Show Your Work 2004

Lathe Austin · July 28th, 2004, 01:32 AM

It works. But I think you could have made the computer funnier. I mean you have it and then the voice over makes it seem like something everyone has tried. But in reality, no one has done that and that's why it's funny, because it's absurd. But you use it like it's normal.

The Sony thing at the bottom right hand corner is distracting. And unnecessary.

Just my opinion.

Michael Wisniewski · July 28th, 2004, 11:27 AM

Well take all this with a grain of salt, hindsight's always 20/20 and somebody always "knows" how to do something better ... anyways here's what I think.

I liked the basic idea, it works and it's a decent start, but you should work on "cheating" your production values to up the perceived quality:

a. The sounds are okay, but the voice over really sounds amateurish. It has too much room sound. Try using a car, closet, or build one of these voice over boxes. I thought your voice over diction and intonation worked fine though.

b. Great if you win $500! but using that song might become a big problem. Unless the contest got permission ahead of time, you should do a little research on getting permission to use music in your video.

c. You could really fix the lighting in the computer sequence. It screamed amateur (hey I know, I am one). Lots of ways to fix it, I'd start by trying to diffuse the light. If you can, get some craftsman work lights at Sears. I saw they were on sale the other day, $20 for 1000 watts, heck get 3 and you're set. A cheap set of reflectors would help enhance the light as well.

The minidisc and running shots were decent and worked. I liked your dolly shot and the handheld shot throwing the minidisc.

Fred Finn · July 28th, 2004, 12:22 PM

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah luckily we don't have to worry about copyright issues since it is an educational based project and contest :) One of the perks of being a student. When you said the lighting shots with the computer, did you mean the PC when it was taped to my back, or when I was picking it up. Ironically enough I was using the halogens lights you described haha just bought them from home depot for 9 bucks!! I only had ten days to write film and edit, so we are given leniency, I definitely agree with you the lighting in the shots with the PC on my back is really bad. As far as sound goes... I know... The bain of my existence. The nouse is actually computer noice from filtering the sounds so much.... I took out a muffled sound, and my voice is a little naisely... Thanks so much for checking that out!! I'm glad no one had trouble with the concept!

jumbalijumbali · July 30th, 2004, 03:53 AM

Fred -- the key to holding the viewer's interest is telling a story. Everything hinges on the story concept. The beginning works, but you don't carry it through.

Even if you aren't going to change it now, think about how you could have carried the theme through the entire commercial.

Why don't we meet computer guy again?

How could you have used him through the whole production?

Could you have had him jogging down the street meeting people using the MiniDisc player?

Could he have met a pretty gal at the end using one? What twist could you throw in to make the story complete?

It's all about the story. It seems like humans are wiring to look for and enjoy being part of a good story.

Ben

Fred Finn · July 30th, 2004, 01:02 PM

Yeah thats where I was struggling. I felt like him coming back into the the story was a bit cliche. I was trying to come up with some new way of seeing it, but I just ran out of time.

I am definitely open to ideas. The best thing I could think of his him getting into a car with the comp on his back... Seems like something that has not been addresssed before.

Bill Ball · August 3rd, 2004, 11:31 AM

I've received a lot of help from the DVinfo forums over the last couple of years as I have begun to make some short dramatic (maybe "melodramatic" is more appropriate!) movies as a hobby.

In case forum readers would like to check them out I have put the two completed projects online in Windows Media format. They are currently set up as 300kps files -- I will work on proper streaming etc.

You can find them at: http://ball.tcnj.edu/movies/

I just completed work on "Lieder" with my GL-2/Premiere Pro. "Point of Separation" was done last summer on simpler equipment.

I'd be happy to take any feedback

Bill Ball
ball@tcnj.edu

Benjamin Taft · August 4th, 2004, 05:41 AM

Synopsis: "Watch the Swedish west cost band Fritz talk about their past and future. Hear what motivates Danny to write the hit singles that astound the people of Poland and most of the former eastern block. Find out the story behind the mysterious band member Calle Nilsson. What happens when the band gets of the stage...all is revealed. As the band aims for further success in the land of the rising sun, Japan we follow them through fire and rain."

