Hi,

This is my first post, so by way of introduction I have attached a 3 minute short thriller that I made recently using a panasonic GS400. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

I hope the link works as this is the first time that I have done it.


http://www.savefile.com/files/2205723

1) Some of the sound effects were totaly weird.

Then again so was the video, so it fit.

2) Find something Lilac, put it in the window. I DONT HAVE ANYTHING IN THAT COLOR.

Wow I laughed.

3) Some of the clips were too fast to see well.

Great movie, totaly weird and random. Nice job with the camera angels and story, the whole Mirrior thing was a fun way to end it.

Nice job.

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I think it’s a great piece of drama. Convincing visual storytelling, pretty gripping in places. Really liked the mirror twist, quite an effective way to shock. I’d prefer a better ending, though. Have you done other pieces like this one?

I loved it.

A well crafted mini drama. Uses many of the techniques of scary cinema to great effect.

The pace was just about right when many movies like this are too slow.

Call me a pedant but I did notice a lilac quilt during the search for the nastly lilac pants, was this a gag I failed to grasp?

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I have two prejudices - I am anti HDV for consumer camcorders, and I eat mooks who claim to be pro wedding vidders and ask dumb questions.

www.zaskarfilms.com You tube channel 'zaskarfilms'
JVC DV5001e (big cam), Sony PC6E (tiny cam), Vinten pro5, PAG light, SM58, Sony ECM50, Sony C-76, 0.5x convertors for sony, Rode video mic, Vegas 7.

Thanks for all the great comments so far. More feedback, negative and positive, would be truly appreciated to help improvement.

This is the first short that I have done on digital. All aspects of the filming were done by myself. The most difficult part was composing the shots and then stepping in front of the camera to "act", whilst ensuring that I kept within frame boundaries.

I have a second short entitled "Live or Die", which I am in the process of editing. And yes, well spotted, the lilac quilt was meant as a bit of a joke as it is the most prominent colour in the room.

I am very impressed that you did it all by yourself.

__________________
I have two prejudices - I am anti HDV for consumer camcorders, and I eat mooks who claim to be pro wedding vidders and ask dumb questions.

www.zaskarfilms.com You tube channel 'zaskarfilms'
JVC DV5001e (big cam), Sony PC6E (tiny cam), Vinten pro5, PAG light, SM58, Sony ECM50, Sony C-76, 0.5x convertors for sony, Rode video mic, Vegas 7.

I enjoyed that. it was better than a lot of final year student films I have seen recently. Some of the shot composition was very good. it was nice sharp footage too. I think the best part of the film was the sound which is often neglected in many films.

I have attached an updated version of the film. The original was edited on Pinnacle Studio Plus ver 9 which does not give much flexibility in post. In fact the picture was left untouched, as filmed.

I have since upgraded to Sony Vegas 5. I thought it would be useful to show how a higher end NLE can really improve the look of a project with colour correction and other effects. I therefore imported "Letters from a Madman" into Sony Vegas and applied various filters. I also used a plug in called "Celluloid". It only costs $25 for 21 film look presets, together with other functionalities such as conversion to 24p and 4:3 to 16:9. Amazing value. Who needs Magic Bullet.

Anyway, I hope this will be useful for anyone wondering whether it is worthwhile upgrading their system. I think it gives a convincing film look and I'm sure I could have improved the quality even more with further experimentation.

http://www.savefile.com/files/1026772

The format change looks good, I’ve heard of ‘Celluloid’. Just checked it against your first one, and the colour looks a little bleached out to me – I think you need to up the contrast a fair bit. The image lacks bite all the way through. What kind of preset did you apply?

If it were mine, I'd try a strong colour, high contrast look - a bit like Mark W's food peeler advert.

Thanks for the comments tone33. I must admit to my untrained eye, I like the new look of the film although I am very much at the learning stage. It is a daunting task to achieve the right look without going too far on the "tweaking" of the image. I thought one aspect of the "film look" was to desaturate the colours.

I have checked out the Mark W video you recommended and I really liked it. But I must say that I didn't like the look at all. It worked well for the advert but I don't think it would work for Letters from a Madman.