.

Expirement experiment experiment!

Regarding QuickTime and your video. You are already wasting
precious bandwidth and thus bits in your file by compressing
the letterbox (black bars). Cut those off for web distribution and
you will already loose 1/3 of your image for compression.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Regarding QuickTime and your video. You are already wasting
precious bandwidth and thus bits in your file by compressing
the letterbox (black bars). Cut those off for web distribution and
you will already loose 1/3 of your image for compression. -->>>

Mmmmm....
Now, why didn´t think about that?
It´s so obvious thing to do, it makes me feel stupid...
Well... afterall, I might end up doing those subtitles, so I have an extra motive to do that.

Thanx...

Federico.. sounds pretty cool. Thanks for posting the stills.

Sorry to hear you're having a problem with quicktime.. I love it and use DiVX when exporting video out from final cut express on my mac. Since you're using other programs and maybe a pc, it might be a bit more challenging though.

Looks like you have some vignetting in some shots.

Dave thanks for taking the time to watch it. I wish it was a little more exciting than just fields, but it was mainly to test the location and time of day of where the action will take place for the shoot. I hope to do some more test shots this weekend and will change the edit a bit to add some better excitement!

I used a ND grad for the wide shots but never took it off on the close up shot of the thistle. I think the vignetting appears mainly in that shot for some reason even though it should have been a solid grad going horizontally across the top. Post effects might have also contributed somewhat to the look of vignetting?

Good video Dennis, can't wait to see more of it. The colour and contrast is very good. I am still expertiment and learning to shoot landscape cause I still made mistakes.

I've also uploaded a WMV version because it is 15 times smaller (only 4MB) and looks pretty close to the Quick Time version (60MB) with the exception of the color saturation.

www.starcentral.ca/trailers/MusicBox.wmv

I have a few emails asking about camera settings and it was done. It was shot in Frame mode on the Canon XL1s (PAL version), -4 sharpness and -1 color tweak in camera, 0db Gain. It was edited in Premiere and colored in After Effects.

Great idea. Very funny:)

As others have said, the end of each commercial is usually unpredictable and quick. When the guy packed up, he should have walked down the street, etc and then end should've have take only a 1/4 or even 1/8 of the time spent on showing the guy with a PC.

yeah man looks cool, i could feel the tension!

what did you edit on?

good luck with sundance

tyler

My Work - Comments?
 

I'm a new music video director. I wanted to share what I have. Let me know what you think. My website should be up by August 20th. Thank you very much for you time.

MDFilms

http://www.mdfilms.net/She.mov
http://www.mdfilms.net/MDfilms.mov
http://www.mdfilms.net/MDfilms3.mov

I looked at these and I thought the craftmanship overall to be very good. The pieces have an interesting look and distinctive style and come across as quite professional. On my Mac cinema display they were a little dark, but I think that prob. to calibration of my monitor and compression (which tends to darken).

I did have a little trouble following the narrative in the "She" piece. Is he dead? Is she dead? I was confused. I thought the intro a little too long. The intercutting at the start could go a bit faster, I thought. I also thought you were missing a bet visually: The women in bed in the blue sheets and the water at the beginning might be superimposed in interesting ways. Just an idea.

Moments of Brilliance...
 

As true "hollywood" style music videos, they aren't quite traditional -- but I noted several brilliant moments.

Can you tell us a little about your process? Tell us more about the production and post-production process.

Ben

What moments are you talking about then I can answer your questions better.

It has been a few days (and a hurricane ago) since I watched the vids -- but a couple of the effects I remembered that were nice included the smooth slow-mo and several light casting effects. It looks like you have deft control over After Effects.

Ben