I really liked it... nice camera work too. What was it shot with?

Luke

It was shot with a Sony Z1u, 50i, deinterlaced in post, Magic Bullet Color Correction, output PAL sd from After effects.

That was fascinating and poetic.
Loved it.

Transcontinental
 

Hey all, I just finished a short film for my American History class. Shot in 2 days and edited in 2 sleepless nights mere hours before the deadline. I liked how it turned out though; it was something different and a lot of fun. Used an XHA1 with magic bullet looks in FCP.

Not perfect I know, as crew was somewhat nonexistent, but some comments would be welcome, more so in the areas of shot composition, editing, storytelling and the general flow. I'm always looking for ways to improve my work. Also, actors were members of the class, so no real 'actors' here, though some of us like to think so!

Enjoy-

http://www.vimeo.com/1022932

Brilliant !!

Paul.

Well, it is great for a student film. I wish I had access to equipment like this when I was starting out (we fought for time on the cuts only 3/4" bays).

The story, the acting and the editing are fine. I like the sense of mystery you created.

My only complaint would be the anachronistic elements. The highway, the heater and electrical panel. I don't know what you were dealing with but if you could have adjusted your shots, maybe you could have removed them from the scenes?

But overall, really great work!

thanks!

Well, things are always a work in progress. It's been suggested that I add short flash dissolves before and after flashbacks/character histories. Yay or nay? Is the washed out color enough already for people to tell that its a different time?

Oh, and I'm kinda lying about the "HD," I found that SD uprezzed to 720[ looks better on vimeo than the SD version. Sorry to decieve!

What else is fixable?

Yeah, a real bummer now that it's done. When I started I didn't have any real plans to take the time to make this a quality piece. I was stressed out and low on time so I was just going to kinda do it "good enough." After we got the footage though, I realized just how much I liked some of the performances and the script in general.

Highway really does take away from the whole experience, but the "saloon" location was to good to pass up (especially with a sub-$30 budget)- no way to avoid those cars though, that's a freeway in the background! We shot that scene first, and after that things like the electrical box and heater seemed kinda trivial if the highway was in the first shot. You're correct that I should have been able to frame them out however.

If I learned one thing from this production is that I guess I don't do things "good enough." I'm in it for the production no matter what. Would have liked a boom on the shoot, and an operator for that matter; also lights might have added some, also, more tripod shots; I think I did the whole thing handheld- cept for the last shot where Kit is walking away through the bodies, someone else had to do that one *wince* cause I had to play dead!

I wonder if you can blur the highway to make it less noticeable.

Shhh! Don't be apologizing for that stuff! The audio was quite adequate. Some dialog was a little lower which you can bring up but overall not bad. I did notice some camera bobble but not too bad. Having said that, if ya got sticks, use 'em! The lighting was adequate too.

I did find one fairly major problem with your script though: this website, http://www.nps.gov/gosp/ states the spike was driven on May 10, 1869, although I read somewhere else it was May 15. So I'm not sure what the actual date was.

Its good work that you should be proud of. Now you know what to look for on your next attempt!

I just uploaded this exact file to Vimeo
http://vimeo.com/1032267

Thanks for the comments guys!

Cheers

Herminio

this had such great music in it, and i really enjoyed it. Great job! so different... it was awesome!

Music profile video - UK Acoustic singer/songwriter - feedback appreciated
 

Hi Everyone,

This is a music profile video we were asked to put together for a local acoustic guitarist/songwriter. The idea was to give viewers an insight into the artist whilst showcasing the song 'Find Yourself'.

The video is to be placed on the artist's web site as well as sent out on DVD as part of a promotional pack.

So far everybody is very happy with the rough cut. We still need to run it through After Effects for proper scaling, colour grading and other tweaks/fixes.

http://www.wrenpod.net/dancrisp/preview.mov

I would love to hear any feedback if possible.

Many thanks

Alex

It's quite difficult to do this kind of thing well but this basically works.

There was a technical problem with the sound. It was breaking up or clipping badly for the first half.

I don't know who the other two musicians are. I suppose they will be captioned.

My main suggestion would be not to jump around so much. I wasn't too sure about the shots of him singing on the beach. They might have been more convincing if he had a guitar with him.

Overall my guess is that it might work even better if there was more of a central performance on which to hang the other bits. I got the impression sometimes that the film was skipping around because you were worried that the audience might get bored. If this is true I think you can have more faith in the material/performance.

There's lots of ways to do this kind of thing. I'm just finishing off five films in a similar vein right now. I've been grappling with similar issues and these comments on your film are just first reactions. Hopefully they are useful on that basis.

Thanks Richard, yes your comments are most welcome.

Strange, it plays ok when i just tested it. I will have a go from some other machines. What platform/player are you using?

Yes, I was going to do this during the AE phase. Otherwise it will all get nastily squashed when I scale it down.

I think after shooting 5 tapes you get to the stage where you think you have everything. In the end it turns out that you end up substituting shots for ones that work (i.e. correct part of song) for ones that you prefer. I kind of agree with you but I suppose that is all part of the learning curve...

The locations were pretty much chosen by the client. I was worried that people might think that we were skipping around, however reactions so far have been very positive so hopefully this is not too apparent.

