The eyes that follow
 

My Mom has a weathered statue in front of her house. It's one of those angelic concret statues. I took some shots of it over Easter and I noticed that the eyes of the statue for the most part seemed to follow the camera. I edited it in black and white and added one of my piano music pieces. It's very simple and plain.

Oliver




http://www.blindchildproductions.com...at_follow3.wmv

A small piece called "Music for murder" but it has copy rite music
 

What is the concent of the masses in regards to presenting videos with copyrited music material. Even if it is intended as student art and non-commercial? For the sake of comment? I would welcome some feed back on a short I made called "Music for murder". It's a simple piece, and I use alot of extreme closeups that I would like comments on. But unfortunetly the music I picked fits perfectly. And it is not done by me. What so you say?.............. Dare I? Or forget it?

Backfire; a five minute comedy I produced with a $40 budget.
 

Once again I come to ask for your help DV info members.

I have produced a short five minute video which I would like some feedback on. It recently premiered in the Halifax Independant Filmmaker's Festival and had some good comments, but I'd like to know what the public really thinks.

Backfire 05:00

Vimeo Host
http://www.vimeo.com/858092

Blip TV Host
http://blip.tv/file/800043

Thanks!
Justin

Having trouble finding a film that was on here
 

Hey guys, I am looking for a short that I saw on this site before. I don't remember the title or the maker, which makes searching extremely difficult. Maybe you guys can help.

Anyway the movie was of this young man (either Asian or Indian) on a bus, and there was a cute girl sitting across from him. When she left, she left behind her photo camera. Once she leaves, he looks through the pictures, and finds certain landmarks and is eventually able to figure out where her apartment is. He rides his bicycle all over town. When he gets to her apartment there is a painter there which tells him she moved out. He eventually gets to her and gives her the camera.

I loved this one a lot and I would really like to see it again.

Thanks a lot guys.

I think you're referring to a commercial. I believe it was Canon, but I'm not sure.

George.

It was a short film done with the HV20 and a 35mm adapter.
The guy arrives riding a bike where the girl used to live, but she moved.

I had this film on my PC, but I've deleted for some time now.

Tried searching Vimeo and HV20 Sample Clips here, no luck... Maybe someone else knows where to find it.

It might be in our Alternative Imaging Methods forum...

A Thousand Words
 

That's...
A Thousand Words
..a wonderful story IMHO.

HV20 with Brevis adapter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Z8gW8NBks

or higher res versions here:
http://www.cinevate.com/images/athousandwordslg.mov

http://www.cinevate.com/images/athousandwords.mov

Follow this discussion for production workflow info:

http://www.cinevate.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1723

YES! Thats the one!!!

Thank you so much!!

Little Venice - London
 

Ever wanted to go to Venice well my new short takes you to Little Venice London - As named by the poet Robert Browning it can be found on my website www.londonmarkfilms.co.uk under the films section.

Daylight Robinry
 

http://www.vimeo.com/866130

On April 6, 2008, it snowed. This was somewhat unexpected for Slough. It confused our garden cohort no end.

In fact, the Robin from next door (who is young and inexperienced) saw this as a sign of doom and chose theft over starvation, much to the chagrin of our Robin.

Raw EX1 footage chopped together. Demonstrates the slo-mo qualities of the EX1. Shot from the comfort of my dining room today (snowing in April?!)

Every time I see discussion on this film I like to mention this gem as well:

http://patrykrebisz.com/stills/FINAL_movie.html

It has a suspiciously similar storyline and came out a good time before the HV20 short.

No screenshots yet, nor trailer, give us a chance .. :) Editing started end of last week, so will keep you all posted ! We have a making-of shot with an A1 (without Brevis) too, so the canons got plenty of use for this feature .. :)

Hey Kris, looking forward to seeing what you've come up with. What kind of budget were you working with?

Anyway im based in Lanark so if you ever need a cam or steadicam operator gimme a shout, (JVC HD100 and glidecam V8). I also have a studio with apple quad G5 running final cut studio as well as a sound booth for ADR http://www.box.net/shared/static/ybto1dqltj.jpg , http://www.box.net/shared/static/6jh3hz20v3.jpg if you ever run into any post production problems im always willing to lend a hand to other scottish filmmakers.

Andy.

