Photo montage
 

Instead of just exploring the different transitions that came with your editor, try using pans, zooms, composite different elements from several pictures... It can turn a slide show into something special.

animated music video
 

http://fatkidstudios.com/video/marykills/mary_high.htm

please let me know what you think!

That was awesome!

Very cool video and message. Being a father myself I wish that other men would be fathers to their children. I can see a big difference in my son vs. other children with no father in the home.

I'm starting on my music video production and I have a XL-1s also. Question. Did not use movie mode or 60i?

Peace Jerome

Hi Jerome

Thanks for your comment. To answer the technical question, I went through some experimentation and discovered that I really get the best results if I shoot 60i and deinterlace it later which is what I always end up doing. I also used to shoot 16*9 but went back to 4*3 because the resolution is better. I than mask it in post to give it the wide screen look. My theory here is that You can go from interlaced to progressive but not the other way around and I also want the highest resolution footage to start with.
Let me know when your video is done. I would like to see it.

Thanks for the info. What you are saying makes sense to me. I have a possible project coming up. The artist has no budget but is asking about 16mm film for the shoot. I told her that we could do the video in DV and apply a film look in post. Hopefully she will go for that because I need more experience has a DP/camera man anyway.

Thanks Again,

Jerome

No budget and wants 16mm? That might turn out a bit pricey. My reasoning behind the music video is this. What are the chances of it going to the big screen? Most likely NONE, thus mini-dv, especially well edited would be beautifull. To get the great color and sharpness, I had my color boosted and sharpnes boosted all the way up in the camera settings. I also had a chance to see the video projected onto 8*12 foot screen and it looked fabulous so tell your performer than you can do just as good if not better for the ideas they have in mind.

Boston Film Festival - "Bert Prentice CEO"
 

Its been awhile since I posted to the boards. So here it is:

The short HD (transferred to 35mm) "Bert Prentice CEO" has been selected to screen at The Boston Film Festival, September 10-19, 2004.

For more details and other excellent films visit:

http://www.bostonfilmfestival.org

"A Day in the Life of a Corporate Brown-noser."

I moved from light and lens to in front of the camera for this provocative film.

I hope any of you in the greater Boston/New England area will be able to see the event.


Cheers!


Derrick Begin

"Derrick Begin is a nameless, low-rank employee whose job is to literally..." (Come to the festival to find out.)

Sounds like a plan!!!

Thanks Rafal,

Jerome

Interesting is the word I want to use.

Looked nice! Did you crop the video before export or not? It looked
liked you wasted some bandwidth by leaving the black bars there.

Definitely not my cup of tea. Also the audio was highly distorted,
so you might want to look into optimizing that in the future.

Hi Rob. You know, I didn't even think about it. I will play around with your suggestion and see what happenes size wise. Thanks again for pointing it out
On second thought, I don't think I can do it because on three ocassions in the video, I have things that spill onto the black bars

well done

pizza the movie
 

It's on DVD now, so go to the site www.pizzathemovie.com, check out the trailer, if you got a few bucks, buy the movie.

Here's one review:
http://www.roguecinema.com/article84.html

It was shot on a Canon XL1s. Edited with Final Cut Pro.

Thinking of submitting for a festival. Could use some input.
 

I have posted this film before but I recieved 3 responses to it. Now I am thinking of submitting it to a film festival and would like some input from you guys as to what you all think. Any criticism would be great. Thanks again.

http://www.rafalkrolik.com/grapesofwrath.wmv

Mitch

Lovely imagery in the opening scenes.

Terence Malick fan?

I started to think .. .maybe not .. when we see the scene of the young man throwing away the shotgun. The video audio recording is jarring. I would rather that the music just played all the way through without the on location sound.

But then you return to the imagery.

I prefer it for all of the disconnected shots. I think it has artistic composition. Quite nice.

I really do like it. Submit away.

What type of camera did you use?

Mitch,

Are you targeting specific festivals here or asking in general? If I remember correctly (this could be way off base, so sorry if I offend) this was done as a high school project. And assuming you are still in high school, I would definetly say to seek out contests specifically designed for your age group. I could see you being very successul in that. If you're talking about entering larger scale festivals (sundance etc.) best of luck to you but unless you have tons of cash I would try to be very specific and pick certain ones you might appeal to. I know when we showed Detonate (a short us par-t-comers made with a DVX) at an international festival, while extremely cool to even be accepted, competing against stuff shot on 35mm is just overwhelming and we had no real shot at winning anything in my opinion.

I'm gonna be submitting a feature I shot last summer over the next month, and just looked at websites for a bunch of fests and picked the two I thought I had a legitamate shot at getting into (slamdance and cleveland film festival, if wondering). Anyway, this is a long response for something that might not even be helpful but that would just be my two cents.

