Hi all!

I've been lurking around the boards for about close to a year now, picked up lots of tips for DV filmmaking and the XL1S in particular, I've started hanging around before I bought my XL1S last June and so in a very large way, this board has grown with me and my 'XL1S life'

So, I've finally finished my first short film of 15mins. It's shot in Singapore and I did all the post production in London, please have a look and let me know what you guys think, I'll be more than happy to answer any questions, about the story or about technical issues.

my kit for the shooting

XL1S, stock 16X lens
selection of Cokin filters
two el cheapo video lights (300W floods)
Audio Technica AT815b shotgun mic
homemade boompole
a few gels for the lights
Manfrotto 055SSB tripod with 501 head

http://www.ilovedumplings.adrianseah.com

I've managed to squeeze the 15min film down to about 20Mb so it shouldn't be too much of a pain to download.

Cheers!

Adrian

Great you finished something Adrian!! You had some very nice
shots in there and some nice cinematography. It looked great
(even with this high compression!). Also liked the story.... Oh,
and I've never heard of a UDD before. Very funny!

I did find it a bit slow though (story isn't moving along very much
in my humble opinion) and I thought more music and perhaps
a little bit different music would have been nice. This is just me
ofcourse.

Overall I really liked it! Great job and good luck in the future!

Very impressive, Adrian! Especially with such a modest budget and for a first effort! Your framing and shot movements were excellent.

I thought the music was spot-on for the piece, perhaps (as Rob noted) adding a bit more or making it stronger in a few spots.

Its pace is a notch slow, probably accentuated by several shots which, perhaps by visual precedents in film, suggest that something's about to happen shortly. I'd bet that if you walked away from it for a month you'd find your edit selections to be a bit different. I'd be tempted to give myself a much shorter duration (say 10 mins) and cut it to that limit. I think you'd be amazed at the results.

Congratulations Adrian! Bravo!

Just finished watching it. Thumbs UP!
The start was a little slower paced, but I forgout about that once the story got going. I liked the cinematography. THe editing might be a little smoother, maybe more dissolves in between cuts that show an extended period of time.

Why did the shop keeper speak English?

I can't seem to see the movie. When I acess the page it downloads and I hit play. I hear all the audio, but all I see on the screen is white. That is the way it is for the whole movie. What is wrong here? I am on a PC with XP Pro. Thanks!

Hi again all,

thanks for all the constructive comments. As for the shopkeeper speaking 'english', well... actually its sort of a dialect of English spoken in singapore, we fondly call it 'Singlish'... probably due to our colonial british past, English is our first language in Singapore.

I've been staring at it for some time now and I guess its numbing my brain. Like Ken said, if I left it alone for a while, I might get a different perspective on it. will try to do that!

Scott, I'm not quite sure why you can't see it... I'm uploading on a Mac but I don't see why you are unable to watch it, I've tested it on my flatmate's PC.... hmmm... maybe download the latest version of quicktime?

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download

Adrian

Scott, it sounds like your problem is with Quicktime, get the newest version and it should be alright.

Adrian, I loved your cinematography! Every so often in movies there are shots that make me smile, there were definitely a few in this one (the one I can remember really liking is towards the beginning, when he runs out the door and rings the bell I believe?)

And thank you for bringing the knowledge of a UDD to the overseas crowd! :D

Nice job, Adrian. I note your address is listed on your web site as London--did you have to budget travel to make the film?

Actually I'm from Singapore, I've just been studying in London for the past 4 years. So I'm sort of London based at the moment. The film was shot when I went back for my summer vacation.

The film was shot with a non existent budget, apart from feeding the cast and crew. After shooting this, I have a renewed respect for producers... they have a tough job! Doing all the crappy work and running around all the time!

When I was growing up in Singapore, I never really realised the absurdity of things like the UDD, its only when I have left for a while and come back that I see things with a 'fresh pair of eyes'.

Thanks all for the comments, keep them coming!