Have a look at it:

Download Fritz. If you find it to be too dark get this gamma adjusted one instead

I also put up some full resolution screencaps from the DVD!

It's a standard mpeg-4 video, tested to work in Quicktime 6 and Video LAN Player, (VLC) on mac and windows. It's about 17 minutes long and the smallest some what acceptable file I could get was slightly below 35MB with Apples Compressor, at medium VBR setting. It's hosted off my home server for now (about 70KB/s uplink) so I recommend saving it to disc.

Since it's in Swedish I had to add english subtitles to the DVD but the only way I could get these in to the web-version was dubbing the DVD with the subtitles turned on to FCP over s-video and my cameras anolog->dv input. Because of this they are quite small, sorry about that.

This is my most ambitious project so far. I worked with four classmates from a course in "Cinema science" I took at the university. Our end term assignment differed from other parts of the course since it wasn't only theoretical, we were asked to make a documentary. It was shot last fall (2003) and edited & finalized and showcased and finally put on to a DVD back in February of this year. It was basically a huge learning experience for me, getting comfortable with planning, shooting interviews, (getting by with what's available) lighting and most of all editing and DVD authoring.

Technical details:
Video: Canon XM2
Audio: Crummy external mic on a home made microphone boom-pole
Lighting: Big hot ass orange theatre light (color interviews), various old tripod video lights (black&white interviews)
Editing: Final Cut Pro 4
DVD authoring: DVD Studio Pro 2.

This is what the DVD cover looks like :)

I'd really appreciate any feedback on it. Let me know what you think!

/Benjie

Rob Lohman · August 4th, 2004, 02:02 PM

I've moved your thread to our showcase forum where it belongs.

Bill Ball · August 4th, 2004, 02:19 PM

Thanks. I couldn't seem to remember where that was when I posted.

The videos do stream at various bitrates now.

Alex Chan · August 4th, 2004, 07:07 PM

Hi, my friend would like me to post his short film in here cause he doesn't get the access. His name is Charles Lee, the director and editor of "The Passion", I am just helping him for sound and music edit. It shoot by a one CCD Sony camera.

A film about violence in school, it is a school assignment.

http://www.appleidea.com/movie/passion_eng.wmv

David Chao · August 5th, 2004, 01:01 AM

Great demos, Brett! I have 3 questions for you; 1) was the aerial shot the only one captured with a DVX100, 2) where do you have your site hosted, and 3) what did you use to compress your demos? Your demos downloaded very fast for me. As fast as Apples movie trailers.

Great DP work!

Rob Lohman · August 5th, 2004, 05:58 AM

It looks like a big project, congratulations on pulling it off. However,
it didn't really maintain my interest for more than a couple of
minutes. The first "interview" looked like the guys really did NOT
want to be there and it was very hard to watch, some more
editing and perhaps pruning might have helped greatly.

I was expecting someone to talk about their love and passion to
be, I don't know, perhaps more entertaining or more enhusiastic
about it. I just didn't get the feel of that which I think is due to
them and not you and the team who made the movie.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't get myself to watch the full piece with
all the work I have laying around.

Benjamin Taft · August 5th, 2004, 03:22 PM

Thanks for watching Rob and for taking time to let me know you did!

I understand what you are saying about the beginning. It's a bit long and umm..boring ;) I'm very happy with the visual side of it though. I guess we only have ourselves to blame since WE play the band members. We had some basic character guidelines that we had made up that we tried to follow but other then that we were just improvising what to say. I actually think the close up individual interviews are kind of funny.

I don't expect anyone to look though it from beginning to end so here are some recommendations if you decide to sample a few scenes.

03:00 - The stuff this guy comes up with when improvising is just plain weird. I have a bunch of clips with him where he says equally strange stuff but that I couldn't use since everyone cracked up.

05:16 - Interviews with people (unknowingly) praising our band. Can you guess who they are really talking about?

10:51 - A music video I made in the last stages of my editing work for a song one of the guys made. Also check the end of it, at 13:43 for some time/movement experimenting.

