Valentine's Day Mini-Movie

[John Holland]

www.aggieblvd.net/videos/Valentines.wmv

Just coming through to show my Valentines day movie. It was shown at my schools Valentine's day ball and was a big hit.

Enjoy!

[Dean Orewiler]

not bad...I'd like to hear some better sound - maybe light through a softbox or light more directionally so you don't see hard shadows on the wall. I like your theme - and your opening credits of the candles were very nice.... Nice job !!

[John Holland]

Thanks, I'm glad someone finally responded. Was starting to think I wouldn't get any comments unless I had a trailer. Anyways, yeah I agree on the lighting and sound. It's something I'm working on and learning as I go. Way better than my earlier stuff. I think if I just take more preparation time, I could get some excellent stuff.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback. Any feedback is appreciated!

[Travis Cossel]

I can't give much feedback because I didn't make it 10 seconds past the opening credits. Not your fault. Apparently my connection is acting up on the streaming. I don't have time right now to dnld a 210MB file.

So, real quick, the only thing I can really give you any criticism on is the opening sequence with the candles. For me it was a bit jarring to go from the steady tripod shots of the candles to the shaky handheld shots. I think you should have just gone tripod the entire way.

Sorry I can't give you more at this time. If I get a chance later I'll dnld and watch the rest. Sorry!

[John Holland]

Hey, no problem, it's 210mb because once again, it's a 40 minute movie lol. That's about as small as I could get it without major quality loss. As for the candle shots, there's only one shot in there that was hand held, the rest are all tripod, it's just unfortunate that you had to stop at that point. Hopefully you'll get to see the rest.

[Travis Cossel]

Downloading the file now . . . d:-)

[Travis Cossel]

Alright, I got the file downloaded and started watching . . .

First of all, 5 minutes of opening credits is WAYYYY too much. No, wait, it's WAAAYYYYYYY too much. To be honest, I almost stopped watching.

However, I kept watching because I wanted to be able to give you some comments on the film itself. Regarding the film, the story or stories seemed to move really slowly. There were good moments, to be sure, but it felt like it was taking too long to get through it all. I think a shorter script would have worked MUCH better.

Another thing I noticed is that the lighting was too strong in most of the scenes. I would look into diffusing your lighting more in the future so you don't get those really harsh 'wall shadows'. Maybe consider using lower power lights even. Most of the time it felt like there was a giant spotlight somewhere off-camera, and it was pretty distracting.

There were also a lot of inconsistencies with the audio. Sometimes, in a scene, it seemed like only 1 of the 2 people in a scene were mic'd. In the scene where the 'athlete' is getting interviewed, you can barely hear the interviewer. Since the interviewer is never on camera, you could have just recorded those questions and added them in post. In most cases you probably could have just gone with the on-camera mic and gotten better results I think.

There were some good camera angles and some good humorous moments, but overall, the video could have been a lot shorter I think and told the same stories better. I hope I haven't come across too brutal. Just trying to let you know my criticisms since I actually took the time to watch your 40-minute video.

I don't know if you just did this for fun or if it was some kind of class project, so I can't really comment much more. Hopefully you had fun and learned a lot in the process of making this, and hopefully my comments will help you in the future. d:-)

[John Holland]

Actually, we did only have a giant spot light and only one person was mic'd at a time. I'm operating on my universities equipment which is subpar to say the least. But I won't get into that. I don't mind the criticism as long as it's constructive. When I show these to other people they think it's great but they never really comment on the technical stuff. So that's why I come here.

I did learn alot, and I yeah, the story could have been shorter, but this was the movie of the night for the Valentine's Day Ball, so I had to lenghthen it up from my regular 20 minutes to make it worth people's money for showing up.

I'm still trying to master audio. I think once I get some more mics hooked up, I can be good on that, and as far as lighting, it's an ongoing struggle, but better than my earlier stuff when we were using lamps! ;)

Thanks again!

[John Holland]

Also, how would you suggest lighting the scenes? I have a very small space and only 3 lights to work with (I think it's a 3 light Lowell kit, mostly used for interviews). I noticed the harsh shadows myself but I didn't think much of them since I had all three lights used, but I think I should have spent more time setting up the lights.

Also, what would you suggest for audio? Our school doesn't have mixers nor do they allow more than one mic to be checked out. I'm thinking of buying a cardiod mic or something and attaching it to a boom pole to get better sound (and get those cables out the way). Any suggestions for catching good dialogue audio indoors and outdoors?