Show Your Work 2005

[Brandon Greenlee]

Nice little video.

Should have tripod'ed the first few shots.

What was it shot with?

The well-lit inside shots looked very clear.


Been a while since I've heard Clint Eastwood....Bring Back The Gorrilaz!

[Riley Harmon]

My drama teacher, my friend, and myself are theatre people and we worked on this scene for our advanced drama class. By the end of rehearsals we decided that we wanted to preserve it on tape. The scene calls for 3 construction workers to be on a building gurter (sp?)

So I thought a greenscreen would be perfect since we were going to be filming it.

We greenscreened some flats and put some 2x4's on sawhorses and went with it. The audio is kind of iffy because I didn't put up any batting to remove echo. Oh well. It was shot with a Pv-Dv953, converted to 24p with DVfilm, and then composited in After Effects using keylight.

Let me know what you think.

It is windows media and about 20 megs.

Thanks!

http://www.rch-e.com/rche/films/meremortals.wmv

[Scott Silverman]

It was shot with a GL2.

Your right about the first couple shots with the tripod...we just didn't want to have to deal with it, but next time we will use one! Thanks for the reply!

[Gerald Lee]

This is a horror short film a friend and I made last summer. We are planning to create 2 or 3 more shorts along with an outer story (like Creepshow) and end up creating a feature length. Hopefully we'll get better with each short. Since we are releasing the entire thing, we placed a watermark. Sorry for the inconvenience. We welcome feedback and constructive criticism. Feel free to ask questions.

There are some violent scenes so you may want to tuck your kids in before watching.

http://www.hirr.org/trucci/BuryTheGiftScreener.avi (101 megs, Xvid)

[Mitchell Stookey]

I downloaded your video and there was no picture at all, just audio. I recieved an error when loading the codec. Is this my problem or the files? I waited over 30 minutes and it will not load in the browser so I would prefer to just download it. Thanks

[Dave Ferdinand]

The crappy resolution due to the compression doesn't really make it enjoyable.

I'm sure some of that footage was quite nice to look at, but as it is it's kinda pointless.

[Nicholas Bartleet]

Thanks Dave, I used After Effects for the color grading by the way.

I had to use a lot of depthmaps and blurs to fake depth of field in some of the shots, this was to tie it in with the shots I aquired using a 35mm converter.

Cheers, Nick

[Dave Ferdinand]

It worked fine on mine. You may have to find some website where to download the XVID drivers from, Mitchell.

Here's what I thought of the short.

GOOD:

1 - Well shot. Framing, colour and continuity are all pretty good.
2 - Sound. Many short films suffer from imperceptible speech, but yours is crisp and clear. Did you dub it in post or used a good shotgun mic? Also nice sound effects.

BAD:

1 - It extends for too long. I thought the plot could have been easily crammed into 8 or 9 minutes. The slow pace doesn't really help the stoy, imo.
2 - You should have used a tripod more often for steady shots. Some of them are a bit shaky.
3 - Some scenes (like the one zooming onto the bedroom window) are over-exposed. Not sure if you did it on purpose, but it doesn't look right.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hey Gerald,

Very good. I don't know how many movies you have made, but it looks you already know some things well:

- Good editing
- Good framing
- good sound, although sometimes it felt somewhat unnatural.
- Good acting performances (are that your buddies? If so, you guys already have many technical experience at a young age!)
- Funny how you always framed the mother without her head.
- Good lightning
- Good misé en scene.
- Good special effects
- You gave some time to build these characters, especially by the good acting performances too.
- Simple script, but with good cinematography.

Minor things:
- the cutting from the dinner place of the boys, to the zoom in on the window of the white house, at around five minutes... is to abdrupt, I would let the sound of the dinner place linger a little longer.
- Sometimes the movie was a little long, although it never came boring though.
-Didn't like the rock music at the climax
- The monkey didn't really look that scary, but it never really bothered.


Few Questions:
- what did you shoot it with?
- did you use lightning kits or used natural lightning?
- did you guys made the dvd covers of the horrorfilms yourselves?
- how did you do the shots when you track the two guys talking? did you buid a dolly?
- did you have a budget?
- did you compose some of your own music? Because the music when the guy goes down in the middle of the night, with the red image and stuff, it really sounded like the instruments coming from a Casio Keyboard (I have one, but I'm interested in how far is it good enough to make a score with, just curious)

Sorry to ask, but how old are you?
Your movie looks like it's made by young people who were very enthousiastic about making their movie, and I mean this in a good way! You need that passion and fun!

Keep up the good work!