Yes very useful thanks. I wouldn't have posted it here if I was afraid of anybodys comments. I shall pass all the comments back to the team involved and hopefully they will all help.

Thanks for all your comments.

Hi Alex

i just tried again and it played back fine. Must have been a glitch somewhere.

I pressgang friends into looking at rough cuts. It takes a thick skin but I'm sure the result is better because of it!

Good luck with the rest of the edit.

Spoutwood Fairie Song by Janet Spahr
 

Here is a little music video using a song written and performed by my wife that was shot in May 2008. It conveys the feeling of the Fairie Festival pretty well....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nNYXnaQg4Gs

btw, try the high quality link it really makes a difference

thanks for watching

What is that instrument she's playing? Looks like some type if inverted steel drum.

It's called a Hang (pronounced hung) and it is made by PanART.
If you go to http://hang-music.com you can find out more than you want to know.

Olympic National Park
 

See it here:

http://exposureroom.com/members/disj...1df90/?em=View

Awesome, that is a really great park!

I have to ask, even at the risk of sounding like a total newbie...are you just cropping the height of your video in post and framing accordingly when you shoot to get the super wide cinematic aspect ratio?

Looks like a nice place to visit and you captured some beautiful memories. When the wave hit the log on the beach and the camera went haywire was that planned or for real. Looked like you almost got a dunking.

Wow. Let me just say your work always inspires me. I only wish you lived closer so you could take me under your wing and teach me how to actually use this camera. I do have one okay two questions for you. First what settings do you use for your low light situations? All of your work has almost no grain that I can see. I'm about to start filming a horror movie for some people ( I know probably not your foray) and some of it is supposed to be pretty dark. When I try this even with gain turned down I get a lot of grain. Okay my other question is what sticks you use when you're out and about. I have a decent ( in my opinion) set but there fairly heavy and a pain to carry around. Just curious

Vader vs Walker
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8AbsFVVrKg

check this out

nickfilms.com
star wars fan film

May the force be up you.

XH-A1 short doc: World's Largest Soccer Game
 

This year, my university held it's 2nd World's Largest Soccer Game in tribute to our president stepping down after 20 years of service. This video was dedicated to him and all his hard work over the years.

Here is the link to the full video, estimated run time is about 18 minutes.. shot exclusively on Canon XH-A1, with a Rode NTG-1 shotgun mic. No artificial lighting was used, and it was just a one man job.

http://www.theamazinghouse.com/work/INDEX.html

It's in flash format, so I would let the video get close to finishing before you play it, otherwise it might be a little choppy while it downloads.

Feedback welcome, thanks everybody!

Christian N.

Christian,

Nice piece.

Can you tell us a little about the camera set up? Did you shoot in 60i? Did you use a custom Preset? And, what did you use to encode the footage to flash? I've been trying to get some of my footage encoded to flash but haven't been able to achieve that quality that you did..

Thanks,

Oh right, sorry. I shot all in 24p and I believe the preset I used was derived from the DVX100 look-a-like preset, I just tweaked it a little myself.

This was my first time encoding right to flash, but basically what I did was export my timeline from FCP and imported that into Sorensen Squeeze. I then set the flash settings in there, I think I set the average bitrate to about 1600 and then manually set the dimensions.

It came out a little larger (file size) than what I was hoping but it is 18 minutes, nothing really you can do about that, because I wanted to keep the quality.

I thought it was really well edited, nice flow, told the story. Only thing I would add would be some more music during some of the silent parts. It would get the viewer a little more excited about it, I think. Watch some docs and notice how they fade the music in and out when people talk. Great work.

thanks man!

i tried to choose songs, which most people will like :)

anywhere else we can view this? don't really want to have to install the new flash player right now....

http://www.vimeo.com/1050933

You may still need the Flash player although you can download the original Quicktime.

thanks. Vimeo works fine but that other site you first posted wants me to download the "latest version of Adobe Flash"

hv20 (my sample video)
 

hi everyone..this is my sample video..
shoot last week..

http://www.vimeo.com/1065930

The video is "protected" so we can't view it.

problem solved..

The Tunnel - A Short Film by Ocean Zen
 

The Tunnel - A Short Film by Ocean Zen
Hope this is the right forum to show a short. This is my final Uni project filmed with the Canon HV20, and Raynox wide angle lens (660? can't remember)

Effects and colour correction done in After Effects. Edited with Final Cut Pro

Check it out here. -
http://www.revver.com/video/910363/t...-by-ocean-zen/

or HD version with better audio here
http://www.vimeo.com/1053489

Synopsis
This short film explores the power of the mind and it's infinite ability to create our surroundings and experiences. The use of Hyper-Real Sound Design, intense music and heightened visuals take the audience on a journey from life to death, or is the whole experience a vivid hallucination?

Very good Ocean.
I especially like the camera angles on the steps.
If you're ever over the west country way then let me now,i like to work with you.

Paul.

Thanks mate :)

Motorshow 2008 @ Tallinn
 

As all sort of car shows seem to be very popular here, then here is mine covering Motorshow 2008 which took place in Tallinn, Estonia.
For some shots I used tripod and some are hand held. Regarding preset I'm in trouble because I don't remember which preset I used. Shame. I guess it was Panalook2, but not sure about that.
No any color correction in post.

http://exposureroom.com/members/vimp...5b21af364093d/