This is my first attempt at a music video. What am I doing wrong?

www.blindchildproductions.com/Sound_in_Motion.wmv

Thanks,

Oliver

Hey guys, this is my new Netflix spec commercial. It's really cool. Please check it out!

http://tripleeproductions.wordpress.com

Thanks so much! A "behind the scenes" will be up soon!

Hey everyone,

About two years ago, the rock band Queensryche hired me and my company to produce video content for Part II of their Mindcrime tour. I don't know if any of you saw the show, but it's pretty much a theatrical live action presentation of the Mindcrime story, with some video used to fill in parts that can't be done on stage or provide atmosphere.

Because a lot of this stuff was quick snippets to play before songs started and a lot of the focus is on the live stuff, there aren't too many scenes to cut a trailer from. So, it became more or less a collection of cool shots showing what we did.

None-the-less, I'd be curious to see what you guys think. A warning; some parts appear dark on my laptop screen but look fine on my desktop (both macs) so, let me know if things are too dark.

No color correction has been done yet.

Enjoy:

http://www.meydenbauerentertainment.com/Queensryche.mov

Josh

Nicely done, Josh. One of the better things I've seen here!

The audio track was great. Where did that come from?

Check it. Let me know what you think-


http://www.animalplanetpv.com/Reel.html

Wow, very very cool, I have been a huge Queensryche fan for many many years, you are one lucky guy to have gotten the opportunity to work with them, your work on this looks very nice.



Paul

The audio track was great. Where did that come from?

The opening music is actually the opening track to the Mindcrime II album. The other music is a track called Pompeii by E.S. Posthumous.

Also, I forgot to mention that we shot all of this on the XL2 with a 14x manual lens. We had some stuff on the stage (including the prison which we built) and greenscreen, but most of it was shot with available light on the streets of Seattle.

It was cool enough. What's it for? Are you selling some sort of service?

I like the dog doing a backflip, that was my favorite part.

I need alot of help and have few (no) chances for professional feedback. Would love some comments, thoughts, etc., on my trailer. You can be harsh/honest.

http://www.vimeo.com/717584

Hi Matt,

thanks for sharing your work!
The steadicam shots we very impressive, especially the last one. What system did you use? I had the feeling that you are very involved with the canyon and the region, surrounding it. This gave me a very authentic feeling when I watched your trailer.

however, I wasn't perfectly happy with it - I was a little bit missing a story. Your movie looks like a bunch of random shots, sound and comments without a real story in it.

These are my main critique points:

- Without your comment at vimeo nobody would know what the guys in the movie are talking about. Just the first guy speaks very vague about "if the dam would be built".
- You're fading in the first speaker so that the beginning of his comment is hard to understand
- If I understood it right, the next guy talks about a huge sand bar and that rafts will not be able to go over it. Is this really one of the most important issues regarding the dam?
- What's the message of the guy who got stuck in the mudd, the two hikers and why does the capricorn jump up the hill in slow motion? Why does the music end so abrupt in this moment?
- What's the message of the insect at 0:40 - 0:48 which is just about to drown?
- I was also surprised about the instrument starting at 0:40 that sounds like a Australian didgeridoo. Aren't you in the US?
- 0:50 the slow-motion comment is just annoying.
- the next shots of the canyon and the comments about its beauty are nice.
- the following interviews are not too bad, however I found them to be pretty incoherent.

I hope that my comments don't sound too harsh!? I think you should go and write a little list of what you want to explain with your movie first:

- main facts about the dam, the canyon and why they want to build it.
- impact on humans, wildlife, fauna?
- what are the alternatives to building this dam?

Next, bring your answers into a logical order, think about which pictures could tell this story and with which comments and interviews you could underline them. And - there it is - your storybook for a great movie! :-)

All you have to do then is go out and make it... ;-)

Cheers,

Oliver

Hey guys. Taking the plunge and showing my work to you lot. :)

Hope you like.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XXsfoaGPdyQ

Overall, good reel! You have a great variety of work, something that I could stand to work on. Your locations are beautiful, and your shots (even the advertisements) avoid "cheesy" and are very artistic.

