I thought the short was pretty funny. Were those supposed to be the frogs from Magnolia? The guy with the curly hair is a good actor. Very natural. The other guy was kinda over the top, but still funny.

The part where they are talking over a black screen and then later they open the trunk is really great.

Cheers
[bac]

Curt wrote a little more to it where the dude with the curly hair (me) went through a little Magnolia scene of his own - but of course we don't have a few hundred thousand billion trillion dollars for that...

So I guess yeah, it's from Magnolia - fresh from ILM :)

Looking forward to seeing it Derrick.

-Nori

My best on its final outcome, as we all know it was the process you'll mostly remember.

-Alex

As promised, we've moved to our new domain host and have plenty of space now (yay me!)

Check out american-ocean.com click on the films section - scroll down until you see Trailer A and B.

Shane

Well, this is a motor magazine that we are developing. These is the pilot program as we call it here. Just 8 minutes of what it will be on TV.

The file is a big one. About 70 Mb. It is encoded in divx. But quality is excelent also. You will like it. It is a test of BMW´s Z8. Lot of action and moving images, not the usual in TV. It speaks for itself.

Almost all the work was done by me (even i change the credits so the same name wouldn´t appear all the time). I was the director, videographer (;-))), editor, sound editor, 3d special effects (except for the engine was done by a hollywood major, not me), producer, cameraman, and production developer.

It is completely shot with canon Xl1, edited mostly in Ulead Video Editor, and sound edited in vegas audio. It was finished about 1 year ago.

I am sure you will have a lot of questions after watching it. Ask me if you want.

For those who do not understand spanish don worry and watch it until the end.

The link:

www.macgregorcorp.com/km77tv.avi

I am going to move up a smaller version, it will be about 30 Mb.

The link doesn't work, Miguel.

That is because i am uploading the new version. It will be available in 50 minutes. Sorry.

Hey guys,

I have some friends who have a bike component company
and they asked me to get some video tape of a Professional
mountain biker using their equipement so they can put it up on their web site.

Well they just wanted something simple but I got creative
and made this.

They love it but I wanted to get some opinions from video guys.

The indoor footage was shot with a Canon GL2 and the first outdoor clip was shot with a Sony PC5 and the second was shot with a PD150. The effects were done in after Effects and it was edited in Premiere.


please right click and select 'Save As'
http://www.downfallproductions.com/e13.htm


P.S. let me know what you think of the graffitti also.

Well, the watching was going a bit slow [especially with me not understanding too much espanol and all] =) but remembering what you said I watched until the end. And I’m glad I did! The shipyard scene is awesome! Really. Great job, Miguel!

As for a technical question (I’ll just ask one as the effects are incredible but, I’m sure, way past my abilities, even with explanation), what system did you use to attach the camera to the car? Any advice on filming a car like you did the last 1.5 minutes of the clip (car spinning around with camera attached, etc.)?

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers.

Dom

Very nice! Though I'm not quite sure what "near zero drag" is.

To my eye the grafitti looks like it was there in the shot to begin with--doesn't look like a post effect at all.

The video is cool, nicely edited. I think you could have used some better font choice and placement, though to make it that much better. Something a bit more stylee, instead of that non-serif font you were using when describing the features of the bike.

thanx alot guys

I really appreciate the comments.

Robert:

thanx for saying that the graffitti looks real. It's hard to look at an effect I've created objectively when I'm trying to decide if it looks real enough.

The text was not written by me. I asked them what they wanted it to say and they told me.
The "near zero drag" refers to 2 things, the fact that the security guide (the part I zoom in on) is smooth enough to let you slide rails with little friction and that it guides the chain well enough that you can do "crankflips" (the part when the rider kicks his crank backwards 360 degrees) that are fast and smooth.
We might have to have a focus group of bikers watch it and see if they understand it. I think they would.


Keith:

the font was also their choice. They like it and the customer is always right, right?

I like to hear peoples input, so what do you think I should have done with the text placement.
By placement, do you mean in the timeline or on the screen?


thanx again guys

Why was the watching a bit slow? You mean the watchingor the download?

If you want to save the clip and then watch it go to www.macgregorcorp.com/km77tv.htm

and then save destiny as...

Well, for ataching cameras to the car there are several ways of doing it right.

Check this pictures:
www.macgregorcorp.com/dole3.jpg
www.macgregorcorp.com/madrid4.jpg

bye!

Well, if the font was not your choice well that's what you have to do.

Other things you could have done with the font were some slow tracking, fades. In the spots where you weren't doing that faux technocheesy stuff. Otherwise, some tightening up of the leading.

looks good, but i'd be careful about the copywrited music.

