My video work (mostly DVX 100a)

diego1235467

diego1235467

Well-known member
Heres some video project that I did throughout the year for a high school film class.
"Testimony" and "Math and Science Center" were shot on a DVX 100a. The other video was shot on some other camera (not sure what it was). Please let me know what you think of my videos. I'd love to hear some comments/ critiques! :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/970diego
 
So I watched the two pieces shot on the DVX.

The Math and Science Center PSA was fair-to-middlin' (East Tennessee term). The pacing was a little slow... I'd try to make it more exciting. The VO was poorly recorded... lots of plosive pops and a fairly "cheap mic" sound to it. The teacher's interview clip was okay, except that her eyes were looking the opposite direction of your lead space in the frame. Kinda awkward. Her audio also sounded like camera mic, which was distracting. I'd also have mixed the music a little louder in that spot.

As for "Testimony," it seems that your favorite shot is to rack focus. This is the second DVXUser-linked video I've seen this week that overuses that. It gets tiresome after a while. And in the shot of the car door opening, you can see water droplets on the lens when you're out of focus. Keep your glass clean.

The pacing was good, but the complete lack of sound (location, FX, or Foley) besides the music for a lot of the shots was irritating. The color was also a little wacky for me... it had an orange glow to it that looked less like CC and more like bad household lighting and ineffective white balance. The fight FX (punches and hits) were a little over the top. And they sounded very much like FX and not like part of the fight. Bring them down in the mix a little, and add just a little touch of reverb that tries to emulate the sound of the room.

And I don't know if you have a non-fluid tripod head, but your pans and tilts were rough... sticky and jerky. The shot of the car driving up to the camera was interrupted, after the camera felt like it had hit its mark, by one more slight - and noticeable - adjustment. And in the kitchen, where the camera tries to track, it looks very much like you were using a tripod, then picked the whole thing up to walk with it for your tracking.

And I believe I saw the tripod in the background when the cop shows up and the fight ensues. Never leave it out anywhere within the action area... if you aren't using it, tuck it into a closet, a back hall, behind the lighting, or in the truck.
 
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Thanks for the feedback. As this was my very first short film, I'm fairly happy with it. you pretty much criticized everything that I didn't like, so at least I know my ego won't be likely to get in the way on future projects.

All of my audio was recorded an a mic that was included with the camera when I bought it (not the on-camera mic), and from what I've seen it's gotten average-to-bad reviews. Audio pops and general hissing were everywhere in my audio. It was pretty horrible, and I tried to fix it as much as possible, but to less-than-desirable results. My deadline pretty much destroyed any chance of foley and ambience. I had to make up for it with random music from Juicer 3, which wasn't always that great. When I recorded the fight scenes, for some reason my mic was messing up and didn't catch any of the audio, so this ended up being all pre-generated effects (again from Juicer). It almost came out cartoonish.

I do have a fluid tripod head, and it's actually fantastic. The shot with the car was never intended to be in the video, but I had to stick it in there after the good shot got messed up. As for the kitchen, I had to improvise with an office chair.

The tripod in the back was someone else's tripod, which I didn't notice showed up until I had shot the scene and had absolutely no time to reshoot the scene *facepalm*

The rack focus was repetitive, but the setting was just too plain, so I had to figure out some way to make it more interesting. I did go overboard though.

At the time I shot this, I hadn't learned how to do manual CC, and when I asked my teacher for help, he simply showed me a list of crappy filters and told me to choose.

Most of the problems came from the time constraints and lack of equipment. I had to improvise everything, from lighting to the "tracking."

Overall, I'm happy with my work so far. My biggest complaint is audio. My mic sucks something fierce, and it's incredibly hard to get it to work right. My next few projects will likely be music videos, so I won't have to worry about that too much, but I most certainly need better audio equipment. As you can guess, however, it's kind of hard for an 18 year old to get his hands on good equipment, especially when he's going to be paying for college. Hopefully I can find some good deals here and there.

Thanks for the critiques! It's great to get tips from professionals who actually know what they're talking about, and I greatly appreciate it.
 
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