Olympic Fencer Claire Bennett shoot

[leofwine]

Hi Im now all of 6 months into making videos with my litle JVC GY-HM100 and Premier Pro. I posted one of my very early ones a while back and now im posting another to show how im getting on. Im still a long way off where I want to be but im enjoying myself and as a self-taught im eager for criticism and advice.

I shot this short vid of Claire Bennett UK's No2 fencer and OLympic hopeful down at her Gym in Clapham. Hope you like it.

[TimStannard]

I thought it was well constructed. I get the impression that you basically shot loads of stuff, then when you edited you got all the sound bites you wanted together into a sensible sequence and then sorted out the images to fit. That's the way I often work and find it makes a more cohesive story than trying to start with the pictures. Of course the best way is to plan absolutely everything includeing what you want the interviewees to say, but we rarely have that luxury. However, it does save time in the long run if you can plan ahead as much as possible.

Specific comments

The opening caption (not the title - the one after that) was not on the screen for long enough to read.
A lot of the shots were over exposed and so quiet a bit of detail was lost.
There was a good variety of shots, all of which seemed to illustrate what was being said. I particularly liked the sequence from 0:56 wheer we see Claire lung from the side, then from in fron, then from in front again through a mask.
Avoid cutting two shots together which are too similar - they look like jump cuts (eg 0:53 to 0:54) - aim to ensure there is a much bigger difference in angle and/or framing between consecutive shots.
The audio was not a clear as it might be. the first interview seemed to suffer from too much background noise (if fact I think you even added some to illustrate her running) and I tought the choice of music was rather "busy" in the same frequencies as Claire's voice: thus we had three things competing for attention in the same part of the audio spectrum.

The head trainer was clearer because (a) his deeper voice did not conflict so much with the music and (b) there was little or no ambient noise.

Having said that, the music was still very distracting.

Framing could have been better in several shots (checkout the rule of thirds)

Overall a reasonable piece which would have been improved greatly with clearer sound.

[Midnight Blue]

Nothing to add to what Tim has said except to either reduce the music track level or increase the talking level.