Green screen episode of music TV show
 

I'm currently shooting and editing a show called In Tune which appears on a province-wide on-demand TV service called Local On Demand. They put clips from the shows online so here's a clip from the episode I've been most happy with. The interview was green screened and the band had fun with that, so things turned out pretty well.

The performance was shot with two Sony Z1's, the interview was shot with three (normally it's also two but I brought mine along as a wide to show me, the interviewer and the green screen in the shot). I fed my Sennheiser G2 wireless with Tram TR-50 lavs through my Sound Devices 302 mixer for the interview. I shoot everything in HDV 1080i using CineFrame30 so I can slow my shutter down to 1/30 and get the extra light you need when shooting in dark venues. The interview had a faster shutter speed.

The show was edited on Premiere Pro CS3 using a Matrox LE realtime graphic card, which was a huge lifesaver when keying that many shots.

http://www.mysask.com/portal/site/pc...CacheTok=token

There are two 5-ish minute clips from the 18-minute episode (that's the nice thing about being on demand - no time restrictions!). The first has the intro to the interview and one full song. The second has the first half of the interview.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Hang Drum Music Video
 

We just did our first music video featuring the PANart Hang drum and you can see it on YouTube at :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKGNFgm_OQg

I used a pair of Panasonic DVC-30 cams with a pair of Sennheiser wireless lav mics on the drum to pick up the audio. The audio used in the video was recorded during one of the takes.

We needed a quick and attractive promotional video to promote Janet's CD "Listen With Your Eyes Closed". Shooting took about 30 minutes (not including constructing the "set") and I edited it in the evenings over the following week. The best part of all is that it has produced results!

Okay, now I'd really like to get some feedback.

The second spot was one that was currently in production and now the client has rejected it. Our companies salesmen are the ones who communicate with the clients directly so I wasn't told a reason why they turned it down.

Is it just a bad commercial?

Honestly, I feel that the commercial, although well made, doesn't really sell Sundown One. I don't know anything about that store (being from California), but I did notice that it's an electronics store...only after I saw the commercial a few times through, did I understand that. What did catch my eye was the Circuit City store on the way. The intent may have been to show that Sundown One is worth passing up Circuit City, but I think it had the opposite effect. I saw that Circuit City sign and said, "Oh yeah, there's a well known, solid, and professional Electronics store. How can I even think about taking Sundown One seriously with a little talking cowboy in a car who sounds like he's sucking on a helium balloon?

I realize that you probably had no control over the script or concept (then again, maybe you did). And, I suspect that the idea was to make it cute and funny so it would stand out in people's minds. However, it came accross as silly to me....which translates to a non-professional store, or i.e., not as good as circuit city. No offense, that just the feeling I got.

Perhaps a commercial that shows the quality of the products, knowlegeble employees, great prices that you would find at Sundown One, would have been better recieved by the client and the potential customers watching the commercial? I think your first piece has a much better selling quality.

Hey John,

The commercials are well made and they are technically pleasing but I did not like them and here is why.

Video 1

The first one was like a hundred other cable service provider commercials. There was nothing different than the other hundreds I see on the television all the time. Not only was it annoying to see some guy over excited about cheap cable, I didn’t hear what he was saying because he said too much.

“Your attention please!” I hated that line. If I'm watching television, I don't want someone shouting for attention, especially for a commercial. Not only is it unnecessary, but it makes me want to hit the mute button before the commercial even begins.

Too many clichés. The “only 19.95 per month” means absolutely nothing to me. All cable providers say ‘only this’ and ‘only that’. People won't jump out of their seats when they hear that price.

The use of the term “Cable Modem”. The word modem may confuse listeners with 56K modem. Better terms would be “High Speed Internet” or just “Cable”.

There was too much text on the screen as well, and I barely had a chance to read it. Had this commercial been on television I would not have bothered to even look at the text, it would be incredibly forgettable.

I found myself concentrating on the blue rings around the guy, trying to figure out what exactly they were. Also, I noticed it looked like he was standing on a huge mattress, which doesn’t make much sense. These are definitely not things you want the viewer to be thinking about, but that is what I was thinking.

The name of the company sounds like Comcast, another cable service provider. Why did they name it Casscomm in the first place? It made me confused.