14:22 - The ending/credits sequence plays to a song that another guy from the "team" made. Some Swedish knowlege is required to appreciate the unusual lyrics.

As a side-note, another couple of guys from school made a "real" band documentary with an actual band for the same assignment. These guys did some heavy (but quite transparent to the viewer) manipulation with their interviews to fit their theme of a trash talking, fighting band. Also these real band members weren't all that more interesting/didn't have a whole lot more to say then our made up characters.

Anyways, for those of you who take a look, I like comments, even really short ones...

Benjamin Taft · August 5th, 2004, 04:34 PM

Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though!

Charles Lee · August 5th, 2004, 04:51 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Benjamin Taft : Ni hao :)

The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro.

I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh...

b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though! -->>>

Hi, this is Charles Lee, the director of the movie.
Regarding you didn't get the connection, the reasons I did not specify the reason of killing his roommate is because I want to reveals that some people killing others without a reasonable reason, like some countries do in a year ago.
Beside, I am tend to reveal that the violences can be happen in everywhere, even in the place that should be peaceful. The violence is not too far from us, maybe someday, your buddies in school or workplace will hurt somebody without any good reason, and you cannot predict...
I hope my video can remind the concern of violences.

BTW, thank you for watching my movie.
There is another movie I made, and actually it was my first movie.
http://www.appleidea.com/movie/last_december.wmv
I am pleasure to hear the comments from everyone.

July 30th, 2004, 03:53 AM	#484
jumbalijumbali New Boot Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 7	Where's the story? Fred -- the key to holding the viewer's interest is telling a story. Everything hinges on the story concept. The beginning works, but you don't carry it through. Even if you aren't going to change it now, think about how you could have carried the theme through the entire commercial. Why don't we meet computer guy again? How could you have used him through the whole production? Could you have had him jogging down the street meeting people using the MiniDisc player? Could he have met a pretty gal at the end using one? What twist could you throw in to make the story complete? It's all about the story. It seems like humans are wiring to look for and enjoy being part of a good story. Ben

August 3rd, 2004, 11:31 AM	#486
Bill Ball Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: NEW JERSEY Posts: 216	movie projects to view I've received a lot of help from the DVinfo forums over the last couple of years as I have begun to make some short dramatic (maybe "melodramatic" is more appropriate!) movies as a hobby. In case forum readers would like to check them out I have put the two completed projects online in Windows Media format. They are currently set up as 300kps files -- I will work on proper streaming etc. You can find them at: http://ball.tcnj.edu/movies/ I just completed work on "Lieder" with my GL-2/Premiere Pro. "Point of Separation" was done last summer on simpler equipment. I'd be happy to take any feedback Bill Ball ball@tcnj.edu

August 4th, 2004, 05:41 AM	#487
Benjamin Taft Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Gothenburg, Sweden Posts: 52	Fritz - A rockumentary with the latest swedish musical sensation Synopsis: "Watch the Swedish west cost band Fritz talk about their past and future. Hear what motivates Danny to write the hit singles that astound the people of Poland and most of the former eastern block. Find out the story behind the mysterious band member Calle Nilsson. What happens when the band gets of the stage...all is revealed. As the band aims for further success in the land of the rising sun, Japan we follow them through fire and rain." Have a look at it: Download Fritz. If you find it to be too dark get this gamma adjusted one instead I also put up some full resolution screencaps from the DVD! It's a standard mpeg-4 video, tested to work in Quicktime 6 and Video LAN Player, (VLC) on mac and windows. It's about 17 minutes long and the smallest some what acceptable file I could get was slightly below 35MB with Apples Compressor, at medium VBR setting. It's hosted off my home server for now (about 70KB/s uplink) so I recommend saving it to disc. Since it's in Swedish I had to add english subtitles to the DVD but the only way I could get these in to the web-version was dubbing the DVD with the subtitles turned on to FCP over s-video and my cameras anolog->dv input. Because of this they are quite small, sorry about that. This is my most ambitious project so far. I worked with four classmates from a course in "Cinema science" I took at the university. Our end term assignment differed from other parts of the course since it wasn't only theoretical, we were asked to make a documentary. It was shot last fall (2003) and edited & finalized and showcased and finally put on to a DVD back in February of this year. It was basically a huge learning experience for me, getting comfortable with planning, shooting interviews, (getting by with what's available) lighting and most of all editing and DVD authoring. Technical details: Video: Canon XM2 Audio: Crummy external mic on a home made microphone boom-pole Lighting: Big hot ass orange theatre light (color interviews), various old tripod video lights (black&white interviews) Editing: Final Cut Pro 4 DVD authoring: DVD Studio Pro 2. This is what the DVD cover looks like :) I'd really appreciate any feedback on it. Let me know what you think! /Benjie

