So I wrote, shot and edited this a little while back but I finally got around to uploading it to the internet. This was my first short film and I was hoping to get some feedback from the community. I am considering moving from still photography into cinematography so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy:
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Loop - First Film Feedback
- Thread starter shorty15
- Start date
randomname
Well-known member
Very impressive for a first effort. While I'm not sure that everything really clicked, I really liked the boldness in your techniques and shot selection. Here are my main issues with it:
1. Lighting, this is definitely where you need to improve the most. You really really really need to be aware of the color temperatures that you have going on in a shot, and it almost always looks terrible when you mix tungsten and daylight like that. The black and white sequence was also very flat and boring, the actors just kind of melted into the background. It's always a good idea to light the background separately and give the talent a backlight. If you're shooting in black and white you also really need more contrast, get some dark blacks and bright whites in your shot. Lastly, it looked like there were a few spots where you just had a light at eye level pointed at the actor, and it was throwing some really ugly shadows on the wall, I would try to raise the light up higher and get those shadows out of the shot.
2. While the guy was on the phone up until you saw the hostage, the cinematography felt a little lifeless. Neither the compositions or the lighting didn't really draw my eye to spot in the frame, and I wasn't exactly riveted by the talen'ts performance. Also, the lighting continuity was way off in between the wides and the closeup, it was very distracting. I did really like the subtle movements that started once you saw the hostage.
overall, a very good first effort, and if this is something that you seriously want you may have a future in it.
1. Lighting, this is definitely where you need to improve the most. You really really really need to be aware of the color temperatures that you have going on in a shot, and it almost always looks terrible when you mix tungsten and daylight like that. The black and white sequence was also very flat and boring, the actors just kind of melted into the background. It's always a good idea to light the background separately and give the talent a backlight. If you're shooting in black and white you also really need more contrast, get some dark blacks and bright whites in your shot. Lastly, it looked like there were a few spots where you just had a light at eye level pointed at the actor, and it was throwing some really ugly shadows on the wall, I would try to raise the light up higher and get those shadows out of the shot.
2. While the guy was on the phone up until you saw the hostage, the cinematography felt a little lifeless. Neither the compositions or the lighting didn't really draw my eye to spot in the frame, and I wasn't exactly riveted by the talen'ts performance. Also, the lighting continuity was way off in between the wides and the closeup, it was very distracting. I did really like the subtle movements that started once you saw the hostage.
overall, a very good first effort, and if this is something that you seriously want you may have a future in it.
randomname, thank you very much for the feedback. I agree with many of your criticisms.
A couple of quick points:
1. I had one day to shoot all of this or I would have needed to pay to check out the hotel room again so I was rushing the whole time. Since I was working with student actors who had homework to get to, I really a little under 10 hours so I certainly would have worked to fix some of these issues if I had had the time like in a normal shoot.
2. I agree that the lighting really falls apart, especially towards the end of the short. I found myself in a really bad situation where I had 2 hours left on the clock to film all of the scene with the guy and the girl so I decided to shoot it handheld and move around freely in the space to get a lot of footage quickly. This limited my lighting options so I bounced a 650 Arri off the ceiling and used a Litepanel LED for a little fill. Sine I was shooting in a hotel without their permission, my kit was quite light and I brought with me only the small LED, the Arri 650 and a Kinoflo.
The black and white scene looks really flat because of my limited light options and since it was an old 1/3" chip HDV cam, it did not handle low light so well. The one thing though is that I never had the lighting pointing directly at the actors and any shadows that were cast were a result of the ceiling bounce or the practicals in the room.
I am a little confused about the lighting continuity you mention. My set up did not really change between wides and close ups. I had a kinoflo by the window pointing towards the actor, simulating daylight and that stayed on throughout the shots. The only difference in close up was that I used the LED to fill in a little of his face. Still, the majority of the light on his face is coming from the desk lamp. I did have him sit closer to the lamp in the close ups and this may have led to the lighting discontinuity that you mentioned. It is also quite desaturated from the original color version so this may have had an effect.
Do you think I should have used the LED to add some fill in the wide shots? Off screen right, as if the light was coming from the lamp?
Finally, I like the effect that I got mixing the daylight balanced kinoflo with the tungsten balanced lamp but it may just be my taste. What might you have done instead?
Thank you again for the feedback. It really made me go back and look critically at the decisions I made and now that I think of it, there is quite a lot that I would do differently.
A couple of quick points:
1. I had one day to shoot all of this or I would have needed to pay to check out the hotel room again so I was rushing the whole time. Since I was working with student actors who had homework to get to, I really a little under 10 hours so I certainly would have worked to fix some of these issues if I had had the time like in a normal shoot.
