Adrian's right. I imagine door-to-door for me would be about two hours to get there. And I live in central Tokyo!

That's why I like living in Osaka, everything is so close, I can ride my bike to Namba in about 15 min. Umeda is only 13 min. away by train, heck, I even one time rode my bike to the Canon Service center in only 8 min. It's one stop over in Morinomiya. The longest ride I take is the train to Kyoto, only an hour from my place.

On the subject of Japan, right now Resfest is in full swing down here in the Big O. been checking it out, my friend does PR work for Resfest Japan so he got me a festival pass, just saw the documentary Stoked tonight, great flick. He introduced me to the woman in charge of Japan Resfest, I gave her a copy of the short film a friend and I submitted but didn't get accepted to Resfest. I was surprised by some of the shorts that got in, not very good.

Did you guys check out Resfest?

I'm still not sure I fully understand the plot, and some of the acting is woeful, but otherwise I think it's pretty good all things considered.
____________________________________________________

I love your review.

I originally interpreted it to mean the guy had another weekend of getting nowhere in life. Partied the week away and still didn't get the girl. Then Monday rolls around and it's back to work/school.

Overall I didn't think there was anything random or unstructured at all. I'd even submit it to a festival and wouldn't be surprised if it won something.

Team Bling - Sportbike Intro
 

This is my first edit production and I'd like some feedback. Camera was shakey (hand held for obvious reasons) as the wind was insane this day. This is a basic edit deal synched with music. I'd like to build on this in the future with some more cinematic effects, but you gotta start somewhere.

This is a promo for "helmetharbor.com", a local motorcycle apparel shop. They have their own race team, and this is the intro for a short 20 minute documentary about the team and the club race scene. The total production will be completed in a week or so and the shop owner is having 2000 glass mastered disks printed up. Pretty cool for a first gig.

This is a 7 MB windows media file.

http://www.kkingdigital.com/video/team_bling_01.wmv

Thanks for the feedback.

cool video dude. really good for you first project. shooting was really good too, didn't mind the shaking at all, it kinda made the clip a little more intense.
what i would have done though is made the edits alot faster and compressed the clip down to about 45 seconds to a minute, using the absolute best footage you have. sometimes i shoot some stuff without the image stabilizer on to make the shot really shaky, and also do some really fast cut aways with the camera so all you see is the subject then all of a sudden the camera pulls away really fast, this makes for some really intense transitions when you edit.
also you should try positioning your text off to the left or right. centering your text looks kinda bland. kinda like basic camera compostion, putting stuff in the center is amature looking.
once again, good video, just offering some suggestions.

corey

Kevin,

Good work. Just some thoughts....at the end, when you are going through many different shots, you might try timing them exactly with the music, especially in consideration of what the drums are doing. This is a great effect, and I was kind of looking for it when the music started "hitting" a little bit more. Also, your fades (to black) lasted a little too long IMHO. I would set those a little faster. Otherwise nice work and choice of music! Good Luck...

Clay

Award winning rookie..
 

I'm a rookie and entered one of my short video's into a worldwide IMovie contest. I just found out that I won 3rd place. I used a Sony one chip DV camera and IMovie 2.1 for editing. I'm pumped;)

Check it out...."Water Games at Sea World"

http://www.internetvideomag.com/arti...nners_2003.htm

3 films online
 

Hi all,

Finally got my website online at www.adrianseah.com. 3 of my films

Talking with Fishes

Last Day of Work

Bizarre Love Stories: Thursday

... are online at the 'FILMS' link. Please do check it out and let me know what you guys think.

Cheers,

Adrian

I love the "slice of life" feeling you've got going with your body of work thus far. Was BLST completed after LDOW? You nailed the editing in that one in my opinion, very precise and professional. Thanks for posting these.

Very impressive. Congratulations.

WOW! You should have won the first prize!

Great work!

Hi Michael,

Yep, BLST was completed after LDOW, it was pretty much run and gun shooting for that one, with available light and no sound. (all sound was done in foley)

A

The home page appears to be down for me. The solitary image doesn't load.

Hi Robert,

Just tested the site, seems to be ok. I'm having some teething problems as I have only recently (2 days) moved to a new web host and I can't really figure out what's going on with all the DNS, Name Servers, Registrars etc etc.

Please do try again (fingers crossed)

A

Completed Short Film: DV23F
 

Here it is, my second short. ~20 minutes, 40 MB, 256 kbps WMV file. Sorry, no Quicktime file yet. Details at:

http://www.piousdogproductions.com/dvd03.html

Full short file:

http://www.piousdogproductions.com/w...03_256kbps.wmv

Shot with a Sony TRV-900 and NO BUDGET. Edited with Vegas4+DVD (strategic upgrade from Video Factory).

