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"Success in Training"



Hi Community!

Today’s the day - this fitness-commercial is the first video-project of my newly launched film-business. In this video I’ve used a Sony ZV-e10 with a Sirui 35mm anamorphic lens and a DJI RS3 for stabilisation (and a few shots with the Mini 3 Pro drone are also included.. 😉).

When approaching this project (I’ve shot it for a friend of mine, who has coded a training/workout-app), I asked myself: „What is the story behind it? What questions/need to people have, who workout? And how will this app help them to achieve their goals?“.


The question could be: „What is success in training, and why is it so hard to get the results we are looking for?“
And my video tries to answer these questions! :)


So your feedback is very welcome and I appreciate your input, so I can improve in the future!

The video premiers today (Dec. 11th, 22) live on YouTube! It starts at 6pm CET (Vienna time, UTC+1) - so join us live at the premiere and let me know what you think!

See you,
FerdinandS
Vienna
 
Upvote 1
It's pretty good. You seem to be taking your job seriously, congratulations, that's top 1% in today's world. I respect this work, so I'll give you some feedback, and it's not intended as negative or nitpicking, it's just that you got so many things right that it's a lot quicker for me to focus only on the few negatives.

1. It's longer than it needs to be to communicate any of the things it's getting across. I feel like I'm seeing shot ego here, something I struggle with all the time. You got a great shot, and you worked hard to get it, and when it came to the edit, you couldn't bear to cut that shot, even if it failed to add anything to the message, or had a negative effect on the pacing. No judgement, I do it all the time, and the only way to really avoid it is to hire an outside editor with no emotional stake in the footage, or just retrain your brain against natural bias, which is tricky. I once climbed a mountain to get a shot of a power plant. In the edit, the shot was boring and pointless, but I left it in for 20 seconds anyway, because I remembered how hard it was climbing up that mountain with 40 lb of equipment. Happens to everyone. I may be wrong, it's just an opinion, but I saw shots that were cut too quick, which is a telltale sign of trying to fit too many shots into timeframe x.

2. Color work is generally good, but the skin tones seem just slightly off. It's nothing major, but the guy's skin looked unnatural to me, just by a percent or so though. A nitpick. Nearer to the end of the video, you use a different colorist look, and that's a bit visually confusing. Each look you use is valid, and fairly well designed, but it's weird to use multiple looks in one piece, especially a short one, and one where there is no clear division between segments shot with one look and those shot with another. It's nothing to worry about, probably only pros will notice, but technically, you aren't supposed to be switching LUT's or whatever you're doing mid video.

3. Editing is uneven. Take this shot 22 seconds in, of the clock next to the bed. That shot is 8 seconds long, and it only needed to be 3 seconds. The shots after it are timed almost perfectly. What is the logic driving the length of that shot? Are we waiting for people to read the clock? I expect you were thinking that showing him get out of the bed was important to the story, and so you couldn't clip the shot until we saw him put his feet on the floor. Ok, for one, the audience would have connected the dots if he just slapped the alarm off, and the next shot is the car driving. Secondarily, you have the option to just hard cut from the alarm slap to a brief shot of shoes being tied, or feet landing on the floor. This also could have been an opportunity for fast character development. Instead of waiting 6 seconds to see him put his feet on the floor, we could have spent 1 second watching him rapidly cinching his laces, fast and firm, a focused, driven athlete that hits the ground running. That delivers more message in less time.

4. The couple of SFX transitions were a great idea, that probably could have been executed a bit better. They were partially effective, but the use of a few tricks could have elevated them.

Anyway, it's pretty good overall, this is not a negative review by any means, I just wanted to be detailed enough to be helpful.
 
I like it; it is good work. But the product goes over my head: these people seem pretty successful, fitness-wise, already. To sell it, maybe, at least to someone like me, it would probably be helpful to emphasize its aid in motivating one in the first place. But as I said, good work.
 
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I like it; it is good work. But the product goes over my head: these people seem pretty successful, fitness-wise, already. Too sell it, maybe, at least to someone like me, it would probably be helpful to emphasize its aid in motivating one in the first place. But as I said, good work.
That’s a good point! Thx Spike!
 
