archived-videos "NUMERO 7" - My latest short movie

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verticalberto

Hello everyone,
I'm back with a new short film! It was written, shot and edited in just a couple days , yet we are quite happy with the results.
A sunny, warm afternoon inspired us to create something that could spread some happiness and hope during these hard times :)
As always, I would like to receive as many feedback as possible so any comment (especially negative) about shooting, editing, audio, colors, etc. that you guys would like to share with me would be much appreciated.
Thanks for watching!

 
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Hi @verticalberto

Overall, a good dance video. :thumbsup: I like the colour palette, although I'm not sure it reflects the "sunny, warm afternoon" you described, and the palette is a bit cool to inspire "happiness and hope". I think I'd have felt more of that if the colours had shifted to warmer tones with the change in the music.

As regards cinematography and editing, it's all well done (I know how hard it can be to effectively capture dance sequences) with one exception: the cut to the woman at the end of the jetty at 0:47 seems out of place, and I think it interrupts the hopscotch sequence at that point for no good reason.

I'm limited to a mediocre audio system at the moment, so there may be more to the soundtrack than I can hear. However, it felt like there should have been a little more ambient sound towards the end. I was waiting for the sound of waves to add to the atmosphere as the dance came to its climax ... but all I heard was a chorus! :no:

As my Italian wasn't good enough to understand the voice-over on first viewing, I watched it again with the subtitles. Even acknowledging that football vocabulary is more of a foreign language to me than Italian, I still couldn't figure out if this was the woman talking (to her son?) or telling a story, or simply trying to be "inspirational" - but I couldn't find any link between the narrative and the action. I like the inclusion of the voice-over at the beginning, but I preferred not knowing exactly what was being said! :secret:

(Did you shoot this on the Lido de Jesolo? Just curious - I have good memories from there)
 
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Hello @CelticRambler ,
thank you so much for taking the time to write such an accurate feedback! I really appreciate it, I wish I could receive comments like this everytime :D
You bring up a good point about the colour palette, I'm still not very familiar with color grading and I'm just starting now to experiment rather than sticking to the classic luts. If you have any recommendation don't hesitate to share :) I chose to start off with an unsaturated, dull palette which becomes more vivid and warm as the girl starts dancing, but the colors at golden hour were so intense that I was afraid any further adjustment would mess everything up.

About the cut at 0:47, that was something I too was uncertain about. I figured it would be interesting to have an interruption from the regular playful timeline showing a contrasting clip which reflects all the kid's insecurities, but I guess I should have made this dichotomyn clearer.

Now that you mention it, I think that adding more ambient SFX towards the end could have added to the atmosphere. As with color grading, I'm still quite cautious with sound design as well, since I've seen many videos with excessive SFX that end up losing their natural vibe.

The lyrics are from a classic piece of italian music which encourages this kid -Nino- to not be overwhelmed by other people's expectations and just enjoy what he's doing without giving up his playfulness. My wife chose this song to share the same message with her young students, so yeah the main goal was to inspire the kids. But again, I guess we could have make everything clearer had we spent more than a couple days filming this!

(You've got a good eye sir, this was shot at Jesolo Lido, which is just stunning after tourist season has ended!)
 
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verticalberto said:
The lyrics are from a classic piece of italian music which encourages this kid -Nino- to not be overwhelmed by other people's expectations and just enjoy what he's doing without giving up his playfulness.
Click to expand...
verticalberto said:
I chose to start off with an unsaturated, dull palette which becomes more vivid and warm as the girl starts dancing, but the colors at golden hour were so intense that I was afraid any further adjustment would mess everything up.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear: I didn't dislike any of this - it just didn't quite make sense to me in the context of your description! If you hadn't said anything about the warmth of the day, or hadn't mentioned the word"hope" I would have been completely happy with the colour palette, and the subtle shift to warmer tones towards the end. :cool:

Similarly, I thought the voice-over was very effective as an inclusion in the soundtrack, and it gave way to the music at the right point. And I understand it's motivational message as a stand-alone narration. What I couldn't understand was the relationship between the words and the choreography - the words speak of fear, but the dancer seems happy; the words speak of running, but the dancer stays almost still, in one place; the words imply teamwork, but the dancer is all alone ... :hmm: Maybe I'm more sensitive to this aspect as dance is one of my particular interests - as I said, it only became a "problem" once I understood the words! :lol:

I'm happy to have seen it, though - will make a point of watching your other videos now.
 
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