DOC: The Neon Bonfire (5 minute short)

thomstitt

thomstitt

Member
It's been a long time since I've finished a film, and since I got my T2i a couple months ago I've been going bananas with it out in the city of Vancouver. Just passionately filling my time with the pursuit of great images and the towering job of editing it all into something. I have so much stuff it's become quite difficult to compartmentalize and focus, but so far I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish. My hope is that I'm able to put out another 2-to-5-minute doc every couple of weeks up to the standard of this one. The really hard part is editing and "writing" the movie in post - finding the themes, the motifs, the broader stories, the moods that exist in all this footage.

Eventually, once I have a good handful of these done, I'm hoping that it all adds up to a beautiful and varied portrait of Vancouver and city life in general.

Hope you guys enjoy!

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The Neon Bonfire (vimeo)


I'll also include my first short I made with the T2i, Snow Night. This is a tiny tiny little movie at under 3 minutes, and it's about snow and loneliness. I should have just called this one Snowneliness.

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Snow Night on vimeo

 
The "suddenly pull up" of the sound.. I think I know what you ment to do, but I think it's done in a wrong way. Making something sound like "far" or "behind a wall" or "like you're underground" is not always "pull down the level"


Some foley could have helped: like the broom right, and the sound of the bird left, maybe a little pull up and low cut. (pan also)

what's the purpose of the splitscreen ?

Another thing to remember: watch out for VO's.... People can only pay attention for 1 minute, after that...the attention is gone.
 
dre83 said:
The "suddenly pull up" of the sound.. I think I know what you ment to do, but I think it's done in a wrong way. Making something sound like "far" or "behind a wall" or "like you're underground" is not always "pull down the level"


Some foley could have helped: like the broom right, and the sound of the bird left, maybe a little pull up and low cut. (pan also)

what's the purpose of the splitscreen ?

Another thing to remember: watch out for VO's.... People can only pay attention for 1 minute, after that...the attention is gone.
Click to expand...

For the sound "pull-up", I'm assuming you're referring to the balloon shot where I replace the ambience with music? Or just the first shot title screen?

Split-screen's hard to pull off, and there are places here where I think it works really well and places where it doesn't work quite so much. It's a balancing act that's very tricky to get right. When it works, I think it's great - the early trio of the bird plus sweeping man plus windy patio is I think not one of the more successful ones, but the horizontal split of the dude painting glue on the flyers and the couple walking down the street I just love. WHY do split screen? It's not a story of a person, it's a story of a place, a whole city really, and all of the people out and about in it. It's a mosaic, filled with fragments - and also an experiment which I'm still figuring out as I go. I'll probably do less of it in future docs, but I love it when it works well.

The VO is an important part of it to me - Like splitscreen, I know how much of a trap VO can be, and so I take the honesty of it very seriously. I don't want to hold people's hands or lead them through every tiny thought, I just want to introduce ideas and put some personal human perspective into the "story" being told. Hopefully I don't have any where I'm VO-ing at the audience for more than a minute straight. it's more like, the VO sets you up for the series of images. Helps define the mood - guides which parts of the imagery to focus on that tie the story together.

Thanks for the feedback. Sound design, I love it but it's not my strong suit in post. Always kind of a headache for me.
 
Well the first shot, from black to "first shot".

The split-screen I asked because sometimes people use this...Well...just to use it... They've find a new plugin or something in there editing program and think "well...it will be ok...not ?".
So if it's with a purpose and not just to make something "cool"...it's good.

With splitscreens you have more "frames" that people have to watch. Let's say that in a splitscreen of 3 if you put an elephant in the right one, it's possible people don't see the elephant because they're kinde a
attracted to something in the other splitscreen. It depends on the frame before. If there's something happening in the right corner of the frame (shot) before...it's the first place people will look to in the following shot.
A lesson I did on school (I did sound, but we also had some camera, editing, lightning courses) was: look at a picture and tell what you see first.
 
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Watching this, it seemed like you abused the split screen a bit. dre83 makes a point in his posts. At times, I found them a bit confusing. Simple cuts would have worked in certain situations as opposed to split screen. I felt that have to focus on 3 split screens multiple times took me out of the story. The footage was good and some sound editing could have been done.
 