It's pretty good. You seem to be taking your job seriously, congratulations, that's top 1% in today's world. I respect this work, so I'll give you some feedback, and it's not intended as negative or nitpicking, it's just that you got so many things right that it's a lot quicker for me to focus only on the few negatives.

1. It's longer than it needs to be to communicate any of the things it's getting across. I feel like I'm seeing shot ego here, something I struggle with all the time. You got a great shot, and you worked hard to get it, and when it came to the edit, you couldn't bear to cut that shot, even if it failed to add anything to the message, or had a negative effect on the pacing. No judgement, I do it all the time, and the only way to really avoid it is to hire an outside editor with no emotional stake in the footage, or just retrain your brain against natural bias, which is tricky. I once climbed a mountain to get a shot of a power plant. In the edit, the shot was boring and pointless, but I left it in for 20 seconds anyway, because I remembered how hard it was climbing up that mountain with 40 lb of equipment. Happens to everyone. I may be wrong, it's just an opinion, but I saw shots that were cut too quick, which is a telltale sign of trying to fit too many shots into timeframe x.

2. Color work is generally good, but the skin tones seem just slightly off. It's nothing major, but the guy's skin looked unnatural to me, just by a percent or so though. A nitpick. Nearer to the end of the video, you use a different colorist look, and that's a bit visually confusing. Each look you use is valid, and fairly well designed, but it's weird to use multiple looks in one piece, especially a short one, and one where there is no clear division between segments shot with one look and those shot with another. It's nothing to worry about, probably only pros will notice, but technically, you aren't supposed to be switching LUT's or whatever you're doing mid video.

3. Editing is uneven. Take this shot 22 seconds in, of the clock next to the bed. That shot is 8 seconds long, and it only needed to be 3 seconds. The shots after it are timed almost perfectly. What is the logic driving the length of that shot? Are we waiting for people to read the clock? I expect you were thinking that showing him get out of the bed was important to the story, and so you couldn't clip the shot until we saw him put his feet on the floor. Ok, for one, the audience would have connected the dots if he just slapped the alarm off, and the next shot is the car driving. Secondarily, you have the option to just hard cut from the alarm slap to a brief shot of shoes being tied, or feet landing on the floor. This also could have been an opportunity for fast character development. Instead of waiting 6 seconds to see him put his feet on the floor, we could have spent 1 second watching him rapidly cinching his laces, fast and firm, a focused, driven athlete that hits the ground running. That delivers more message in less time.

4. The couple of SFX transitions were a great idea, that probably could have been executed a bit better. They were partially effective, but the use of a few tricks could have elevated them.

Anyway, it's pretty good overall, this is not a negative review by any means, I just wanted to be detailed enough to be helpful.
Hi Nate! Wow - thank you so much for the time watching and writing your comment! I really appreciate your advice and I‘ll try to incorporate it in my future work.

Some background information on your points:
1. You’re right. I’ll may do a second shorter version in the future.
2. Yes, I noticed that too, but wasn’t able to fix it in the way I wanted to. Another thing was that I had big issues with bending after I uploading to YouTube. I could partly fix that in creating a second version of the video - which I uploaded to YouTube - in which I reduced the noise reduction, reduced the colour-grading and increased the overall brightness of the video. So the original file on my computer does look cleaner, more coherent in terms of colors and light, and overall it’s more pleasing to watch.
3. Good point! The alarm clock scene was partly that long, because it includes the sound of the car door opening/closing and the engine start which leads to the next scene.
4. ok - that’s something I wasn’t aware of. Any advice how to improve this point?

Once again thank you very much for your feedback - it really helps! 👍
 
I thought the green letters like Endurance seemed to disappear/be too faint instead of popping.

I didn't like the sound leveling at the end when it kept getting lower as someone talks up/down/up/down/up/down music... too many changes. Try to keep it down for sequences not each line.

I really liked a lot of the punchy edits that were synced with sound.
 
I thought the green letters like Endurance seemed to disappear/be too faint instead of popping.

I didn't like the sound leveling at the end when it kept getting lower as someone talks up/down/up/down/up/down music... too many changes. Try to keep it down for sequences not each line.

