http://zed.cbc.ca/go?POS=2&CONTENT_ID=241453&c=contentPage&FILTER_KEY=100192

Joan, a materialistic young woman, gets more than she bargained for when she unwraps her brand new cellphone.

http://www.theflux.tv/ seems pretty nice, but a warning on that first film, not for the faint hearted.

Man, that just worked well. It was almost like there was meaning behind it.. like... "The guys go out and drink good beer and be guys"

The music though was what really made it interesting. You didn't by any chance make that music did you?

Also, the XL2 performed well (as it always does) and, like the above post, I just sorta liked it. I really did.

40th trip video, thought I could use some criticism from someone beside fishermen. This is the introduction for the soon to be filmed (trip is next week) Panama, Pinas Bay.

Anything thoughts for improvement are welcome.

Jim

http://bellsouthpwp.net/j/m/jmmnt/pinas.mov

Looks pretty good. It is hard to give is a decent review because the PIPs are to small to really see very good. But I am sure your audience will be reved up and ready to see this video, so the action and audio are probably going to do their job, which is to get them even more excited. Right?

Love to see it but...

"Access Denied. Bandwidth limit exceeded"

I can´t...

I liked the visuals. The audio clip does not scream intro to me though. It seemed too even and did not have an 'ending'.

I didn't understand what was going on.

It is finished! Well, as much as any project like this can ever be finished. This was my first attempt. I had a lot of questions during production and a lot of you gave me some very good answers and advice. Thank you.

Our first festival entry is Crested Butte Reel Fest. I haven't heard yet whether we have been accepted.

I don't have the 31 minute short on the web yet, but I do have a web site containing the trailer and a lot of production pictures and still frames.

If I may advertise the web site, it is.....


EquinoxWorldPictures.com


I hope you like what you see and provide me your comments.

Thanks again for all your help,

Douglas

I thought the footage looked interesting, but the narration in the trailer put me off. Maybe you could edit it to build suspense and hook the viewer in trying to guess what's about to happen.

Also, decrease the shot length - we don't need to see much of each scene, just take a peek to arouse curiosity.

Of course, all just my opinion. I'm just finishing my first short, so I know how hard it can be...

Thank you, Dave. Good advice. Now I'll see if I can put my limited knowledge to the task.

Good luck with yours.

Regards,

Douglas

Hi,

Here is a small production I put together. It originally started of as an exercise in DOP and camera settings, but in the end the material was good enough to make into something a little extra. So here are the fruits of my labour! Hope you enjoy, and any feedback more than welcome....

On a technical side.... it was shot on s GS400 in 16x9 Interlace; Manual Mode for everything; In post I converted it to 25P. I wanted to see if there was any noticable difference shooting between 25P Frame Mode and doing 50i->25P. In the end, I have come to the conclusion, I actually prefer the look and quality of 25P Frame Mode.

The whole movie was shot in 3hrs on a Sunday morning here in Sydney. My partner Ella plays girl driver in the movie, which I have to thank her for. There were no on-camera filters used apart from a standard UV filter to protect the lens.

Well, you can download two versions... a full resolution / high quality MPEG2, or a smaller WMV version.

1. http://www.robertrobertproductions.com/media/drop off.mpg (MPEG 2 -138MB)
2. http://www.robertrobertproductions.com/media/drop off.wmv (WMV - 38MB)

Enjoy

Robert

very nice short. What was doepped off? Money or what? I did not get that part... otherwise nice edit and focus rolls and all.

Hi Robert,

I liked it. The best thing I can say about it is that the piece drew me in. I really want to know what was in the box ..... or was it just a decoy to get the girl to go somewhere out of the way to blow her and the car up?

As well as that your camera work and editing were great. And your choice of music good as well - I especially liked the heartbeat ... I felt quite nervous watching and waiting .... A little more handheld footage may have added to the tension.

The explosion was the only part that suspended my 'belief' - not a bad effort though :) What did you use to create the explosion?

Good work, and thanks for posting it.

Matthew.

Thanks Matt / Dan.....

Good question what was dropped off :-).... I think that will always remain a bit of a mystery.... But if I had my way it would be some of the clothes that my partner owns... she has way too much !

The explosion was done in AE, using a few layers, and some explosion footage....

Thanks

Rob

tahnk you, well done! Keep it up!

I finally set up my website with my first ever film.
The trailer still needs some tweaking, but it's nearly there.
You can watch it at:

www.theheadlesspuppy.com

Any comments on the website or the trailer very much apprecciated!

I finally set up my website with my first ever film.
The trailer still needs some tweaking, but it's nearly there.
You can watch it at:

www.theheadlesspuppy.com

Any comments on the website or the trailer very much apprecciated!

