(OT)

Just wanted some opinions on this scene. It's the final scene in a short script I wrote a while back. The rest of the script is quite a bit more involved so I took advantage of the last weekend I was in San Diego before moving to LA to get this, much easier, scene out of the way. Without seeing the rest of the movie does this scene make sense in itself? Does it make you want to see the rest?

Right Click and Download

This is an h264 file, so QT 7 is required.

Thanks folks

 

I really liked this scene, it does make me want to watch more of it,

 

Excellent work, the scene was very well done. It did make me want to see more of the film.

Have to ask, what camera are you using?

 

First of all, disregarding the relatively dark and "shapey" quality of the video, this piece of film/video is the most professional looking thing I have ever seen on this board! The music (BHD?) added a lot ot it, but it was also stunning without it! Great job. The audio quality could have been better towards the end, though. Let the people speak up a bit.

Did you do sky replacement at some point near the end? The first 4 shots made me think it was a CG character - a really GOOD CG character, though. There was a medium shot of the little girl that you seemed to have slown down. Don't follow that with a normal speed shot, it looks like the shot wasn't long enough for the cut, so come up with a better solution. It's legitimate if you have a lower "overall quality" which you don't. Don't junk your excellent work with such an obvious first aid trick.

To answer your question: No. I do not want to see the rest. I want to see what happened before But basically we all know what happened before. We just need to watch Black Hawk Down to figure it out.

 

I do agree, the video was a bit dark ( I thought it was my monitor, guess not) and I do want to see what happened before more then I want to see what happens after.

 

That had a very interesting feel to it.. kinda professional looking, though somewhat... pixelated. That doesn't seem like the right term to describe it, though.

 

nice color correcting, good use of the middle third, very cinematic...

 

Poorly compressed is the term I'd chose. I compressed it last night when i hit the sack and just uploaded it this morning, I plan to recompress it today at a little better rate.

Thank you for your comments man.

 

The Sony HDR Z1U in HDV 1080i50, our production camera for Prelude2Hope.

 

Didn't Chadfish DP this? Or something?

Anyway. For a clip as long as it was, it didn't really do anything. It was very pretty, and the music gives the viewer a sense of where they would be emotionally seeing this scene in a bigger film. Although, the only thing about it that would make me want to see more is the production quality, not neccesarily what was showin in the scene.

 

That's what i meant actually - this is the last scene of the short, so I was asking if it makes you want to see what is before that.

We had no shotgun mic available and I was basically crossing my fingers and praying that the on-camera mic would pic up good enough quality. I'm still working with cleaning up the quality after having to boost the levels considerably - thanks for mentioning it though, I really wanted to know if it was noticeable to others as much as to myself.

No sky replacement, it just happened to be a gorgeous day in San Diego. Now, as to the "slowed down" shot. We were running out of a light QUICKLY at the end and Chad Peter, our DP simply slowed down the shutter dramatically to get a little light in; the shot was actually shot just to get a semi-clean recording of her audio, but I decided to use the video of it because it was the only semi-clear shot that included her cute little face. So the blur is not due to "slow mo" but was actually shot that way - if it were up to you would you eliminate the shot entirely or simply add a slow-mo and motion blur the shot following?

Thanks again for your comments and input, i really appreciate it.

 

Yeah, Chad Peter, of SDNP fame.

Good enough for me.

 

Very beautifully shot. At first, I too thought it was CGI. Anyways, I definately would want to see more. Good job.

 

Make it the first scene, even if you have to copy Saving Private Ryan.

Absolutely !


I need to watch that again to give some more input. This is definitly worth an actual download for further interpretation and analysis!

 

Can't do it. The name on the tomb stone is of the character that dies in the short itself and, as it is written, his death is a surprise. If I put this at the beginning.. it would be like introducing Yoda as a wise Jedi Master *before* we meet him as a crazy hermit crab, and why on earth would anyone do that?

Side note, all of the shots of the grave stone have been "fixed" with text that fits the story; some of the crane tilting shots were quite difficult to pull off and I'd like all of your feedback on it in particular. Of course, now that i've mentioned it you'll all notice right away that it's been altered; but not knowing ahead of time would those shots bother you?

Thanks

 

Oh, yeah! I thought "how did he put the name on the tombstone"

You could cut the name- shots out in order to put the whole thing to the beginning of the movie

Anyway. I think it serves quite well as a last scene, too.

My last movie ended with the first and last scene being the same, so I'm kind of a fan of "a perfect circle" in a movie, I guess.

 

It's called a "framed story" and I am a fan as well.

 

Thank you for the term!

 

Yeah, hey Dev!

OK, firstly - love the clip, it's got the kind of production quality I've come to expect from you!

Two things - minor really:

1. The shot of the grave yard with sunset is beautiful, but kinda comes in the wrong place. We leave the crane shot as it comes down to ground level, cut to the sunset wide, then cut back to an extremely similar shot of the graveyard. i dunno how to exactly explain it. It almost looks as if the wide shot was put there to cover a zoom in that might have happened between the previous and following shots. Does that make sense? Also, the sunset shot kinda feels uncomfortable where it is because there were closer shots before it. It's like it should be an establishing shot at the beginning. Let me explain a bit better (hopefully). The camera has already brought the audience fairly close into the graveyard with the crane shot, then suddenly, we're looking at it from quite some way away, if the camera were the audience, it feels as if we've jumped back about a mile or so. Any of that make sense?

2. This is a real small almmost forgetable thing - there's a bit of slight wobble on some of the shots, nothing major at all, but a slight wobble - you can see that the text tracking on the gravestone is slightly out of time with the camera movement. but it's only slight and kinda anal to mention, but you did ask


keep up the awesome work dude.

anyway,

Nick "Shorty" Long

 

Nice work.
Tracking the stone into the shot with the rack focus off the hilt came out really really nice.
Did you just replace the whole original stone and go with 2D tracking?

I watched this on my Mac, which is set to video gamma, not "Mac/Print" gamma and the video seemed very VERY dark.
really difficult to make out much detail, but it was still powerful.

For the audio, the girl sounds fine to me, but the guy isn't strong enough IMO.
Could you just do a quick ADR session to get that line?

Again .... really nice job.
Have fun.

 

You know, if you put the scene in the beginning, you can make the whole rest of the movie a flashback if you want. That is what I would do.

 

tracked in 2D, yes; learned a lot about shake's 2d tracking abilities and off-set tracking in the process. i didn't replace the whole stone, i just painted out the old text and built new text within shake to map onto the surface.

 

Just wanted to let ya'll know that I uploaded a newly recompressed version of this and it looks MUCH cleaner. Also fixed the dialog levels a bit at the end and slow-mo/motion blurred the last shot as per suggestion.

Lemme know how everyone likes it now.

Right Click and Download

Thanks again all

 

Okay. Maybe you'll want that one shot where the girl puts down the flowers last a little longer before she stands up. Make her sit there for 12 frames. Add some more more motion blur or whatever you used to the last shot.

Sorry.. but your video is SO dark that this time (the brightness of my monitor turned up to 1000000) the third shot revealed to me that it was NOT the sky with some stripes of condency of some airplanes' (like on July 4 blue/red/white) but lines of tombs on a field below. Up the brightness, please!

EDIT: I still don't understand what they say...

EDIT 2: AHHH now I got it... "I miss my daddy" "I know sweatheart. I miss him to!"

But in my opinion the little girl should look down or stare at the tomb saying that, instead of breavely looking up to.. the uncle?

 

Where do I get the software?