Show Your Work 2003

[Corey MacGregor]

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

[J. Clayton Stansberry]

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

[Rich Sheikh]

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

[Adrian Seah]

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

[Michael Robinson]

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.

[Michael Middleton]

Very impressive. Congratulations.

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

WOW! You should have won the first prize!

Great work!

[Adrian Seah]

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

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

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

[Adrian Seah]

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

[Bruce A. Christenson]

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

[Elsa Kim]

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

[Kieran Clayton]

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

[Peter Sieben]

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

[Alex Taylor]

Adrian,

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