Adrian

actually.. we need a urine detector here in new york.


i thought the film was brilliant and a loved the pacing. This was a very tight and important film. I think you did an excellent job. I loved the music and your dramatic dolly backs to fade out were superb.


scenes that stuck out to me

- The sink where he brushes his teeth

- a cut away to a ceiling light with a short

- a shot of some wires coming out of the wall which were in focus and the hallway in the distance out of focus, nice depth of field working from the stock canon xl1s lens.


- nice lighting that was dark, but yet still had dimension, highlighted by scene such as the boy hero sitting on the steps tying his shoes.

- the scene of him standing in front of his loves door. before she is formally introduced onscreen.

- excellent cut-away and establishing shots (city scape at night, egg crate buildings, assembling dumplings, clothes out in the wind to be dried, calendars, ceiling fans)

- a frame up of the shopkeeper talking to the hero, and when he is craning his neck in fantasy time looking at the hero walk off with the girl

- the end, where it is like he has become the fish, and one swims by after the girl walks off living in reality with another dude.


it's hard to think of anything negative, the only thing is I personally would have matched the soy sauce bottle breaking to something breaking or falling from the dinner scene. However , that is rather cliche now, so it's not a con to me. I remember that the film opens up with the hero as a kid breaking something and his mother yelling at him, as though that was the catalyst that put him into this catatonic state of talking with fishes. a con has now turned into a positive!

the only scene that doesn't look good under compression is him under the ceiling fan at night thinking. This might look better on a NTSC monitor.

im not super fond of arriflex shutter flash type effects, but they didnt even bother me here. I hate dumplings now too.

thanks for sharing this film. I have to show it to all my friends. You should enter this in festivals right away! I would love to see more work from you. Once again, absolutlely brilliant.

I agree completely with John Threat. Your film was excellent, regardless of budget size and crew. After a couple of minutes I had already forgotten it was MiniDV streaming over the internet and I just watched it like I would any film.

Loved the fish "talking" scenes, and the beautiful shots of the city where the boy lives. I really liked that you didn't put subtitles for the boy's mother as she yells at him. The moment where he sees the big aquarium in the mall was also striking.

Very impressive work.

Jaime Valles

I got it working by downloading QuickTime 6. It was very good. I really enjoyed it. The things that I noticed mostly were you cut aways. They were great. They fit right in with the shots and everything flowed smoothly. The variety of shots you had was very good. They worked welll to suit the current mood of the video and there were some very creative shots in there. What software did you edit this on? Also, how did you do your credits? I have been trying to do those two colum credits like you had (the role is right justified and the name of the actor is left justified) but I can't figure it out. Thanks for sharing your work. Great job!

Adrian,

That was an excellent piece. Very nicely cinemagraphed.

I'm intereseted in knowing a couple of things:

1. Is your camera PAL or NTSC?
2. Did you Color Grade, and if so what program did you use?
2.1 If not, what did you white balance to?
3. Did you shoot in FRAME mode or Normal mode?
4. Did you shoot 16:9, or 4:3?

-Nori

Hiya!

ok, to answer the questions...

Nori:

I shot on a XL1S PAL (frame mode)

Yes, I did quite a lot of colour corrections/ grading, all done in FCP 3 using the colour correction tools (very powerful indeed)

my white balance was not always perfect during the actual shoots but I tried to match the colours during the correction stage.

I shot in 4:3 but 16:9 protected and I cropped the top and bottom bits in post.

Scott:

I actually did the credits in photoshop, sort of have a long list (it should look like a tall rectangle) and manually align the text, then animate the image to move ('scroll') in FCP. That way, you can pretty much have it any way you want, different fonts, alignment etc. just save it as a 72dpi jpg file and it should be fine.

Adrian

Thanks. I thought about doing it in photoshop but then I thought that there must be an eaiser way, but I guess not! Thanks, great movie!

What a great little film. Took me way back to the years I lived on the island of Hawaii, esp. the shopkeeper -- pidgin English and all.

If you have not already, you should consider uploading this film to triggerstreet.com. It's far better than most of what I've seen there.