First short details from 2002:

http://www.piousdogproductions.com/dvd02.html

Cheers,
BAC

Show Your Work 2004
 

Hi everyone,

I made this documentary earlier this year for a local contest.

www.mvhs.net/~ekim/speech.wmv

It's only five minutes, and if you would take the time to watch it and give me some comments I'd really appreciate it! It's about speech and debate. I'm a little intimidated by the caliber of work here, but still, I really want honest comments, no matter how brutal, by people who know what they're talking about.

I've made a few films, and I've never really gotten good, solid constructive feedback, so I'm really happy I found this board. Also, if anyone has another place where it's easy to post films and get feedback, please tell me! Thank you,

-Elsa Kim

That was good. If you want some suggestions then I have a few..

I like documentaries that are detached and impartial. I also like to a lesser extent the Michael Moore style of polemic-driven documentaries. And so generally I think documentaries work better if they choose between those two mediums. There's nothing wrong with a voice-over, but for me it's not as good as those other two methods. There's a disembodied voice, to which no one can relate, telling the audience what the images mean. If you put a face to the voice it works better because it's more visual. You can do this by choosing a specific subject for your documentary - say a new debater for whom everything is new - and following them through the competition. That way each of the events that occur are explained but by someone who is constantly on camera, and with whom the audience might become engaged. You still show the bigger picture of the weekend debates, but in a much more involved way. I don't think the Michael Moore approach would be very good unless you wanted to expose some shocking truth about debating competitions.. But it is another example of how to personalise the narrator.

Other than that there's just little points. I'd avoid cutting up people's interviews obviously if that makes any sense.. There was a few times where you would make a cut mid-sentence to go to a new part of the same interview from the same angle. In a general sense that suggests manipulation of the facts; it shatters the idea that the camera is impartial. Of course a lot of making a documentary is about manipulating a lot of footage to fit a story. And there's nothing wrong with that at all, but it has to be done subtley. For instance if you had had a second camera at a different angle then cutting to different points in the conversation would work in a technical sense and at least be disguised from the viewer.

The last point is purely technical. Your shots will look a lot better if you take the camera as much out of auto mode as you can. If the camera won't let you set an exposure then try to find places where the subject will be nicely lit - silouhetted figures and bleached out faces don't look as good as well-lit people. It's difficult to do perhaps when you're shooting on the fly, but the only solution after that is to get a better camera I guess.

On the whole though it was very good, and it's nice to see Idlewild making in roads on the other side of the Atlantic :o)

Kieran

You have made some very nice work! I've watched all three films. Nice little stories with great cinematography. Your skills as a photographer are also visible in your movies.
Some of the darker scenes in Talking With Fishes have this great greenish almost Matrix color look. Can you tell me what kind of light you used or did you alter the video with color correction tools afterwards?

Keep that great work coming!

Peter Sieben

Adrian,

Nice job! I really love your main page, you pulled off a great retro design. Especially the colours!

Thanks for the feedback. After some more work I got the last half snyched up right on the kick beats - much more punch now. This is actually 1 of 3 riding segments in the project. I'll be posting links to the others in the near future.

Thanks again.

-Kevin

Hi Peter,

I did most of the colour corrections in post. I tried to shoot the footage as cleanly and with as little contrast as possible, also with the sharpness level all the way down, so the rushes look grey and dull but retains as much information as possible. Colour corrections in Fishes were done in FCP 3 and for the other 2 films, they were done in Magic Bullet.

Cheers

A

talking to fish was shot in singapore right? does the main building (where the boy and girl are in the elevator) have 25 stories? cause i used to live there!@!!!

Yep, Talking with Fishes was shot in Singapore, I can't remember if the building has 25 floors though...

Thanks!
 

Thank you so much Kieran, your response was very helpful, and I basically agree with everything you commented on. I would love to follow someone with a camera, it just wasn't possible that weekend because I was competing too! And I don't know that much about the technical aspects of my camera, or about special effects. That's why I've done nothing but documentaries so far- they have less of a focus on special effects.
Getting free music is something I've been wondering about as well- I guess I could find it if I just looked more, but what are there any sites you recommend for good music that's not copyrighted? I love Idlewild too, but unfortunately I'm not at the point where I can legally use them! Thanks Kieran!
-Elsa Kim

Elsa!

What are you doing here? =) Haha, it's surprising to find you on this board, but I'm glad you came here. DV Info's forum has been the most helpful resource I've ever found online, and if you're looking for helpful comments from people who know what they're talking about, you've come to the right place.

Now for an opinion from a friend and non-professional, I really enjoyed the documentary. I also agreed with everything Kieran said, but on a small sidenote, I think you should try cleaning up the audio a tiny bit. As high school students, I know that we can't afford the best equipment, but you can still tweak the audio some with a decent audio editing program. The microphone buzzes (most noticeable in the voice overs) were a bit distracting, but overall not a big problem.