This is really the first thing I've eve done in Premiere or NLE in particular. It's a music video I did as a favor for a friends wedding.

http://kodacksdarkness.com/wedding_music_video.wmv

Done on a Canon ZR40, tripod mounted and manual mode.

Update 3/19/03

Not a peep? I realize it's not as professional as many of you could make. But a lot of what I meant to show the viewer I believe I suceeded. And I think it was a good first try.

Please give me feedback. Shooting video and documentaries is something I really want to do.

http://www.alaska-photo.com/March%2017,%202003%20Aurora%20big%20file.wmv

This one's really nice, shot by Greg. Enjoy!

Everything, not least the music, makes a great, powerful forward flow in this video. But the zooming in and out of the green quadrangle slows it down. When I've seen that once, I've seen it. Don't make me have to see it over and over again.
Another improvement would be to let the main shot move on and just freeze the PIP.

No no, Miguel. Please don’t take offense to this, as I did not intend it this way. If I understood more Spanish all would be well. But only picking up a word here and there, after a while, led my attention span astray. That’s all. = )

But let me assure you, at 7:07 I was completely blown away!

Again, wonderfully done.

Kind Regards,

Dom

¿you mean the satellite view? Yeap, the result was nice. THe first is 3D, but the 2nd and 3º are pictures with 3D rotation in after effects.
But it was the first one which took most time, (and also many 3d passes) ;-)

Good first short Michael,

Although I shoot sports video not weddings, I will take a shot at making a few suggestions/comments:

1) The wedding is the 2nd biggest event in a young lady's life, position yourself to take more facial shots of her. Your opening shot would have been much better facing the two.

2) Too much of his face, and not enough of her face in several shots

3) Great ending shot will the candle

4) Like the background music

5) Why did you encode at 96kbps? Suggest you go to 300kbps to 350kbps. It will clear up your picture a lot more. 96 is to fast for dail-up, but 300 to 350 should work just fine for DSL/Cable users.

6) Recommend you zoom in on the kiss from the mother/mother-in-law

7) Sit down with your buddy and his new bride and ask for their opinion. It will give you a better perspective on what a client would be looking for if you do it again.

All-in-All a good first time out. Since I didn't have a forum like this several years ago when I got started, the best thing to do is tape numerous such events where you don't plan to deliver any product to anybody. This will allow you to experiment with different angles/zooms, etc. This is really something that only gets better with experience. I still see a number of things I can do to improve a shoot, everytime I go out!

Since turnabout is fair play, here are a few links to some of my works. I do all my encoding with Windows Media Player 9 (latest version). To me this provides the best in a quality picture for the net, but it does exclude some individuals such as MAC users, Windows NT users, etc. We also go high speed at 1000kpbs because they are action shots. We down encode for a progressive download, which allows dial-up users the ability to download the file to view it.

http://visualstudios.org/gymnastics/sectional1/paragonbars.wmv

http://visualstudios.org//gymnastics/sectional1/paragonbeam.wmv

http://insidecarolina.org/commits/03/kedra/kedtack1.wmv

http://insidecarolina.org/commits/03/cangelosi/cangtd3.wmv

It was very nice, what I saw before my machine froze up. I would, however, like to point you to another current thread that you should read:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7832

Thank you for the feedback.

I shot an hour of before/after/during the wedding so I have a lot of material.

This was just something I threw together for them while I do the wedding proper (and to give me the practice to do the wedding properly).

I didn't shoot the wedding as a commercial job but as the groom's best friend. I was originally supposed to be one of the groom's party but when I heard nobody was shooting video..well I did instead. :)

I will try to work some more shots of the new bride into the music video.

But your right about my positioning, I wanted shots of my friend more than the bride (at least during the wedding). And there were a limited number of places to film in the chapel. If I had gone to the center and zoomed in, there wouldn't be as much depth, and the position would have been less elevated.

I tried to do my best as a guy in the audience and not distract.

One of the hardest things though was the light. The Canon ZR40 I use is the worst camera in low light. But if you notice, the colors are bright and for the most part it looks allright. It took me 10 minutes to set the camera up to balance all that out.

The tripod I have wasn't as smooth as I'd like either. That's why it looks like someone bumped the camera in a few shots. It's got a fluid bearing head and I don't know how to oil it.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Tom, about your video's

The encoding was really clean was the first thing I noticed. I had to download a new codec to see the video but there was no audio. I'm not sure if you didn't encode the audio to save bandwidth or not. I use Media Player 7 (9 caused me too many problems) for my web stuff.

