Ok, here is our feedback thread.

Before we shot this, I had wrote a script and went to shoot it but all of my actors left at the last minute. So, as a result, Kenneth and I joined to make one movie.
I'll be honest, there was a bit of stuff that did not happen due to the time that we had, but I am sure that when you watch it you will see what I am talking about, and I don't want to spoil it for those of you who have not seen it. So here it is.

Its the one on the left that says "Delusional Larpers", you'll have to download it. Its 9.9 MB.
http://home.comcast.net/~crystaldragonproductions/videos.html

Please leave your feedback here and ask any questions if you have any!

Thanks!
~Gabriel

Oh those crazy LARPers. A funny entry for sure, and I wonder what your neighbours thought when they say you fighting with pipes.

Your voice over levels are pretty low and I had to crank up my speakers to hear what was being said when the characters were coming out the front door.

I'm not sure I get the whole larper's thing. might be getting old. But it was pretty funny to watch. liked the star wars SFX too. why are they rolling dice?

So far, Gabriel, I haven't been able to watch this. First the download errored out, then I finally got a saved file only to read that it's not a "movie file." What the...

I'll try downloading it again.

Gabriel:

I am not even finding it a link on your web page.... will check back later.

That's because you're too much like me, Chris. :) Scroll down on the box that is marked "Under Construction" and you'll see the link there. Hope you fare better than I have!

Okay, thanks to that wonderful sleuth Lorinda, I found the link, and it worked for me.

Film was hard to follow first run through. Sound and dialogue just wasn't clear to me..... but I will admit that could have been my sound card acting up. I have being having a bit of trouble with it and I think I am going to break down and replace it. Once the film ended, I understood the premise, ie., that everyone has their version of memories. Not sure (again because of dialogue difficulties) what the dice have to do with it....

Congratulations on teaming up and getting this film completed!

Lol...I might be like Michael Fossenkemper The Wood Bender and be too old too understand the Larpers. Would you guys care to educate those of us who are too old or have been out of the loop for too long?

There was a point at 00:00:46 seconds to about the 00:01:00 minute mark where I couldn't hear the conversation very well. I could hear "what are you talking about?" and that's about it. I take it that these two have a different memory about a same event and were talking about that in this portion of the short? Is that right?

At the end, the discussion at the table was very clear! I can see the direction you were going with the Memories theme.

Best wishes~
Bradley

ok, so sorry about the wait that I put you guys and gal thru. I have been busy planning my next shoot. Lets move on, shall we?

First of all, the sound is NOT your fault! We used a cheap mic. and so the sound did not turn out well. Sorry about that. The scene where they are at the table and the counter, those are both in mic audio clips, the scene at about 00:40 to 1 minute are where we used the cheap mic to do a dub over.

Yes, the neighbors had fun watching.

Sorry about the link not working, I will look into it. Like Lorinda stated you have to scroll down on the box that has the animated gif saying "Under construction", sorry for the confusion.

As for the dice game, its called "D6", you may also know it as "D20". The game is where you role play (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_playing_games) with characters you make up and then the "game master" makes a story and you then use the dice to do your attacking and so forth. Its a fun way to get creative and hang out with friends.

As for some of you who do not understand what "larp'ing" is, here you go. You can read about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Action_Role_Play). But here is just a fast example. "A live action role-playing game (LARP or LRP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants perform some or all of the physical actions of the characters they are playing within a pre-determined space for a pre-determined span of time. LARP may be considered a form of improvisational theatre." - Wikipedia.

These two things are what make this a funny short.

Yes Chris, that is accurate. Well one guy remembers it as just them Live action Role playing in a street, the other one remembers it the way that he fantasized it to be. So yes, I would say that it is saying that everyone has their own versions of memories. Some more Creative, and others the way it really was.

Bradley, that is right... In this little piece that is hard to hear, the one guy says "=My Ataru totally owned your Soresu", The other guy says, " What are you talking about? There was no sword forms. It was just us swinging our PVC Sabers around in the street like the dorks we are.".
So there you go, that was the translation of what you could not hear.

Thanks for watching/reading/leaving feedback! Sorry it sounds like some of you had troubles getting it to work. I will try and make it better for future work (this is the second thing I ever have shot on DV).

Best luck to you all in the DVC!
~Gabriel

I checked the video and it seems to be working fine here. If you are using firefox, you can just click on the link and watch it in the browser without having to download it.

