Hi folks,

please watch my new music video made for the Hungarian metal band VelvetSeal. However I had some other projects with the cam [canon hv30] before, this is my very first music video... I learned soooo much during the making of this video... I hope I can shortly use this knowledge in my next project!
Following equipments were used:
hv30
diy crane
diy dolly
Matthews m25 tripod
diy ring-light
3x500w work lights with reflectors and paper for softening
Adobe Premiere + After Effects CS3
I know the lighting could be more efficient but next time I'll spend more time and energy on lighting... light is everything..

Constructive criticism welcome!

VelvetSeal - Lend me your wings on Vimeo

Mike

amazing that you shot this on an HV30. Personally I think the low lighting works for this genre of music. If I had to be a critic I would say one thing kills this video and it's the sound of the drums, they just sound really really flat. You don't feel the snare or the bass. The guy is playing the heck of of them but you don't "feel" it. And I always keep hearing from the pro's that audio is 80% of what you see in video. But dude, great friggin job on this!!

Thank you Dave!

The honest feedbacks like yours are really important for me. They give me the proof that I'am (more or less) on the right route... :) I understand your point, I'll contact the band regarding this, it might be an encoding problem. However the camera works great in low light, at some shots it was a headache to brighten it up in post without having grain etc... I'd like to invest in a lighting system but it would be only enough for the closups and story scenes not for the whole band... so thank you again for the kind words! :)

Hi Mike,

My first impression is lots of the shots seem very static. For this type of video I would've shot mostly handheld - though I do like your crane shots.

The one shot that seems wierd to me is the extreme close up's of the singer, I'm guessing it's with an on camera light cause it looks really flat. Placing the light just to the side of the camera will give alot more depth to the picture - not as good as a full lighting setup - but a significant improvement for how little extra effort it takes.

Also the drummer doesn't match up with the music alot of the time. It's difficult when its such a hard beat to match but tighter shots could help to hide the mistakes/differences.

Overall I think you've done a great job and it looks really good, especially considering the minimal gear you had!

Hey John,

I must agree with you, I started to shot the video with almost no experience. After I watched at home what we recorded I also thought that it is a little bit static. There were parts which I couldn’t use because of the poor lighting or because the crane was not stable enough and the picture "wobbled". I'm planning to build/buy a stabilizer to have the handheld feeling. Any suggestion on this?
For the singing part I only used the homebuilt ringlight, because I liked the retina effect of it, but I guess I know what you mean: shadows would make it more 3d...right?
Syncing the whole thing (not only the drummer) was very difficult in Premiere, but its a good „trick” what you advise, I’ll definitely try it out!
thanks for the feedback and advises!

Superb job. Really effective editing and your story ideas seem very sound to me, with occasionaly humor (the pulled lip). I don't want to think how long this took or what issues you had to overcome.

Static? Well, to me at least those shots seemed like a decision and I took them as intention. You could argue that steadicam is overused and you made a conscious effort to avoid it. You could shrug and say you had two Steadicam operators working union rates, but chose not to use any of the footage....

Seriously, an amazing job with the gear you had. And hats off the the band, which did its part well I thought.

Thank you Christian!

I'm glad you liked the storyline, which was probably the biggest challenge while I was editing. I rather not tell you how long this all took... :)
You're right steadycam and 35mm adapters are overused (and their effect way overestimated) these days but still I would be very happy if I had one of these toys... But until that I'll "cook" with the parts I have even if its much harder to create good looking images. I'm a huge fan of DIY movie accessories, amazing how effective these cheap things can be. Of course I hope I can buy the real accessories some day but its exciting to create almost the same looks with the stuffs you can buy in a home depot. Am I right? :)