The gymnastics video's were well positioned and captured the action pretty accurately. You could use another camera (or some quick zooms) to cut in closeups showing the grace of their arms and legs and they spin and twirl.

The football video was pretty good. I liked how you changed up the shots with a camera up high and down in the action. It made the video more interesting to me. I used to photograph our high school games for my journalism class and I found I got the best shots slightly elevated from the ground level.

If you are right there on the field, then people get in the way when you try to get good shots. If you are up in the stands it removes the camera from the action a bit. But if you get 1 or 2 rows up so your barely elevated it keeps you in the action and gives a clearer angle on the players than being down in it.


And Keith you touched on something I had already looked into. I can legally use the music for these purposes. It would be the same as if I were filming the reception and caught the DJ's music on tape. It's a private video for friends and family. I could never air commercially, even if I made no money from the performance, unless I got express written permission from the copyright holder.

A good tip for amateur films...If you want to go low budget and still have music, go with classical music. Lots of good stuff for drama, comedy, etc in opera music as well.

Thanks for sharing that!!

Hi guys n gals, I haven't checked this board for a fair while; feeling quite content and confident with my 2 month old XM-2 (PAL ver of GL2).

Was going through some clips of various scenic shots I had taken recently and just started fiddling around with one in particular that grabbed my attention. It seemed fitting considering the many current world conflicts to use a shot I took from a slow moving car of a servicemen's graveyard in South Australia during a recent trip.

It's not too special, as I'm still young and new to DV, so don't expect much.

Running time: a mere 28seconds
Size: a decent 7.6 mb (divx 5 format guys, I assume you'll all have that)
Format: 720x400 high quality compression - 16:9 widescreen

http://members.optushome.com.au/drlake/graveyard_intro.avi
(Right click... Save as...)

ITS NOT MUCH... BUT PLEASE GIVE ME ANY FEEDBACK AT ALL.

Thanks fellas. :)

Divx 5 is a small and usefull freeware video codec and can be gotten here...
http://download.divxmovies.com/DivX503Bundle.exe

-----

If your at all interested the clip was put together in a few hours, after a lot of tweaking and painfully long rendering times.

Software used:

Adobe Premiere
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Photoshop
Flash MX

Music/Sound:

Nine Inch Nails - A Warm Place
& Bird sounds from the actual shoot

I like it alot! The birds combined with the music really set the right atmosphere.

What did you spend most time with tinkering with in AE/PS? Did you use Flash MX for the intro text?

Oh ya, it played fine on my Mac and Quicktime with the Divx plugin.

Hi Hilary.

I liked it too. Great ambience. Being fairly new to DV myself I will still offer a few ideas....

I noticed that the horizon is not horizontal. The right is noticably lower than the left. Was this on purpose to give it a look of "speed"?

In the middle credits saying "A fluid canvas production" you are doing a straight cut from footage to the credits and then back to the footage. Personally I think I would prefer doing a fast fade to black from the footage, fade the credits in, fade to black, and then fade the footage back in. You have similar fades in the other parts so I think it would streamline it a bit.

Just my 2 cents.

Hans Henrik

Thanks Ben and Hans,

I have since changed it slightly to incorporate the fades Hans suggested and I tinkered a little with the sound (made birds quieter, albeit a bit too quiet...).

Hans;

Yes I too noticed the horizon off balance, it's a pitty; not for any effect, just poor camera-work that I didnt notice on the 2" LCD at the time.

Ben;

The first title sequence I had done some time ago In the days before my understanding of flash, so i made about 80 individual bmp images for that simple scrolling down of canvas. :-/
The light that comes on is just two different bmps (one with no light one with) that then cross-fade in premiere.

Flash MX should have been used to create this. I did use flash to create the second simple sequence, which was very fast to do with motion tweens (easing in), just exporting to avi.

I used Adobe premiere to edit and change the basic colous of it (both 'Invert' [In Phase Chrominance] to de-saturate, saturate and alter colours and 'Levels' to get the right brightness/contrast).

Lastly and notably, I used Adobe After Effects to add a nice little postmodern pinky-red glow effect to the sky. This 'glow' filter found under the STYLEISE folder can, if used minimally, give your work a really nice deep warm (if not magical) filmic look if used in moderation.

My use of filters and colour altering was a bit over the top; the tell tale signs of an amateur. Filters are great... if used sparingly for subtle improvement. <- a lesson I am still learning.

PS/ Also had to use 20% Brightness Increase in AE for the entire clip that was exported to avi. Annoyingly the Computer quality is much darker and inferior to the actual TV playback.

Software brightening/gamma is not ideal and reduces quality, do you know of any other methods of making computer playback produce closer image reproduction of that on a TV ??