Also, because this is such a polished piece, it would be great if you would write an article about the making of this film. Perhaps Chris Hurd could put it on DVinfo.net

Thanks for all the positive comments everyone! It's really encouraging for a first timer to have such positive affirmation for my work.

Peter:

as for writing an article about the 'making of' this film, it would be great but I'll wait and see if Chris Hurd says anything about it first because I don't know if it will be too 'pretentious' for me to write an article 'teaching' others considering its my debut short and my first attempt at it myself!

Keep the comments coming!

Adrian

In FCP if you create a regular text scroll you can edge justify the columns by typing the first line and inserting an "*" between the second horizontal line. This will give you the 2 columns on the outside.

type like this:

written by*John Doe

views like this:

written by (space) John Doe

By the way I thought it was a fantastic film. Really great job. Keep it up!

First-time poster long-time lurker coming out of the woodwork (you know the deal).

Excellent short Adrian!! For years I've been hearing people on DV boards say something to the effect of, "as long as you have an engrossing story it doesn't matter what format it's shot with." Looks like we finally have an example to hold up to this phrase!

I'd disagree with others about the pace of the film...for the subject matter you're dealing with it fits rather perfectly. This is my opinion of course--but not knowing what I was getting into on the first viewing it did seem slow moving (although I was immersed in the pace)...but after the second viewing I can completely see the setups and why it was cut that way.

I think you've accomplished a good mix of style and substance here (both the narrative and the filmed result)...and you should definitely promote this work more.

A couple of annoying questions--

What was the level of acting experience with your cast?

The 360 camera shot at the aquarium, was that accomplished with a dolly track?

How much of the shots did you storyboard, and how much were discovered accidentally during your shoot?

And lastly, how long did it take you to complete it?

You've got a great command of hidden metaphors when it comes to their visual translation. Keep up the good work.

Hi again all,

Michael:

Thanks for the positive feedback. I knew from the beginning that I won't have any big explosions or any other big budget effects to keep the audience amused and on their seats so I figured I had better write something of more 'substance' for the film to be any good at all, so that is what I tried to do. I was very inspired by Resevoir Dogs (Tarantino) because after watching the whole film, you realise that although you could have sworn there were many things happening, the actual heist itself was never shown, and if you really look at it objectively, its just shot in a few streets, a restaurant, a couple of rooms and a warehouse, so it was really the good script that pulled the 'action' off.

The actors and actresses are all amatuers, some are my friends and the aquarium owner was actually my former discipline master!

the 360 camera move was done by a tripod dolly, you know, the wheel things you stick the tripod on. They wobble a lot and refuse to go in the direction and speed that you want them to, so unless your budget absolutely disallows the use of a proper dolly, I don't recommend the use of the tripod dolly.

I actually storyboarded the whole film but a lot of it was changed during the actual filming and during editing but I find it helps a lot to storyboard because, sometimes I was so tired and had so many things on my mind that I didn't really know what I was shooting and had to rely heavily on the storyboard as a kind of shot list.

I wrote the screenplay in Mar 2002, started shooting in July, actual shooting days were about 8, and started editing it in Sept, and completed it quite recently. (I wasn't hard at work all the time, but there were many delays and I had to have 'rest time' between the edits to see it in a better perspective)

Hope it answers your questions!

Adrian

Adrian,

I think it is very good film too - and I mean film as opposed to a bit of video.

I have noticed the comments on pacing and on the whole I think the pacing is fine, but perhaps if you were to omitt some of the fade outs it may help somewhat - they often can create a sense of having a series of vignettes which can slow a film down. Films can always do with tightening but don't go mad as you may loose some of the charm of the original.

I also liked the music but perhaps if you were to put a little of it up front and less towards the end it might seem more evenly spread - when you have the music there is a strong sense of atmosphere and it may be nice to start with that and carry it over transitions.