I think a comment on the site would be, that it would be a lot more fun if you had some more behind the screen pictures or something. That's maybe personal, but I mostly like to watch those. So if you have them, it would be cool if you put them up.

Which cam did you shoot with?

Comment on the trailer: some very atmospheric cinematography. I think it's only a shame that you only use music and no sound or dialog. Maybe try that once?

I liked the second music part, but the first one ruined a little bit the mood, maybe.

That said: all rest looked fine to me, looks interesting!
Keep up the good work!

About 7 Mb, so it takes a little while to dl.

http://www.tidepoolproductions.com/nixon.mov

Used 2 500w work lights to light the green screen, 75w clamp lamp for the keylight, XL2, wide angle lens, medium shotgun mike, Googled WH image, "Hail to the Chief.aiff", FCP 4, PowerMac, Quicktime's 264 codec. Has lighting, sound, writing, visual effects issues but fun nevertheless. Concept to final cut = 2.5 hrs.

Wasn't sure which forum these would belong in, but this one seemed as good as any. I decided to upres a shot from my old XM1 and compare it to an up converted shot from my pdw510. I was mainly doing this for my own interest because I have been hired to shoot a fire safety information film that will be digitally projected before films at a local cinema, but thought people here might like to see the results.

The first is an XM1 shot from The Silencer originally shot in frame mode and converted to 1080p. I wanted to compare the noise and sharpness with the new camera so I upconverted it to the highest HD resolution to really push it.
http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/tests/upres_XM1_1080p.png

The second is a shot from the pdw-510p of a similar style of shot to the one from the XM1. This one was shot in 25 frame progressive, again upconverted to 1080p.
http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/tests/upres_pdw510p_1080p.png

Lastly two shots from the 510 converted to 1280x720p. This I feel is a sensible resolution to upconvert to, and in actual fact isn't that much larger a frame than anamorphic PAL.
http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/tests/upres_pdw510p_720p.png

Lastly a medium wide shot.
http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/tests/upres_pdw510p_720p_mediumwide.png

From these tests I think upconversions to 720p are perfectly viable as long as the camera sharpness is set up decently (ie no edge enhancement) and does not suffer from any noise. Further things can be made more successful by keeping the shots to medium wides, and close ups of various degrees.

If anyone here can output any of these to a HD TV of some kind I would be interested in hearing what they look like.

Incidentally they were straight upconversions using Vegas 5. Further improvements could be made by using both Algoliths edge mosquito noise filter and then upconverting using the Algolith upconversion software.

www.rch-e.com/temp/Neighborhood.mov

Experimental video for contest. I don't know if I should have a voice over with an internal monologue going or not. I think the video kinda works for itself. Let me know what you think.

PV-DV953 16x9
1/60 Normal
Magic Bullet Suite

My first thought would be a dialog of what it's like growing older and into a father... Something like that... Very nice pacing...

Hey all:

Well we competed in the Washington DC bracket of the 48 hour film festival about a month ago and ended up getting in the top 14 films or "best of" spot meaning we'll be on the area's DVD but won no other specific awards. We learned a lot about who enters the contest as our preminitions were incorrect:

Our average age was ~23 and we thought there'd be a lot of people like us entering. Among the Best Of screening, we were the only team to have this be their first time competing, we were the youngest team by far and we had the smallest budget. One team even shot their short on a Panasonic SDX, most had professional actors, sets and studios and so on, some were joint production company entries so it was a bit of a let down to see what we were competing against but regardless of the rankings, we were happy with our little film, glad people could see it and excited to be included with such larger budget company.

Production Info:
DVX100a, Audio Technica AT897 Boom Mic
One China Lantern from Target and 200 watt bulb plus dimmer for lighting
FCP HD on Mac MINI with Maxtor 300 gig external HD :: edited from Sunday 1am until Sunday 1pm straight

Our crew was 4 of us from here in Raleigh, NC who have worked on many short films before and then we met 3 friends who signed us up for the contest who live in DC who have never worked on a film before and then a friend of mine lives near by Raleigh who composed the score based on what I told him our feel we were going for was.

Anyways, it's an extremely dry comedy (ala BottleRocket, Rushmore, anything Wes Anderson pretty much). Hope you guys enjoy!

http://www.definingfilms.com/48hourfilm.htm

About 7 Mb, so it takes a little while to dl.

http://www.tidepoolproductions.com/nixon.mov

Used 2 500w work lights to light the green screen, 75w clamp lamp for the keylight, XL2, wide angle lens, medium shotgun mike, Googled WH image, "Hail to the Chief.aiff", FCP 4, PowerMac, Quicktime's 264 codec. Has lighting, sound, writing, visual effects issues but fun nevertheless. Concept to final cut = 2.5 hrs.

