Colin, thank you!
It's a Moscow Symphony Orchestra "Russian Filarmony"
Conducted by Maxim Fedotov.
It was recorded in about 1.5 hours in I think 5 takes!

anyone? haha anything would be greatttt

I agree about getting a tighter shot with the HV20. I would also try to match the colors in post, the blacks on the HV20 weren't as deep as your other cam. Other than that, looks and sounds great.
Why didn't you upload in HD?

I watched it, from your own description it sounds like you pretty much nailed the problems....I can't understand why the tripod was shaking...Was there a PA monitor somewhere around the tripod...I've down a couple of live bands that were louder than these guys with no tripod shake. Lighting wasn't too bad, rarely are you going to get a well lit band. Overall it was OK. Could have bit tighter editing and perhaps some more interesting camera angles.

The band did not feel very energetic or even really committed to their music, this was my main difficulty with the piece.

finally some responses! Thank you both Lou and Chris for responding. I don't think a monitor was by the tripod but its very possible that i just didn't see it. The place I had the camera in the back was the only place it was allowed to be. They were pretty strict about where I was setting stuff up. I was planning on moving around a lot up on and around the stage but I sprained my ankle pretty badly 2 days before the shoot so I was pretty much standing in one spot. Next time I will definitely try to get some more angles because it definitely seemed boring and repetitive. Maybe this is a stupid question but what do you mean "Could have a bit tighter editing?"

Chris, I actually didn't end up shooting in HD. I probably should have but they just wanted to post these to youtube anyways. No dvd or anything. It just seemed easier/faster to do it in SD.

Not bad for a 2nd attempt at a live band. I agree that you really need a stable location for the wide cam and a slightly tighter shot would have been good. Did you have a nice heavy tripod? I think the weight would have added stability if so.

I liked the shot you tried out at the end with the light behind the guitarist. If you would have had some more of those shots to use throughout the piece it could have added some emotion that was lacking from the performance.

Might be a good idea to add a pre-recorded track over it, but you will have to do something about making it seem like the performance is live. Losing the natural room sound will hurt it's credibility as an event. Well you can always add another track for that.

Cheers, and keep shooting!

400 Flat Trailer
 

Hi there. Just finnished my short film, its shot completely on costarrican beaches and countryside, you should check it out, tell me what you think

youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8uC9Sy6NkFQ

high quality:
http://www.carambafilms.com/trailereng.mov

thanx

-Fede Lang

Since Stage6 is kaput, here's the video on Vimeo in 720p

http://www.vimeo.com/729626

Also I worked on one with my brother, here's the full 1 minute version

http://www.vimeo.com/738311

velvet revolver music video.
 

a video i did for velvet revolver contest.
check it out.
thanks

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fusea...deoid=29827169

or you tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIs7RvFvtgI

An Experimental Horror Film
 

An experimental film that focuses on pacing more than visual quality. This film had virtually no budget, and compared to other no-budget films I've done, I don't think the camera angles are as good, but the pacing may be better. Any comments?

http://www.vimeo.com/764061

I like the moon zoom thing at both ends. It would be good to steady that somehow, the wiggle detracts from the effect. Maybe zoom into it, pause then pan down to the actors as the dialouge fades in as if they are entering form the left. Zooming out at the end then fading out as the credits fade in would be cool too.
The dialouge i think didn't work so well. It's hard to come up wth natural sounding script that doesn't come off as improv sounding.
Faked the stabbing well. Believeable and scary.
Keep up the good work.

The WW's serious tone and attitude regarding something so absurd as cheetos.... was hilarious. But yeah, when he went off later could have been a bit shorter. Less is more kind of thing.
very nice production.

I watched part of it, music wasn't my speed, but it looked good.
Cheers!

I liked it a lot. I'm not familiar with the sgpro, but I'm just now starting to look into all that stuff for the first time. Where can I find more info on it? Was this the DVX100, a, or b? I liked this a lot. It had a sad feeling of 'goodbye' to it.

PJ, Your footage looks great. I'd like to know more about the film. What did you shoot it on? What was your budget? What did you edit it on, etc.

Nice video, how did you do the effect at the end? What did you shoot it on?