On the other hand, if you have lots of money to "burn" I say go for it, the worse that can happen is you getting denied.

Also, do you have the rights to Grapes of Wrath? Do you need it for an inspired by project? Never done an adaptation as my focus is writing, but you should make sure to check these out before submitting, 'cause that would suck to get accepted and dq'd.

Stuff looks pretty funny. Kind of like a Jack Black comedy. Was it actually rated by the MPAA?!

yup. Donald got a real rating!

I got my DVD a few weeks ago. It's pretty cool.

looked like film!!!

To those who purchased 4BMOA thank you so much for your support. I hope you guys like it.

-Nate

In response to your question Glen, my camera that I used was a Sony TRV87. It is a single CCD camera, but has gone a long ways for myself. Now in response to Jeff, you are correct this was made as a high school class that project. As for festivals, I was planning on some smaller scale ones with cheaper entrance fees. No Sundance in my immediate future. I just want to start out small and hopefully work to a larger project. Right now I am in the process of submitting one to a smaller festival in Boston. So we will see how that goes. Thanks again for the replies.

Mitch

* * BOSTON FILM FESTIVAL / CONEY ISLAND FILM FESTIVAL * *
 

Greetings fellow filmmakers,

The short HD (transferred to 35mm) "Bert Prentice, CEO", writer/dir by K. Nibley, prod by K. Barry, Platform Productions, will screen this week at the Boston Film Festival.

This provocative piece follows a "day in the life of a corporate brown-noser..."

"Derrick Begin is the nameless, low-rank employee whose job is to literally..." Come to the screening to find out.

BOSTON FILM FESTIVAL
9/10/2004 - Short Pkg 1 7:15,9:00
9/11/2004 - Short Pkg 1 3:00,5:00

http://www.bostonfilmfestival.org

See you there...

A.P.B - - Coney Island Film Festival invites "Bert Prentice CEO" for screening. More to come...

"Stuff looks pretty funny. Kind of like a Jack Black comedy."

Yeah, I had Jack Black in mind for the buddy character, but he like, wanted money and stuff to play it. So I got Jason Muzie instead :)

Rock In Roll!

TONIGHT!

How many films are ...
 

Seriously how many succesful films were shot on Dv like video format to be later transferred onto 35mm for thetrical releases

Thank You
 

I just wanted to thank everyone who has taken there time to view my website (mdfilms.net), I really took everyones comments to heart. I will be working on many things in the upcoming months. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Michael
MDFilms

First, define "Succesfull". Do you mean succsessfully shot, transfered, sold and MADE money, or do films that lost money count too? ("Tadpole" for instance, lost money but was considered a success)

Hey actually that was a typo ... i meant successfully shot transferred made some money or atleast recovered wht they had put in.

I am planning a project which would be shot using Panasonic DV200 & JVC GYDV5000E all PAL later to be trnsferred onto Film for commercial release.

I had contacted one such Film transfer company in Taiwan but their reply was Both his reply to my mil is as belows

========================

Dear Bankim:

Thanks for your inquiry on our Video to Film transfer service.
If you shoot in DV format, no matter how good is the resolution in TVL, the video signal you output from camera for transferring to film is fixed at 720x576 in 4:3 and if you are going to crop it into 16:9 (which is reasonable for a closer aspect ratio to 1.85 35mm format), the resolution you use in the video framing is only 720x405 which is really not enough for theatrical release. In our experience, even you implement software interpolation, the picture will still looks soft and blur.

If you are really restricted by budget, try to use HD camera. Sony HDCAM is a good choice, which is of highest resolution (1920x1080) and lower cost than 35mm. The next choice is Panasonic DVCPRO-HD which is even better in cost but resolution is lower(1280x720) but has three times of pixels than PAL DV. The cheapest HD camera in the market is JVC GR-HD1U which is also 1280x720 in resolution but much cheaper than DVCPRO-HD and definitely cheaper than GYDV5000E and AGDV-200.

Regards

Video Center Manager


----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 1:37 PM
Subject: DV to 35mm transfer.


Dear Sir,

We are a Production house based in India. We are producing a Film using JVC GYDV5000E & Panasonic AGDV-200 both PAL format with camera resolution of about 800+TVL. We are shoting it in 4:3 format but keeping in idea of 16:9 cropping when we do edit or the film transfer. We anticipate its transfer onto 35mm at 24fps. We wish to know how very cost effective could it be if we were to choose you along with your quality expertise, are there any special efforts we need to put to have a good quality of blowup onto film from DV PAL to film 24fps 35mm. So far in India there have been no attempt to do such an production on DV and later to be blownup onto 35mm for theatrical releases so we are a bit skeptical about the quality of output on the silver screen. We would like to know your view on this subject before we approach your company to undertake our assignment.

