Villain of the Month

I dig the concept of this a lot. Just another day at the office.... Nice.
Those camping LED's are killer, BTW. Are they expensive?
 
Anthony Todaro said:
I dig the concept of this a lot. Just another day at the office.... Nice.
Those camping LED's are killer, BTW. Are they expensive?
Click to expand...

$7 each. I have 5 I think and they run on 4xAA cells. They're obviously not "proper" LED lighting, but they sure look good to me for certain situations - especially for getting a little but more light in a tight space. They're so cheap they're almost disposable.
 
Jason Ramsey said:
it's been a long time since i've used vegas personally...

but, what settings are you currently trying to use?

what codec, resolution, and bitrate? also, check your audio format as well... it can gobble up a lot of your file size unnecessarily
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Thanks Jason. I managed to get the finished product down to 96mb. I need more experience with the rendering settings obviously.
 
Spoiler:
SPOILER REVIEW:

Good job, Lynch! I think you played this out very well, especially for a first timer! I like some of the small things in the office. The shark, the mustache shadowbox, etc.

Now, a couple things I noticed: Shots seemed a little hot. The audio doesn't sync correctly on a few shots as well. The audio was good, it was just off. Most people make the opposite mistake. Crappy audio that matches (because it's awful onboard audio). I also feel the "moving out" took a little longer than needed without really adding anything. Though don't cut the park with the shark. That was great. I also really liked all of the evil plans he was shredding.

Take all this with a grain of salt.
 
This was a clever riff on the villain concept and you you came up with a neat premise. I like the shark laser, that's clever. And the mustache case was a great prop!
So I like your entry but want to mention a few things to think about:

i like your locations, the villain sitting at his desk has a neat little blue light and it looked good, but color correction-wise i think you should boost the contrast or crush the blacks or give the overall look of the cinematography some flare.

as i watched this, i just couldn't stop thinking about dr. evil and how fun and over the top his character is in the austin powers movies.
the tone of your film needs to be a bit more focused, it's sort of sad, and not funny... so i guess it's a black comedy, which is fine. but i wish your lead villain hammed it up a touch, he didn't come across that villainous. That being said, he was still good in the role, i just want you to push your concepts harder in the future.

Also watch your sound, most of it was very low, but then you had some really loud sound effects.

But overall I really liked the ending, when he got to the office, and i think you did an admirable job for your first fest. Good work and good luck!
 
Hawk Teflon said:
Spoiler:
SPOILER REVIEW:

Good job, Lynch! I think you played this out very well, especially for a first timer! I like some of the small things in the office. The shark, the mustache shadowbox, etc.

Now, a couple things I noticed: Shots seemed a little hot. The audio doesn't sync correctly on a few shots as well. The audio was good, it was just off. Most people make the opposite mistake. Crappy audio that matches (because it's awful onboard audio). I also feel the "moving out" took a little longer than needed without really adding anything. Though don't cut the park with the shark. That was great. I also really liked all of the evil plans he was shredding.

Take all this with a grain of salt.
Click to expand...

Thanks Hawk (or is it Mr. Teflon?). The audio was so hit and miss with the furnace in the basement that we just dubbed new audio in editing. We did our best to get it to sync up, but it was definitly off in a few spots. I'm not sure what you mean by "hot" - you mean the audio, or the lighting? I did absolutely no colour correction at all, as I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to that stuff so I thought I'd just leave it as it was. :-)
 
Matt Harris said:
This was a clever riff on the villain concept and you you came up with a neat premise. I like the shark laser, that's clever. And the mustache case was a great prop!
So I like your entry but want to mention a few things to think about:

i like your locations, the villain sitting at his desk has a neat little blue light and it looked good, but color correction-wise i think you should boost the contrast or crush the blacks or give the overall look of the cinematography some flare.

as i watched this, i just couldn't stop thinking about dr. evil and how fun and over the top his character is in the austin powers movies.
the tone of your film needs to be a bit more focused, it's sort of sad, and not funny... so i guess it's a black comedy, which is fine. but i wish your lead villain hammed it up a touch, he didn't come across that villainous. That being said, he was still good in the role, i just want you to push your concepts harder in the future.

Also watch your sound, most of it was very low, but then you had some really loud sound effects.

But overall I really liked the ending, when he got to the office, and i think you did an admirable job for your first fest. Good work and good luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the very kind comments! I was more inspired by Dr. Horrible than Dr. Evil on this one. The sound was definitely an issue, no question about it - quiet...then BAM! I have no idea about colour correction - I use Sony Vegas and I've never managed to make the image look better, only much worse, so I just left everything totally uncorrect, just as it came out of the camera (after being converted using Shedworx VoltaicHD that is). My actor is a good friend from work, and I believe this was his very first acting gig - which may explain why he didn't think I was utterly incompetent and unprofessional during the shoot :-D
 
Sorry, by "hot" I mean overexposed. I know it's too late now, but on your next shoot, try to watch your levels. I don't remember which camera you used, but most have zebras built in to show you what's being blown out (or if you're on a DSLR, just check your meter).
 
Hawk Teflon said:
Sorry, by "hot" I mean overexposed. I know it's too late now, but on your next shoot, try to watch your levels. I don't remember which camera you used, but most have zebras built in to show you what's being blown out (or if you're on a DSLR, just check your meter).
Click to expand...

Thanks - I was on the GH1. The front shot at the desk was the one that I already found overexposed and for that shot I believe I was using the Panasonic 20mm lens. I tried to correct in editing but it looked better before I attempted to mess with it. I will definitely take far more care with the lighting and exposure next time. This has been a huge learning curve for me - never shot a movie before, and I really appreciate the advice.
 
Hey there Lynchenstein well done for producing your short film! For me this film had a novel premise (which i liked - its cute and funny.) However armed with this singular idea, the film for me, failed to rise to the potential of that premise.

Spoilers...
I can only describe it as somewhat agonising - the painfully slow pace of events where by we had to hear the court proceedings declaring on and on for what our hero was found guitly of (while he slowly ooooh so slowly packed away his office belongings.) It was like me with a Scottish strawberry tart (its delicious but it takes a while to eat because on top of the delicious pastry casing is a yummy thick cream with a strawberry draped in thick strawberry syrup yumminess.) But a bald guy packing his folders to a weird slow mo voice over is no strawberry tart. I actually felt like it was personal watching this - like you were trying to teach me a kind of Terence Malick lesson of life!

Then WHOOSH we're in an office for like 10 seconds and the films over. Where were the jokes? See, this kind of film would have benefited from jokes and a much snappier edit. (Now i say this but there were some amusing props, the moustaches and the little shark toy and so forth were cute!) But as background elements these are only comic ambient.

I'd love you to tell me what your focus was with the film - was it simply on just trying to get it made? or is it part of a bigger project etc? Why did you not inject the film with more comic moments? Why did you rely on such a substantial part of the film being covered in expositional voice over?
 
Good job for a first entry. I'd have to agree with most of what was already stated...the color...sound sync, etc. But from a 30,000 foot view, this was a great effort.
Keep making films...I'm looking forward to your next!
 
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