- geez that was long.

Thanks for the feedback again.
Happy filming.

wow i looked at it, and i thought you composited (the titles) in After effects using masks, which would have taken around 2 minutes to do (then i read the thread). But i enjoyed it, the music really made it interesting, almost the start of a "the entire world is dead" movie.

Good work, keep it coming.

Zac

Hey!!! What do you say? i think it looks amazing!

I read your message from the other post and i dont see the pixels anywhere. THe quality is very good. it almost looks like a movie!

How did you get that "vanilla sky"?
You said something about that images where too dark... ummm, thats intersting because xl1 (i havent use xm2 but i think it will be the same on this) tends to overexpose images in automatic modes. The AE shift must be always around -1.0 for me.

Another thing. In order to achieving more image quality, it is better to record in 4:3 and then cropping tom 16:9. For some reasons, pixels get more blurred in 16:9.

And it doesnt matter which software you use if it is good enought. Queality will be the same.

Anyway, i like it a lot!

Thanks Miguel,

I think that is part of the problem. It wasnt cropped, but simply resized (squashed) from 4:3 to 16:9, causing slight pixelation.

The process for creating the vanilla sky is mentioned in my previous post.

Look foward to using your 1/6th shutter + 4xSpeed technique.

Look even more foward to seeing more of your work, very inspirational to see people using typical consumer hardware/software to create a professional looking piece.

Just before I bought my XM2 I dreamed of getting a Pana DVX100, but the extra cost ruled it out. You've got a great cam there.

Well. A couple of things...

When you resize there should not be any pixelation. Instead, you "increase" quality.

I love vegas. But one of the things i do no like from the software is that is too slow in rendering, compared with ulead video editor and others.

I have not recieve the panasonic yet. I expect it today or tomorrow.

:-))))

When you resize you will not "increase" your quality but "decrease"
it. This happens because you are trying to create more information
from something that is not there. Ofcourse the loss in quality
doesn't have to be apparent, depending on what you do.
Pixelation will occur if you resize high enough.

Sorry, but if you have a 720x576 clip and resize it to 720x400 i bet you it will look better.

One thing that happens when making images smaller is that they get some blur, but that is easily resolve with sharpen filters.

I thought we were talking about upscaling instead of down. You
shouldn't reduce the quality when downscaling indeed. But you
must use a hiqh-quality resample routine for best results...

Whether it looks "better" when sizes down I don't know. You
start to lose detail and resolution and that is not my definition
of better. If you are after a softer look there are other possibilites.

i've heard the pd150 and xl1 rumors as well, and if you watch closely, many of the angles in the cars would have been hard to pull off with a larger cam. =) for the record, one night after watching in a somewhat "altered" state, i emailed jehane and asked what kind of cameras they used. well, i never heard back. =)

put up the bachelor party clips with N.E.R.D.s lapdance song running...

that would be funny...hehehe

Looking for a Director’s Vehicle focused on character development in a 10 to 15 minute Short. Extreme action stories are not desired and we would prefer to work with a small cast. Think of some of the more intense emotional scenes of classic features worked into a 10 to 15 minute Short with all the attributes of a good story. A story with a beginning, middle and a good ending is required. We would prefer not only a good script, but a script that may be commercially viable within the framework of existing distribution channels for Film Shorts.

This is a chance to have your work performed by professional actors under the direction of a superb Director and reviewed by a major Hollywood Star. The entire reason for this production is to show the Hollywood star the film directing capability of this Director whom the star knows quite well.

The Director is a well-known Broadway and Hollywood actor with 22 films to his credit. He also directs stage productions in the San Francisco Bay Area and is the founding Director of an Actor Training Program located in Northern California.

The production will be located in the San Francisco Bay Area

Pre-Production should start no later than July
Production will take about 2 weeks and start the beginning of September.
Release by December.

The rewards will only be credits on the screen in front of the actor, and possibly a share of the proceeds from distribution of the Short, depending on the nature of the script and the market for the finished property.

Send your synopsis or treatment, no scripts please to:
Mike Rehmus
737 Elmwood Avenue
Vallejo, CA 94591
or fax to 707 642-5783,
or email to mike@byvideo.com

GETAWAY...another weekend with the old battleaxe

WATCH IT NOW ON IFILM!

exact link...
http://www.ifilm.com/filmdetail?ifilmid=2458249

or goto
www.GetawayTheMovie.com

Let me know what you think,
ENJOY!

SWEET! Very, very nice.

