Thread: Best of 2011 Compilation by Wolf Star Pictures

Sorry dude, it just didn't do for me. It had it's moments things like the opening shot but for me it just came across as a mish mash of different uncoordinated clips. It needs stripping back so much that it's probably best to start again from scratch. Don't be to disheartened by these comments. What your trying to achieve is almost impossible. I don't see how you can make a "feel good" piece that lasts so long. Approach it as if you are doing a showreel, I would aim for 3 mins tops, only include your very best and interesting shots or try an create a theme that runs throughout. People like the old BBC sports editing team make this sort of montage look easy but it takes years of experience to know what really works.

If it's any consolation I couldn't do it.

I watched the first 7 minutes. It seems like you'd have enough footage to pack a 2/3 minute video with some punch. High impact, high energy with lots of variety would be my goal to document your year.

The song choices were good, but there was just too much. I wanted to be teased a little at the start. Show blasts of high impact shots in rapid succesion with a variety of different events, angles, positions. Flashes of cars, girls, stunts and crashes. Then a real mixture of longer clips with ambient sound - engines roaring, tyres squealing and people screaming. Finally I'd want to see some funnies, just to calm things down a bit, before another blast of high energy.

What do you think?

I enjoyed a lot of it .......some great footage!!! (ie) tyre burnout out and free running??? I think it was free running?

Liked a lot of the music choices by the way .

I also think it was a bit long and culling it so you are left with the best???/ Most dramatic footage (easier said than done I imagine)

Take my advice with a pinch of salt by the way as to be honest you are way way ahead of me just giving my opinion if it helps in some way.

Cheers and best of luck.

thanks for the feedback and your right it is a little long the variety defenently changes towards the end Marc and at the credits.
i think the video especially at this length is more suitable to the people that are in it or friends of those people.

thanks slimbob it was parkour, free running is minimal stunts, object is to just get to the destination. Parkour is flips tricks and stunts either for fun or to get to a destination.
what do you think about me throwing up at the end? i was severely hung over with very warm fruit juice in my stomach lol

Gotta agree with what's been said above. Actually when it started, it was as if it was trying to follow Marc's excellent suggestion, but then it sort of broke up a bit.

Apart from "teasers" at the beginning, I'd have been less incline to mix up the shots, but have had more defined sections on each event/sport.

And you sort of did this a bit with one or two events and the section about the girls.

In fact I thought the film made a bit more sense in the second half where you had clealy chopped it up into sections, with black between. This wasn't as clear at the beginning.

Once I started looking at it as a collection of shorts rather than as one long piece, I enjoyed it all the more.

There was some stuff I lved. The editing in the car park to the music was great (though I didn't like the initial shot of the car geing forwards/backwards/forward/backwards - that looked very noob!) and the shot of the girl which pulls away to reveal it's her reflection in the car bordywork was superb. I also liked some of those shots from the GoPrp's mounted on the outside of teh windscreens (but be careful of overuse)

As a look back from your point of view, and a lot of your friends/fellow members, I think it's fantastic. As a "film" in it's own right - less so. But I found it very enjoyable and, onceit developed into short sequences, very watchable.

Parkour

Thanks a lot Tim, what you have said make's a lot of sense makes me wish i went back and re-edited it but a bit too late now.

On a very serious note Tim, I have 2 friends i grew up with who are very passionate both about the films i make and the content within those films. They would like to create a business involving this. Now I have always wanted to do this as a full time job but there is one thing that's stopped me, money and equipment. Which could potentially be solved depending on if i do really want to make this film career work.

What's involved? well it would be a media company essentially acting as a brand name. Very Very Versatile, covering winter sports, motorsports (anything action packed) wedding's, Band's and music videos (one of the friends idea as he is a music producer) corporate events, basicly anything we can get our hands on.
How would we make our money? Well to start with we would film as much as we can small and big, generate a fan base which would in turn develop advertiser interest (through youtube and google ad's is fairly easy to do) after that we would basicly act as a dealership for the companies that supply parts in our footage. For example, some films shot with HD Hero's we could act as a merchant, a company called Japspeed help's us with film making, we become another dealer for them in selling their aftermarket carpart's, same for ski/snowboard equipment... guitars so on and so forth. All from our website where events link to films and a blog, these then link to companies and parts which will then link to buying them.
what do you think?

Originally Posted by Airwolf

what do you think?

I think you're asking the wrong person because (a) I'm only an amateur film maker and (b) I'm a self employed one man band with no idea about marketing and sales!

That's not to say you shouldn't ask the question so others can answer.

And it's not to say I won't answer anyway so here it is for what it's worth.

The two immediate difficulties which come to mind are (a) generating a fan base and (b) being able to supply the goods at the level of service and similar or better price than other online suppliers.

I'll ignore the first as this is the biggest hurdle and I wouldn't know the first thing about it.

With the second - imagine it from teh customers' perspective. I see something on your site and I'm interested in buying it.

I'll look at your price.

I'm on the internet and so i'll just open another browser/tab and google it. If it's cheaper elsewhere you've lost the sale.

If it's a similar price elsewhere, I'll look at how quickly you can deliver. If it's direct from you - great (but you then need to invest is stock - of every product) if it's from another source then I may well look for someone who can deliver from stock.

I will also look at reputation. It will take you a while to build any sort of recognisable reputation for service.

If you hold stock yourself, this will require massive investment, but you have reasonable control over QC and shipping. If you just act as an agent and stuf is shipped from a warehouse/manufacturer (like Amazon's relationship with their marketplace companies) you do not have any control for failed/late deliveries etc.

It's not my intention to pour water on yor idea. Just making you aware of one or two potential pitfalls.

Always one to have an opinion, even about things I have no experience with. I think if this proposal was put before the Dragons Den people, they would all be "out" very quickly. Your throwing your net far to wide. To become national opinion leaders about snowboarding & motor Sport and music etc. I think a venture like this could only succeed if it was in a very specialised market. Even then it would take a HUGE (way outside the budget of normal mortals) amount of marketing to build up a viable customer base.

The other issue is your competence as a film maker. While you have some competence with a camera, I don't think your work reflects a high enough level of film making skill (yet) to produce real wow videos. Not enough to "get a fan base" beyond your friends or the people in the videos.

This may sound very harsh. In fact it is very harsh and I'm sorry to be one saying it BUT I think what you are considering is far to risky for you to give up your job or invest a lot of your money and to do it just before we go back into an economic recession.

I'm sorry if I've over stepped the mark with you but I felt I had to say it.