A Documentary Project

If anybody from Edmonton Canada here would like to help us a little bit with will be more than appreciateted.
 
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Hey there. I'm from Toronto, but I'd like to offer a few suggestions.

1. Sound quality is terrible The speaker is muffled and the national anthem is too loud and distorted.
It looks like you're using the mic on the camera to record the speaker. This is a big mistake. Use a
lavaliere microphone, hand mic or shotgun. You can find a lot of tips & tricks on this website, just
use the search function. There's also a great training DVD which I highly recommend.

http://dvxuser.com/articles/dvxshop/SoundDVD/

2. The national anthem should not play under the speakers voice or under the titles.
It should play once at the beginning of the video and once at the end.

3. Titles are way too long (15 sec). They should be no more than 5 seconds. In tead of them
"writing" themselves on, I would recommend a simple fade-in and fade-out.

4. The titles are too close to the edge of the video. You need to leave a border. This is called title
safe and is a standard broadcast technique. Not using it makes the text look crowded and ungainly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area

5. On the YouTube link, your audio is out of sync by 1:30. I didn't check the Vimeo site.

6. The speaker rambles and hesitates, which does not inspire confidence. I would suggest
writing a script and using a teleprompter, or cue cards. The presentation will be much more
professional and it will improve the pacing of the whole piece.

7. Where are you shooting this? The is very little depth in the background and it is not very
interesting. There is also very little colour in both the background and the speaker's shirt,
making the image dull and flat. Have the speaker wear a bolder colour and find another location
where you're not shooting against a blank wall.

In all honesty, the video is very boring. I don't say this to be mean. But there were a lot of
factors that contributed. For example, I had no idea what it was about until 1:30 and
then learn the project is: "An analysis of the current state of participation of community
youth in politics". Not very exciting or inspiring I'm afraid. It's also almost 9 minutes long,
no one is going to sit through 9 minutes.

If you want to get people excited (youth, politicians, professors, general public) , I would
recommend shortening the video to no longer than 2 minutes. As I said before, write a
script based on what you've said already, and use a teleprompter or cue cards. It will make
a world of difference.

Hope this is helpful. Good luck with the project, it's very worthwhile.

Peter Reynolds
www.ftrp.ca
info@ftrp.ca
 
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the graphics and type treatment - YIKES!

agreeing with pete. the write-on takes WAY to long. it CAN work well for a short one or two word title, but NOT for a full sentence. and the dither dissolve exit? NO. using too many transitions is the first pitfall of the hobbyist. and two different transitions on one title? no no no.
 
well thanks guys for your criticism i well look into these and well improve on them, its just we were sitting in my computer room and i just got my cinemek and wanted to shoot something and we had the idea for the documentary for cuople of days, so we just shot this for introdction.I did use an extrnal microphone i guess there were too many computers and electronic stuff around so sound didn't comem out good, and i just got the audio DVD u mentioned just gonna watch it now so will improve for sure on the sound.For titles i did ask em the question but i didn't like sound on the video so i decided to type it on.yes i should have used title safe i guess won't make that mistake again.for the subject i just wanted to shoot something and this guy wanted to do this documentary so i said i'll help you on it as for liking some people like it some don't everybody have their opinion. We do need lots of preperation before do the final one of course but this was all done in one night and were lil tipsy so did whatever came to my mind. I told the guy to keep the Doc. to 30 min. to 45 min less than an hour. WGZN man i did ask em question but i didn't sound good so i did that. i guess to many transition don't look proffesional either. Well again thanks very much for your criticism and will certainly improve on the things you guys said.
 
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yes i just checked the sound on youtube and vimeo it was fine for couple of days when i put it on there youtube messed it up now don't know what happened because Vimeo one seems fine
 
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