French DP Reel

Arnaud M. St Martin de Veyran · December 16, 2005

Hi everybody !

I am a French DP based in Paris.

I've just edited my reel which mix together what i consider as my best work seen i started shooting three years ago.

The quality of the video isn't really great and it's small : 320x240.

You will need quicktime player 7.0 and the size of the reel is about 25MO, just to let you know.

I would appreciate to get any kind of feeback and critiques about my work to judge my skills, my style...my level and to figure out if now i can send my reel to some Music Video Production Companies cause for the moment i'm only shooting short drama films/low budget.

By the way, everything you will see was shot on S16mm with no color correction in post.

One movie was shot on PS+Technik with Zeiss Super Speed and Canon XL2.

So go on : http://arnocine.free.fr

Thanks in advance :)

Feel free to contact me directly to get more infos

Arnaud M. St Martin de Veyran · December 29, 2005

Hi Guys !

Since i posted my demo reel i saw that more than 60people check it out! Thanks to all of you but please give me some feedback, some critiques ....Please ! I want to know what people with an eye about lighting think.

Thanks again

Tim Tyler · December 29, 2005

I gave up after waiting 3 or 4 mintues and only 5 seconds of the video had come down. I have a very fast connection too.

What little I saw was nice though.

Chris Burke · December 29, 2005

I gave up after waiting 3 or 4 mintues and only 5 seconds of the video had come down. I have a very fast connection too.

What little I saw was nice though.

J'ai aussi un raccordement rapide d'Internet et cela a pris un moment très bon de charger. Vous pouvez vouloir coder la vidéo encore ainsi qu'elle charge plus vite. Ce que j'ai vu était merveilleux. J'ai vu une utilisation fantastique du mouvement d'appareil-photo. J'attends avec intérêt de voir des choses plus grandes à l'avenir.

bonne chance

Jason Debus · December 29, 2005

A very nice reel, once it loads! Good variety of looks, frame rates, compositions, camera movement. A few critiques, please don't take too seriously because they are minor:

- Figure out a better way to encode the video because the artifacts are pretty bad

- The shots of blood on actors faces looked really fake, maybe edit that part except for the grittier violent stuff

- Some of the shots looked like unsqueezed anamorphic which I don't like so much. This was probably intentional as a stylistic device, but it's just not a look I cater to. However, some people may like this look.

Good luck!

Tomas Koolhaas · December 30, 2005

Hi,

you wanted feedback mainly on the lighting so I will start there; I thought in general the lighting was very good, each project had it's own distinct mood/atmosphere in terms of lighting (which is what people generally look for in a Reel), the shot of the elevator moving in the B&W project was extremely good lighting. The B&W project had very good lighting throughout, very distinct film noire style which is good to show you can do well on your reel!!

I thought that the only two shots that weren't as nicely lit as the rest were the shot of the guy with blood on his face (the blood does look pretty fake aswell), and the shot of the guy going through the office drawers at night (a bit too classic blue moonlight for my liking, not as strong as the rest of the lighting). I really liked the lighting in the very first scene, very simple and natural, the almost sillueted look with the light flaring the lense out a bit looks very nice. As I said the lighting is generally very good in your reel, but perhaps the strongest element of it is the camera movement!!! lots of it! and very well composed and excecuted too!!

Congratulations on a strong reel.

I would say that the long loading would deter most Producers who are not known for their patience!!!

Cheers..

Arnaud M. St Martin de Veyran · December 30, 2005

Thanks to all of you for your feedback.

I see that you all loved the camera movement. I hope you also appreciated as much the lighting ;)

You all told me that my downloading is too long and i don't know how to make it shorter :unsure:

If anyone of you can advice me how to create a good quicktime file 320x240, let me know.

Thanks again.

Mike Lary · December 30, 2005

You all told me that my downloading is too long and i don't know how to make it shorter :unsure:
If anyone of you can advice me how to create a good quicktime file 320x240, let me know.

Have you tried exporting with Sorenson 3 and quickstart for internet? Whatever compression you're using is bad. The bands of undulating artifacts are distracting. The photography looked good overall (from what I could see), but if I was hiring someone based on the quality of their work I would have closed the browser window once I saw those artifacts dancing around, and looked elsewhere. I would figure the person must not be concerned with image quality if they would put a degraded version of their work on a web site. I know that might sound like beating a dead horse, but I think an online identity needs to be at the same level as your physical portfolio. As far as load time is concerned, it took 15 minutes for me on high speed DSL, which is way too long. Personally, I would break up the piece into sections if I couldn't make it manageable as one file. If someone likes the first one, they'll probably watch the others, whereas they might get discouraged by the load time on one huge file and just leave.