New Short Film

PaPa

PaPa

Major Contributor
hey guys, i started a thread a while back called bumblebee tuna and the chamber of boys.

PREVIOUS THREAD:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=105542

shot it throughout a week at camp, probably had about 6 hours of shooting in total and over a hundred hours in the editing station, finding sounds and so on.

basically, i had the kids sit downstairs, explained and showed them the film i created last year with the same camp but a different park and they all showed interest in creating their own.

so we shot it over a week, a couple hours here and there each day. Some of the kids would come in different clothing ( even though i asked both their parents and them to have them come as they were previously ) some kids would go missing for a day... all to say that one can make a game out of the continuity errors, who can count the most? lol ( please dont, ill cry )

along with the movie we made, i also shot most of our outings this summer. The camp vists a theme park, or event, or area on every wednesday. I bring along my trusty xh a1 and the glidecam 4000 pro ( arm brace ) and i compile the outing into a 4 or 5 minute piece edited to some music of choice.

The last day of camp, Friday the 17th, all of the staff and most of the families gathered at the local town civic center ( large arena with hockey rinks, food courts, theatres and so on ). we reserved the theatre hall and screened 33 minutes of our summer on the big screen! It was a blast. The night was entitled the Red Carpet Event, and everyone dressed to impress. By the end of the night, the kids were so jacked that they were in a "big movie" that every family wanted to have their hands on a copy of the dvd that i sold for 7$ a pop, went home that night with $250 :)


please dont be too harsh.. these are camp kids afterall, and im still a beginner ( plus we had really no equipment to work with ) conditions neither..

cheers! Hope you enjoy!

RIGHT CLICK AND SAVE AS PLEASE> 90 megs. 12 mins
http://www.tassweb.com/papa/bumblebeemovieLQ.wmv


here is a fun little dvd cover i made.

summercoversmallvx7.jpg
 
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One of the best short films i've seen on here yet.This kept me interested all way through and i completely forgot this wasn't shot on film.Excelent cinematogrphy.

1who did your scoring?

2.did you use magic bullet?
 
lol thanks man, i definitely apprecaite that comment concidering what we had to work with.

the two theme songs came from freeplaymusic.com and the rest of the effects / sounds, such as the rumbling, or the wind, all came from a mix mash of sound effects i found from my sound effects library. Just played around with em till i found something i liked!

magic bullet was only used for diffusion for the exterior scenes. :)

+Edited+

just remembered, i used the MB to create that old film look when bumblebee looks into the picture of his friends.
 
yeah, i had the glidecam 4000 pro on a smooth shooter. which kinda blew cause two of the four days we shot were extremely windy..... and when your rushing ot get shots done, smoothness isnt always a factor that is controllable due to time.
 
Download

Download

I have tried to download the WMV file, but it tries to find a web page and times out. Right clicking only give me an html page reference. ANy chance of re-posting the link again? I'd love to see your short!

GK
 
Good for what you were working with, I think. As far as simple things that are completely in your hands, I'd say watch your framing, especially when you have a lot of people on camera. The girls were a lot of different heights, which can be tough but you were chopping off heads a lot when it didn't look good. Like, when they were in line. Careful arrangements based on height and such can help.

Then, when they were doing the fight sequence, the power shot, or whatever it was. You followed across the line as they did whatever they were doing to, I guess, transfer the energy from one to the other, but you didn't see what their arms were doing. Instructing them to raise their arms to their chest when they do it, or pulling back the camera, or shooting from a lower angle, would have helped.

It would especially be more beneficial when the first girl and then the guy do the power shot, where they put their arms out in front of them like Dragonball Z or something. Their hands are out of the frame as they thrust them forward, and they really need to be there in the shot. Maybe you weren't shooting the the 2.35:1 guide or made a creative decision after shooting that you would use that aspect ratio.

That's all I have now! Good work.
 
thanks for the comments, and im with you 100% on this. i would have loved to have had time to actually practice the shots before doing it, but when your working with 8 year olds, attention spans are gone andyyou just need to get the shot done. originally, i had it storyboarded and what not, and i hada great vision, but after the first day of shooting, i quickly realised that all the ambition i had for this project would have to be put on the side for realism, due to the complete lack of time to get things complete. It was literally, K THAT SHOTS DONE, everyone quiet, move here girls, move here boys, do this, k and action! lol, so every shot was done once or twice maximum. and when deciding to chose which shot to do, i had to avoid all the ones they were laughing, or staring right into the camera, or forgot what to do or say, or just would stand there and do nothing. so yeah.... sometimes the framing was sacrificed for just having the shot done.

your point about height is something i only noticed later on in the shoot which i should have paid more attention to. Prior thinking would have allowed me to set that up without the actual kids being there so it wouldnt have taken up time to do, but it just wasnt on the mind at the time, there were too many other things going on in there hehe. and yes, i framed with 2.35:1 aspect display on. Just wanted to go for tighter shots and i wanted to stay away from shooting completely wide.

The fun part is, as i said, some days kids were there, some days they weren't. on the first day of shooting we got 5 shots done, then on tuesday, 7, wednesday we didnt shoot, thursday we 12 and friday all the rest, which was like 21. thats how big of a rush we were in lol.

I should have learned from last year when i did the same thing with a different park, but no... ambition took hold and i wanted ot make something that was 10x better than the previous year.


The thing about working with kids ( non actors ) is you think you have an idea of what its like, but until you do it, it is nothing more than an idea. Last year i worked with 50+ kids on one movie ( ages 5-10 ), this year i decided to just work with the older group (8-11) containing 15-20 kids. Two of the kids have extreme ADD, and one of them is autistic. heh.

cheers!
oh well, give me time, money, and real actors :)
 
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