Show Your Work 2005

[Travis Maynard]

Yeah, It's a good idea.

It's my buddies webspace though, and cutting it up and getting it to him to upload on his webspace would be a long process. I will try to fiddle with the filesize a bit more. It's a 720x480 resolution, so I may just take that down a bit and that could help.

The purpose was to keep it a DVD-rip download quality.

We lost some quality though, and still had a large file.

The movie is an hour long though, so Im not sure how much smaller I could get it.

I'll do what I can!

[Rob Lohman]

You left it at full resolution? Most people who put up movies on
the web do it at 50% resolution (which would be 320 x 240 at
1.0 pixel aspect ratio, yours is still in NTSC PA, which you don't
want) and sometimes even change the 30 fps to 15 fps. This will
drop your filesize with the same compression by 75%!

[Rob Lohman]

Hello Mike. I have no idea how far I got into the movie (since there
was no length indicator etc.), but I could not finish it. For my liking
it moved far too slow, or at least not enough was happening.

I would get rid of the intro, it looks cheesy. You shouldn't need to
tell the audience to get "ready" for something. I would also ditch
the line that went like "from the twisted mind of". That looks un-
professional in my opinion.

One final bit. Do I see the LucasFilm logo in the lower left? If so,
I assume you do not have any association with them. Remove it
immediately. You are not allowed to use another companies logo
without their consent!

[Rob Lohman]

Hello Rich,

Is there one movie you are most proud of? That you really want
people to see? Usually if you post links to a bunch of movies they
will not be watched (a lot).

Like myself, I have very little time. I'd like to see movies other
people make, but if you start posting 5 at the same time it takes
a lot of time.

I'll see if I can watch some later.

[Rob Lohman]

I was missing some close ups as well, but other than that it looked
nice, good work!

[Pete Bauer]

Hi David,

Thanks for sharing your work with the community. Since it is really a short film showcasing your work -- more so than about the camera itself -- I moved your post over to the DV For The Masses board...more folks will find it here than in the XL2 board.

Cheers,

[Travis Maynard]

While I didn't understand a thing about the little short...It was very...entertaining.

I really cannot gather the words to explain it. The acting and the mystery with the music just worked well.

As far as I could tell there was no meaning(?) but it was done well.

Im at a loss of words to explain it but I enjoyed it!

By the way, what was the music you used for it?

[Mike Lott Jr]

Rob,

Thanks for the reply. This is our first attempt at a real production, produced, directed, filmed and edited by only two people.

As far as Lucas Films is concerned, no, that is not their logo, the one you are referencing says Luke S. Films. As far as I know, that name is not taken.

Thanks,
Mike

[Luis Caffesse]

"Luis, when you started out freelancing, how did you get the attention and business of your local agencies? Right now I'm doing mainly business that comes straight from a client or a referral, but I want to get some agency work as well."

Sorry I took so long to get back to you, I was actually out shooting all weekend.
:)

I started out in radio, though I had been working with video/film long before that, I took the radio job because it was produciton oriented.

So, much like you're working through the TV station, i started freelancing through the radio station. Most of my contacts began through there, until I had enough freelance business to be able to sustain myself.

I got lucky in that a few of the key contact I had were local agencies. When I first started, these angencies only had 1 or 2 clients each. Over the past 4 years, they've grown quite a bit.

I continue to court the local agencies with demos, setting up pitch meetings at the beginning of each year in an effort to get their business. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

You're best bet it to try to find the smaller agencies in your market. I don't mean the smallest, not the bottom of the barrel guys who are looking for free production, but the smaller agencies who are still looking for something slightly better than they can get from free from the TV station (no offense by the way, I thought your work was really good, in fact I'm suprised your station would give that for free. The free spots where I am are generally a 1 or 2 shot deal, handheld wiht a graphic at the end).

The small agencies of today will be the medium sized agencies of next year... So, Ive tried to concentrate not on getting one big job from these people, but creating a relationship. Thanks to that, I've gotten continuous work from one agency in particular.... they've told me repeatedly that they won't use anyone else for the TV production.

I was always upfront with the agencies I met with in the begining. Part of the advantage of meeting with small agencies who may not have a lot of resources or clients is that they may tend to be more willing to go with someone who is in the same situation. I approached many agencies when I started and told them flat out that I had only been in business a short time, and was hoping that we could find some way to help both of our businesses by working together. Some people are receptive to that, some are just looking for a quick spot and will always go with the lowest bidder.

Like I said, it took a while.... and it's really only starting to pay off this year. But I'm glad I never let any of those early relationships wiht agencies die out. Even when they hadn't given me work in a while, I would call them just to see how business was going, and to remind them that if they needed anything I was there.

My advice would be to start out by talking to the sales people there at the TV station. The sales people at the radio station were invaluable in getting me contact information for the agencies I talked to. Your sales staff should know who your best bet is... and who to talk to. They should also already have relationships with local agencies, and could help put a good word in for you.

I hope this rambling post helped in some way.
I'm exhausted from shooting, and haven't slept much....

[Brandon Greenlee]

I thought this music video was extremely well done.

Well choreographed and I enjoyed the story as well.

What did you shoot it with?

[David Eggerichs]

How did you get Rob Corddry to be in the video?

That was sweet.

Did you shoot with the XL2 for this as well?

David

[Geoffrey Engelbrecht]

Hello Mike,

I watched it through to the end. I like the idea of the story. There was a cute twist at the end.

I agree with Rob, though, it went on a bit too long and could have been shortened a bit.

The music was good but could have been a bit more intense. I have to say I loved the initial ring of the phone on the dashboard. It really made me jump, but then you reduced the volume and the effect dulled out. I would have kept the same high volume until he picked it up.

All in all though I think it was an excellent first film.

Best Regards,

Geoff

[John Hudson]

I tried watching this and just couldnt due to losing interest. I had no option for pause as well; might want to fix that. The AUDIO is the highlight of this piece but the story and camera were below average; nothing screamed for my attention anyway. The compression is pretty bad as well so who knows if I am getting the best view of this. I just got "Dude standing around on phone walking back and forth while guy on other end keeps calling him and using foul langauge"...Sccaaarrryyyyyy. It lost me; sorry.

Also, 'LukeSfilms' might be free but the LUCASFILMS Likeness is not; I'd seriously considering 86'ing that; sides, you're more original than that aren't you?

[Tyler Jon]

This is a promo I made for a youth center. It marks the first freelance project under my belt.

www.finaldesignstudios.com/jppromo.wmv

Take a look and see what you think. Save it to your hard drive please as bandwidth isn't free. :)

[Pete Bauer]

Hey Tyler,

My 2 cents is that you were highly effective in delivering your message -- definitely a success. Without doing any analysis, just watching/listening through the piece, the sound seemed pretty well done -- not an easy thing, as I'm finding out in my amateurish projects. One thing that did catch my eye, though, was inconsistent lighting between the various interviewees:

- first interviewee (female) seemed to have different color cast at different cuts in the interview
- the young fella with the pencil thin moustache and later the young woman in front of the pea-green background both seemed under-lit compared to their backgrounds
- guy with the black muscle shirt and necklace had a distracting "hot spot" to his right in the background
- the dad (?) with glasses had a wicked "hot spot" on his left temple.

But again, on balance, effective and nicely done. As long as it is run through a "broadcast colors" filter, or something similar, to mitigate the hot spots on the interviews, I'm sure it would do well on TV.

Cheers,