All cable service providers are more or less the same. All those details, to me, are irrelevant. It's how they come across as a company through their commercials that makes viewers connect with them. The client may think differently, and insist to include all that useless crap, but they are wrong. Take a look at Geico's commercials, they are clean, simple and effective and funny. They don't go into details on their insurance policies but their commercials are a success because of their popularity. You want a commercial viewers will like or love, not hate.

To sum it up, it was boring. If the commercial tries to grab my attention, while looking like it is trying, I won't give it my attention. My advice would to have a simple commercial, one that is clean and not junked up with too much talking and text. Give me something that won't make me want to hit the mute button. Give me something that will make me like Casscomm.

Video 2

This one was a little better, because at least it has something eye catching, which is the small cowboy. The problem that I have with this commercial it that I have no idea what the company is all about. I know the woman mentions plasmas and home theatres, but apart from that, it's a bunch of gibberish about getting to the store.

It concept is good, but the first part could have been cut down by 10 seconds, and at the end their could have been footage from inside the store showing what exactly they sell. The video suggests I come down to see what's inside, but I won't. I'll come down when I see what the store has to offer, which in this case is stuff that isn't portrayed well in the video.

A huge problem I found was the footage of outside the window driving down the road. The commercial shows the buildings of:

Lowe's
Circuit City
Calver's
Buffalo Wild Wings
Several other stores...

A huge no no! This is a commercial for Sundown One! Not the aforementioned! Do not show the competitor’s buildings! - Especially Circuit City.

I also don't understand the significance of the cowboy and why he is a cowboy, or why he is really small.

So, I pretty much tore up your commercials, but I felt it was needed. I don't have any experience myself creating commercials, but I have seen plenty in my life to know what's effective and what isn't.

I hope that your future work goes well, just remember to connect to the viewer in a way more real than strict commercialism.

Justin

Director's Demo Reel, Spring 2008
 

The past five years in retrospect.

I have been working on a professional demo reel of the work Chris and I have done with Divinus Entertainment over the past five or so years. This reel is a work in progress and contains footage from "The Villain", "Axe", "Sleep", "Ambiguous Travelers", "Infliction", various behind the scenes footage, as well as pre-visualizations of the upcoming film "The Resistance". This reel will be included in a production package for our pre-production of the film "Late December" so, I don't care who you are, what you do, or what kind of experience you have in film ... your feedback is GREATLY appreciated.

http://vimeo.com/883277

Kellogg's Commercial (Comedy Sketch)
 

Me and some friends got together and improv'd a Kellogg's commercial that is just plain down right silly, but filled with tons of fun and laughter and unexpected twists!

www.greenbench.tv/videos/Sponsors.wmv

For you Mac users:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJpEOxTd2-0

Simple equipment used. Oktava and a Rode camera mounted mic. Was a blast to shoot. Don't ask where we got the strawberry suit from. :D

"why does a strawberry have f&^$&*g" legs!!??"

HAHAH

TV Commercial "NA EKS Vitamins"
 

http://www.artvark.co.yu/showreel/popijte_naeks.mov

XDCAM SD + Pro35 + UltraPrimes

Hah, nice commercial.
Pretty funny.

Only the audio drift bothered me sometimes. Owkay, sometimes they are meant to be harsh and sometimes they work, but sometimes they should be smoothened a bit, I feel.

Official Film Trailer "THEO"
 

Shot partly with JVC HD100 and HV20 with Redrock M2 35mm adaptor.

Official web-site is not up yet, but you can watch the HD video on Vimeo:

http://www.vimeo.com/825323

Compression is not too bad, but isn't great either.

Alternatively you can check out this direct link for 480P HD video stream:

http://www.galioneli.com/theomovie/t...s/theo480p.mov



Thanks for looking.

My film shot entirely on a Canon XL2 "The Shadow Asset" - DVD now released
 

It has been a long time since I started this film. I learned a lot from the Canon XL2 watchdog forum. I found some great tricks and I posted some of my own that I used to get a real theatrical look from the Canon.
Well now it has all paid off.
The movie has now been released on DVD. Check out my movies website to find out more.

www.theshadowasset.com

Thanks to everyone who shared their filmmaking tips.

Wes

Very impressive trailer! Love the look you have created.

Keep it up.