Babelgum.com Online Film Festival
 

Hello Everybody. I just wanted to inform everyone that our short film EYE FOR AN EYE was accepted and is currently competing for the Babelgum.com Online Film Festival - Looking For Genius Award. Please check it out and vote for it. The direct link to the film's website is - http://www.babelgum.com/html/clip.php?clipId=112672. What you need to do is download the player, install it, then register to watch the films. You can always type EYE FOR AN EYE in the search tab as well to find out film. When you pull up the media player and the play the film, move the cursor over to the right to rate it. Five stars is the highest, and that rating would be most appreciated.

The film was shot with a Canon HV20 with a budget of $27, please forgive the compression. I sent them the film in 720P, but they heavily compressed it for online streaming. The actual film looks much better in HD or even on DVD. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

HD greenscreen interviews for local non-profit
 

Hey Guys:

I've been very busy shooting and editing this spring, but wanted to show my latest work. I was contracted by a local non-profit, the Boulder County YWCA, to produce five short videos for their Hall of Fame Awards that were presented last night.

Here's the quarter-rez vids in Flash: http://www.browncowvideo.com/YWCA/videos.html I'll try to get some HD ones up on Viemo soon.

I hired a guy to assist me with a second cam in the shoot. He has the Sony V1U and I have the Canon A1. We captured in 1080/30p and I did the rough edits in PremierePro CS3 at 1280x720 then brought the footage into After Effects for keying with Keylight and adding various effects. I made the opening/closing curtain sequences with the Fractal Noise effect.

I shot the five background plates at the historical Chautauqua Park up against Boulder's famous Flatirons formation. My favorite one is the Dining Hall with the flag-waving and leaves rustling. Plates were blurred appropriately with Fast Blur to mimic 35mm film DOF.

Here's some full-def screen grabs:
http://www.browncowvideo.com/YWCA/fernwide.jpg
http://www.browncowvideo.com/YWCA/ferncu.jpg

I presented the videos last night on my Optoma 720p projector to about 500 people at the annual fundraiser/awards banquet. Files were 1280x720 10Mbps WMVs and looked pretty darn good on a 12' screen. The videos were very well-received and likely landed me more work.

A HD multi-cam greenscreen shoot is sure not something I want to do every project, as it's a major workflow challenge and ties up a lot in rendering time, but I'm very happy with the results.

Enjoy,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

2nd trailer now on our page...
 

2 trailers and the first of many video blogs on our myspace now..

Would love you opinions...

http://www.myspace.com/shootthedjfilm

Cheers

Sean

Hello, thanks for the feedback guys, now to answer the questions. I shot it on a canon xl2. I'm not much of an effect guy.. but here's how I did it. I shot them all with her in the frame, then she leaves the frame. So I cut out the part where she leaves... and I told the rest to stay still. and then I added a simple transition.

Hi Sean,
Firstly, kudos for what looks like an interesting & well-made film.As far as the trailers are concerned, the second is much stronger than the first.The VO helped set the story up so the clips had some coherence that the first one lacked; I had no idea what the piece was about after watching the first one.

My only qualm would be the sound loop played throughout.It's a good beat but over-used & becomes repetitious It flattened the build of the story, IMO , rather than piquing interest as the crux of the matter, the scam of this pseudo-gear, got the plot ball really rolling.

In fact ,the only break I can recall in the beat came during the "cooking " segment.Not really the place I'd have used a orchestral strings ambient sound.
I'd try a variety of rhythms and emotive tones to more accurately reflect the texture of the flick which seemed to me to be less a Michael Bay thrill-ride than a character-driven caper/thriller parable laced with humor.

Also , finish with a flourish that will stay with the viewer, either visual or aural.Can be a stunning crescendo, a bit of humor, or a tantalizing cliffhanger.For eg, you started with that shot of the record playing.Maybe the cut to black should be on the sound fx of a gunshot/scream/"oh f**k" then the ambient soundtrack( which has built up to a climax in rhythm ,tone, and volume) ends abruptly with the needle screeching across the record followed by a quiet scritch-click-scritch-click as the turntable keeps spinning ...fade to silence......

Ok, maybe that's a little trite but I think the points of using music more judiciously to structure the trailer like a mini-short with a set-up,crisis, and cliffhanger are valid.Your film doesn't look monotonous but the trailer sounded that way.

thanks for sharing, they look great.

