Ought2bCommitted
Veteran
I hope so too! I did enjoy your film and wish more people would comment on it for you.
Home Invasion - Bena
- Thread starter bena
- Start date
Ought2bCommitted
Veteran
bena said:its either an optical contusion or alien technoligy
LOL, thanks for the clarification!!!! :thumbup:
Thanks Ought2bCommitted!
I wanted to make something fun and pretty.
I totally under estimated the amount of time I would be doing the fx at the same time trying to get a final cut so the Most Excellent Score could be timed out.
I built a skater dolly for this, and I think it worked out very well. Its hard to see in the wmv version, but there is a dolly in zoom out that gives that cool Hitchcock feel about 2:10 in the movie. It took about 3 tries to get it right, but it looks real nice.
I also think the next time I will put a still graphic for adjusting the brightness/gama at the head of the movie. On my mac its too bright, oh well live and learn.
As soon as Jarred allows, I will post a 60MB Quicktime h264 that looks a lot better.
I wanted to make something fun and pretty.
I totally under estimated the amount of time I would be doing the fx at the same time trying to get a final cut so the Most Excellent Score could be timed out.
I built a skater dolly for this, and I think it worked out very well. Its hard to see in the wmv version, but there is a dolly in zoom out that gives that cool Hitchcock feel about 2:10 in the movie. It took about 3 tries to get it right, but it looks real nice.
I also think the next time I will put a still graphic for adjusting the brightness/gama at the head of the movie. On my mac its too bright, oh well live and learn.
As soon as Jarred allows, I will post a 60MB Quicktime h264 that looks a lot better.
Ought2bCommitted
Veteran
How did you build the skater dolly? I thought you had a dolly shot, but wasn't sure.
Ought2bCommitted said:
There were a lot of dolly moves. They are subtle. There are a couple 360 camera dollys, like where he sits up in bed.
I built one of the 3 wheeled Skater mini look a likes that everyone is making in the DIY thread...this is what the real one looks like http://www.pstechnik.de/en/skater.php
The main issue I had was the wood floor was not smooth enough to do a nice dolly, so I had to use a 2x4 shelf to get it to roll right.
The Hitchcock shot was done on the skater dolly moving straight in while I used the zoom control to zoom out. It took a few tries but I found the correct dolly in speed with the zoom out speed to get that nice depth compression.
Ought2bCommitted
Veteran
Yeah the Hitchcock shot was the one I couldn't figure out. I wasn't sure the size of the room, but I knew you had wood floors, so I wan't sure if you had a dolly or not.
Norm Sanders
Script Wrangler
Bena, only saw one ring directly ontop of the roof. I was looking for another, thinking I'd see one, but didn't.
Finally was able to just watch this, after pulling it from the .zip file Robert pointed me towards. Impressive (VERY) camera work, and the score worked well for getting us to feel the way we should at certain parts of the film. Lighting was also good, though the shot when he was in bed was a tad too well lit for my tastes ... like he had headlights shining up from the foot of his bed.
However, where this fell for me (though it had a VERY Twilight Zone thing going on) was in the script ... having just VO the whole time. Beyond that, it was the editing. It really needs to be tightened up, in my opinion, as it holds shots WAY longer than it needs to.
Otherwise, TOP NOTCH effects as the levitation looked VERY real, the light coming down on him, the EXT view of the house where we had the full moon to the upper left, and the house & horizon were slightly rocking back & forth ... VERY VERY cool stuff.
Finally was able to just watch this, after pulling it from the .zip file Robert pointed me towards. Impressive (VERY) camera work, and the score worked well for getting us to feel the way we should at certain parts of the film. Lighting was also good, though the shot when he was in bed was a tad too well lit for my tastes ... like he had headlights shining up from the foot of his bed.
However, where this fell for me (though it had a VERY Twilight Zone thing going on) was in the script ... having just VO the whole time. Beyond that, it was the editing. It really needs to be tightened up, in my opinion, as it holds shots WAY longer than it needs to.
Otherwise, TOP NOTCH effects as the levitation looked VERY real, the light coming down on him, the EXT view of the house where we had the full moon to the upper left, and the house & horizon were slightly rocking back & forth ... VERY VERY cool stuff.
Thanks Envision!
The lighting when he is in the bed looks great in the original footage, its just something about taking a mac file to a pc, and then running windows media on it that totally made it too bright. The whole movie is 1/2 to 1 stop too bright in the current WMV version. I can make it a little darker in quicktime pro with the A/V brightness control, not sure if you can do that in Window Media player on the PC. As I was saying, if I do this again, I will put a calibration still at the begining, that shows the user how to set their brightness.
There is a second ring if you open your mind at the very end you will see it. Of course its much easier to see in the full rez version, which I hope to post when the voting is done.
Or maybe you just aren't ready to belive... ???
As far as editing goes, I would say it could be tighter, but if it was, then the Score would not have been as good, since time was running out and we had to get an edit lock to get the score timed, but I think it works overall.
Care to guess how we pulled off the levitation?
The lighting when he is in the bed looks great in the original footage, its just something about taking a mac file to a pc, and then running windows media on it that totally made it too bright. The whole movie is 1/2 to 1 stop too bright in the current WMV version. I can make it a little darker in quicktime pro with the A/V brightness control, not sure if you can do that in Window Media player on the PC. As I was saying, if I do this again, I will put a calibration still at the begining, that shows the user how to set their brightness.
