Critique my Website and my work.

Disclaimer: A laymans view.

So, the music tagged me right off. Nice lick and a decent song.
But man, the video had no feeling. It didn't represent the song, the mood, or the lyrics.

I think if you maybe try and think about the song and what it means, or imagine what it might mean, and wrap a visual story around that, then I think that's a head start.

Good song though. And your visuals were fine, just not in a story telling way.

//Watching it again. I think you could have made this a bigger story. Not just a hair cut. Not everyone will understand that. Explain it to them and why this should be meaningfull to them. imo.

//I think what you have is fine. I think if you go out and shoot some of the hard core ****, the real family stuggle ****, the hospital crying ****, and mix that in with what you have, then maybe it'll hit closer to home. Just my opinion man. That should do it. Hit em with the truth. Throw it right in thier ****ing face. That's the way to do it. Right? No BS man.
 
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Content: On your paragraph "about" take out the word "Currently" take out the phrase "my beloved field" - since you already have your email up I'd omit the last sentence about "thank you for blah blah blah" - it's a given.

Photos: Not enough with people. Objects have no life, no soul to them, when you capture the soul of a person, we take notice.

Footage: You look like a documentary filmmaker and not a short film or indie film. No actors, just a bunch of footage. It's not a demo reel, it's a hair cutting event.

Conclusion: get footage with actors, get people in photos, remove some words/phrases in content and your opening photo on photo page should knock my socks off.

Not being harsh, just to the point. I've given a lot of advice on web pages, design, etc. Not an expert, I just understand a few points here and there.
 
Looks nice. But you need some "real" text on your site. Now it's all images. Even the About page is just an image of text (a 44kb JPG of just text. yikes! you could make it a gif/png and have it be only 1kb). You'll want some actual text (like this post has) on your site so that search engines can gather the text to use as keywords. If you don't have any real text then nobody will ever be able to find your website in Google searches. Remove the about.jpg and just type in your About paragraph using any html/text editor. Maybe add some formatting (bold, font-size, color=white) and that's it.

Good luck! Your photos and videos look great.
 
thanks for the input guys!

I should have stated that the videos are not narratives or music videos by any means. Just beauty/ugly pieces, a documentation of sorts of what saw on the streets/city. Bums/drunks/men who get attention from girls by using their pets.

-Gord - I was actually walking around DT orlando and saw a bunch of people getting hair cuts, i had no clue what it was for. It wasnt until i saw the little girls that i found out what was going on. I was really fortunate to stumble across that.

The music was chosen solely to direct my editing ( i dont listen to lyrics, all i hear are sounds)

Thanks charlie, i kept reading the about and knew somewhere something had to change.

Kirk - very true about the image, i never thought about that.

I really appreciate the comments guys. I know what to work towards and what it is i'm missing. I probably have one more piece like these on the way before i move on to something else.
 
After studying cinema for 4 years you come up with this?

Why do you even call these short films? It's just some shots thrown together, there are 1 million clips like this online, most of them using the same aesthetic that comes with the camera. Many random amateurs would do better. What is the material actually showing about you and what part of you is in these clips? Why would I want to hire you or work with you? I see nothing of value in the clips. It could be anyone getting these shots. Any random half drunk slacker would compete well in shooting and editing.

Forget the fact that you are using a dSLR that will shoot anything anywhere, handheld, without lighting and still look OK. Don't let the dSLR control you. Imagine that you are using a 500kg camera that takes 1 hour to move and setup and a 10 person crew that costs a lot of money. Do this everytime you decide to actually go for a shot. Do a narrative or a real documentary, even if it's 2 minutes. Plan, process, execute.
 
I liked some of the compositions, etc. But as far as a demo reel, there isn't much there. Like Otis said, I don't see much that sets it apart from clips coming from tons of others getting their hands on HDSLR's, shooting some pretty footage, and then stringing it together with some music under it.

I think it might help if you didn't refer to the clips as "shorts", because they're more video montages/collages. I was fast forwarding through them because of this, wondering when the "short" started.

That said, I think you could use this to get onto a no budget project as a DP. Then, take that opportunity to show how you can use your visual sense to enhance story/content/etc.

I like the minimalist feel of the site, but the scroll sideways layout with your shorts page isn't necessary and is sort of annoying. There really has to be a reason to employ that sort of layout, and I don't see how it adds to the viewing of your clips.
 
otis - you're right, and i also agree with ben, i shouldnt call these shorts. whenever i was labeling them on the website, shorts was the first thing to come to mind. I think i like bens 'collages' better as thats what they are.

How would you go about labeling this as personal work, or should i rewrite my about section? Instead of taking pictures to document my day or travels, i shot video. I think this is something i should seperate or explain on the site.

thanks for the crits.
 
Hm you take harsh criticism well, a sign of academic education:)

It's not documentary or narrative, it's not Man With A Movie Camera either, because the elements are not there, so you could label it for what it really is? The clips are moments, impressions, and at the current cut they don't work very well. In order to have documentation value, they would need some location sound, longer shots, voices, interviews. Music appears to unify the material, but it's the cheap thing to do. With the sound off you can see the problems. If you do have longer shots with location sound, perhaps you can experiment with editing something more interesting out of the material you already have, something with mood and rhythm. You must have a lot of material but still there are lots of boring shots in the clips.

Did you produce any narrative work in school or was it mostly theory?
 
Looks great:

my 25 seconds analysis of the source code:


(1) Fix your email, its plain text -> http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

(2) Put your Google Analytics's + JavaScript at the bottom of your HTML code (just before the closing body tag.

JavaScript is blocking process, hence by placing your js at the end, this allows the page to render as it downloads the rest of the HTML content.

(3) on the home page, in Chrome at least, all the videos appear next to each other, horizontally. Not sure if this was a design choice. But perhaps if they were stacked on top of each other this may have been better?

Anhar
 
otis - the majority of my classes were based on theory. Granted we thoroughly went through the narrative story structure. They wanted us to look at 'the cinema' before we went into a structured formula. I have produced narratives, nothing worth showing however. There are 1 or 2 screenplays that i can actually shoot on no budget. In response to the moments/clips, one of my teachers had quite an affinity for Godard, particularly Histoire du cinema. The clips were arranged in a way that simulated memory and recollection. Thats something I liked about montage pieces. I see your point though about documentation. I do like the idea of location sound, possibly ambient location sound behind the music? Thanks for your input, really appreciated

Also, I had 2 teachers that were very, VERY hard to please and criticized harshly. These 2 also taught me most. =)

anhar - thank you very much for addressing the soucing issues. I'm very ignorant with coding, and ask my digitial media buddies/girl friend for help all the time. thanks.
 
Histoire(s) Du Cinema was an interesting experience but I don't understand french and the subtitling was terrible.

Sound and personality is very imporant since the viewer will not find a plot in such montages. You could take similar stuff to a higher level with some planning. It worked for Richard Linklater. In some parts of Slacker you get the feeling of being there. The limitations can force you to work hard and this is advantageous by itself. If you take out the story structure and the talking faces, what is left is extremely demanding, it's just rhythm, impression, color, composition.

In the real world though, you need to think about what you want to achieve. At this point you could try to get involved in some projects, low budget projects or work for little money. Experience is what you need. I don't think a site can give you that. It's no more than a business card with your contact details, you have to find another way to connect. You probably have 20 or 30 friends in the business already, through your school. Projects will eventually turn up. If you can afford to work on your material with total control for a while, it's time well spent.
 
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