The only thing I felt like commenting on, is I'm not sure I'd have included their knees, unless you were trying to look as if they were sitting on a fence in the backdrop location?

Thanks for the kudos, Chris.

Very good point about the knees. I wouldn't have thought about it that way, but now that you mention it... makes perfect sense. I'll crop 'em tighter next time.

Cheers,
Brian

Shooting your own "Stock Footage"
 

I am finding myself wanting to shoot scenes and such when I see them, even when I am not currently on a project. A perfiectly clear night as a crescent moon comes up through some winter trees. Sunset against snowy mountains, night time city traffic, stuff like that.
My "eye" is starting to notice them I guess now that I am staring to work with this stuff in the early stages of my hobby.
Do others tend to gather their own stock footage this way, as they see it, or would it be to hard to match look and feel of clips aquired out of context?
Just wondering what others do.

Nice Job.

I'm sure the client was thrilled.

doing justice to the music
 

I used part of this adagio in an AWOL comp and felt I didn't do justice to the piece - here is the full adagio, I still don't feel I have the images right so any comments would be appreciated

http://www.vimeo.com/770701

I just noticed an encoding error - there's a green line at the top and the image has some sort of flicker or jump - I'm sure what's doing that

At the Gym
 

Some friends who are gymnasts and parkour specialists invited me along to the gym, and I took my camera with me.

I wanted to test the slow-motion feature in the camera, as well as practice frame composition (with fixed and moving position), shooting angles. To see if I could make it look interesting and dynamic.

I took the footage, which was recorded on a combination of the HDR and tape, and then edited it together with some music. The guys featured loved it.

I thought it was ok. Nothing jaw dropping, just average. But then it is only the 2nd time the camera has been used. And the cameraman is still learning. The film is simple, short and a chance to practice :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJV9qNjsQjw

I am still working out the whole "compression" minefield, hence why the footage doesnt look as good as it should.

And yes, Im guilty of overusing the slow motion a la Matrix effect. In fight scenes its overused. With gymnasts, I think its different. Feel free to correct me if you think Im wrong.

I will be getting a 35mm adaptor soon, so will shoot some more with the guys soon.

I would welcome your comments on composition, music choice, editing, thoughts on overall improvement.

Thanks in advance

N

Here's me three cents:

1) The slow motion worked well and I enjoyed that.

2) I got tired of the same low angle shot every time. You need to break it up, choose a bigger variety of shots.

3) The Matrix music (Spybreak-Propellerhead?) is so overdone.

Not bad, very smooth. The low angles do get repetitive, just cut it down a little maybe?? I know you probably do not have a device to do this but some higher shots mixed in fading to low angles as like one fluid motion would be very very impressive. Anyway what program did you work with to edit your footage? What camera? Very nicely done...

First Short Documentary
 

Filmed on the Canon HV20

http://www.vimeo.com/user278515/videos

Makers is a short subject documentary, filmed at Austin's Maker Faire, 2007, about the people behind the do-it-yourself counterculture and their inventions.

You'll see a life-sized MouseTrap game, a live performance of the EepyBird Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments, and some amazing footage of inventions of all shapes and sizes - some of them going wrong in unpredictable and dangerous ways. Featuring Adam Savage

Makers is the first project of Blogphilo New Media. All subjects are filmed with full permission.

Short Demo Reel
 

Threw this together this weekend. Tightened it up some last night.

Reel

Thought I'd share since I haven't posted any of my work on here before, I like to do a lot of work with non-profits etc... around my area because while it doesn't pay as much I feel like I'm contributing and making a difference. This usually means less money, but money isn't everything ( though it sure helps buy those cool new toys ), and I do for profit as well, I just have an affinity and nice discount program set up for for NPO's that folks around here know about.

I'm prolly not gonna post a lot, so enjoy what you can get :)

Great reel!

Some of the shots were really creative! There's a lot of post production in there (perhaps trending a little bit toward too much, for my taste) but still within the realm of reason, and obviously suitable for your clients.