You show twenty or thirty shots of some of the scenes, and some of the really, really good shots get one or two seconds, when they should get eight or ten. When you get a "woah... good shot!" shot... let it breathe. These are the shots that get you jobs. Use more of them, and less filler.

Cutting to the beat is effective at times, but can be overdone. You tow that line. It doesn't bother me, but it's close. When done once in a while, it makes a certain impact. When done every beat, it makes me feel like I'm at a disco.

Your photography is good, you have good compositional skills. I appreciate your efforts to get a variety of color in every frame, though I can't tell if it's intentional or not. (That's a compliment!)

Your iris seems to be open very wide -- even in tight shots you have a long depth of field. Try more Neutral Density over the lens.

The shots -- especially the really beautiful ones... need color correcting. I'm a videographer, and I used to take that as an insult. Then I sat in on a Larry Jordan seminar on color correcting, now I color correct every shot. Bring your blacks down. Some of your highlights are over exposed. All things easily corrected in post, that will make your stuff look HOT. Turn up the saturation on that beauty stuff. You've got some gems there... make them sing!

Overall, good job. I'd hire you.

Matt,

Congratulations on your trailer. It looks like you did a lot of shooting, because there were a lot of really great shots in it! There is much to be proud of in your work.

What Oliver said was harsh, but in most cases, true. I could follow the story without reading the caption, but it could certainly be made easier to follow. Specifically, I felt like the trailer didn't end, it just stopped. I wanted to check to see if the tape broke.

A good trailer will, in it's final moments, leave you hungry for more. Mysteries will leave you with a "whodunnit?" question, comedy will leave you with a big laugh, drama will leave you with a tear. Your trailer left me wondering if my cable modem came unplugged.

I was surprised at how good some of the shooting was, and how bad some of the shooting was. Did the same person shoot the whole film? There were steadicam (?) shots in there that looked like they were done by a master. (Incidentally -- how'd you do them?) But the interviews were (for the most part) mediocre.

The opening shot of the movie was done over cloudcover. This shot begs to be shot at golden hour, or even in the afternoon with a ton of shadows! This shot is decidedly mediocre, and could/should/would be the best shot of the whole trailer! The opening shot is the one where I decide whether I'm going to watch the rest of the trailer, or run to the bathroom before the film starts. Hook me!

Thanks for the criticism. I agree with about everything said so far. One of my biggest problems is that the more I work on something, the less I can see it from a first time perspective. So what seems obvious to me, makes no sense to others. I will think a few days on how to remedy that. The doc is about twenty minutes long and I only wish I could post the whole thing to see if 'it' suffers from the same thing as the trailer in that regard.

Just an aside. The dam has been built but the river is filling in with silt way upstream from where anyone thought it would and now a sixty mile stretch will be unrunnable and there will be no way anyone can down it. Eden lost.

Everything was shot by me. Thanks for the steadicam compliment. I practiced for hours and hours with the merlin and the hv20 and a wide angle. Thank you Charles Papert for cookbook settings and other hints.

I agree with first shot looks terrible but should look the best. I plain and simply missed the best time of day to shoot but didn't want to take it out. I thought it needed some tripod help too. A little jerky.

As for lighting interviews, I'm absolutely horrible. If you see the other film on Vimeo of mine (I hope to have that one critiqued in a week or so) the lighting is even worse. I about blind the viewer. As soon as I get a little better I think I will try and post some stills on photon management and try to save myself.

Thanks again and feel free to keep firing.

Here's my latest Heinz commercial for the YouTube contest of the same name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJR_9bZNExs

Or for higher quality, watch it on Stage6

http://www.stage6.com/user/soultaker76/video/2248138/Heinz-Commercial---Heinz,-it's-what-makes-hotdogs-heavenly

Here is one of my recent projects for you. Please critique. Thanks.

http://gallery.mac.com/royermedia#100056

Greetings folks! I've posted some of my films here in the past (such as "Superheroes").