I really liked a lot of the punchy edits that were synced with sound.
Thanks - that’s a good idea! 👍
 
Best part about client videos is when the client is happy and I'm sure they are! Filmmakers can dissect it, but clients know when they hire you, they can too, so you just need to put out quality work to attract clients, and not satisfy everyone. And this is HIGH QUALITY!
 
Best part about client videos is when the client is happy and I'm sure they are! Filmmakers can dissect it, but clients know when they hire you, they can too, so you just need to put out quality work to attract clients, and not satisfy everyone. And this is HIGH QUALITY!
That’s a nice compliment - thx a lot! :)
 
Hi Nate! Wow - thank you so much for the time watching and writing your comment! I really appreciate your advice and I‘ll try to incorporate it in my future work.

Some background information on your points:
1. You’re right. I’ll may do a second shorter version in the future.
2. Yes, I noticed that too, but wasn’t able to fix it in the way I wanted to. Another thing was that I had big issues with bending after I uploading to YouTube. I could partly fix that in creating a second version of the video - which I uploaded to YouTube - in which I reduced the noise reduction, reduced the colour-grading and increased the overall brightness of the video. So the original file on my computer does look cleaner, more coherent in terms of colors and light, and overall it’s more pleasing to watch.
3. Good point! The alarm clock scene was partly that long, because it includes the sound of the car door opening/closing and the engine start which leads to the next scene.
4. ok - that’s something I wasn’t aware of. Any advice how to improve this point?

Once again thank you very much for your feedback - it really helps! 👍
On the skin tones, sometimes when I'm having trouble getting a natural look, I find that isolating the skin and just reducing the saturation a touch sometimes does it, when I can't get it through the meta calibration.

I do understand how youtube can mess up a carefully prepared video, that happens, a lot.

If you have a sound tied to a clip, you can just unlink the clip from it's audio, slice off the part you need moved and move it. This is constantly useful for things like starting the sound for a scene a moment before it's on screen. How you do it exactly depends on editing software. If you have a 3d card, I'd suggest at least trying out Resolve, as it's very powerful with a card attached. I probably would have done that shot with the laces, and played the car ignition sound during the lace up, cutting directly into the car on the road as the engine roared to life.

There are numerous transition suites and preset packages that can assist with such transitions, again it depends which software you are using. These look like staged push transitions, which is a good idea, just could be a bit stronger. I can't really get into it here, because the answers require significant post knowledge, but here's an example of some punchier transition effects. In this case, they just used green screen and matte shots to allow the actors to actively interact with the transitions.

I'm not sure that's really helpful advice for this particular clip, but here's something general use - how strong a visual effect is on screen is directly related to how fast it goes by, and how much motion blur it's under. You can get away with almost anything as long as it happens fast enough, so basically if a transition looks a little weak, try doing it a bit faster and see how it feels.

 
On the skin tones, sometimes when I'm having trouble getting a natural look, I find that isolating the skin and just reducing the saturation a touch sometimes does it, when I can't get it through the meta calibration.

I do understand how youtube can mess up a carefully prepared video, that happens, a lot.

If you have a sound tied to a clip, you can just unlink the clip from it's audio, slice off the part you need moved and move it. This is constantly useful for things like starting the sound for a scene a moment before it's on screen. How you do it exactly depends on editing software. If you have a 3d card, I'd suggest at least trying out Resolve, as it's very powerful with a card attached. I probably would have done that shot with the laces, and played the car ignition sound during the lace up, cutting directly into the car on the road as the engine roared to life.

There are numerous transition suites and preset packages that can assist with such transitions, again it depends which software you are using. These look like staged push transitions, which is a good idea, just could be a bit stronger. I can't really get into it here, because the answers require significant post knowledge, but here's an example of some punchier transition effects. In this case, they just used green screen and matte shots to allow the actors to actively interact with the transitions.

I'm not sure that's really helpful advice for this particular clip, but here's something general use - how strong a visual effect is on screen is directly related to how fast it goes by, and how much motion blur it's under. You can get away with almost anything as long as it happens fast enough, so basically if a transition looks a little weak, try doing it a bit faster and see how it feels.

Very good example - thanks! 👍
 
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