Portfolio Reel 2007: Cinematography

the_Andyape

Active member
Hey! Just finished with the first cut of my cinematography reel... keep in mind there are a few changes yet to be made, but this is pretty close to the final version.

I'll be posting a directing reel, as well as a general one (encompassing everything- directing, cinematography, editing, animation, etc) soon... Hope you enjoy!

-Andy

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~aholme21/Cinereel07-web.mov

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whoa. nice man. that last shot did it for me though with the car flipping in the air about to smash into the dude. :thumbup:
 
Very good reel. My one comment would be the your opening shot was your weakest (The guy walking into the store front). Other than that everything else looked great.
 
Cool- I've actually gotten the comment about the first few shots elsewhere too. I'm gonna be tweaking anyways, so I'll definitely take that into account.

Oddly enough though, the stuff I was planning on replacing was the sequence where the penny floats into the air (mainly because it's older, and I'd shoot it differently now). What do y'all think?

Thanks for the comments!
 
That was incredibly inspiring. Loved the music and like FilmBoy77 I loved the ending shot. Gave me the chills.

How did you get the penny to float, the people to float in the reflection and the car to fly like that? It's amazing...I imagine some green screen was involved for that but still would like to hear a little more.

Only thing I would change...is the phone number at the beginning. My advertising teacher told me that the style with dashes is becoming less professional and a newer form with periods is becoming more the taste. Purely stylistic I supposed though...Great Job. Hats off
 
I loved the flow of the video, the ending got real good. That last one was awesome. Thanks for sharing.
 
that was extremely impressive. God could you please tell me how you created such an amazing looking sky in that green screen shot of the kid flying inside the vehicle....I absolutely loved that, not to mention there were other good ones too.
 
Sheppy52 said:
How did you get the penny to float, the people to float in the reflection and the car to fly like that? It's amazing...I imagine some green screen was involved for that but still would like to hear a little more.

LOL- the penny and the car were similar effects... the penny was just glued to the tip of a pencil and "floated" by hand in front of the camera over and over until the timing seemed right. Then I erased the hand (another reason why I'm gonna replace that scene- not the cleanest pencil-removal). The car was a model from a kit, shot forced-perspective. I had it on a ruler, held in front of the camera, and then flipped over and over until the timing was right. My friend was holding a little sheet of clear plastic with black pant doppled over it so there would be tiny leaf shadow-patterns on the car. Then my hand was erased and the foreground shrubs were matted to be on top of the action. All told, about a $13 effect, but it was still fun to do. :)

For the reflections, some friends and I stood on a folding chair in front of a greenscreen, on one leg usually, waving our arms and free leg around like we were floating. Got some excellent stares from others in the area!

Seppy52 said:
Only thing I would change...is the phone number at the beginning. My advertising teacher told me that the style with dashes is becoming less professional and a newer form with periods is becoming more the taste.

Periods are always cool. i'm jiggy with it.


Oh- and xyouthx (I don't know how to quote more than one person)- the sky was a nighttime photograph that I'd taken a while back, that just came in really hand for the shot. Is that what you mean?

Thanks again for the comments! I really appreciate it. This stuff is a lot of fun to make.

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it seemed like a lot of fun to make. did you use After Effects or Shake for all your compositing and green screen work?

also, with the car flipping did you lose any picture quality when you scaled it larger? was it a video clip of your model car or did you just take a photo of it and use that?
 
I think you need more explosions and tiny little killer ninja monkeys with one leg. Also, a couple of shots of a few mandrills will give a great touch to this reel. BUT either way I think the reel is amazing.
 
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I really liked the whole last section of this reel - it all of a sudden became a highlights reel of a really imaginative filmmaker with a knack for memorable imagery. But the beginning was very weak, and that's your most expensive real estate.
For a cinematographers reel, when I watch them, if I don't see two things right away, I instantly lose faith in the talents of the person behind the reel.
Two things are:
1. A nice portrait shot of an attractive person. A shot of a person who looks like a movie star, not some no-jawed chubby college kid off the street. The face of the 'star' should be modelled by light in a memorable way, and the face should be angled to show off features correctly. Not many budding cinematographrs can do this. Having this type of shot down pat proves to me right away that the cinematographer can make my actress/actor look good and they have the (very important) bag of tricks required to photograph human beings. Again, there doesn't seem to be many people who can do this or even care to do it with any real enthusiasm.
2. Some kind of wide master type shot which is Lit AND designed in an interesting way. There is hardly anyone who can do this one properly. I'm talking about a room or landscape with a mood that is created with light and exposure, and a pictorial design that allows your eye to move quickly and effectively through the composition in the frame. This shows me that my cinematographer has mastered design, light, works well with the art director, and will make all my masters look amazing.

That's it. Everything else is gravy as far as I'm concerned. Not many people can do this. If you can do it, then you WILL get real paying jobs very quickly I think. If you can't, why bother creating a reel to show everyone how mediocre you are? Get shooting and create those two types of memorable shots that show directors you are the right voice to photograph their film.
 
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