Sorry guys, google video somehow squashed the aspect ratio into 4:3 when it should have been 16:9. I choose the worst rendering quality possible as well to keep the size down, so bear with the blocky colors and low quality sound (it was better in the larger version). The story and dialogue probably don't make much sense as I realized I went way over the time limit and had to cut massive portions, which really caused incoherency as a direct result.

That's the first thing I noticed, but I've never used Google Video myself, so I can forgive compression oddities. The washed out colors and blocky artifacts were a bit distracting, but as they say here, "content is king".

Regarding that, I happen to like engaging in small talk, and can't say I agree with the opinions expressed here, but I like seeing people taking stock of their lives at a time like that. The planets falling to the floor after "the rest of the solar system follows suit" was great.

I noticed, though, that the characters seem to be standing outside chatting in a scene before they actually drive there; were they supposed to be going to different locations, spending a little time at each one, or was this unintentional? I also got the sense that the two were facing something important, conversing while examining it. It was the sunset, I presume, and I'd like to have seen more shots over their shoulders.

Alex,

How did you do the whole handing in the air thing with the balls?
I have to learn how to use effects. That was very cool.

I loved the start of this one, but the whole dialog thing talking about the end of the solar system and all that, well, that was kind of a downer.

In my mind, the only time an end of the world, catastrophy thing works, is when you got a young attractive couple, to watch, wondering if they will hook up before the final destruction of everything happens.

But then, I may just not be all that smart.

The planets in the air was WAY COOL though.

Dick

I have to agree with Dick here, it turned to a downer. Though it looks like a lot of effort went into it.

But it was also like trying to fit an eight minute video into three. Too much information with little coverage or timing, so it was mashed. I learned this mistake myself with my video 'Carl'. When the time comes for simple, you give simple.

But great job none the less, and the planets thing looked awesome. How did you do that? I am assuming fish wire.

Justin

Very dialog heavy. I have DDD (dialog distraction dissorder). My eyes kind of glaze over after about 30 words. I like the premise of taking stalk in ones lives, but what a hard concept to pull of in 3 min. I would like to see the video outside of google. The compression on Google is just horrible. maybe you can stick it on putfile.com? there were some continuety(I can't spell either) issues too. I was a little confused going back and forth. I'm guessing it was for story purposes to get the dialog in the right place.

The planets: well, none of that was a digital effect. It looked like they were floating because the compression was bad. I used fishing wire. However, that wasn't the plan. Fish wire is actually about 10-20 too thick. We can see fish wire easily with our human eye. But have you ever been to a magic show where you see magicians levitating small objects? Their trick is that they use something called an ITR (Invisible Thread reel). The string is so thin, that even when you are inches away from it, you'll be hard pressed to see it. Human eyes perceive much more than a HD camera can capture, so you can imagine how invisible it would look on video. I couldn't get my hands on any ITRs at the time, so I compensated with fishing wire and bad compression.

Yeah, I agree the story was a downer. I was trying to compress 8 minutes into 3. I cut out way too much necessary dialogue, so it didn't really make sense. The continuity issues were intentional. Each flash was supposed to be a flashforward or flashback into whatever setting (either the house or the mountain top). But with so little time and the butchered dialogue, it seemed like there were continuity issues.

As far as the long dialogue goes, that's something I'm trying to cut down on, but it's hard coming from a writing background haha. Definitely too boring and overwhelming for a 3 minute piece.

I to liked the concept and am not a good person for small talk. I am too technical in my background. Have been all my life. Part of the process of staying on top of technical issues relegates you to reading trade magazines for "fun".

Back to the video - I too found it washed out but, you can use tools like color correction to intentionally wash things out to stress the point about the banal nature of talk versus true communication, etc.

You could however argue that the social being in us needs this warm up time to judge whether a person is truly worthy of our full attention and moving on to real topics of great importance. The guy who comes up to you and asks what your zodiac sign is might not be the guy to discuss nuclear fusion techniques with? You won't know however until you engage in this small talk socailizing event. You have to discover common interests and methods of reaching someone by observing their language and body language too. In a way, small talk is a sort of Rosetta Stone between people from varying cultural backgrounds.

All that said, I still am not a small talk person and I get the idea of the story. Other than some technical issues and a large topic in a small space, I think it went well.

Sean