This is a clip from a short horror film\psychological thriller film that I've just started to shoot.
The link takes you to the clip on my Youtube channel, as I didn't choose to embed the code, hope this is ok.
The reason I'm posting a clip rather than the complete short film is, as a self confessed newbie I'd rather have my mistakes pointed out to me at an early stage.
I have plenty of questions to ask, especially about creating atmospheric lighting, at some point.
There are a couple of blog posts about the technique of using blog posts in a short film on my www.fxfilms.net\blog film making blog.
Feel free to delete the links if preferred.
Any comments, criticisms, appreciated.

My comments:

1) The writing needs to come on screen a lot faster. When testing this myself, I found that the viewer wants to read a lot faster than I can type. To get around this, I sped up the footage within the editing application.

2) Pausing on text for too long is just as frustrating as not having time to read it. Perhaps more so. I suggest you cut down the pauses considerably. People have very short attention spans.

3) It looks like you filmed the screen. I would suggest using screen capture instead. This will avoid flicker.

4) I would zoom in on the words as they are typed after having your initial full screen shot. Add variety to keep the user interested and drawn in. It also focuses attention and makes the words seem more important.

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I can only echo Marc's comments.

Let the words be typed on the screen, then whilst they're being typed, zoom in and pan or zoom in to highlight certain words. Depends whether you want a classic ciné style or a modern video/trailer style. But as it stands it's a bit pedestrian.

As an alternative to using screen capture, (and this is useful if you really need to capture a computer monitor because there are also real people in the scene) experiment with different shutter speeds to try to sync with the refersh rate of the monitors. May not be textbook, but I've done this and it works!

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Tim

wasn't really feeling it, the writing was very slow
if it's going to be blog comments filmed for a short film, even if an interesting subject it'll bore people easily

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There are precedents for shooting words as they are being typed, as I have done with my clip from a short horror film\psychological thriller film.
As I mention in my blog, I'm pretty sure that the movie 'The Net' has words being typed in email messages, and there might be other instances that I don't know about. I'm also pretty sure that several other films show words being typed or rather being printed on teleprinter messages.
What about the films where they show newspaper headlines? Isn't that expecting movie-goers to read words?
My guess is that a film buff, a movie expert, could pick out quite a few movies that contain words, apart from those from the silent movie era, of course.
By coincidence, a few days after I posted my clip, a video ad. showed up in my Yahoo UK news page. The ad. featured action and words.
The advertising industry isn't stupid, it won't display words like this if it doesn't think that anybody will read them, if it thinks that the viewer's attention span is too short to read them.
So who's right?

first of all, i think it is BORING

also I didn't like The Net so maybe that explains iit.

And I don't care about the advertising industry, if your short was 10 minutes of typing and washing a doll, i would turn it off, because it is boring. If it was 10 minutes of something interesting and typing, i would read the type for a while, but it seems it would get repetitive so I would probably fast forward.

Also, don't post a video, asking for criticism to only be all pissy about it after

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Absolutely right. It's a great trick to focus the mind. It also provides a dramatic visual contrast with whatever other shots are involved.
It often provides the only action in a scene (where the other shots are of someone typing and maybe their facial expressions). Words appearing on a screen can be every bit as dramatic as building being blown to pieces. It's all a matter of context.

The important thing, as Marc pointed out, is to get the timing right. This may take quite a bit of experimentation (as Marc discovered himself). I'd add that you absolutely MUST try it out on other people who haven't seen it before. The problem with being a director and editor is you know exactly what's coming next so it's all too easy to leave things on the screen too long/not long enough.

Remember in this case the words are your actors. Their direction is every bit as important as those of humans.

But don't get too defensive about oilmanrich's comments. If it bores him, it bores him as it will no doubt bore others. You can try to find out why and take his comments on board or ignore them. Or, if you're happy that you're doing it right and he's not your target audience, you can ignore his comments without even trying to discover the cause of his boredom.

Lets face it, none of us are going to please everyone.

Indeed my latest throw-away was praised by many people I showed it to for its brevity and pace. My son (who hadn't read any of those comments) had the reaction that it was rather long and very slow paced. My own flesh and blood! Fruit of my loins! Can you believe it?

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Tim

I'm not being defensive, I totally accept that when you post videos on the forum you have to accept criticism. I have no plans to shoot a 10 minute video that consists of typed messages and a doll being washed. I'm not even defending the concept of words being typed in a film.
I'm just widening the debate, inviting reasoned, intelligent, thought-out comments about the concept.
Some can deal with this, some can't.

Well not being defensive?

You sure fooled me.

I think you just have to accept everyone won't like your concept, and one of those people are me.

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It came across to me as a defensive response to oilman's rather abrupt comments (though not to Marc's or mine). Perhaps I'd have put it better if I'd said "Don't rise to the bait of the likes of oilman".

He's either spoiling for a fight and winding you up, or, as I prefer to think, a young man with a real passion for learning about film - and that passion is expressed as aggressive questioning of what he sees.

But then I'm no psychologist and he may well be a mass murderer.

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Tim