Hi Trevor.
First off, let me congratulate you on having completed several short films. The more you do it the better you'll get, as filmmaking is one of those things that no matter how much you study and learn about the various crafts involved, not actually putting the techniques to practice will prevent you from being able to do it, or at least do it well.
I know you said you were working with a fairly cheap handycam type of camera. Really the camera itself is irrelevant, it's more about what you do with the camera. I did notice several significant video drop outs in both Delta 62 and the Mega Club. It's most likely due to dirty heads, so running a head cleaning tape through the camera would be a good idea. It should be a semi-regular maintenance practice anyway.
The audio is totally out of sync in the Mega Club video, and seemed like it was lagging a few frames late in Delta 62. Also the exposure on both of these wasn't ideal. They both seemed over exposed, and there was at least one shot in the Mega club that had a drastic exposure adjustment, going from totally blown out to "normal". If you can't manually adjust your exposure on that camera, using an ND (neutral density) filter or two to decrease (stop down) the amount of light coming in may help.
Subterfuge had the opposite problem, as it was all shot at night with presumably no additional lighting other than the onboard camera light everything just looked off. Nearly every shot in Subterfuge seemed to run a bit slow, and they all felt a tad on the long side. You also could have cut down the amount of driving shots. The basic rule of thumb is that in a short film we don't have time to see person A get up, walk across the room, down the stairs, down the hall, out the door, etc.. to get to their car, then get in start the car, drive, park, get out, walk into the coffee shop, order a drink, sit down, meet person B, talk, plan out the rest of the day, then move on... Unless the whole story is just about a trip to the coffee shop but even so some of that stuff could be cut out. Instead, we see where they start, and where they end up -- because it's a
short film. Unless there is a particular story motivated reason to see the entire journey. I know you chopped out a lot of what you probably shot for driving footage, but more could go without affecting the story.
Also, the on-camera light really killed a lot of the shots, as people would start out in darker areas and move into the light or vice-versa. A better way to go about it would be to light the entire scene, and then decrease the overall brightness in post.
Basically the only practical audio I noticed was the muffled scream at the end. With mostly (or perhaps entirely) music as the rest of the audio it felt a little out of place. Lowering the audio level of the music and adding sound effects for everything happening on screen (and off screen) would go a long way to making it a much stronger piece.
Also you
crossed the line in subterfuge at least once, this is generally a no-no, as it throws off the viewers orientation of the scene and can confuse them and worst case scenario take their mind completely out of the story.. Since the whole point is to tell a story, you have to do whatever you can to make the cuts invisible, and not crossing the line is a big help. There were also a few cuts in Delta 62 that were a bit jarring. It's always best to cut on action, so when your character runs a few steps and stops to look around, then it cuts and nothing is recognizable in the scene and he starts running again it feels awkward.
Other than that.. as John said -- you're on the right track. You're actually getting out there and shooting stuff, which is half the battle.
If filmmaking is something you're serious about as a hobby or potential career, start building up your study library with some of the materials I mentioned in
this thread, and you'll be that much better equipped for virtually everything.
I speak from experience, having put off my filmmaking desires for a good 15 years or so.