Well, I've had cross-plarform encoding issues. Might be back up in a few days. Encoding Quicktime for the web delivery is tricky stuff.

Well, I've had cross-plarform encoding issues. Might be back up in a few days. Encoding Quicktime for the web delivery is tricky stuff.

Well, got my bs little satire up. The content is completely absurd, so I consider it apolitical. Used Sorenson Compression, 15 fps.

38 views, anyone? Love, hate, don't care?

Shot with a Panasonic DVC30 in 60i, edited in FCX, graphics in PS Elements.
The song is "Any way you want it" by Journey, but the band playing it is "Rise Against"

Sorry about the compression during the intro, I tried several different variations of settings, but nothing cam out very good.

http://homepage.mac.com/bbm20/.Movies/v-ball.mov

Tell me what y'all think?

I liked the story line, some of the shots were really shaky, i dont know if you were going for that look, but it didnt seem like it was neccessary for the story at least. I thought the acting was very sincere. The writing was also sincere. Good work.

Has anyone seen this PDX10 made production and what did they think about it? I laughed my head off! I love it!

Check out www.anewbreedcinema.com and find a place to showcase your work and generate revenue at the same time.

__________________________________________________________________________________________
www.crcpictures.com

i thought it was pretty cool. makes me want a dvx 100a even more now.

Vegas is pretty good to do these kind of conversions, and I agree, uprezzing
can look pretty good most of the time. SD has a lot more resolution than a
lot of people credit it for, especially with a good camera.

Just want to thank all the people at the dv info boards for their help during the making of my first film. The preview is up at my website www.prospectmovie.com if anyone wants to check it out. It features a bunch of major league baseball players and coaches and was completly shot with the XL2. It's starting to pick up steam in the baseball community and looks to be a succesful project.

I used these boards for guidance on issues ranging from what camera to purchase to multiple editing questions. It's been fantastic.

Rick
www.prospectmovie.com

I forgot to add that I got my camera from brian at Zotz digital...who I found on these boards. From my experiences working with zotz, I wouldn't go anywhere else.

Rick

I like it.. insightful, compelling... and the little subtle transistions are good, with good text animations.. short and to the point... may i suggest crushing the blacks a little bit, to give some enigmatic stimulation to the subconscience brain?

I would watch this movie..

cassidy

www.motivitypictures.com

Our short "After Twilight" was selected by the Texas Film Commision to be part of the Texas Filmmakers Showcase. It will screen as an evening of Texas Films at Raleigh Studios, The Chaplin Theatre on June 12th. It's pretty much an invitation only event, The Film Commision uses it as a showcase to industry professionals to illustrate the caliber of crews and locations available in Texas. We're the only Houston based film showing.

"After Twilight" took a Gold award at Worldfest Houston International Film Festival last month, and continues to make the festival rounds. We just finished up a feature length version of the script, and we're shopping it to a couple of distributors now.

www.nu-classicfilms.com has info and a trailer.

I'll be in LA that weekend to smooze and see it projected in a nice theatre.

Hunter S. Thompson is on a field trip to Heaven and is bringing Tricky Dick down to the depths of hell.

Thanks for the comments, Mathieu.

I don't have that many production 'behind the scenes' photos or footage, but I'll try to gather something and add it to the site. Good idea.

The reason for no sound in the trailer is that I still have quite a few things to do, so I haven't had the time to refine it.

The whole short was done with a GL2. When the trailer is playing, you can actually see a small GL2 icon at the top-right corner of the web browser.

Anyone else with more positive/negative comments welcome!

I've uploaded a new cut used on my demo DVD which has version of various footage shot indoor and outdoor from a project I worked on towards the end of last year.

Shot with mixed nikon and Arri lenses, 1k's mostly used and ND for outdoors.

www.starcentral.ca/images/bb/bb.htm

Feedback welcome..

Was that shot on DV or 16mm?

2- Hey, I happen to know Igor (credited as cinematographer on your webpage) and did some color grading for his demo reel.

I saw some of that footage earlier (different shots some of them) on his reel and I though it was 16mm.

Hey Glenn,

It was shot on DV using my XL2 and mini35 adapter... thus the depth of field we were able to achieve on this project.

Glad to hear you know Igor and that you thought it was shot in film. The footage did need quite a bit of color correction and grading, what tools do you prefer using for that? I've found Color Finese to be pretty good for After Effects.

