SHORT: Day in the Life of a Bicycle

[Oetam]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share this short film I did a while back with you.

You can check it out in 1080p H.264 over here tinyurl.com/​2vy5zkz or in 720p compressed on Vimeo

It was shot on two Lumix GH1s. Very few shots were done with two cameras at once but both me and my Co-DP had one.

We used the 140-140 kit lens, the 20mm f/1.7 Lumix Pancake and the Canon FDs 24mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.4.

We used an IndiSlider mini for the dolly shots and a Gorillapod for the mounted shots on the bike.

It was shot in around four days (quite short ones) on location in Amsterdam around my neighborhood

We used FCP for the editing and curves in After Effects for the grading. All sound done in post.

For the timelapse with the buildings we took a photo each 20 seconds for around an hour and because we ended up with a 4K image we were able to do the tilt in post.

PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM! Either here or preferably in the comments on Vimeo.

 

[Oetam]

Anyone?

 

[Ben Sliker]

Mateo, this was very enjoyable. My only suggestions are that a. the story seemed to flip back and forth for a while between a story about humans and a story about the bike. Like i think there was a very lost opportunity for your audience to be really sad when the bike gets discarded. That could play really strong if it is set up correctly. And b. Make sure that your camera work is motivated. You have some very nice shots, but it mostly seems like what was cool and not what the emotion of the scene was. I know it's vague, but I would have like to have seen 'happier' camera moves when everything is right in the bikes' world, it has an owner, it gets ridden, and then when it's stolen, things become more frantic from the perspective from the bike. Which i think is the crux of my feelings. I would reshoot some parts so that the WHOLE short seems to be from the perspective of the bike. And if you can make people feel bad/sad/happy for an inanimate object, then you've really done something!

 

[SuperEgo Saxton]

Really good I don't really have owt bad to say, easily watchable. I was never thinking, oh dear this or that is bad.

Just nice

 

[dre83]

there's missing one "push botton" I think...

never fade in with ambience sounds... it's unatural. When you go outside, the sound also doesn't "fade in"

I would liked to have heared more sounds from the bycicle...already from the start. A specific sound for it... like a creaking sound or metal creaking sound to make it a character

Putting down the bottle, move the sound 1 frame to the right

Watch out for airplanes and trucks... It's very nice you have steet ambience, but sometimes I hear things I don't see, and that's a bit distracting

 

[Sam K]

I really enjoyed this, quite different from what we're used to seeing.

 

[MotionFx]

Love it! Thanks for sharing. Good story. Nice timelapse shots.

 

[Oetam]

Thanks for your comments everyone.

Ben, I completely agree with you and thanks for pointing stuff out nobody has said before.
One of the things I most regret was not making the crash a bigger deal but at the time I wasn't sure how to exactly do that.
The cinematography was mostly based on getting everything in the frame and having a nice composition. I have to work on emotionally involving the viewer trough camera moves. Something I am already planning ahead for my next short.

Thanks about the remarks on the audio Dre. The ambient sounds where actually from a stock effect that came with iMovie, haha... very unprofessional.
Sound is something that I am trying to improve in my next short as well. I'll be recording my own foley, ambients and try to match that as good as possible.

The whole bike film was kind of quick and dirty, shot on in a few days and edited as fast as I could. I'll definitely take your advice with me. Thanks.