Things I love:

Lighting - the cabin was wicked lit. Love the 200 blue gels pumping inside and outside for the moonlight. Use of practicals was sweet, the candles, the fire. Shadow lights were sweet, think I saw a green in the kitchen background, some cosmetic rouge or indoor match lighting for mood inside. Pepper lights for reflection on the items in the drawer when Beth goes for the knife. Did catch some double shadows off of "Beth" before the random guys comes for help, but I thought it was moody cool too. Escapee on hilltop, was that day for night?

Sound - very nice. Good sound on location helps. The dialogue sweetening was right on, the mix was great with the radio and phone effects as well as the score. A+ for sound.

Shot composition - Excellent work. The doorknob shot was great, I watched it several times for reflections, only saw "Dave". Through the window match shots as well as double-side action for cuts was from what I consider really good spots. Great stuff.

Editing - This where I would give you the highest marks. When the guy comes for help and Beth runs to the cabin the sequence was just perfect. Flashlight arguement in the living room was great. Dead on sweet editing. I didn't catch a slow spot that you didn't mean to be there. The hesitations, action breaks, everything was just where I would have put it. Really, really nice.

Things I thought were okay:

Subject matter - Seen it before, know what I mean? Yours was kick-ass, but you know, I think with your talent we could see something groundbreaking on the next time out.

Acting, sort of - I thought the acting was fine, but I think the "Beth" character was directed to play the "bitch" too hard. We wanted to hate her as if she was the Wicked Queen in Snow White in the first 30 seconds. By the time she's calling the other guy in the car, it's lights out for this character. "Dave" was shallow, but we believe it, he's an average guy on an average mission to reform or kill his girl. Guys are crazy like that. Women are more conflicted. I wanted to love her and feel bad about the whole thing, not just think, "She deserves whatever she gets, kill her Dave!"

Escapee stepping on ammo - that was a weak shot, I think it would be tighter without it.

I really liked it, great job! If you extended it over a weekend's time it would make a cool feature. You would need deeper subplot, maybe an almost fell back in love thing.

Most memerable moments:

When Dave returns the, "Get out, I'm naked!" line.

"F*#! you, we're broken up!".

Keep up the good work...

Lamce Barton...

thanks for checkin out...you know your lighting...right down to the pepper lights.

The villian on the hill shot was shot at that perfect moment right before it gets totally dark. we were soooo lucky to grab that. that's exactly how it looked, we didn't tweak the colors at all on that shot.


we are hoping to make it into a feature...starting the night before they leave on the road trip. Also going to give more of a background of the killer.

I did the editing, so thanks for all the compliments. If your interested e-mail me your e-mail address and I'll keep you up to date on what happens. We are just finishing up another short called "Dinner for 2".


Please pass my link around, we've already had over 200 views on ifilm in less than 2 weaks (with just message board advertising)...like to keep that going.


thanks again...

mike@absolutemotionny.com

www.GetawayTheMovie.com

Mike,

I'd love to see it...but I don't have RealPlayer (refuse to use it, actually). Any chance you have a Windows or QuickTime version?

john...

If I'm not mistaken you can change your prefrences on IFILM to view as a quicktime.movi. take a look.


thanks
MIKE

With a name like Mike Meyerson, how could you not make a slasher/horror??? Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)
Anyway....

I loved it. I'm right on with Lamce's comments.
So the concept is nothing new, but what is these days? It was still really good.

One thing I didn't like was the sound. The voices were a little lost over the radio at the start. Nothing wrong with the sound effects, I just don't think the audio quality was that great, but it might have lost something in rendering for web delivery.

And I wasn't big on the ending. Kind of left me hanging. I wanted to see the guy come out ahead, since the chick was such a biznich.

My question:
What camera did you shoot it on, and what types of filters did you use, if any? Looks like an Ikagami on the Steadicam.

This video demo is a screen test for this very talented young lady of 14 that looks and dances much like Britney! Although the entire song was shot, this demo is only the first 1.20 of the song. The remaining will be cut soon. The actual complete video will be shot in a couple of months complete with location, sets and effects. This demo was shot with an XL-1, jib and Steadicam. It was cut with Premiere 5.1c RT.

"Stronger"

High Speed 500K

http://161.58.78.36/asx/demo/musicvideos/stronger/STRONGER500K.asx

High Speed 1000K

http://161.58.78.36/asx/demo/musicvideos/stronger/STRONGER1000K.asx

Any chance you'll have that available for download instead of
streaming?

Rob,
Are you experiencing trouble viewing or do you not have a high speed connection? Which OS are you using?

I'm having trouble viewing.... but that is common here with
Windows streaming media. I'm behind corporate firewall and such
and cannot always do streaming. I can do most other things,
but not that.

So download would be nice. I'm on windows 2000 professional.