archived-videos My first short- 'The Shot'

J

-JK-

Hey guys, I've not been as active on these forums recently and this is one of the reasons why:

https://vimeo.com/40454722

It's my first short, originally made in the hopes of entering into Jessops film competition, but ultimately I left that very late. It's no budget, with a cast of drama students and a crew of my housemates/girlfriend. Any and all criticism is really welcome, even if you slate everything that's wrong with it: I know it's not perfect but I wan t to improve and grow and so everything helps!

Hope you guys like it! :)
 
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Heh, reading that you used theatre students as your actors and your friends as crew is already a win for me. We did that for the films I work on all the time.

Solid opener. Gave us the purpose of the story from the get go. The overall writing's really good.

As for production, you likely already noticed but the blurring is very bothersome. I don't know if you exported it at the wrong frames but you should probably look into that. You should also raise the levels during the dialogue as it's much lower than your dubbed dialogue.
 
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Thanks for the comments guys!

Well the DOP is a photographer but didn't have any film experience, and the composer was someone I found online, so I assume he has experience! Makeup was my girlfriend and another girl and sound was my housemates. One of the actors is as well, the one who's annoyingly quiet- tried to fix that in post but it was silent.

I think it may be the wrong framerate, I couldn't remember which I filmed it in and didn't have access to the camera to check so I exported at 24 and 25, then hoped to upload both to vimeo and see which was better. Butttt I had a weekly upload limit so could only get one up, which I only realised when it was up, so I just went with that one. I'll look to add the other one next week! And yeah, as for dialogue it seemed so much louder on Premiere :/
 
-JK- said:
I think it may be the wrong framerate, I couldn't remember which I filmed it in and didn't have access to the camera to check so I exported at 24 and 25, then hoped to upload both to vimeo and see which was better. Butttt I had a weekly upload limit so could only get one up, which I only realised when it was up, so I just went with that one. I'll look to add the other one next week! And yeah, as for dialogue it seemed so much louder on Premiere :/
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Seeing as how you're using Premiere, you can look at your video files in the bin and it should say the framerate next to the filenames. IE. 29.97 or 23.976 and so on.

If you're using headphones when editing then it's understandable that the audio would sound louder only because you're isolating it. Check the levels on the audio bar on the right side (It should be on the right side...) to check that the level are consistent to each other. Also be wary that because the bar is showing that it's loud, the dialogue itself may not be loud.
 
Your permit to pull rack-focus is hereby revoked for the offence starting 05:09
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However... overall it's a decent flick. Interesting (and consistent) styles for the flashback vs. now scenes. Sound's a bit dody in places, but workable.

The v/o turned out well. Actors were pretty good (even though they sure could've had a few years on them)

Good stuff. What's next?
 
Whelp, I checked and it's 24fps, which might explain why my 25fps version looks so choppy... at least next week I can put the real version up!

I would agree that there are issues with sound and colour correction in particular, although if anything I think it needed more focus racking! I gave myself a really tight time limit so I didn't get a chance to try as different shots or approaches in general as I would have liked, so I did perhaps lean on quicker techniques like that at times, but I'm hoping for the next one to give myself plenty of time to try lots; best way to learn!

I'm doing my finals now but over the summer I'm hoping to do at least one more short, and a music video for a friend. I wouldn't mind trying to get more experienced crew on board, especially in sound, and just hopefully work my way up to a feature!

Once again thanks for the comments guys, would love people to pick holes in anything!
 
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