Heres the link to the video, you can just Right click and save as. It should work. If not, then let me know! http://home.comcast.net/~crystaldragonproductions/Larpers1.mov

~Gabriel

What Gabriel said is true. As for the bad audio there in the transition phase... I ran out of time and scrambled to get the necessary voice-over in. If I had the time to make things nice, it would have sounded a lot better, but the bottom line is that I didn't make things sound better.

A lesson learned: Make the extra ten minutes available to make something sound good, and especially when that something is a turning point for a film.

Thanks for the feedback.

Nice choreography and just an all around fun movie. By the way, did your neighbors call the cops on "two guys out in the street beating each other with sticks?"

Thank you for the memories of what it was like to be that age while making movies for the sheer fun of it!

Bradley, that is right... In this little piece that is hard to hear, the one guy says "=My Ataru totally owned your Soresu", The other guy says, " What are you talking about? There was no sword forms. It was just us swinging our PVC Sabers around in the street like the dorks we are.".


Thanks Gabriel and Kenneth! Thank you for the LARP explanation too. I can certainly see how that could be a lot of fun.

Best wishes~
Bradley

I think having fun is half the battle and it looks like you guys are doing that so keep it up.

Yeah, thanks guys! Thanks Kenneth for clearing that up. I miss understood, sorry!

Yes, we did have fun doing, and I think we plan to continue to make star-wars films.

Now, on to the voting!
~Gabriel

To me the camera work looked pretty good and the music choice really helped set the mood.

For a first work that you submitted for judging and review I think you guys did good. The visuals worked, continuity and flow (which is really hard to make work in a 3 minute limit) went smoothly.

Audio was mentioned by others, all I'll try to do is offer tips. If you're stuck with the onboard built in mic or are doing a voiceover try to boost the voice level in your editor. Don't know what you have available but some editors allow you to boost or reduce the audio track to some extent as needed. I assume you music track is separate and although you didn't have a music level problem here be aware that in future projects you want to insure your music does not overpower your other audio.

Keep with it and I'll bet we see you guys come up with better and better stuff. I'm 68 now and would sure like to be able to go back to your age with the gear and opportunity we have now.

Live it to the hilt, guys!

Bruce Foreman

So…are there any LARPers who aren’t delusional to one degree or another? (I'm kidding, of course!) :)

That was lots of fun, Gabriel. Next time you’ll have that audio monster slain, and I’ll be able to laugh at lines like, “It was just us swinging our PVC sabers around in the street like the dorks we are.” LOL!!!

lol, I think you are right, there is no larpers that are not delusional to one way or another. haha.

Thanks, Lorinda. That would be ideal. :)

Live it to the hilt, guys!
My favorite quote from this thread...

Thanks everyone!
~Gabriel

PS: I am trying to watch everyones videos and leave feedback to them all!

I really liked the idea of this one. I'm kind of a geek, not into larping but I definitely know that us engineer types can really get into big 'debates' on accurate details...

It was cool that you included this 'geek accuracy' as I'll call it in the memory section, I've found that to be true in my life!!!

Haha,

Very fun

10 points to the first person who adds 'light saber' effects to this one!!!*

*points are not redeemable

10 points to the first person who adds 'light saber' effects to this one!!!*

*points are not redeemable

Attempting to add lightsaber effects is why compromises in the audio were made. I had been working on adding the lightsaber effects when I did the math and realized that it would have been impossible for me to finish the effects in enough time for the contest. But even with that realization we were quite pressed for time, and scrapping the lightsaber effects, we still had to rush the overall project.

10 points to the first person who adds 'light saber' effects to this one!!!*

*points are not redeemable

Lol, thanks! We started to ad the lightsaber effects, but then Kenneth did the math and found out that it would take 8 hours to do it. and we only had 6. and it took about 2 hours to get a "good" version of the video that could get downloaded without waiting forever. So yeah, maybe some time we will go back over and do that...

Thanks for the comments!
~Gabriel

Keep up the good work guys, then you guys can be the Yeager Bros. :P
Check out videocopilot.net if you haven't already...amongst the multitude of after effects tutorials there are some light saber tutorial videos that might intrigue you.

That was fun and for those of us out there that are real freaking old, we remember D&D and sitting up till about 3am rolling 20 sided dice. Been a long time since those days but I remember them.

Looks like you did have fun and you are learning. If you want to do this film and video thing for long, you'll notice you get much better really fast because of these little challenges. The fantastic prizes are a great bonus but we would probably all be here anyway, practicing and learning how to do all this better.

Keep at it guys. You have a good start.

Sean