archived-videos My 1st Short, it's kind of silly.

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spunkybdub320

Hey Everyone,

I am a high school student, and I made the short film for an extra credit assignment in my TV class (I had two friends help with some minor details). My teacher printed stories from a random story generator, and our job was to write a script to it and create a short out of it. I rewrote some details, added my own, and took some out from the original story. It's a very random story, so some of you may be thinking "What the hell was she on?" I did not make up some of the stuff! I had to follow it pretty closely.

This is really the first short film I have ever done. I only had about two weeks to get everything written, shot, and edited. I shot the full thing in one day.

Again, I DID NOT WRITE THE STORY. It came from the website http://www.heisanevilgenius.com/otherstuff/randomstory.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XY-o6NN9YW8&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XY-o6NN9YW8&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Here's the original story so you're not totally lost
The amazing, devil-may-be Biff the Pretty Cool was doing 117 jumping jacks in his castle. That's when he noticed Mervin Anderson approaching him with a printout of his blog. After a long talk about the mating habits of smurfs a hologram appeared between them. "Good evening," Milo VonGenlock said. "I have Clarissa Selutt. If you want to see her again, you must throw the big game." Following a trail of riddles, Biff soon found himself deep in the heart of Milo VonGenlock's base of operations. Von Genlock clearly was not expecting him, and he mananged to sneak right into the villian's command centre. "Stay were you are," exclaimed Milo VonGenlock, who put on a ninja suit and threw the Gun of Vigorous Shouting, the most lethal weapon in the universe. "Now you will die while Clarissa watches." "Biff" Clarissa shouted. She was chained to a lamppost in a bear costume. Biff did a standing long jump over the villian's back and then stabbed Milo VonGenlock in the face with an ice pick and shouted "Hot pizza!" to everyone's chagrin. (I'm not going to write the story's ending, I didn't follow it at all).


Thanks for taking the time to watch it. Comments and criticism is greatly appreciated.
-Brittany
 
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Hey, i thought id actually take the time to watch your vid as i did see half of it the other day and now i have seen it all.

I am not a pro film maker but i hope you will appreciate my response...

I did like this , well done for your first short. I thought the editing was good and the comedy was kind of british style in a way (which i like as i am british i guess).

The sound was clear but could of had more depth on the voices, im not sure if you have used a external mic there but im asuming you have not.

I like the charictures also, im sure you can do somthing else with them also.

hope this non pro comment helps.:)
 
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I thought the editing was good too - the story was silly and the actors were good for that role in its silliness and mocking a British accent. They were all in love with a blow up doll whose real name is Mary Carey. (The dark haired actor looked a bit like Jack Black).

I didn't like the echo sounding knock on the bedroom door - it sounded like it was a knock from Count Draculas Castle in Translyvania...unless that was the intent but the knock on the nieghbors door sounded like a real knock. The guy in the shower just seemed to appear out of nowhere and I didn't know if you intended to do that (kind of like a genie) or not.

Overall it was good and I watched it from begining to end if not to find out what Clarrisa was because I thought she was going to be a puppy actually - but a blow up doll is good too.
 
Hi,

Thank you for your feedback. Yeah, the villain was supposed to appear from a hologram, but I had no idea how nor the time to figure that one out, so I made him randomly appear from inside the shower...haha.

And yes, the mic used was the internal mic from my camcorder. The knocking sound was used from one of those sound sample CD's (they did not have a door knocking, isn't that insane?!). It was actually a gravel knocking, and I had to edit it slightly (slow it down, cut it, etc.) to get a closer sound to a knocking. I should have spent more time finding one or recording one myself.

Thanks again!
 
spunkybdub320 said:
Hi,
I should have spent more time finding one or recording one myself.
Click to expand...
I find myself doing the same thing sometimes. Crazy.

You could have places the camera near a door and
knocked a few times, then dropped that audio in
instead of searching through a sound efx CD, finding
something close and editing. Five minutes total.

I slam my head against a wall when I miss the obvious.

I remember searching sound libraries for hours trying
to find the sound of several people walking through
a forest. Finally I grabbed my camera, took it outside
and walked around in my backyard. I did this several
times and laid these all down in my NLE. Took me
about half an hour and sounded great.
 
spunkybdub320 said:
the villain was supposed to appear from a hologram, but I had no idea how nor the time to figure that one out, so I made him randomly appear from inside the shower
Click to expand...

Probably a bit out of your league for now (first video you edited), but CreativeCow have a bunch of great video tutorials to watch - including a couple on creating a hologram..

I've done a few editing gigs, with step by step tutorials playing on the laptop next to editing machine. Handy. :blush:

Yah, your story was extremely random - but I guess that's the way the cards were dealt. :lol:

I really liked the guy in the Flash Gordon t-shirt. Gotta get me one of those, too.

Grats on covering most the project's plot points. :)
 
On the note of sound - can you record the sound of anything on your camera while filming and move that sound from that scene to another scene? Such as the door knocking - if that makes sense.


I am brainstorming this whole sound effects thing. I remember reading about how George Lucas used metal telephone pole wires to give the light saber sound effect. So many sounds are just outside your doorstep....then I read that in the Blair Witch Project they went around and cracked tree branches on the ground with their hands to give the 'running through the woods' sound (I never actually saw the film but read about it).
Someone on this site wrote how they went to a busy resturant and recorded the chit chatter of the guests for the crowded room sound effect. I myself am trying to pay more attention to potential sounds that can be easily overlooked.
 
doomedvideos said:
With all this talk of sound, if i wanted to recored high quality sounds what would be the cheapest way to do it? what device would I need.
Click to expand...

You would need a high quality mic and any high quality audio recorder.
Most miniDV cameras can record in high quality so you COULD record
directly to the camera.
 
The "screaming" sounds from the gun of vigorous shouting I actually recorded after shooting. I'm actually pretty smart when it comes to recording engineering and sound. I started studying that for a few years before I was into film. But I was working with musical instruments on an Alesis interface. Now it's a slightly different ball game. I didn't even think to record the door knocking, I thought for sure I'd be able to find one on a CD. Oh well.

But since we're talking about audio, how do people who do not have mic imputs on their cameras record better sound using a boom mic? I thought about running a mic through my interface and my computer and rolling sound the same time as the video, but then I'd be using a ton of space on my computer and I'd have to worry about it matching up. Is there any other ways? or am I stuck with ADR and my internal mic? (I can move this to another thread if it's more appropriate.)
 
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