A final thought, which may be a bit hackneyed I don't know, but because there is an element of fantasy while the boy ponders the fish (as opposed to the reality of his life - UDD etc.), it might be worth trying to introduce some subtle colour change to the shots of the fish.

Absolutely the only thing I'm not too keen on are the flash frames: this is perhaps just me but I think one has to consider very carefully what a particular effect may communicate, what temporal or emmotive reaction they might generate and not use them because they might be in vogue at the moment: I'm not saying you did but I personally feel they detract from the lyrical feel a bit - perhaps I'm just too old fashioned!

Just my thoughts only, feel free to dismiss them.

Well done and best of luck,

Regards.

just saw it excellent..love the pace, the story but most of all the concept love movies like that....

Great work!

Would love to see more work from you.
Keep us updated.

I am really impressed Adrian. Your frame, your shots were all excellent. The editing could be a little tighter but I don't mind the pacing over all. I can't say enough how good it looks.

Good voiceover. I daresay you are going to make some really good films in the future. Approaching festival quality.

Can you tell us who your influences were? I can see some Wong Kar Wai in there.

I am really impressed by the picture quality you got out of your camera. The tones were something to note.

Ah, it really reminds me of Malaysia where I was born.

Keith:

Thanks for the comments and compliments... I never know Wong Kar Wai was so evident in my work! Yes, he is a big influence but looking at it myself now, I can't really see which bits are Wong Kar Wai... can you point them out to me? It would be really interesting to know.

I guess my other influences are Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream in particular) and Jean Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, Delicatessen etc) and definitely the Coen brothers.

Good new is that I will be shooting my next film this coming Tues, it will be a short as well... estimated at 5-7 mins. Its a story about this middle aged everyday man who has lost his wife but is unable to deal with it. And I will shooting with the mini35 (very kindly provided by the KIND PEOPLE AT OPTEX, Mike Robinson in particular), and with Nikon Lenses (cos I got no money to rent PL lenses) So... wish me luck!

Adrian

Hi adrian,

Just wondering. How did you manage to persuade those guys to get them provide a mini35 for free?

I intend to shoot one on mini35 as well, and was thinking of how to ask as its very hard asking people do give out something for free over here :)

OK, without trying to sound too preachy... my only advice would be to be HONEST.

What I mean is that, approach people with respect and be honest about your situation and motives, ask yourself why you are asking in the first place. Does help mean the difference between making or not making the film? Or do you have the money but just want to save a few bucks? Even if your intentions are entirely noble, people sometimes cannot/ will not help, and you have to take that in stride as well, because essentially you are asking people for help and no one is obliged to help. If they do so, its out of goodwill. But then again, if you never ask, you never know!

Believe me when I say I really wish to pay everyone who helped me out on my film, both in time/ effort as well as equipment, and hopefully one day when I make a living out of this, I will be able to.

Hope its useful!

Adrian

Same here. I wish that someday I'd be able to pay those who help me out as well.

With or without the mini35, I'm still going to make my shorts.
Good luck in your coming short film!

I do go to S'pore sometimes, maybe I can give you a visit if you happen to be there.
Hope to see your coming short soon.

Just had the opportunity to watch your short several times and wanted to say I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Might have been helpfull to use color , lighting and music together to seperate the fantasy with the actuality in the video. All in all a wonderfull first outing.Congratulations and good luck on your upcoming film

Thanks all,

An update on my latest film 'Last Day of Work'... its in the rough cut stage now... the mini35 is wonderful!

A few things about production:

although I've read in this forum time and again to turn on the spinning mirror thing on the mini35, I constantly forgot to turn it on and yes, its very obvious when it off, despite my lenses being wide open (f1.4)

also, the mini35 has some problems (or is it just me) with wide angle shots, I find that it cannot go wider than 24mm (with reference to 35mm lenses), I have a 17-35L f2.8 Canon zoom lens and it just refuses to focus when its wider than 24mm. Is it the lens, the adaptor, or just me?

For UK based folks here, Talking with Fishes will be screening at the Raindance East Film Festival in London sometime in March, don't know the exact screening schedule yet but will post when I do.