August 4th, 2004, 02:02 PM	#488
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	I've moved your thread to our showcase forum where it belongs. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

August 4th, 2004, 07:07 PM	#490
Alex Chan Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 78	My friend's short film "The Passion" Hi, my friend would like me to post his short film in here cause he doesn't get the access. His name is Charles Lee, the director and editor of "The Passion", I am just helping him for sound and music edit. It shoot by a one CCD Sony camera. A film about violence in school, it is a school assignment. http://www.appleidea.com/movie/passion_eng.wmv

July 28th, 2004, 01:32 AM	#481
Lathe Austin Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Springdale, Arkansas Posts: 34	It works. But I think you could have made the computer funnier. I mean you have it and then the voice over makes it seem like something everyone has tried. But in reality, no one has done that and that's why it's funny, because it's absurd. But you use it like it's normal. The Sony thing at the bottom right hand corner is distracting. And unnecessary. Just my opinion.

July 28th, 2004, 11:27 AM	#482
Michael Wisniewski Wrangler Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Makati, Metro Manila Posts: 2,706 Images: 32	Well take all this with a grain of salt, hindsight's always 20/20 and somebody always "knows" how to do something better ... anyways here's what I think. I liked the basic idea, it works and it's a decent start, but you should work on "cheating" your production values to up the perceived quality: a. The sounds are okay, but the voice over really sounds amateurish. It has too much room sound. Try using a car, closet, or build one of these voice over boxes. I thought your voice over diction and intonation worked fine though. b. Great if you win $500! but using that song might become a big problem. Unless the contest got permission ahead of time, you should do a little research on getting permission to use music in your video. c. You could really fix the lighting in the computer sequence. It screamed amateur (hey I know, I am one). Lots of ways to fix it, I'd start by trying to diffuse the light. If you can, get some craftsman work lights at Sears. I saw they were on sale the other day, $20 for 1000 watts, heck get 3 and you're set. A cheap set of reflectors would help enhance the light as well. The minidisc and running shots were decent and worked. I liked your dolly shot and the handheld shot throwing the minidisc.

July 28th, 2004, 12:22 PM	#483
Fred Finn Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Jackson, WY Posts: 178	Thanks for the feedback. Yeah luckily we don't have to worry about copyright issues since it is an educational based project and contest :) One of the perks of being a student. When you said the lighting shots with the computer, did you mean the PC when it was taped to my back, or when I was picking it up. Ironically enough I was using the halogens lights you described haha just bought them from home depot for 9 bucks!! I only had ten days to write film and edit, so we are given leniency, I definitely agree with you the lighting in the shots with the PC on my back is really bad. As far as sound goes... I know... The bain of my existence. The nouse is actually computer noice from filtering the sounds so much.... I took out a muffled sound, and my voice is a little naisely... Thanks so much for checking that out!! I'm glad no one had trouble with the concept!

July 30th, 2004, 01:02 PM	#485
Fred Finn Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Jackson, WY Posts: 178	Yeah thats where I was struggling. I felt like him coming back into the the story was a bit cliche. I was trying to come up with some new way of seeing it, but I just ran out of time. I am definitely open to ideas. The best thing I could think of his him getting into a car with the comp on his back... Seems like something that has not been addresssed before.

August 4th, 2004, 02:19 PM	#489
Bill Ball Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: NEW JERSEY Posts: 216	Thanks. I couldn't seem to remember where that was when I posted. The videos do stream at various bitrates now.

