I would love to hear some feedback and criticism about my short for dvc3. It took a few days to come up with the idea, and after a few scraps. We had what we want. I filmed with a Panasonic PV-GS150 with my homemade 35mm adapter. It was my first with the adapter, and I must say, filming upside-down is no easy task!
Looking forward to see what everyone has to say.

Sincerely,
Jeff Tyler

My favorite so far - inventive story with nice beginning, middle and end, creative effects, and elements (visual, cast, music) blended well.

Great job.

Jeff,

Great still image special effects. Especially looking at the coke being poured. How'd you do this? I can overlay video over a still image with a green screen, but elbows on the table? Face behind the coke stream? This effect is beyond my limited abilities.

Dick

OK, I give too. Very impressive effect. You have to do a web page or at least spill your secret here.

Well done.

Sean

Jeff!

You have a great film here and I, like the others am very curious how you did your special effects.

Care to comment?

Great job!

Thanks for the feedback. What I did to create the effect, was I first filmed the shot of the one actor pouring the soda. I kept the camera on a tripod. I then had my friend who is using the camera come in and focus on a point above the table where the soda was being poured. I then did frame by frame masking in after effects. I realized then that the focus what be a bit wierd, so I crossfaded the soda blur so it would look like I was rack focusing the camera.

Brilliant!

So it was a matte. Not bad. And since it was a still frame and you had no motion in the foreground shot, that make sense, and looked pretty good.

Not knowing AE, can you do a soft edge on the matte?

Looks good on the small screen. How did it look on the monitors/televisions?

I am working on a DVD compilation of all the videos and will be asking for full rez versions to make the DVD from so be prepared.

Sean

Great job. Good story. Your visual f/x were great. Having to do that masking by hand is very teadious and is much appreaciated. Overall great job.

It looks good on the big screen (my tv). The mask is very detailed and is pretty much flawless AFAIK. Thanks for the feedback.

EDIT- and yes you can do a soft matte(feathering) in AE.

i'm not sure what is more interesting, the video itself or listening to you describe the special effects story-behind-the-story. fascinating! inspiring! and a great little video, too.

That was fantastic and creative. Great job.

It's got such a beautiful dreamy quality to the pictures. It was a great to watch first thing in the morning to lift the spirits. Nice job!

great special effects...i was expecting an hp printer at the end though...solid job, well done

...i was expecting an hp printer at the end though...

That's it! LOL. I couldn't put my finger on it, but leave it to you, Robert. :) I happen to really like good and innovative television ads so the fact that this reminded me of one just a little is a plus, in my mind. I thought it was delightful!

As Elvis said, (I can't get the page to open on yours, Elvis!) the overall sunshiny color and tone made me feel good.

Thank you so much for sharing what you can do with us, Jeff. You did a wonderful job.

Jeff,

I was impressed with the light, up-beat look of your short. The mattes were very well done, and the concept, although simple, was very well laid out.

I really liked it - It's a true pleasure to watch.

Hugo

Awesome effects! Really simple story that works.

Hi Jeff,
This was very very cool, and very well done. You are extremely clever in the way you pulled off the special fx, I watched it a couple of times and then frame-by-frame to try and pick it apart and study your technique.

I also liked the way you used the colors, and the way you softened the image a bit - at first fram, it reminded slightly of a Mentos commercial - but then it got very cool.

Great job. I loved it.
-Jon

I've just had the opportunity to begin watching the shorts from yesterday. Your movie kept my interest through the end! I loved the old, yellowish film look and of course your VFX. How much time did it take you to do the frame by frame matte in AE?

When the picture taker was trying to snap a shot of the guy on the bike, and having difficulty so he pressed the release several times, I thought you might pan back and see multiple, stepped, freeze-framed images of the guy on the bike.

You mentioned something in a different post about your friend's piano playing and how you where a little disappointed. If I had not remembered your comments in that pst, I would have felt the music was intended to seem somewhat choppy to accentuate the mode in your movie.

Overall, good job!

Thanks. The frame by frame matte took about one hour total. The shots that required it weren't very long, although I did have to come back and correct some off the masks after my friend pointed some problems out to me.

You're just lucky you weren't masking it the other way. You got to cut a hole in a frozen image. In fact, as a shortcut, you might have been able to export a frame to Photoshop, matte it there, with a feathered edge (maybe?) and bring that single frame back in for x seconds. Might have saved some time?

Just a thought I just had.

Sean McHenry

Well the mask is animated though because my actor waves his hand in front of the kid in the one scene. The other scene was really easy to do. The photoshop thing wouldve worked for the soda part, but the kid walking required an animated mask.