archived-videos El Nacimiento (The Birth) Christmas Short Film

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MiniJamesW

Hey! I don't know if any of you remember me when I first posted and was asking for help to make a short film. I haven't fully gotten into my real project with a screenplay and everything but I've made two projects of my own since. One of them was a documentary that was okay but I saw a lot of flaws with it compared to my other one. Now this one is a narrative I was told by my teachers to make a video to introduce our Christmas concert at school and I decided to make an interview part and then a short film part. I filmed the short film part in less than 3 hours and the next day I had to edit the video for about 3.5 hours, just a few hours after completing the project I had to present it. This is only the short film part of the video, I presented it at school and saw my first live audience of hundreds of people applaud and it felt good. I hope you guys like it too. It's in Spanish but for YouTube I added English subtitles. And since I'm guessing all of you know more about film than me or my audience I'd like to learn what I can do better next time. I can think of a lot of things but I'd like to hear someone with more experience tell me since this is my first serious film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eshMckfO1DM
 
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Just put "eshMckfO1DM" in the youtube tags to get it to post.

All in all, not bad man. Got a good sense for cutting, since you're asking for critique...

Copyright music was a distraction, the whole radio thing could have been nixed, and a score would have really helped the the tension of the drive to the hospital.

Logos everywhere, another distraction.

Need better stabilization. The tripod shots you had were good, but the stuff with motion was lal over the place. Zooms are a no-no too, move the camera in or out.

Keep any text simple. Similar, complementary fonts and colors are the way to go.

Finally, we had no idea it was supposed to be Jesus till the end, up till then it was more or less the story of any pregnant couple. A little more allegory maybe?

Hate to list out all the negative! There was a lot of good too. The steady shots were well composed, the outside stuff looked pretty good and the dialogue was really understandable, not the case for a lot of beginner attempts. Well done man, go shoot something else now!
 
Thank you very much, yes I know about the music! Most of the music was chosen by my producer and I felt that if I used other people's music especially popular ones and ones in other films it would take away from the film. I felt the exact same for the radio thing but my producer wanted it so I put it in, I just couldn't find a right take and just felt that it kinda ruined that part but he really wanted to do it so I just tried my best. I have a friend who can help me compose music next time, but also this was the only thing I could do in that amount of time.

Tell me a little more about the logos, do you mean the establishing shots or do you mean there was logos of stores and anything else in it?

Yeah I realized that as well about my film I needed to use the tripod more often, I should have been more disciplined to use it but my friends wanted to get it over with so I only used it for a few shots. I did keep some shots steady but some not and I noticed that. Zooms, yeah I read so much about these things and I don't know I guess its a bad habit. I have gotten better than I was before but they're still there next time I hope not to do that again.

I learned about text the hard way by actually doing it wrong a lot. Tell me where did you see any text that I should have fixed?

Oh yes, actually since I wasn't the main "writer" I only got some partial credit because I made the ending. During the production I told the producer/writer "hey, how in the world are they gonna know that it was Jesus?" And that's when I came up with the ending, that was a major flaw but I guess most people took that as if it was an intentional decision.

It's okay man, thanks for the tips. I just always want to get better and have seen some things I did wrong as well, for the next time I will be more planned. I also need to take care of small details such as Joseph working but he's all in a nice hat, sandals, not a dirty shirt, etc. Also how the pregnant woman goes into the hospital and comes out wearing the same clothes. Some problems with editing and continuity were also present but I did a decent job of hiding it.

I will shoot something soon! Thank you for everything, hope I can post some more stuff on here soon.
 
Yeah man. Can't critique you on stuff you didn't have a say on haha. Know how that goes!

The brand stuff I was talking about was a main character wearing a shirt with "aeropostale" in giant letters across it and the big, center screen toyota emblem on the steering wheel. Not make it or break it for a lot of people or anything, but a personal preference.
 
Yeah true but next time when I have full creative control, I'll make sure not to make the same mistakes.

Oh thanks I didn't even realize that! I'll make sure to fix that for next time, I understand I hate that too the way that logos are all over the place and showing off products. Thanks for all of your advice, I'll make sure to shoot something soon.
 
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