Critique my Reel - Thank you

Overall, I like the footage.

First, the great: I absolutely love the graveyard shot, although brief I think it is fantastic. The opening sequence is great too, the cold look and the wet pavement works great. Your choice for shots and composition in this sequence was well done. I also like the effects.

(This is my favorite)The motel/bedroom scene between the woman and black man is really great. You give this great erotic feel and look (no pun intended) to the scene. Great contrast with the black man who seems like an everyday, hardworking man that is with some seductress.

The good: I also liked the diner sequences (between the man and woman, and man and the smoker). I thought the shots were well composed and cut. However, given the rustic and earthtone look to the wardrobe and set, a warmer temperature to the lights would have better fit the scene and would allow them to blend in. The placement of the lights wasn't necessarily a problem, but given the color temperature (the bright white against a brown/dep set), they stand out as unnatural, especially since you have "warmer" lights showing in the background above the diner tables.

Also, this is kind of minor, but important I think. The eyeline between the black man and the woman do not match up as he is looking straight back while she is looking down. Now given that this is a demo reel and those shots may not be the order that they were finally in, this could have been corrected, but I do think that even small details such as this count, especially in a demo reel.


Another thing, I actually really liked the whole nightmare, psycho scene. The colors were great, and I love that shot of the blood dripping on the woman. The only things I would change are opinion-based, but that is not really relevant, so good job.

Problems: Again, these shots may not be in their "final cut" form, so I only speak about the reel and not the footage from which it comes from.

The sequence on the rooftop (overlooking the city) between the man (in the red shirt) and woman seems to jump too much. I don't mean edit-wise, I mean the exposure. I actually love the shot of them looking at the city, and the last shot where they kiss with the sunlight glow, but the transition between them is rough. The dirty single shot of the man talking looks cool (temp.) and pale compared to two shots later where it is vibrant and warm. Again, there may be footage in the actual film that transitions this very well (and, in fact, is a great idea) but for the demo reel it is important that you transition this smoothly; it looks as though your exposures and temperatures changed a great deal in a matter of 2 seconds, which would be considered a major error, when in fact it may have worked great in the final cut when there was more. One way around this is to color correct the footage and tailor it for the reel, but not necessarily for the original film. This process is done when piecing together big-budget movie trailers (this is not from experience, but through extensive observation), dvd cases, demo reels, and the reason is for fluidity. By either correcting the shots to be more uniform, you are not distracted by the jump in color and get a great natural and warm feel, which is what the scene appears to do.

The way the demo rell footage was arrange I would change. The only thing I would change is placing the psycho type footage closer to the beginning of the reel. Given the blue tone of the first sequence and the nature of what is occuring (a man with searing eyeballs SWEET:beer:), the psycho scene lends itself better to this part of the reel as the colors (the green tint) beldn well with the blues from the first sequence, and the footage is not "jumping around" too much. What I mean is that by the time the psycho footage comes into play in the reel you have shown me a twisted thriller (the beginning) a love story, a music video, and then back to psycho again, it is jarring but in a bad way because you have already set the mood for a scene like this in the very beginning of the reel (because of the first sequence), but that feeling dissipates when the warm feelings of the love story, the humor from the milk scene, and cool vibes of the music video. So when you bring the psycho scene, it kills the warm mood and tone that you have built up.

Another reason for placing this footage in the beginning of the reel is that because you used the same actor for the motel and for the beginning of psycho sequence, but for seemingly different storylines/films, it becomes very confusing seeing him in these different scenes back-to-back. By only moving this psycho sequence to the beginning (after the first sequence) you place enough distance between the two sequences with the same actor that by the time "we" (the audience) see him again, it is naturalm and safe to assume that it is different movie, whereas when the two sequences were placed almost adjacent to each other, "we" get caught up trying to figure out if it is from the same movie or not and what happened, and at that point "we" are not even paying attention to the footage being shown, we are asking ourselves questions.

All in all, I really liked the footage for the most part (I absolutely love the motel scene, which I find inspiring, and also the diner scenes). I would like to see some more.

Also, did you use the HVX for all of these?:huh:
 
Thank you so much! that was Fantastic!

Funny thing is Godfrey simmons, ( the black actor) is in 3 movies ive shot. so its hard to seperate him , lol. But thank you for the great input, and i will continue to tweak the footage.

Great catch on , reminding me to Recolor correct the tones to match better. That will help alot, and i think it will hel pthe flow alot. :)
 
since GrindedDown started it

the good: cool reel. you have a good mix of work. Bloody mary and katrina really stick out! great work

the bad: the compression is really reckin havoc on some of the clips. like the milk and man hole. especially the manhole. Also in general i would make it a minute or 2 long. I think the people who look at these judge it good or bad from the first minute.
 
Ok MArk was kind enough ot let me host on his site!!!!!!

But i tell ya, i have no luck with getting folks to see this reel... lol
 
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reel looks good. I think you can WAY shorten it. The shots get the work across in MUCH less time than you think they do. Myself, I would try to do it to one song, rather than switching it up in the middle.

Oh yeah, you need some more COWBOY shots in there. Goddamn, what a good lookin' man...
 
I liked it Timur. I don't think it was too long. If someone is looking to hire you for a gig, I think they'll appreciate seeing more of your work. You've got a lot of good material in there, I could see why it'd be hard to cut and remove some of it just to make it shorter.

What I would suggest though is to cut it down some and have a secondary version of the reel that is a little faster. I think more 'film' people would appreciate the version I just saw but then there's the other bunch...they don't care or know much about cinematography but they're looking for someone to shoot their commercial or quick gig, whatever it may be...I think they'd rather see the fast, 'more commercial' reel.

I hope that makes sense. That's kind of my logic whenever I send out a reel, I try and figure out which category the client falls under and that depends on which cut of my reel I send out.
 
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