Short film

Good job for a first try... Nice bit of story telling, which is what it's all about!
Now for other stuff: You certainly found out how difficult it is to do a hand-held shot with an adapter on...AND still keep focus. You also found out how important sound is. Why in the world did you have a Boom Operator when there was no dialogue? Actually you should have strip out all the recorded background sound since it was unnecessary and simply pointed up each place you made and edit. That screamed amateur. Better to have recorded a "wild track" of sounds at the park and laid that in un-cut so you'd have a continuous sound track without all the cuts. Keep working on your craft...you show promise!
 
looked pretty cool, simple story, although i feel like it could've been told in 2 mins rather than 6 minutes. i've seen entire stories with 3 act structures told in less time. some of the shots were soft and it was little glum looking (color and tone) for my taste, but overall it's a good start. i agree about the audio. i definitely could tell the audio pops when it went from cut to cut. seems like you should be able to just do an audio dissolve transition in FCP though or strip it all together and put music or stock ambient sounds from a park.

good luck.
 
Hey cheers for the response.

I certainly did haha...My initial plan was to record the film without sound, and add that later. But when my friend and I discussed it, we came to the conclusion of trying to give the film a more naturalistic feel but using the actual sounds, but we did the wrong thing by recording sound everytime we recorded visuals. I definetly should have gone for the "wild track" idea, which I will next time.

The only scene that was supposed to be jumpy with the sounds, was the montage scene where she searches for the boy.

In terms of the focus, couldn't believe how much it kept going out of focus whilst handheld. I didn't have enough time to work on it because of the actors, so that'll be something else I'll take into account.

Visually, it's pretty obvious the ND filter got the best of me. Some shots seemed fine and perfectly lit through the view finder, but when I took it home, the contrast was shocking. An external monitor is needed!

I'm planning a new short to shoot this summer and hopefully not make these same errors.

FrankC said:
Good job for a first try... Nice bit of story telling, which is what it's all about!
Now for other stuff: You certainly found out how difficult it is to do a hand-held shot with an adapter on...AND still keep focus. You also found out how important sound is. Why in the world did you have a Boom Operator when there was no dialogue? Actually you should have strip out all the recorded background sound since it was unnecessary and simply pointed up each place you made and edit. That screamed amateur. Better to have recorded a "wild track" of sounds at the park and laid that in un-cut so you'd have a continuous sound track without all the cuts. Keep working on your craft...you show promise!
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Maybe it was a bit long but I watched the entire thing and enjoyed it very much.
Normally I scroll though amateur (and many "pro"!) videos like this in a matter of seconds because they cause me way too much pain.
The audio problems are easily fixed; I would however add a bit more contrast and bluish color correction...that's just my taste though.
The woman has a beautiful presence on camera.
Give us more!
cheerio ;)
 
Good job man love it, I thought the audio splices when she's looking for the boy added to its feel same with the focusing "problem" I personally think it added to the short's personality, but like others I think it was a bit long for the story but it's not a deal killer imo
 
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