SHORT: Would love tips and feedback.

M

moonunit

Member
Here is the first project I edited with FCP 7 and my first attempt at shooting DOF with my HMC150. I know this is far from perfect. I completely stumbled my way through this. Any feedback on shooting, editing, whatever you see would be great!

Using FCP was a challenge but I got through it! I had a few problems...
1 - I wanted to use slo-mo on a couple of shots but when I rendered the film, the slow motion footage was shaky.
2 - My text is the wrong color. It's supposed to be black. I tried to fix it about 5 times and it shows black in project but not on the final video.
3- I used a transition in the beginning but it came out weird.

Thanks in advance!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z65oWn9J2lw
 
The best way to know how things work is to use it. The world will not explode because of this :-p. And Americans always will be funny people :-p

Some suggestions: Listen carrefully to what you have recorded. At the very beginning I can hear a small sound which can easely be cut away. Or if you make a small fade in that can do a lot too.
just before "life is a ....."

You know that on her shirt there's written: "mississippi state track & field"... because you know it. But realise that people needs time to catch things.

The shots are very good framed, the sound is also good.

Around 00:11 there's something weird... a strange fade in/out dissolve....

The out of focus was on purpose... Or you thought "naaah, I'm not going to try keep the focus on her" ?

Try to have more different sots of her running, before you go back to her talking....otherwise it's "pumping"

Around 00:49, the kid passing, on that part I would show another shot.... the kid is taking to much attention for me.

It's good you show her with the bag when she talks about it.
 
Great suggestions. Thank you. The out of focus shots were kind-of intentional, kind-of not. I was trying to shoot DOF. Someone on the forum told me how to do it and I just set the camera up that way and let it shoot. I haven't learned how to keep it in focus and keep DOF - lol. I was kind-of hoping they would seem on purpose and be acceptable but someone else noticed that too, so guess not! Lol. You're exactly right, that transition at :11 looks different in my project. It didn't translate in the render for some reason. What does "pumping" mean?

Thanks so much!!!
 
Besides the things mentioned above by dre83. I felt that it was pretty solid and all in all rather enjoyable.
 
moonunit said:
Great suggestions. Thank you. The out of focus shots were kind-of intentional, kind-of not. I was trying to shoot DOF. Someone on the forum told me how to do it and I just set the camera up that way and let it shoot. I haven't learned how to keep it in focus and keep DOF - lol. I was kind-of hoping they would seem on purpose and be acceptable but someone else noticed that too, so guess not! Lol. You're exactly right, that transition at :11 looks different in my project. It didn't translate in the render for some reason. What does "pumping" mean?

Thanks so much!!!
Click to expand...

pumping, a pump goes up and down or back and forth

So in this case it would be from talking head shot to other shot to talking head shot to other shot to talking head shot

talking head <-----> other shot, back and forth
 
dre83 said:
pumping, a pump goes up and down or back and forth

So in this case it would be from talking head shot to other shot to talking head shot to other shot to talking head shot

talking head <-----> other shot, back and forth
Click to expand...

Oh wow, thank you so much! That's great information. I will be doing more of these for work and want to make them better. That's very helpful. Thank you!!!
 
Zxander34 said:
Besides the things mentioned above by dre83. I felt that it was pretty solid and all in all rather enjoyable.
Click to expand...

I know I'm not supposed to reply to every post but I just want to say thanks for taking the time to watch. Thank you for the feedback!
 
Very well done! You followed the rules of always exposing for the subject... however sometimes the backlight can be a bear! A simple reflector (white board or similar), would probably
have given you a couple of more F-stops to bringdown the background levels while maintaining adequate light on your subject. Ever wonder why on film and movie sets you see generous
amounts of lighting gear in broad daylight? Your video is a good example of why. But having said all that... your project is excellent and you probably learned more from doing this, as another
poster eluded to, than anything this fantastic forum could tell you. Keep up the good work!
 
I agree it's very good. I do offer this observation: when you have a subject THAT blonde, you need to avoid light backgrounds. There are shots where her head fades into the sky and into a white pole that's behind her. The concept generalizes out to all hair types -- in a talking head shot you just have to make sure that there's always contrast between the subject and the background. I'm actually repeating what William said, but he mentioned how to fix it with exposure, I'm talking about fixing it with composition. Different roads to the same destination. ;-)
 
Your audio mix was real nice. Same with the framing/composition. Colors seem a little blown out though, especially the BG, as William has stated.

Overall a decent job, in my book.
 
Wow. Thank you all so much for the suggestions. This is so helpful. I really appreciate the feedback! I'm doing another one of these in a week or so and this is going to help so much. Thank you!!!
 
I had to look at my reference sports example, "Olympia"(1938), since I don't usually pay attention to sports things... but I think what is missing for me is the runner... running...

As for using DoF to direct the viewer to the foreground subject... especially for blonde fair skinned women... find a darker background, and Neutral density filters to lower light level, as some of the shots, out on the field were to me a bit to high.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I had to look at my reference sports example, "Olympia"(1938), since I don't usually pay attention to sports things... but I think what is missing for me is the runner... running...

As for using DoF to direct the viewer to the foreground subject... especially for blonde fair skinned women... find a darker background, and Neutral density filters to lower light level, as some of the shots, out on the field were to me a bit to high.
Click to expand...

Lol! Good point! I guess I should have tried to get more of her running. I'll keep that in mind for the next time. I'll be doing more runners. I did use the neutral density as high as it would go. I was wondering if I should have changed the gain, maybe? Would that have helped? Thanks for the input!
 
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