Driving Montage, intro to doc

W

watson

Well-known member
hey guys, i'm just about finished a short (10 min) documentary that deals with the changing face philadelphia. Overall the project deals heavily with still photos, comparing old photos to new. Since this project deals with philadelphia neighborhood i deciede to create a driving montage as the opening to the piece. I wanted something stylized, but not to clean cut, so this is my attempt. The rest of the piece is also pretty stylized so this fits into place. Feedback is welcomed.

http://www.andrewdavidwatson.com/phillychangingintro.html
(6 mbs, about a minute)

Andrew
www.andrewdavidwatson.com
 
Looks like a very interesting project. You have a nice tight opening going there. I think you could go a bit easier on the flashes/lens flares...they start to distract the eye away from otherwise very well-shot footage.

Keep us informed. :beer:
 
The footage look good. The cuts using the shadows are nice. The angles and compositions overall are also done well. The flashes didn't bother me.
 
I think you should be well pleased with the opening of your Doc, you've got some really great looking shots.
 
Beautiful shots! Did you use any filter, like polarizer? How did you stabilize the camera? What did you do in the CC?
 
Some of those shots looked F*ckin great!

I thought the moving shots looked super sweet. And smooth too. What'd you use to get them so smooth? And nice CC. I dug this vid.

The opening stills you used...I liked the first two but I think four is too many. I see that you did this in order to cut the motion with the song but I think there is a better way. After the first two I got bored and was ready to move on.

as far far as the text goes...I like the font choice but I'd include it in the frame. The black bars don't exist in my mind. They are outside the frame.

two cents from me.

Great work as a whole.

-rook
 
Good vibes. The film burn transitions worked overall but I didn't like the early ones in the beginning. A little variety in duration and color and pre/post blurring on these effects would help a ton in making them feel less cliche'.
 
I liked the piece overall. I think all the parts of it helped make it so good. The flares worked well when timed with the music. The colors were nice, along with the saturation. The colors I thought fit quite well with the piece, they represented a "realness" that went along smoothly with the footage and editing. Good luck on the rest of your project.
 
Great shots! It sorta reminded of me of David Fincher's movies. Outdoors, tall buildings, wide shots, sharp detailed images, shadow/contrast, film burn transitions, and the whole mood... It's a compliment.

Can somebody tell me how to do those film burn transitions in FCP? Thank you.
 
thanks guys for the feedback. I might go back and see if i can change the first few shots to make it move quicker. I think i am going to keep the titles outside the frame though, i agree it looks kinda wierd at first, but when i viewed it on my broadcast monitor it didnt seem as wierd (this project will be airing locally on TV in philly (spring 2006 ) so i'm editing with TV in mind).

Man i wish i had a picture of my set up. I pretty much had my tripod with two legs open slammed between the passenger door and the front seat of my truck. I then had the thrid leg of the tripod extened down onto the seat (which i think helped to make it smooth becasue the seat gave way a little to the tripod so it wasnt so rigid. I then had AV cords running from the DVX into a small miniDV cam i had sitting on my dashboard so i could see what i was shooting, while driving. Overall worked way better then i imaged.

The color correction was done in final cut using the standard 3 way color correction and also using Magic Bullet 2 ( Bleach Bypass Light, one of the few new Film Looks in the update.)
 
Looked great. Thanks for the deets.

BTW, I checked out your site. Cool vids. You do nice work.

-rook
 
I checked out your site as well. Great music videos. Absolutely love your dolly and crane shots! Your videos are inspirational, especially IMAGINE.
 
I really liked this! I think that my favorite part about this was the colors. You captured the essential "real street" feel and look that a lot of people strive for. Makes you feel like you're there. Nice job. :)
 
wonderedby - to answer your earlier question. The burst frames are pretty easy to do actually. I always liked the look but never got around, until now, figuring out how to do it. Pretty much in FCP use the 3 way color correction and keyframes. At the points you want it to blow out, riase the mid and the high, adding keyframes before and after so it blows out and then comes back to normal.

I'm glad to hear it has a "real street" look. Thats what i was going for. I may be starting another documentary project that will be shot in "the badlandz" part of philly. A pretty rough area of the city. A) if i go through with the project, i'm going to have to capture "street feels" again B) i'm going to have to tint out my windows so no one on the streets see my camera hanging out. haha
 
rook said:
Some of those shots looked F*ckin great!

as far far as the text goes...I like the font choice but I'd include it in the frame. The black bars don't exist in my mind. They are outside the frame.
Click to expand...

Nice work, but I'd have to say I agree with rook as far as the text....we've become so used to looking at the black bars as non-existent that they do seem "out of frame"..

Overall looks great though!
 
LeSeulGiraffe, the song probably wouldnt be my first choice but i'm friends with the band so getting the proper music clearancce for braodcast was easy, especially since i decided to add this intro kinda last minute. The rest of the piece mostly used music from Explosions in the Sky, if anyone is familiar with them. A really amazing band.
 
I can see that working really well. It's a pretty nice piece, although I might agree with the comments about the jarring text.

You do have some pretty nice stuff in your portfolio. That bike polo piece is shot particularly well. Unfortunately, there's something else in your reel that's not so nice: a couple shots of what looks like pretty much a perfect rip of Jason Koxvold's video for Her Space Holiday. I'd lose those if I were you, and quick. I think he's a member here, actually.
 
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