August 5th, 2004, 01:01 AM	#491
David Chao Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Tokyo, Japan Posts: 26	Great demos, Brett! I have 3 questions for you; 1) was the aerial shot the only one captured with a DVX100, 2) where do you have your site hosted, and 3) what did you use to compress your demos? Your demos downloaded very fast for me. As fast as Apples movie trailers. Great DP work!

August 5th, 2004, 05:58 AM	#492
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	It looks like a big project, congratulations on pulling it off. However, it didn't really maintain my interest for more than a couple of minutes. The first "interview" looked like the guys really did NOT want to be there and it was very hard to watch, some more editing and perhaps pruning might have helped greatly. I was expecting someone to talk about their love and passion to be, I don't know, perhaps more entertaining or more enhusiastic about it. I just didn't get the feel of that which I think is due to them and not you and the team who made the movie. I'm sorry, but I couldn't get myself to watch the full piece with all the work I have laying around. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

August 5th, 2004, 03:22 PM	#493
Benjamin Taft Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Gothenburg, Sweden Posts: 52	Thanks for watching Rob and for taking time to let me know you did! I understand what you are saying about the beginning. It's a bit long and umm..boring ;) I'm very happy with the visual side of it though. I guess we only have ourselves to blame since WE play the band members. We had some basic character guidelines that we had made up that we tried to follow but other then that we were just improvising what to say. I actually think the close up individual interviews are kind of funny. I don't expect anyone to look though it from beginning to end so here are some recommendations if you decide to sample a few scenes. 03:00 - The stuff this guy comes up with when improvising is just plain weird. I have a bunch of clips with him where he says equally strange stuff but that I couldn't use since everyone cracked up. 05:16 - Interviews with people (unknowingly) praising our band. Can you guess who they are really talking about? 10:51 - A music video I made in the last stages of my editing work for a song one of the guys made. Also check the end of it, at 13:43 for some time/movement experimenting. 14:22 - The ending/credits sequence plays to a song that another guy from the "team" made. Some Swedish knowlege is required to appreciate the unusual lyrics. As a side-note, another couple of guys from school made a "real" band documentary with an actual band for the same assignment. These guys did some heavy (but quite transparent to the viewer) manipulation with their interviews to fit their theme of a trash talking, fighting band. Also these real band members weren't all that more interesting/didn't have a whole lot more to say then our made up characters. Anyways, for those of you who take a look, I like comments, even really short ones...

August 5th, 2004, 04:34 PM	#494
Benjamin Taft Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Gothenburg, Sweden Posts: 52	Ni hao :) The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro. I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh... b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though!

August 5th, 2004, 04:51 PM	#495
Charles Lee Tourist Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Hong Kong Posts: 2	<<<-- Originally posted by Benjamin Taft : Ni hao :) The most interesting part of the short to me is when the tourture/murder video is viewed in the classroom. The intro sequence (up until when he gets a phone call) was also pretty coool. The concept reminded me a bit of the movie '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro. I didn't quite get the connection with some guy who decides to whack his roomie because he's stealing his stuff (and later showing it of as a school project) and Columbine shootings and US bombings in Kosovo. The later two incidents were connected in the Bowling for columbine movie, but other then that? Violence never ends eh... b.t.w I got redirected to http://www.you-nion.net/ when I wanted to check out the site that hosted some gl2 sample you put up some time ago. From what I could see there was some of your work on there, but almost everything was in Chinese, heh. Cool site though! -->>> Hi, this is Charles Lee, the director of the movie. Regarding you didn't get the connection, the reasons I did not specify the reason of killing his roommate is because I want to reveals that some people killing others without a reasonable reason, like some countries do in a year ago. Beside, I am tend to reveal that the violences can be happen in everywhere, even in the place that should be peaceful. The violence is not too far from us, maybe someday, your buddies in school or workplace will hurt somebody without any good reason, and you cannot predict... I hope my video can remind the concern of violences. BTW, thank you for watching my movie. There is another movie I made, and actually it was my first movie. http://www.appleidea.com/movie/last_december.wmv I am pleasure to hear the comments from everyone.