Help critique my video

S

Scarytown

Member
Hello everybody! I'm pretty new to the forums, but I have found this place to be great at learning new techniques at filming. A little background on myself and my projects: My brother and I started making video's about 3 or so months ago for fun. He is a part of a college improv group and was curious about acting and I had been wanting to get into directing and cinematography for a long time. We started up Brostorm Comedy (don't ask why we came up with that name) and just started filming skits. While he was more for the straight up comedic skit, I ended up liking the more cinematic styles of filming. We ended up meeting in the middle. We are currently on our 5th video getting ready to start are 6th.

I have come here to you guys to have you critique my lastest video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OKGKoGTpZo

The biggest problem I have had when making any video is the further my editing process goes along, the harder it gets to actually critique my own work. It ends up creating a sort of blind spot so to speak. I'm not sure if this is exclusive to just me or not. While I am pretty proud of our latest video, I do understand there is plenty of room for improvement. Also the youtube quality isn't the best for some reason. 720p was the highest I uploaded it too. Anyways, let me know what you think!

My gear:
Canon 60d using Marvel Cinestyles
Tamron 17-50mm VC Lens
Zoom H4n and Rode NTG1 mic
Fluid head tripod
Custom Dolly

Editing tools:
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Adobe After Affect CS5 (twixtor plugin)
Audacity

Thanks!
 
Good job. I liked the Police joke, and the colored lighting on the 80's dude with the glasses. I would work on getting the other characters lit with the same amount of thought as went to the 80's guy. Not that style mind you, but it seemed the other characters were not lit at all.

I liked how you were obviously influenced by Drive, based on the lighting of the 80's guy and the Kavinsky soundtrack

My biggest issues with the short:

1) Watch the line. If you are not familiar with the line, I would learn it. I think it is ok to break it, but you did so without motivation nor transition, and that can get choppy.

2) The people in the video could not have had an 80's childhood. Everyone in that video was born in the early 90's.
 
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Thanks for the response Ryan! We definitely did reference Drive with some of the shots. Originally my brother was going to be a different sort of 80's guy, but after watching Drive I was smitten by the scorpion jacket that he wore (also seemed really familiar). Well I tried to find similar jackets too it and found out that it really wasn't American 80's but based on vintage Korean souvenir jackets. Luck would have it that my father was based in Korea when he was in the army during the 80's and had purchased one of the jackets.

We also referenced The Lost Boys and a couple John Carpenter movies. The music we used was by an up and coming composer named Lazerhawk that does the whole 80's synth music like Kavinsky.

I am still learning, or least mentally practicing on how to hold a line. My biggest problem is that most of our actors work for free and usually only have a small window to film. What ends up happening is that I have to rush some shots, or others don't quite work well, or I just plan forget where to properly place the actor from the previous scene. I felt I had done a bit better than some of our previous films, but it appears I still have a long ways to go :)

As for the people being actually be from the 80's, I was attempting to portray them as 80's hipsters that like to dress retro just to be cool. However, I had to condense some of the scenes and retweek the dialog a bit, so it appears we may have made that point a bit murky.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback!
 
Yeah that 80's synth does sound like Kavinsky, so much so, I thought it was!

From the 80's guy monologue, it seemed as if he had 'dusted off' the Nintendo from his youth and the other objects he had. So it was indirectly saying his childhood was in the 80's... so he had just bought all that stuff?

i want that jacket, btw. Cool your dad had previously bought one.
 
Oh, I forgot to post that the lighting fault may be on me. I tweeked a lot of the lighting post production and may have darkened it a bit too much (My LED monitor tends to be on the brighter side). I usually provide soft lighting for most indoor scenes, but was short of equipment. The outdoor shots I had a window of about 20 minutes to get my shots before the sun set and again went a bit much on post correction (wanted it to look bleak).
 
Pretty much. The NES was suppose to be originally his and the other stuff he collected. However, the dialog was to convoluted so we pruned it a bit. Most likely too much.
 
Scarytown said:
Oh, I forgot to post that the lighting fault may be on me. I tweeked a lot of the lighting post production and may have darkened it a bit too much (My LED monitor tends to be on the brighter side). I usually provide soft lighting for most indoor scenes, but was short of equipment. The outdoor shots I had a window of about 20 minutes to get my shots before the sun set and again went a bit much on post correction (wanted it to look bleak).
Click to expand...

The last shot, where he sticks his hand out, with the smoke and such, looks good to me. I liked that.

The NES originally being his and the other objects is what was strange to me. He's clearly no older than 21, thus he was born no earlier than 1991. By the time the guy was 7 years old, the NES would have been replaced by the SNES and the N64. Not sure why someone would buy their kid a video game console from over a decade earlier. So there is no way that any of them could have drawn from any backstory and the 80's.

You may think I am being a little too picky, and I probably am, but I was an 80's/90's kid, and when I see someone who is clearly much younger than I have more of an 80's backstory, it just sticks out.
 
My brother is 23 :) He was more of a computer kid than console. It was more interjection on my part as I was a pure NES kid (I'm 28).
 
My brother Jamie is the main 80's retro guy (23), his girlfriend Annie played the wannabee retro girl (20), and Luke played the wannabee retro guy (25). The 80's crew consisted of 2 of my brothers friends who are 18-19ish (jean guy and long hair guy) and my wife who is 26 (punk hair girl). The others we used in the retro war ranged between 18-26ish beside the older folks who were played by my parents and relatives. Almost everybody that we used are part of a improv or theater group at the college which is the only place to find actors around here (I live in a small city in Kansas :( ).
 
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