Well I've completed my latest short comedy "Why No Arms?" The first for 2008, shot over 3 days with no script, natural lighting. Haha. Original music by Van Kapeghian. It'd be awesome if you gave it a watch. For more info and a download link (plus YouTube link), click here: http://www.amfproductions.com

It was a fast paced film, the music was good, some good action shots, not sure about the whole premise... Keep on working!!

If that was the look you were going for then you nailed it.

But, what were you going for? No story, no musicians, no scenics, just swirls like you filmed it off the screen in itunes. Not trying to be critical here but there's really nothing to critique.

What am I doing wrong?

In order to tell where you are going wrong you need to tell us what you were trying to do,

As Jim said if you were going for the windows media player visualizations
look then you got it.

Andy.

Here's a short film I did for a student run film festival at Carleton College http://dvdfest.org/ . Rules of the festival required that the movie be no longer than five minutes and use iMovie for final output. thirty seconds of footage generated in outside programs was allowed. We decided to use these thirty seconds to the greatest extent that we could, and wound up winning first place.

You can see it on my website:
http://www.blarbus.com/

What do you think?

I thought it was very good. There was a shot towards the beginning where the mic was in the frame, but only for a second. But the one thing I didn't like at all was the music choice, it just didn't go well with the movie at all. Other than that it was a really good short film. Good Job.

Hi Jim and Andy. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. I guess I'm not sure what I was going for. I wanted to create something that was visualy pleasing and would fit the music that I made. And I did plagiarize by using windows media. I used my camera to record the visuals from media since I had no means to create my own at the time and mix them with some other video that I took. I added some additional lighting affects with Vegas. I've shown this to friends and recieved a "ho hum" yes that's nice response. Thanks for giving it to me strait guys.

Oliver

Hey everyone... we put together a behind the scenes / "making of..." for this spec commercial for your viewing. We go over some shooting and how we accomplished the Visual FX in this spec. Check out the video!

http://tripleeproductions.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/netflix-arrival-behind-the-scenes-of-our-netflix-spec-commercial/

Enjoy! Feel free to post comments.

Thanks!

Just to try to pick up some extra video work. Glad you liked it. Thanks

I actually recut my reel (due to music issues on the other one). I've expanded it a little and included a couple of other projects.

http://www.meydenbauerentertainment.com/NewReel.mov

It's a bigger size and higher quality file so it may take a minute to load.

Looking forward to comments.

Josh

Thanks for watching Oleg!

Yeah, it's a bit of an absurdist's comedy. Hehe. :D

I thought it was pretty funny. Kind of an armless Shawn of the Dead. The package joke dragged on a bit long, but I thought the rest was pretty well executed.

Oh, and the music added alot. Good job overall. You might want to think about saving that one for ChillerTV's Dare2Direct contest. 5-8 minute horror movie contest around Halloween time.

I have to agree about the music. It worked in the beginning, but didn't when they were running and shooting and everything after that.

Otherwise, some great effect shots, and the shots were good in general (except the one with the mic).

Was very fun, I kept expecting the guys in the suits to take off their glasses and have funky eyes or something, but that's just my own imagination.

Good work.

Oh, and congrats on winning.

Shot and edited this one in just a couple of days. It is in the fine cut stage and I'm just looking for some critique before I finish it up.

http://www.rpmproductions.info/videos/The_Paper_H264.mov

Thanks in advance,
Ryan

Looks great to me, nice colors and good camera work.

Regards
Simon

It's only 30 seconds long people. Come on, watch it. You know you want to.

Can I get some feedback please?

Sure. A couple things:

You did a good job syncing your cameras together and it looks like it was a good experience for you.

It seems like your camera crew had a little trouble figuring out what to focus on - a lot of the shots seem to wander and aren't very 'confident'.