Sorry if I overwhelmed you with questions.

[Gerald Lee]

If the video doesn't work, try the latest ffdshow decoder here.

Thanks for the feedback and constructive criticism. We will definitely benefit from it on our future projects. This is our first narrative project we ever did, so we have a bit to learn, but we were already experienced with videography (through documentaries and weddings) so at least we knew our movie would look and sound somewhat decent.

Here are some answers to the questions,

We shot with the DVX100 (not the A) in full frame and cropped on post. The ability to reframe some of the shots was a huge advantage. We used some work lights and lamps from home depot and diffused with parchment paper. Our entire light kit probably cost us 50 bucks, a little more if you include the color gels. The dvd artwork was done by this guy named Lukas Richtera that my friend found on the internet. He does lots of gothic artwork and we promised him a copy of the final product for contributing. The stable shots were done with a homebuilt stabilizer (Cody Deegan design). Our monitor was broken at the time so we just blindly framed our actors. Good thing the DVX has such a wide stock lens.
The actual budget we spent on this movie was somewhere around 150 to 200 dollars. Most of it went into special effects and DV tapes. Haha, and Mathieu you were right, the lead sound was played by my friend on a cheap Casio keyboard. I played the rhythm with my classical guitar. We did add some reverb and compression to it though. All of the music was original (except for La Muerte Del Angel I performed on the TV behind the mom, but that song is no longer copyrighted) as we didn't want to deal with using other people's music. It sounds cheaper, but it's ours. I am 21 and Richard just turned 22. The actors were actual high school actors we contacted on the internet.

All sound was done with the AT897. On some scenes the actors were recorded on location (scene with them doing physics homework), and others we had to dub due to lawnmowers and such getting into our sound. Sound effects were made by chopping an assortment of vegetables which the local grocer was kind enough to donate.

This and the dvxuser forum has been my best asset. There are some really knowledgable people in these forums, and I even bought the DVX from someone over at the dvxuser forums.

Right now we are seeing how people react to our movie. It's been a mixed bag so far.

[Volker Krieger]

Join the first endless interactive chain video in the net - initiated in Germany!
It's no competition and has no commercial interest - it's an experimental game.
We're looking forward to a wide participation all over the world...!
www.kettenvideo.de

The curators

Volker Krieger (Dortmund)
www.vk-videokunst.com

Sascha Dornhöfer (Berlin)
www.neuemassenproduktion.de

[Geoffrey Engelbrecht]

Nice film.

The dialog at times seemed a little quiet compared to the music. Especially the last line. I had to play it back with the volume up to hear it.

Regards,

Geoff

[Peter John Ross]

Ever go to a film festival & then watched a blurry, grainey, incomprehensible, random assemblage of images called "abstract"?

I made one from the underexposed, unusuable footage from my narrative movei "Bitter Old Man". I'm hoping to submit this to film festivals & see if people buy into the B.S. that it's an "art film".

let me know what you think.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE Bitter Old Man

8 meg file


THE BITTER OLD MAN comes complete with art film cliches:
a. crappy jazz soundtrack
b. black & white, grainy film footage
c. guy washing face in mirror
d. subliminal messages
e. characters that represent abstract emotions
f. meaningless phrases throughout

This movie even stars SONNYBOO itself, committing suicide.

Enjoy!

-Peter John Ross
Sonnyboo - The Filmmaker's Friend

[Scott Beck]

Bluebox Limited's latest feature "Her Summer" is now on DVD for only $10! The film was shot on a Panasonic DVX100A for a total budget of $50.

BOX ART: http://www.blueboxlimited.com/hsdvd.jpg

VIEW CLIP: http://www.blueboxlimited.com/multimedia/hsclip.html (Quicktime, 18.2MB)

TRAILER: http://www.blueboxlimited.com/multimedia/hstrailer.html (Quicktime, 18.6MB)
http://www.blueboxlimited.com/multimedia/hstrailer.wmv (Windows Media, 6.8MB)

Based on true events, Officer Ethan Crowe finds his brothers brutally murdered and becomes entangled in a supernatural mystery. The next day, he is missing. Two years later, two friends come across the police evidence from that night, and began to put the pieces together. "Her Summer" is a suspense-thriller which is more than its parts -- it is a human story of friendship and the memories that we form.

The DVD includes the film, commentary, interviews, a short film, and more, and is available for only $10, plus shipping. To order, visit the Bluebox Store at http://www.blueboxlimited.com/store.

Thanks for your support!

[Jesse Rodriguez]

i agree with the sound you should invest in some mics.