Re: Snowliness. I liked the idea, and I didn't think there was anything wrong with the split screen. My objection is the VO. Film as a medium puts huge demands on the viewer, much more, than f.ex. music. So, try not to overwhelm the audience with a ton of information they need to absorb. When you put all of these elements together, that's too much bandwidth for the viewer - they can't take it all in, so pick and choose. Be as lean as possible. Overwhelming with attention demand is a classic mistake, because the filmmaker is familiar with the material, and so misjudges how it impacts the viewer - meanwhile to the viewer it's all disorienting... he's still trying to figure out the setting, meanwhile volleys of words fly at him - he can't possibly take all that in. That's why you need to feed the elements carefully. The VO to me seemed overwritten. Every filmmaker feels they have a ton of info to convey, and so they stuff every second full to the gills - that's completely counterproductive. Cut down. Say it in fewer words. Pace things. Otherwise the viewer tunes out pretty fast. Make it simple - so simple that it seems to you almost insulting. And you get more depth with fewer words. Fewer words have more impact. Say only the most essential. I'd slow down the VO in both how much info it's conveying, and in the pacing - insert some pauses. Make every word count. Quality over quantity. Again though, I liked the idea, how you shot and the images chosen. Just lean it out a bit - OK, a lot, especially the VO.
 
OldCorpse said:
Re: Snowliness. I liked the idea, and I didn't think there was anything wrong with the split screen. My objection is the VO. Film as a medium puts huge demands on the viewer, much more, than f.ex. music. So, try not to overwhelm the audience with a ton of information they need to absorb. When you put all of these elements together, that's too much bandwidth for the viewer - they can't take it all in, so pick and choose. Be as lean as possible. Overwhelming with attention demand is a classic mistake, because the filmmaker is familiar with the material, and so misjudges how it impacts the viewer - meanwhile to the viewer it's all disorienting... he's still trying to figure out the setting, meanwhile volleys of words fly at him - he can't possibly take all that in. That's why you need to feed the elements carefully. The VO to me seemed overwritten. Every filmmaker feels they have a ton of info to convey, and so they stuff every second full to the gills - that's completely counterproductive. Cut down. Say it in fewer words. Pace things. Otherwise the viewer tunes out pretty fast. Make it simple - so simple that it seems to you almost insulting. And you get more depth with fewer words. Fewer words have more impact. Say only the most essential. I'd slow down the VO in both how much info it's conveying, and in the pacing - insert some pauses. Make every word count. Quality over quantity. Again though, I liked the idea, how you shot and the images chosen. Just lean it out a bit - OK, a lot, especially the VO.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks so much for the input. It's good to hear actually, because there's a certain part of me that looks around, sees what the **** they put on TV and in videogames, and I wonder how the hell people are going to be able to pay attention to a single shot that lingers for more than a few seconds. It's good to know that there's still some sensitivity out there when it comes to media stimulation. Although here's my own note on the same topic... I don't want to take out too much VO, and the reason is that I don't want to make music videos. The commentary is important, and I think what I need to do is be extra careful with what images are going with what lines. There are a few disparate elements that can be confusing, so that demands close attention.

What I REALLY want to start doing more of is sound design. Less music, more interesting sound design and ambient tones to help define the mood. I don't have a mic yet for my camera and most of the audio I pick up is just a flat din. I won't use canned stuff, it's gotta be the real deal, but I'm thinking I'll need to buy a half decent mic before I dig much into that end of things.

As for split screen, I actually love vertical composition, and I do quite a bit of it with my T2i, turning it sideways and grabbing 9x16 shots. The only way to really layer these in is to use them in 3s - sometimes I think this works, sometimes it doesn't (the shot of the woman's face in the crowd, and then on the left the other woman in the tiny dress - when I finally saw this on a bigger screen it hurt my eyes to split focus between two compelling images). Lately I've been doing more doubles than triples, but mostly just avoiding split screen more often than not - I still love it when it works and I think it's really useful for these kinds of stories that are about people everywhere rather than one little thing.

Anyway, overstimulation is definitely going to be a concern I'll keep in mind going forward.
 
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