Suggestions:

- Your photography, editing, and compositing are very good. WTF happened with the titling in your demo reel? It's a plain font with a cheesy LiveType built-in effect on it. The font is bad, the effect, is bad, and it takes away from the great work that is your photography and your editing. First, ask yourself if anyone who watches your shooting/editing demo reel is going to wonder if it is your shooting and editing demo reel. Obviously they got it from somewhere (you, your website, your post) that was referencing what it was... do you really need this text at all?

One of the things I evaluate photographer/editors on is audio... and you didn't have any. I'd appreciate (perhaps on a separate reel) a look at 10 second snips of finished programs, with the full audio mix in there.

Other than that... looked great!

Top This -Heinz 57 commercial
 

Hey guys how's it going? We shot these commercials using the Canon XH-AL. Take a look at them when you get a chance and let me know what you think.

thx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM2nSJqyyNA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8m_nGG6QOo

great job on both, the export on the first on is sized wrong, it looks like it should be 16x9. Great comedic timing on the second, the ending could have a little more punch on the first.

Thanks for the comments Dylan & Nathan,

See what you mean about the low angle stuff, and the music.

I used Premiere CS3 to edit it together

Camera is a v1e, with HDR-60 hard drive recorder. The slow-mo only works to tape. :)

I will be going to the gym again soon, so expect to see another one at some point.

Was editing together computer game footage last night. Hardly worthy of showing here to be honest. It all looks the same, only thing that changes is the camera view.

'Some work' reel
 

Tell me what you think,
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2X0YNe5SQ


thx!

Big Bad Wolves - Short Film Online
 

BIG BAD WOLVES

A mash-up between Quentin Tarantino and The Brothers Grimm, fairy-tales will never be the same again....

This is probably old news to some, but I just wanted to let everyone know that after two years of doing the festival circuits and television airplay, my 13-minute long, award-winning, short film entitled "BIG BAD WOLVES" is officially online!

"BIG BAD WOLVES" depicts a conversation between five mobsters, passing the time drinking and smoking in a restaurant, which slowly leads to one of the gangsters suggesting that the story of Little Red Riding Hood is actually about the importance of sex education (in the same way Quentin Tarantino's character in "Reservoir Dogs" suggests that the Madonna song "Like a Virgin" is about a particularly violent sexual encounter). The other mobsters think he's out of his mind, so the narrating mobster begins to re-tell the story as he believes it originally existed, before it was "censored" and "cleansed" for young children. What follows is a dark journey into the mythology, fantasy and the heart of the human psyche, where pure evil lurks and waits to rob us all of our innocence.

"BIG BAD WOLVES" is a hilarious and disturbing experience that will have you alternating between laugh-out-loud comedy and thought-provoking questions on morality and the fabrics of our own society.

"BIG BAD WOLVES" was the director, Rajneel Singhs second directing project, after directing "The Fanimatrix: Run Program" (watch it) in 2003.

DOP was Marc Mateo, Production Designer was Annamarie Connors, original story by Chris Kerr, Script by Rajneel Singh.
Produced by Craig Parkes (co producers Rajneel Singh and Annamarie Connors)

The film was shot in 2005 and released to festivals in 2006. It costed approximately $10,000US and was shot on Mini-DV format on the Sony DSR-300s series. It was shot entirely on location in Auckland, New Zealand. Among its prominent awards were nabbing the "BEST DIRECTOR" award at the Ohakune Big Mountain Film Festival in 2006 and "MOST PROMISING FILMMAKER" at the Rotorua Magma Film Festival hosted by Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett), Jay Laga'ia (Captain Typho) and Cliff Curtis ("Sunshine", "Three Kings", "10,000 BC" and "Die Hard 4").

This movie has been rated in New Zealand as R16 - contains excessive offensive language, horror violence and brief nudity. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

WATCH THE TRAILER:

Low Resolution (YouTube)

WATCH THE FILM:


High Resolution (Vimeo - streaming and downloadable DIVX version)

thanks for the feedback, I have had a couple other responses suggesting some of the live audio in there as well, I may augment my reel to allow that however, I am currently offering this on a DVD which then has a full project that I've done as well. I'll look at taking out the text during the video, but do you have any font suggestions that would not be so... crap? thanks again for the input.

Dave

Just got word that we won the contest.

Nice job!! What did you win?