Show Your Work 2004

[Alex Taylor]

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.

[Jim Quinlan]

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.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

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

[Dylan Couper]

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.

[Matthew de Jongh]

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

[Dean Bull]

www.atomicworkshop.org

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

[Andrew Lee Hendren]

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

[Rob Lohman]

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!

[Bryan Roberts]

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 ;)

[Andrew Lee Hendren]

<<<-- 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

[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.

[Andrew Lee Hendren]

<<<-- 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.

[Peter Sieben]

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

[Matt Elias]

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.

[Rob Belics]

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.