Thread: The Unknown

Made me jump (run over by truck)

You definitely created atmosphere/tension with music and footage.

Sure some other guys will pop by with more technical advice /criticism/feedback about use of camera and sound .

But I thought it was well done maybe a bit long drawn out......but held my attention till the end.

Quite well made but narrative you have fallen into the usual trap of just showing the scary ideas you had for a horror video without any real substance to the story. I understand this is just the beginning but it didn't really establish who the main character is etc.

The only real technical point would be not to hold a close up with a hand held camera for too long like you did with the phone. I would either stabilise the shot or cut it shorter.

Well done.

Agree with Midnight entirely.

I was also a little uncomfortable with the levelling of the camera - the shot at 1:30 was way off vertical but nowere near enough to be an intentional Dutch Tilt (which would have been appropriate).
One thing to watch for was the title was very high quality. Avoid using titles of higher quality than the film - it makes the film look worse.
On that subject, whilst the dream had a particular look which was quite effective, the final shot (where the van appears) didn't have the same look, which made it rather disjointed.
Another minor point in the opening scenes, when the talent was walking he was looking straight ahead - as if trying to avoid looking at the camera. this looked ratehr unnatural to me.

I think you missed a trick when the bathroom door shut - the lock should have turned (with a quiet click if you wanted to make out the protagonsist didn't hear it)

But a good effort and excellent work with the soundtrack.

this got me on the side of my seat, great job. It was all sound and it was great !

Visually and technically, there's not much to say, but I felt a few things could have been done a little better.

First off, as said above, the titles were off. The "the unknown" bit was over the top, technically very nice, but it didn't really look like a movie title. More like some sort of special FX studio logo. Nowadays it seems that titles, while independant works of art are more often than not kind of embedded in the movie. A good title sequence is a piece of art in itself. And the "this is the beginning"... looked a little too "amateur" with the special font and whatnot. Not that big of a deal tho.

Then as far as image quality, it was generally very good but at some moments, there were a few drops in the quality (more noisy shots here and there).

Overall, this film has most of the things done very well, but a few points could have had been done better and it felt like

- for the title, you might have played a little too much with your software
- for the few grainy/noisy shots, maybe you could have had refilmed but I understand how much more of a trouble it is to go through another session just for maybe 3 or 4 two seconds or five seconds shots
- the the end title, you felt you had to put it there so you just put it there

maybe I'm wrong, but this is how it felt to me (your public), the perception I had. So here you have the chance to explain to me how I'm wrong and how you really intended to do it. But think that you won't be able to do that with the average viewer, and if I had this perception (wrong or right) others might have it too.


overall, I'm very impressed, I wish I was able to do stuff that were half that good, the work with the music was spot on, a little cliché but extremely well executed and I profoundly respect that. I'm looking forward to see more from you!

Thanks for the suggestions and the constructive feedback guys! I really appreciate and let me see if i can address what I have been told..

Yes i did spend a quite a bit of time on the title in After effects and I used it coz I really liked the look of it and the fact that it over-powered the overall video quality is something I didn't expect coz I did shoot the movie in HD but there is a catch, since I dont have artificial lighting more so because I didn't really want to spend money on buying it and I have no knowledge on how to light a scene since I have never learnt that aspect of film-making (I am teaching myself as I go along) and that is why I went with what looked good to my eyes on camera and since I was limited by the lighting options i had to bump up the ISO on my camera in some scenes to about 3200 which resulted in the grainy and noisy picture that you guys see.. I was quite aware of it and I did feel it was noisy in parts but my main focus was on the screen-play and that it should not come of as clinched or gimmicky.

I know technical aspects like the quality plays a huge part in film-making but when one is limited to the options available you try the best you can. If I had a little more lighting done I could have pulled off the movie shooting it with an ISO level of max 800 which would be a lot less nosier.

Also in one of the criticism mentioned it was said that I didnt give the character a back-story and decided to make a a sequence of scary effects,... yes I was completely aware of that while filming and i did that because I wanted to establish in the first episode that there is something which is not natural haunting the character, usually when people shoot a movie of this genre they show the spirit at the mid point in the film but as for me I wanted to show the audience the spirit at the first, I do have a back-story in mind which I will explore in the second episode and this time around there would hardly be any scenes with over-powering music or ghosts showing up and it would take the plot forward.... I know that my approach is not necessarily the best because I have shown what my spirit looks like and some may say that I have killed the suspense but then that is the challenge when the viewer thinks that all the cards have been shown you can thrown in a twist which takes the story forward.

Also about the special effects on the film and that it does not come off as effectively as it should.. since I am still learning that aspect of filming and it was the first big special effect that I tried in AE it did come off slighting artificial but like I said next time I will try and do a better job as compared to my last effort! and yeah the end title about "This is just the beginning" was put in intentionally so that I give myself space to make a second episode and I didnt spend much time on that font actually..just selected something from FCP's in build library which looked decent and used it..

Thanks again guys, I hope I have answered all the areas which I was advised on and if you think I have missed out on any please put me know so that I can be aware or explain why I did it...

-A

you should give those amazon cheap LED lights a try, I got one 160 leds one for about 60 euros (cheaper on amazon US tho, about $40) and I'm probably getting a couple more next month, they work with 6xAA batteries and have a fair autonomy. just search for video LED light on amazon, you'll find them there. Really a game changer, especially if you're into darker stuff with precise lighting, interiors etc...

They might be workable for lighting backgrounds etc.. BUT I wouldn't recomend them for acurate colour work. They aren't go for getting nice skin tones. I think for the kind of stuff you do hadoq, they will work just fine.

well, obviously at that price they're not expected to be of any "pro level" quality, but they do work and they really allow me to get a first grasp of how to work with additional lighting. Money's tight for pretty much everyone nowadays, and as far as video quality goes, we do the best we can with whatever we can afford. These definitely allow me to explore furthermore and experiment. They also come with a couple of filters to play with, I say for less than a hundred, there's really no reason not to try if you have nothing and not much in your pocket. I mean, worst case scenario: they will be useful at least once every now and then in a given situation.

but yea, for whoever is already aiming for that "next level" there are better yet pricier options out there. in that "unknown" movie, I could see some use. and as far as skin tones go, the film is already fairly filtered here and there so. they're also nice without any filter on to create directional light.

nice work!!