Igor and I might be working together on something new shortly.. hope to have more footage to post soon.

I prefer using Vegas 6. Why I like it:
-Very powerful (as in lots of tools), although it doesn't do everything.
-Controls are responsive. Double click a slider, it resets. Move a slider, things update on the fly (as opposed to Final Cut, where this doesn't happen).
-OK still/reference store.
-Firewire preview, has big vectorscopes + histogram.
-Reasonably fast. Very fast compared to Magic Bullet Editors. Some operations like bezier masking and blurs and chroma blur are slow, which affects responsiveness too.
-I'm very comfortable with the interface and it doesn't take that much button pushing to do things.
-Filter heirarchy (can apply filter at various levels), and takes system.

What I don't like:
-Speed (Ideally there's be a system out there that's faster. I don't think there's anything significantly faster.)
-No luminance curves like Combustion does.
-No motion tracking which you can tie into masks. (Never figured this out in After Effects. Yet?)
-No 32-bit float rendering. You just have to be careful as to filter order.
-No good built-in noise reduction tools, although you can use Mike Crash's filters. DNR and Smart Smoother
-Conforming tools- never tried AAF import, although apparently there are bugs?
-Learning curve / things that aren't obvious (i.e. 7.5IRE setup in the scopes, how not to make illegal colors [especially on dissolve to black], which filters are stupid, etc.)
-No luminance composite mode.
-Reference store could store more stuff.
-There needs to be shortcuts for specific commands to speed up workflow.
-No color matching tools, although I wouldn't know what to use em for.

I tried Color Finesse + After Effects. I didn't get into it, but I am more comfortable with Vegas so I like that better. What I didn't like about Color Finesse / AE:
-You have to wait for the interface to load up. On my system, it's buggy.
-Things aren't big... i.e. the curves window, and the histogram. It hard to see things precisely.
-I don't get the secondary color corrector. It seems to be limited compared to Vegas'
-Lacking some tools in Vegas: Noise reduction, gradient map to add duo/tritone (although secondaries can do this??; I don't get them, so I don't know how I'd use em)

2- I'm not really sure what film looks like. Probably why I was under the impression it was film:
-Igor was talking about how some of the stuff on his reel was shot on film.
-It didn't look like video.

I think it could look better (i.e. camera likely could've been steadier if you had a steadicam), but you don't have a Hollywood budget.

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/onceuponajedi/
I have my own opinons on it. I think it's a really solid little short. It kept me entertained.
What do you think of it?

Shot on Sony's Cinealta HD900.

Rick, I'm in the middle coaching a team now, and have been coaching at the junior-senior level for several years now, so this struck more of a baseball reaction, instead of an analytical reaction from me.

Your preview looked great, and I've passed your link on to other coaches in our league...Although your video focuses on what it takes to get to the next, ultimate level in baseball, it would not surprise me if its lessons would apply to all other levels of life, whether in basketball, tennis, golf, or the business world.
We've found in business(I run a large division of a very large company) that those who have succeeded in getting to the "next level" in sports, especially team sports, usually are very successful later on in life. It's just that most kids and young adults who have the talent, don't know what it takes to get there.

Best of luck.

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here, but I wanted some constructive feedback from you guys so I decided to put my latest short online.

www.noneedforalarm.cjb.net

My friend and I rushed to make this film in 6 days and barely made the deadline for the UCLA Shorttakes Film Festival (we're freshman at UCLA) so the quality is not the greatest and I know it doesn't match up to the other work found on this board, but I'm just looking for some feedback so I can get better and learn from my mistakes. Thanks so much for all your help, I really appreciate it!

- Chris Yi

Hi, just if somebody want to see 2min. test footage XL2, converted to .flv
1000Kbps, 25fps

(Note: if your connection speed is slover, press pause button and wait responding time to buffer the video...)



http://www.demagotheatre.org/eyetea/

I'm not sure what others might think of this, but I found it interesting. Great job Chris! The concept of this short was easy to follow and the story captured my attention. The quality of the video was good too (same goes for the editing), what camcorder did you use and what software did you use to edit(adobe,vegas,magic bullet,etc.)?

Very nice! What camera? What did you use to light the night dorm room scenes?

The much anticipated final chapter in the "Bad Cat" series is now available for download at http://loudorangecat.com

"The meow stops here."

4 minutes, 13 seconds.

It streamed fine for me, but I also tend to make my "personal" streaming video for high bandwidth users only. Business applications are another story.

Maybe one or two very slight pauses viewing your test at that rate, on our end anyway.

As a side note... I love the look of just about anything from the XL2, it's my #1 favorite SD/DV camera.