2. I agree that the lighting really falls apart, especially towards the end of the short. I found myself in a really bad situation where I had 2 hours left on the clock to film all of the scene with the guy and the girl so I decided to shoot it handheld and move around freely in the space to get a lot of footage quickly. This limited my lighting options so I bounced a 650 Arri off the ceiling and used a Litepanel LED for a little fill. Sine I was shooting in a hotel without their permission, my kit was quite light and I brought with me only the small LED, the Arri 650 and a Kinoflo.
The black and white scene looks really flat because of my limited light options and since it was an old 1/3" chip HDV cam, it did not handle low light so well. The one thing though is that I never had the lighting pointing directly at the actors and any shadows that were cast were a result of the ceiling bounce or the practicals in the room.
I am a little confused about the lighting continuity you mention. My set up did not really change between wides and close ups. I had a kinoflo by the window pointing towards the actor, simulating daylight and that stayed on throughout the shots. The only difference in close up was that I used the LED to fill in a little of his face. Still, the majority of the light on his face is coming from the desk lamp. I did have him sit closer to the lamp in the close ups and this may have led to the lighting discontinuity that you mentioned. It is also quite desaturated from the original color version so this may have had an effect.
Do you think I should have used the LED to add some fill in the wide shots? Off screen right, as if the light was coming from the lamp?
Finally, I like the effect that I got mixing the daylight balanced kinoflo with the tungsten balanced lamp but it may just be my taste. What might you have done instead?
Thank you again for the feedback. It really made me go back and look critically at the decisions I made and now that I think of it, there is quite a lot that I would do differently.
randomname
Well-known member
The main issue I was talking about with the lighting continuity wasn't that it looked like the lights were jumping around, it was just that there was a huge difference in contrast ration between the wide and the closeup. For instance, in the wide shot, we can very clearly see the detail in the talent's entire face, but when it cuts to the closeup, the shadows are much deeper and it gets to the point where it's hard to tell the difference between his skin and his facial hair (for a sci-fi noir thriller, the closeup had a much more appropriate contrast ratio).
As for white balance, while you certainly CAN mix colors, it's a very very tricky technique and I think it only works if you take it quite a bit further than what you did. The thing is that whenever you use something slightly unconventional like mixing color temperatures, you need to convince the audience that that is exactly how you wanted it, and that there's a damn good reason for why you did it. That being said, I don't think there necessarily needs to be a damn good reason, but the audience MUST believe that there is or else they'll just read it as accidental and amateur. Basically, if you want to do something like that, take it a lot further; if you don't want a white balanced image, then go all the way with it. If you want your light to be orange and blue, then those should be the only colors I see in the scene. The social network is a good example of how to do this correctly, and Hobo With A Shotgun is an even more extreme one.
Now, if you wanted your image to be perfectly white balanced, your options would have been to either A. replace the bulb in the practical with a daylight balanced bulb B. blackout the window and have it set at night (given your story, I would have recommended this option). C. Blackout the window and use a tungsten light off screen to fake the daylight.
One more piece of advice: While everyone is different, I wouldn't recommend shooting and directing any more. Personally, if I try to direct and run the camera at the same time I instantly become the most useless person on set (music videos are the exception). I still have projects I direct and projects I shoot (I mostly focus on cinematography) but very freeing to only have to worry about how a shot looks or only have to worry about what the actors are doing.
As for white balance, while you certainly CAN mix colors, it's a very very tricky technique and I think it only works if you take it quite a bit further than what you did. The thing is that whenever you use something slightly unconventional like mixing color temperatures, you need to convince the audience that that is exactly how you wanted it, and that there's a damn good reason for why you did it. That being said, I don't think there necessarily needs to be a damn good reason, but the audience MUST believe that there is or else they'll just read it as accidental and amateur. Basically, if you want to do something like that, take it a lot further; if you don't want a white balanced image, then go all the way with it. If you want your light to be orange and blue, then those should be the only colors I see in the scene. The social network is a good example of how to do this correctly, and Hobo With A Shotgun is an even more extreme one.
Now, if you wanted your image to be perfectly white balanced, your options would have been to either A. replace the bulb in the practical with a daylight balanced bulb B. blackout the window and have it set at night (given your story, I would have recommended this option). C. Blackout the window and use a tungsten light off screen to fake the daylight.
One more piece of advice: While everyone is different, I wouldn't recommend shooting and directing any more. Personally, if I try to direct and run the camera at the same time I instantly become the most useless person on set (music videos are the exception). I still have projects I direct and projects I shoot (I mostly focus on cinematography) but very freeing to only have to worry about how a shot looks or only have to worry about what the actors are doing.