There is a second ring if you open your mind at the very end you will see it. Of course its much easier to see in the full rez version, which I hope to post when the voting is done.
Or maybe you just aren't ready to belive... ???
As far as editing goes, I would say it could be tighter, but if it was, then the Score would not have been as good, since time was running out and we had to get an edit lock to get the score timed, but I think it works overall.
Care to guess how we pulled off the levitation?
EditPhish
Well-known member
Bena,
Lots of comments for ya
First off, I really enjoyed your film a lot! The music was very good... and the cinematography was great.
I liked your lighting a lot... my only gripe would be at the beginning when he's sleeping and restless (night)... it just lacked a bit of interest. But from the moment he goes to the window the lighting got much more interesting and drew me more into the story.
LOVED the difference in lighting/color from night to morning.
The spaceship FX were a bit cheesie, and without a doubt, your film would have been improved with better FX... but I can overlook that, as I imagine you budget/time/ability constraints that I can definitely appreciate! Totally dug your beaming-up, levitation FX... that looked excellent. Do tell how you did them...
Story was great... I've watched it several times and on one watch-through I muted it whenever the narrator started to speak (and guessed at when he stopped) to see how it would have played without that narration. While it was definitely needed at the end the way you pieced the story together, I wonder if you had restructured the ending a bit it might have been better without the narration... but that's really just a question... not a statement about not liking it the way it is. Personally, I'm just not a big fan of narrated films, and yours in particular struck me as one that could work exceptionally well without it.
Only other thing was the end... it felt just a tiny bit anti-climatic... though I can't give you an exact reason why... not sure... can't really put my finger on it.
Thanks so much for sharing an very entertaining short... I really did enjoy it!
Lots of comments for ya
First off, I really enjoyed your film a lot! The music was very good... and the cinematography was great.
I liked your lighting a lot... my only gripe would be at the beginning when he's sleeping and restless (night)... it just lacked a bit of interest. But from the moment he goes to the window the lighting got much more interesting and drew me more into the story.
LOVED the difference in lighting/color from night to morning.
The spaceship FX were a bit cheesie, and without a doubt, your film would have been improved with better FX... but I can overlook that, as I imagine you budget/time/ability constraints that I can definitely appreciate!
Totally dug your beaming-up, levitation FX... that looked excellent. Do tell how you did them...Story was great... I've watched it several times and on one watch-through I muted it whenever the narrator started to speak (and guessed at when he stopped) to see how it would have played without that narration. While it was definitely needed at the end the way you pieced the story together, I wonder if you had restructured the ending a bit it might have been better without the narration... but that's really just a question... not a statement about not liking it the way it is. Personally, I'm just not a big fan of narrated films, and yours in particular struck me as one that could work exceptionally well without it.
Only other thing was the end... it felt just a tiny bit anti-climatic... though I can't give you an exact reason why... not sure... can't really put my finger on it.
Thanks so much for sharing an very entertaining short... I really did enjoy it!
Last edited:
Norm Sanders
Script Wrangler
Bena, no clue on how you pulled off the levitation. Spoon feed it to me, would ya? Too tired to guess.
hemophilia
Well-known member
And thanks for the kind words Opus!
Here's my take on it (me being the abductee/composer for the movie)...
I like a lot of the camera movement. It's amazing the level of professinalism that a slight dolly move can provide. My fave' is when the abductee (me) hits his alarm clock...that shot just has this ever-so-slight dolly track-in... but it's those little touches that keep things compositionally captivating.
Some of the lighting is good... some of it is not so good. The tricky subject of monitoring very dark materials for consistent delivery over the web deserves many a thread to itself-- but what bugs me more is the lighting continuity, which at times, isn't as good as it could be. And of course the 3d-work isn't exactly Spielberg-ready. But Ben (bena) doesn't have much experience with 3d and he certainly did a better job than I could've in the 3d dept., particularly given the time frame.
And of course I think the music is fantastically flawless and the actor did a bang up job and is quite handsome.
As for the levitation, I gotta say it WAS tricky. We developed a positron magnetic inversion resonance gamma beam imaging screen with which to triangulate the H7O4 vector fourier spectrograph coversion to temporarily suspend the effect of gravity. It was really tough cause we did it all in Fortran, which is kinda archaic but we wanted to prove it could be done. Plus the beam killed the dog.
Which was sad.
-Kevin
Here's my take on it (me being the abductee/composer for the movie)...
I like a lot of the camera movement. It's amazing the level of professinalism that a slight dolly move can provide. My fave' is when the abductee (me) hits his alarm clock...that shot just has this ever-so-slight dolly track-in... but it's those little touches that keep things compositionally captivating.
Some of the lighting is good... some of it is not so good. The tricky subject of monitoring very dark materials for consistent delivery over the web deserves many a thread to itself-- but what bugs me more is the lighting continuity, which at times, isn't as good as it could be. And of course the 3d-work isn't exactly Spielberg-ready. But Ben (bena) doesn't have much experience with 3d and he certainly did a better job than I could've in the 3d dept., particularly given the time frame.
And of course I think the music is fantastically flawless and the actor did a bang up job and is quite handsome.
As for the levitation, I gotta say it WAS tricky. We developed a positron magnetic inversion resonance gamma beam imaging screen with which to triangulate the H7O4 vector fourier spectrograph coversion to temporarily suspend the effect of gravity. It was really tough cause we did it all in Fortran, which is kinda archaic but we wanted to prove it could be done. Plus the beam killed the dog.
Which was sad.
-Kevin