We look forward to your reply.

Best regards,

Bankim Jain
Director - Coverage TV

==============================

But i still felt there might be such facilities around te globe helping guys like us to accomplish our dreams on the SILVER SCREEN...after it the idea that gets shot & directed well to get foot falls into the theatre rather than the medium which it is shot on.

...the wait is on for views !!!

Many very good movies have been shot with relatively cheap DV cameras and transferred to 35mm for theaterical release. In my opinion, one of the best looking ones was "The King Is Alive," which was a Dogme95 release. It was shot with PD150s.

It is true that the Sony 1080i HD format will give you the best looking picture from just about any camcorder, but it is expensive to buy or rent. I have heard of the Panasonic Varicam being used quite a bit because it is significantly cheaper than Sony, and rental houses seem to be giving good deals on long term rentals.

What makes a film successful, however, has little to do with what it was shot on. It has more to do with the story, acting, and production values. I consider "The King Is Alive" a great story with tremendous acting, and it was shot by world class cinematographers who knew how to use the type of gear they had for a look that worked wonderfully for them.

However, before you shoot anything with any camera, be sure to do a test with whatever lab you plan to use for the transfer. Most of the ones here will do a low cost transfer for you, and if you do the final project with them, they usually apply what you spent on the test to your bill. You might be better off looking at labs that have more experience in dealing with DV formats.

low cost film with an XL1 about falkland war
 

We made, in Argentina, a low cost film with an XL1, without filters, just sun light. Check my link www.creavision.com.ar/malvinas.html

We shot in 16:9 and frame mode. Just some low motions shots we do it in normal mode.
Thanks

Cesar Turturro

Late For Work (first 1:30)
 

Okay, I'm a little wary of this, but I figured since I have the first 1:30 filmed and edited and the rest of the short untouched as of yet, I might as well upload and throw it out to you guys to see what you all think... Intro titles and any music aren't in there yet, but any comments that might improve the filming process would be very useful :)

I'm shooting it using an XM2 (i.e. a PAL GL2 for those who don't know).

http://www.volvi.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Late_For_Work.wmv

Cheers!

"BERT PRENTICE CEO"

Saturday Oct. 2nd, 1pm
Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave. @ W. 12th St.

http://www.coneyislandfilmfestival.com



More Festivals to come, including the West Coast.


Cheers!

Yeah....here's what I think.I can tell that you like to keep the camera moving and that's great, that's just part of your style and there is nothing wrong with that but you still need to keep the camera movement clean and simple. When she's lying in bed the camera is going to different directions all the time. I mean one time the camera is pulling away from her and then it cuts to the camera pulling away from her at like a 20 degree from the other angle. And then it cuts back to the first angle. There's no point to it. It's almost like taking two different takes of the same thing from slightly different angles and edittig them together when there is really only a need for one. Basically for something so simple as someone lying in bed try not to over do it with the camera movement because it serves no real purpose. Unless your trying to strech the length of the short out?

Hopefully this helps. I mean we all have our personal styles and I realize that. So I guess that only thing you can do is look back over it and see what you think. Just trust your gut.

After reading carefully I see this is an unfinished piece, almost
wrote something up that it didn't make a lot of sense. Heh.

I agree with Lathe's assesment. It seems to be taking too much
time with nothing really going on. As they say in making films
"less is usually better" and "show instead of tell". Do we really
need to see her enter the bathroom and then "zoom out" on the
door? Do we really need to see her lying in bed for "so long" etc.?

125th - Ending
 

I have posted on here before about a project I'm doing for my church. The whole thing is 18 mins long so I cant really post the whole thing up. I wanted to share the ending of the film. If yoy want more info about this please e-mail me. Its going to be shown next weekend then sold on DVD w/ extras and so on. I'd like to hear your thoughts about the ending. Please note that I have rights to use passion of the christ music. Thank you for you time.

http://www.mdfilms.net/ending.mov

Michael
MDFilms@mac.com
MDFilms.net

It's really hard to judge the feel of the film, having not seen all that led up to this ending. I will say that it was more frightening to me than it was anything else - that music is quite scary. The 3 superimposed layers at a time was a touch confusing to look at, especially when some of it was in fast-motion. It's possible though that seeing it small on a monitor might make it more confusing and perhaps it's clearer on a regular t.v.

It was intriguing though, and impactful. But again, it's hard to judge since it's just a tiny little snippet. What is the film actually about? Perhaps that will help.