But anyways, I enjoyed your documentary and I think you should post up your other ones. The rough edit I saw of your AP History documentary was great, and I'd really like to see the final cut. Keep up the good work, and don't be afraid to branch out from documentaries - you obviously have a lot of potential and, with this board, all the help you could ever need! Oh yeah, and congratulations on getting into Harvard!

- Chris Yi

DVX100 footage
 

hey kids...

I found some more of my DVX100 footage from this summer lying around. Take a look at her. Sorry no sound! Its chuncks taken from my 5min short film called "Floor 5ive"!

The black car stuff is just other stupid stuff. Hope to post full complete version of "Floor 5ive" soon!... when i have time eh!

http://www.illconcepts.com/muhahaha.mpeg

A Christmas film
 

Take a look at this:

http://www.woodpeckerfilm.fi/rare/

A christmassy short, don't know why it's made... Nor if this was shot on film or HD or DV, but the looks are simply great. It's worth loading the full size version, because the picture quality is quite superb.

Have an enjoyable time watching this :)

-Jarno Satopaa

PS. The material shown includes shots that may be inappropriate for young children. You decide...

PPS. I have no connection with the group that has made the film, just found it on the Net.

Loads extremely slow, (I'm on a cable modem) though it may depend on time of day. I gave up after 15 minutes and only the first 30 seconds had downloaded.

jeff it is 67mb big. I ended up ripping out the direct link and simply downloading, it is worth the watch.

Zac

The link is not setup right to download on a Mac. However, on a cable modem a 67mb file downloads in several minutes at the most (assuming at least a reasonably fast server).

It allows you to "Save as" once you've downloaded on a Mac. It IS worth it.

Yeah, the server seems to be quite slow... Checked the speed too, and it takes almost half an hour to download.

It still makes me laugh... But, as some may think, it's a tad harsh, maybe...

-J

My First Short (Video)
 

My friend and I were studying at our university library...we got tired of studying and luckly I had my camera with me. The "script was thought out as we went and the "shoot" took about 15mins - the elevator was a bitch...waiting for a free one and then making sure we got it down right. Anyways, enoy...but realize that this wasn't a pre-planned thing...just some fun. Oh yeah, and colour adjusted to add to the weirdness in post.

Here:
http://static.zed.cbc.ca/users/r/rhe...eakybook-1.wmv (6.71 mb)

Great! I just love it!

Jarno, what does the hunters say? I'm from Sweden but can't figure it out...

I would love to get to know what the setup was.
35mm? 16mm? Really really good..

If anybody wants to download it directly or use a download
manager and doesn't want to rip out the link themselves,
here it is

Well since you threw it together it was kinda okay. I really disliked
a lot of the shaky camera stuff. Also it looked like you wanted to
introduce tention which didn't work out too much due to editing
and certain coverage.

You do know that you are using music in the video which you
(I'm assuming) don't have the rights for?

I thought the editing did improve futher down the short!

The hunters just mumble something... Like "two and a half at 1 o'clock... seven three four..." It's not very important anyway, they're just aiming at the target and figuring out the distance (I think...)

I have no idea whether it's shot on S16 or HD, but probably not on 35mm. The director (Jalmari Helander) has been called something like the rising star in Finnish action film (yak...). I've seen some other films he made, too, and he just rocks. He started as a amatuer, but works nowadays for a well-known (and well-paid) production company, making mostly ads. This can be seen, because the technical side is great but the storytelling is... well, not-so-great. He's an ace in entertaining people, but when discussing in-depth, he might have something to learn. Well, that much about the director.

Anyway, this short has been made on a hobby-something basis, self-financed (I think) and with a non-professional (or at least non-paid) crew.

-J

PS. Merry Christmas, everybody. *<:-)

<<<-- Originally posted by Andreas Fernbrant : Great! I just love it!

Jarno, what does the hunters say? I'm from Sweden but can't figure it out...

I would love to get to know what the setup was.
35mm? 16mm? Really really good.. -->>>

yep no intent to sell...probably still in the wrong though :S

this wasn't planned or anything - shaky cam I tried my best to smooth but we also felt like idiots running around with a cam in the university library!

Don't take it too seriously...I just know I love seeing what people make with their cams on here, even if it sucks - it always gives me ideas, things I tell myself i'd do differently mostly

editing was too slow in my opinion

My latest (current) work.
 

Some of you may have seen it already.
But this is what I've been up to.

It's from my upcoming video on DVD.
This is the two dances I made for the movie. If you have any questions or comments don't hesitate.
I need to get better and the best way is for other people to speak their mind about my work.

Intro: www.atamashi.com/work/saltomortalez/intro.mov
Dance1: http://www.atamashi.com/work/saltomo...alezdance2.mov

And this is my latest work.
Dance2: http://www.atamashi.com/work/saltomo...talezdance.mov

Thanks for taking time to watch my short films.

Be safe, and may 2004 bring us all some great footage!

/Andreas