Reel Question
 

Not sure what to do about this one. I want to put together a reel for commercial production. Exclusively for post work. My question is should I cut together clips of my work with the mix of the project or should I cut it together to a soundtrack. Now I understand that if you are a DP you would cut to music. But if you want to be an editor in this field shouldn't you include your mix of the project as well? So the client can grasp that you can handle the whole project? Or should I just cut it to music as well? Any feed back would be great on this one.

I've always found cutting to music works well as it gives you the chance to gel a number of different works together in way which delievers a bigger impact, however at the same time bringing occasional audio elements from the original project is what i believe to be key to making it stand out. They do this alot in film trailers, where they have a music sound track playing the whole time, but on key events they will let the dialogue rise above the music to add a sence of extended drama and intimacy.

Sometimes i think it's more important a client goes away feeling 'emotionaly influenced' rather than 'technically informed' by a piece of film as i have found people will generally go by what 'feels' better regardless of how it was achieved.

Hope this helps

Great look and pace to this, it really creates a 'feel'. Well done.

Well done Wes, looks excellent. What sort of DVD/distribution deal deal have you got if you don't mind sharing?

Thanks I see your point. This gives me something to think about. I am really going for something short and sweet. The music I have chosen is only about a minute and half long. Does anyone thing I need to make it 3 minutes like a standard reel? If I did I could bring more clips in and let them linger so I would have time to bring up the audio.

This just occurred to me. Now if the piece I am showing has music as well and I bring up the audio then the soundtrack is no good. Which could create more confusion.

Now What?

nice cars!!!

In that case, I would see if I can find the audio recording without the music mixed in. Easy to do if you still have all the working files, not so easy if you don't.

If you can't isolate the voice audio, then maybe you shouldn't use that clip for the demo reel.

If you want, your demo reel doesn't need to have music throughout, maybe at certain parts. Then at the parts where there is no sountrack, you can use the clips with music mixed in with them.

Just make sure if you use these clips with audio, when you chop them up in the timeline to have the audio blend between them, so that you don't get sharp audio jolt sounds between shots.

Nice, looks like a good film. The cinematography was especially attractive. The volume for the voices is a too low compared to the music, sometimes I had trouble hearing what they were saying.

Hey Matthew,

It's a strange demo reel. I found some of the shots were not that great. As a demo reel, the behind the scenes shots felt out of place, but I can see how there may be artistic reasons for it. The camera was shaky at times, and not good shaky. Some of the shots looked like old army royalty free footage, I wouldn't use those if you're making a reel showcasing your or your teams filmmaking skills.

The colour correction was bland, everything was flat looking. I'm not sure if that was on purpose, but it doesn't look good aesthetically. For example, the contrast ratio for the black and white scenes was way too low.

Some of the colour scenes were not that bad. Some of the scenes look like they don't need colour correction. But a lot of them do, for example...
http://tomchukfilms.com/blaps/preview.jpg

I wrote a short article on colour correction using curves if your interested. It will make the shots a lot more attractive.
http://tomchukfilms.com/articles/art_ccwc.html

Justin

Thanks for the replies. I guess I didn't mention before that I didn't write these commercials, I did however make a revision to the Sundown One commercial to add the little cowboy. The original script contained the same dialog word for word (except for the little segment about the Sarsaparilla) only it was about two people driving to the store and the video was to be from their perspective inside the car looking out. The client wanted to show other businesses and actually wrote into notes that they wanted a full shot of the car driving in front of Circuit City.

Television advertising isn't too popular here in Springfield, IL an most of the ads you see are more or less radio ads with moving pictures. Had I been given the opportunity to meet with the client, I would have steered them in a different direction altogether. It's a simple scenario of a client who doesn't know what to say, a salesman who doesn't know how to sell concepts and an advertising director who doesn't want to risk losing an account. I don't know if that makes any sense to any of you, but that's how it is for me.

As an update to this story, the client has decided to run the commercial, but they want me to reduce the pitch of the cowboy's voice and change the music to make it seem more old western than upbeat country. I think these changes could help, but the issue I have with the commercial still remains and according to those of you who have posted your opinions it's not just me who feels this way. While I was able to do some creative post work with this spot, the viewer doesn't know what the commercial is about and once they figure out that it's for a high end audio/video store they're even more confused.

Thanks
 

So, I guess I will cut it to a soundtrack.

Whoa...nice job Justin you really made that pop. Does your article apply to any editing software? I use Sony Vegas.

Nice bikini!!!