My Short Film

Pavan Deep · September 19, 2008

I thought I'd share, www.vimeo.com/1766416

I shot this film about a year ago, I wasn't happy with the original telecine so I have had it telecined again.

Pav

Alessandro Machi · September 20, 2008

Here is the full link...

http://www.vimeo.com/1766416

Just a couple of things, I can hear the footsteps cadence quickly repeat a couple of times throughout the movie, and the actors talked over each other at one point early on which looked like a mistake to me, however, after that point, the scene developed nicely.

Excellent use of a moving, one camera angle with no cuts for the entire sequence, and you recorded live audio I presume???

That's an excellent example of how to shoot a low budget Super-8 movie, all the traffic sounds are imbedded into the take and because there are no cuts you don't get ambient sound shifts. (other than the cadence of the footsteps going out every now and then).

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If you wanted to give the scene slightly more of an edge, if something could happen at the end of the scene that implies they will meet again...

so when she walks away he could have held up a check book, as if to imply he stole it from here while they were walking and therefore they will probably meet again.

But since I don't know if there is more to the story that is just a suggestion based on incomplete info.

Pavan Deep · September 21, 2008

Hi

Thanks for your comments, there are a few times when the footsteps don't sound right, and the actors did make a mistake at several points forgetting their lines and ad-libbied. But this was just a test, a trial to shoot dialogue with Super 8 , there isn't another ending.

Pav

Alessandro Machi · September 22, 2008

There is a very important lesson to be learned from this project. If one trys to shoot long camera takes on location, beware of sounds that repeat at a very quick cadence, such as the sound of footsteps of someone walking, or two people walking.

If the sound is not recorded with a crystal sync camera, when one goes to shift the audio to keep the dialogue in sync, the footstep sounds will have a jumpiness to them. I synced a feature once that had been shot on 16mm non crystal. It was pretty easy to sync.

I now realize what made it easy was there was no repetitive or fluctuating sounds in the background that would have "jumped" when I pulled the sound to keep in sync with the picture.

Lisala Dolo · September 22, 2008

There is a very important lesson to be learned from this project. If one trys to shoot long camera takes on location, beware of sounds that repeat at a very quick cadence, such as the sound of footsteps of someone walking, or two people walking.

If the sound is not recorded with a crystal sync camera, when one goes to shift the audio to keep the dialogue in sync, the footstep sounds will have a jumpiness to them. I synced a feature once that had been shot on 16mm non crystal. It was pretty easy to sync.

I now realize what made it easy was there was no repetitive or fluctuating sounds in the background that would have "jumped" when I pulled the sound to keep in sync with the picture.

I was impressed with how the dialogue stayed in sync did you have to break it down line by line or just pull up a couple of times when it went out ?

Also the motion looked really good at 18fps which suprised me because ive been drilled from film school to 24fps or 25fps and usually i can notice 18fps.

Ira Ratner · September 22, 2008

I really liked it!!!

Great tension, and I appreciated the fact that although she was paranoid about him, HE was really the paranoid one.

And for better or worse, when the car/bus drove down the street, it scared the hell out of me.

I guess you got lucky because there weren't too many vehicles when you shot.

Pavan Deep · September 22, 2008

Thanks for all your comments I really appreciate it. We were going to shoot at 24fps/25fps but the action was slightly longer than 2 minutes, so we compromised and shot at 18fps. I was impressed at how good the motion was at 18fps. Syncing was done every few seconds, a couple of times not line by line. I do think the camera wobbles too much, maybe it wouldn't be that obvious if we had shot at 24fps. There was lots of traffic I think we did 7 takes.

I have had a mixed response about the story, some didn't like the it. But I think it is interesting, keeps us thinking, very real and even spooky and both the actors are very good, their mistakes make thier performances more real. By the way it was based a real conversation, a chap who wanted to talk but yet there was something wrong.

Pav

Alessandro Machi · September 23, 2008

There is a very important lesson to be learned from this project. If one trys to shoot long camera takes on location, beware of sounds that repeat at a very quick cadence, such as the sound of footsteps of someone walking, or two people walking.

If the sound is not recorded with a crystal sync camera, when one goes to shift the audio to keep the dialogue in sync, the footstep sounds will have a jumpiness to them. I synced a feature once that had been shot on 16mm non crystal. It was pretty easy to sync.

I now realize what made it easy was there was no repetitive or fluctuating sounds in the background that would have "jumped" when I pulled the sound to keep in sync with the picture.

I should add one more thing to this. If you can sync the audio via NLE, how about just trying to find a beginning and end frame for both audio and video and seeing if the NLE can do an automatic sync that way.