Mike Williamson Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Hey everybody, I've just finished getting my website up and running and my reel is finally online. I'd appreciate any feedback on the reel, I'm curious to hear what works and what doesn't. Comments on the website are also appreciated, thanks for the help! www.mikewilliamson.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted October 2, 2007 Author Share Posted October 2, 2007 Any comments would be appreciated, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick aiton Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 Hey Mike, Some nice work on your reel, but I felt it just took that bit too long to load. You know when your downloading something and you wait and wait and then you just get bored and cancel it, your reel nearly comes into that catagory! So you might want to change the way you stream it.... but I really liked your montage and the only comment I would make is that I would like to see a bit more variety, because from your cv I see that you have shot commercials, music vids and docos so why not show us some of that??? Just a thought...... Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted October 3, 2007 Author Share Posted October 3, 2007 Thanks for the comments, Nick. I've been told by a handful of people that the reel takes a while to load, but I'm not sure that I want to go smaller/more compressed with it. It's tough because having high quality images is the entire point of the site, but it doesn't matter much if nobody watches it. As far as the content, it's primarily a narrative reel though I do have a few commercial images snuck in there. Both the B&W footage at the beginning and the woman in the red dress are from spec spots that I did, I'm hoping that they still work in the context of the narrative pieces. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby L Edwards Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 Mike' I really liked you reel. Nice work. The Black and White stuff at the begining was very nice. Toby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted October 3, 2007 Author Share Posted October 3, 2007 Thanks Toby, do you remember how long it took for the reel to load? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby L Edwards Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 Thanks Toby, do you remember how long it took for the reel to load? It took about 5min and I have a high speed connection. I closed and re opened it a few times until it loaded into memory. Worth the wait though. Toby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyler taylor Posted November 8, 2007 Share Posted November 8, 2007 (edited) hey mike, i'm no expert by any means, but i enjoyed these shots. (not to mention the girl in the red dress made my jaw hit the floor!) keep up the good work edit - it only took about a minute, maybe two minutes to load on my computer. Edited November 8, 2007 by tyler taylor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Smith Posted November 8, 2007 Share Posted November 8, 2007 hey mike, i'm no expert by any means, but i enjoyed these shots. (not to mention the girl in the red dress made my jaw hit the floor!) keep up the good work edit - it only took about a minute, maybe two minutes to load on my computer. Hey Mike Great reel. I really liked the black and white. BTW it started right off the bat for me no loading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Brad Grimmett Posted November 9, 2007 Premium Member Share Posted November 9, 2007 Nice stuff Mike. It loaded pretty much instantly for me. I do have a fast connection, but I can't see it taking 5 minutes to load....maybe on dialup? Love the music. The cuts are sometimes a bit quick, which kind of defeats the point of the reel, but otherwise I thought it looked very nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alessandro sambini Posted November 14, 2007 Share Posted November 14, 2007 Hi Mike, I am not an expert, nor a cinematographer (not yet), but to me, it looks wonderful. I just wonder how much time it took to you to have a so nice/big reel. Bye ALEX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Bill Totolo Posted November 14, 2007 Premium Member Share Posted November 14, 2007 I liked it, there's a lotta strong work there. It feels like you know how to tell a story with the camera. I'd just tighten it a bit by making it shorter. I liked your choice of music, btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Auner aac Posted November 14, 2007 Premium Member Share Posted November 14, 2007 Hi Mike, love your work. Really nice stuff, it opened quick for me. One thing though: make the font you used on your website match the one used in the reel and pdf. Just use pictures for the links instead of text. But that's a typographical tidbit... :D Cheers, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted November 14, 2007 Author Share Posted November 14, 2007 Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear that it's loading quickly for some people, also good to hear that people like it. To answer Alessandro's question, I've been shooting for almost five years now, not counting the projects that I did in undergrad. The reel is mostly made up of material from the last two years, the last section of it is from a 35mm feature that I shot about three years ago. In terms of time, for me it was about getting to a point where my work was better, rather than about having shot a certain number of projects. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make the cut for one reason or another, lack of basic production design being a major one of those. Nobody wants to see an empty white-walled apartment, no matter how nicely you light it. David, the fonts should match, maybe your browser doesn't support the font I chose for the page? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Auner aac Posted November 15, 2007 Premium Member Share Posted November 15, 2007 David, the fonts should match, maybe your browser doesn't support the font I chose for the page? Yes, but the trouble is that I'd need to have that exact same font installed on my machine. And par any standard fonts like Arial you can be quite sure that many people won't have the font of your choice installed. So it's better to use graphics instead of text when using special fonts... HTH Cheers, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted November 16, 2007 Author Share Posted November 16, 2007 Gotcha David, misunderstood what you were saying. I've got to revamp some stuff in the near future, so I'll try to make that change when I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Pawela Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Hey I really liked your work. What formats was it? I really like the night exteriors at the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Williamson Posted November 21, 2007 Author Share Posted November 21, 2007 Hey Dave, there's a handful of different formats on my reel, as follows if you can figure out where the transitions from one project to the next are: 1) 35mm Plus-X, 2) Panavised F900, 3) F-900R with Digiprimes, 4) HVX-200, 5) 35mm 5201, 6) Super 16 mostly 8673, and 7) 35mm 8573. The night exteriors at the end were from the 35mm feature I shot a few years ago, Fuji stocks with Superspeeds. The stuff at the warehouse was lit with 5K through a 4'x4' of diffusion on the building and a 10K raking the parking lot in front of it. The scenes in the car were shot mostly from car mounts with available light at night, T1.3 on 8573. For the two shot through the driver's side window, I bounced a flashlight into a piece of white paper below the dashboard (a little too hot maybe), but the stuff from the backseat was all available light. Glad you liked it, I thought it turned out to be some of the strongest stuff in the film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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