Thanks again all! and keep the comments coming!

Cheers,

Adrian

Adrian, first I would like to congratulate you on a wonderful piece of work as everyone else has. I just had a few personal questions that I was very curious of if you didn't mind...

Age?
Video/Film background? Like did you go to film schools or have you just been an avid hobyist for a while? Obviously you've got some real experience somewhere :D !

Seeing your ultra low budget film come off so beautifully gives me inspiration to see my film school dreams through and far beyond that.

Hi Bryan,

no, I don't mind sharing a bit of background on myself, I'm actually still a student, to be graduating this July, I'm doing a degree in Graphic Design but to be honest, the work I'm doing is about as far apart from my course as possibly can be, which brings me into constant conflict with my tutors.

so with regards to video and DV, I guess I'm self taught, mainly from books and observing films and a lot from this site with all its knowledge as well. I was from a photography background, self taught as well, so the next 'logical' step was for my photos to 'move', so that's what I'm trying to do now. Others might have a different opinion on it but I find filmmaking A LOT harder than photography. Where previously, I had to have the elements in place for a split second in time, now I had to choreograph the whole sequence, think about camera movement, sound etc etc etc... so right now, I'm infinitely challenged by this whole filmmaking thing. I had a Sony PC100 handycam for about 2 years, never really did anything productive with it and only got my XL1S last June, and immediately shot 'Talking with Fishes'

nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it, cliche but true i think, so whatever your dreams of filmmaking or film school might be, go get it done!

hope it helps somewhat.

Adrian

Adrian,

That is very good news that you are going to have your first short
up on a Festival! That must be a tremendous exciting thing. How
did you get this to happen?

Also would love to see some screencaptures from the footage
you shot with the mini35!

Keep up the great work!

Hi Rob,

Well, for the festival thing, I'm currently just sending out as many submissions to as many festivals as I can, and it so happened that the people in Raindance saw something interesting in my film I guess...

anyway, the stills of my latest film-in-progress is on another thread...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&postid=44235#post44235

Cheers,

Adrian

Adrian,

You should be very proud of your effort. Very nice work. I hope at some point you would be able to write an article for us about your experience.

Keep up the good work.

Bill

hi Adrian,

Congrats on your short film. Are you based in Singapore? cause I am a Singaporean. I am also very keen to get my short film done soon. Maybe we can meet up sometime to share our vision?

cheers
Wan Shu

oh, i got a question. aare all music in your short film self made? or did you use the music of somewhere esle?

cheers

Wan Shu:

I'm from Singapore but I'm London based at the moment, I wrote 'Fishes' in London, shot it in Singapore and did all the post production back in London. The music was composed by my friend and musician Max Garfinkel. You have to have original music (or own the rights to any other music) if you wish to send it off to festivals.

Awesome work! Couldn't convince myself it was DV at times. With the tripod dolly shot you did at the mall aquarium (360degree spin), how did you get that juttering effect? Is it an effect in FCP?

Peter

Hi there Peter,

thanks for the kind comments, the juddering effects was just a result of speeding up the footage actually, no fancy tricks involved.

Hey...

I just saw your film and I liked it a lot...though you are going to need some better music to make it work great...
But besides that I really liked it...the cinematography in particular...

keep up the good work...

Excellent work Adrian. The film was a joy to watch and I was truly moved by the emotions you captured and conveyed with your images. You showed us the story more than you told us the story and that is the place we all aspire to be. I strongly agree with your vision and the responsibilty that filmmakers have. Thank you for sharing a beautiful piece of work with us.

Cheers!

Is there a working link to view this film? The original link is no longer active.

again, thanks all for the kind comments... just tested the link and its working... it was probably my crappy ISP web host that was acting up.

Adrian

Adrain,

I loved it. I look forward to seeing your next film. Keep us posted.

Hi again all!

Rest of my films are now online at www.adrianseah.com. Please have a look and let me know you guys think.

Cheers,

Adrian