I saw a lot of the back of the head of the keyboardist, which isn't very pretty to look at - I would have preferred some very tight shots of his fingers, and then a shot of his face, etc... not the back of his head, unless you're tight on that but really focusing on the guitar or sax or something beyond him, if that makes sense.

There was a shot of the drummer that would have been cool but again you can't see his face - it's behind a cymbal. That was a little frustrating. We like to see faces, and if we can't it is a little hard for our brains to enjoy the image. It's unsettling or something - kinda like hot chocolate without the marshmallows.

So - good job, I'm sure it was a good experience for you, but there are some things you can improve in the future that will help the final show out quite a bit.

Thanks for watching Loney, much appreciated!

Yeah I didn't have an experienced second camera (handheld) operator with me at this shoot, so I just had my mom do second camera. Part of the problem was that the Optura Xi (handheld) was having focusing issues and had to be plugged in, so it was hard to move with it. I am going to replace it with an HV30 when they come out though, so that and a little training should help a lot.

Haha, good stuff! Watching that was definitely render-time well spent on my part, look forward to seeing more from you. :) I agree with the Shawn of the Dead feel. Definitely a good movie to be compared to!

Argh, back to FCP, playtime's over. =D

Great idea! Funny!

Wow... great camera work. Great color correction! I am humbled by people who can color grade like that.

Your work is very good. I enjoyed the story line. Your use of audio is very good - I love the sound of the creek, the sound of the geese.

I'll make some suggestions for improvement, but they are mostly very minor.

The second shot in the film is of the front of the house shortly after sunrise. The house is overexposed. I think it's intentional (giving us that "sunrise" look), but even so, it's too much in my opinion.

The woman sitting in the house, sipping the coffee, wishing she had a man... we assume she is single, childless. Behind her, to her right (our left) is an electrical outlet with a child-safe plug protector in it. Single people don't have these. People with kids have these.

Your shooting is very, very creative -- among the best I've seen of this style. It is *almost* too creative, where every shot is of the "creative" variety. We see her reflection in a plate, or looking thru the newspaper at her, etcetera, etcetera. Let it breathe once in a while with a straight-on shot. That is how we (viewers) see the world, is eye-level, straight on. It's entertaining to see things from another angle (especially a creative one) once in a while, but not every shot.

Sometimes actors, especially young, amateur actors, feel like they should ACT, because they're being paid to act. So you ask somebody to drive a car, and all the sudden they're driving a car like a cartoon character, jerking the wheel to and fro... and nobody really drives like that. Likewise, your character asks herself a question (in her head) and scrunches up her face while she does it. Then when she decides she doesn't know the answer, she shrugs her shoulders. Personally, my life is a dialog. I think to myself all the time. I don't ever scrunch my face or shrug my shoulders when I ask myself a perplexing question. Tell your actress to think the emotion they're trying to perform. Don't act it. Don't look it. Just think it. We're doing everything else in the film to make people believe it -- we've written the script to lead up to it, we've shot it in a particular manner, we're using pacing to make it believable, we've got a particular music playing under it... etcetera. You, the actress, are not our only means for getting "confused" across. You are one of five. So don't give me 400% confused.

I enjoyed the story. I watched it a second time, and the beginning confuses me. I appreciate the end-beginning-middle storytelling fashion, but for me, it doesn't work in this story. I'd prefer to skip the "we've been together for four years" part, and just start with her wondering if she'll ever find a man.

I think this film would win photography awards in any competition you submitted it in. Congratulations on a job well done.

Great lookin stuff there. I am just going to suggest that in the talking head shot at the end, the guy is straight on to the camera and the lighting is very flat all over. I don't know if it's something that you can change now, or for future things, but I'd try and angle the body from the lense ( 30/45 degrees and let them just turn their heads to you ), Also I'd say to let their head come up a little so you don't feel like they're peaking up over the bottom edge of the frame ( that was supposed to be funny, but don't know if it came off that way ). I do a LOT of talking head shoots and I have about 10 years of hobby and professional photography experience before I hit the Video world and so that's kind of my bread and butter (good and bad). (also, try and separate out the person and the back drop if you can and zoom in a little bit). Don't know if you have a separate audio recorder so it may be difficult to pull the camera back but if you can pull cam back and zoom in you can shallow out that DOF and get a much nicer easier to focus on subject that will make listening to them easier for the viewer.

Just my .02, (it comes with a money back garuntee) :P

indeed, good cam work, nice footage, (house looked too blown out in the start to me, might tone down the highlighting in that shot). Otherwise it all looked and sounded very well, (story wasn't my thing, but it was still entertaining). I'd say you've got something that you should be pleased to have spent the time and effort on.

Dave

I watched it a second time, and the beginning confuses me. I appreciate the end-beginning-middle storytelling fashion, but for me, it doesn't work in this story. I'd prefer to skip the "we've been together for four years" part, and just start with her wondering if she'll ever find a man.


From that point of view it doesn't work for me either, however I kind of got the impression she was reading from the paper(voice was different) then, as she sat it down she was reflecting on the story and her life in contrast. I may be wrong, but that's how my mind put it together in order to make more sense of the story. Then she meets a man in exactly the same way later on in the film.

I agree about the cinematography being excellent, other than the mismatch between the opening time lapse and the house, it seems like all of a sudden an hour or two pass by in that cut as far as lighting goes. So this throws off my interpretation of the story beginning with her reading from the paper.

The rest of the film was great in my opinion. Audio mixing/timing was near perfect, and your edits seemed very smooth.

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments!

Indeed, she is supposed to be reading the paper in the beginning of the story. I totally agree on the house being over-exposed! I brought it into my NLE and immediately played around with the idea of re-shooting it. I plan on throwing the title up over it and adjusting the levels, if it still looks bad I'll just re-shoot it.

Thank you for taking the time to give it a look and posting your thoughts. I am actually going to enter it into a local cinematography festival, that's why I wanted all the critique I could get.

Ryan

Sax player's sound is a bit distant, does he really drench it in reverb, or did you capture it from the PA and not a direct feed? Everything else sounded pretty clear.

about half way thru the zoom out from the drummer, cut to the front zoom out, cut back to the side shot and zoom in... that ain't workin.

there are some shots in there that I wouldn't have used. With an inexperienced 2nd cam op, I would have chosen to lock one camera down on a wide shot of the entire band, and then use the second for closeups and roam the band with that one. That would save you from cutting fomr camera movement to camera movement, or having to use a shaky shot because you had to choose from the "less of two evils."

and when the sax player walks the dancefloor like that, get up in his face, he's out there to entertain the crowd (yeah I know spoken like a true sax player!) We saw shots of the bandstand without him and then the camera searching for something to shoot. If your were locked into a position he should have come to you, unless he was a bit timid about getting out there in the first place. I've done my fair share of barwalkin, and you gotta get out there with the people. (sorry for the little diversion)

Hey guys,

Here's my first short film, "Beneath Rotted Flesh". It was shot in 2 days and it is for George Romero's Diary of the Dead contest. If you like it and have a MySpace account, vote BOOYAH! on it. If not, click NO WAY!, either way, vote if you can.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2095030396

Hope you guys enjoy it.

EDIT: I forgot to mention it has a lot of cursing so if you're at work, I suggest you wear headphones or if you just don't like films with violence and cursing, don't watch it at all.

My apologies for the late warning.

Wear headphones on this one people:

PROJECT RUNWAY VS. WEREWOLF
http://www.eldersofthedarktower.com

That was just too funny! Great job!

Thanks a lot, Jim. Pass it on to people you think might like it.
Steve

My wife is a big Project Runway fan, so I had her check it out. She thought it was funny.

Werewolf got a bit unfunny during his tirade but overall it had the look and pace of the show, and the Tim Gunn character was spot on! Very well done.