Green Screen Project

[Ryan Zarra]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfxlOWrFQQ4

 

any feedback or critiques

[Matt Read]

Your chroma key falls apart really badly at about 1:53 when the boys are pushing the girl around. It looks like it was caused by her shadow falling on your green screen. This could have been avoided if you had blocked your actors further from the screen.

 

You've also got some "floating" people at around 3:03 caused by the camera reframing and the background not tracking that movement. This can be easily solved by using tape to make some white or black crosses on your green screen. You can then use these as reference marks when you make your key and match the background to any camera movement.

 

Another thing I noticed is that all your keyed in backgrounds with walls are created so that the walls are perpendicular to the camera's angle of view. It really limits the depth and perspective of your images. It just looks like your actors are standing 6 feet in front of a wall (the green screen, which they are), rather than creating the illusion that they are in a real environment.

 

You've got a few nice shots. Overall, there's too many white shirts and hats blowing out and not enough highlights on the actors' faces. Other shots have shadows that are too dark and hide a lot of detail that I would like to see. The combination of the hats and top-lighting is a major cause of this. You either need to put your key in at a lower angle or get some fill on the actors' faces. The few color shots at the end are okay, but look kind of like they are just lit with the room's ceiling lamp. The final shot of the mom looks flat in color and underexposed in B&W.

 

The sound is pretty bad throughout. Some of it is due to bad recording and some is due to a bad mix. The opening scene is a good example. At one point the detective kid talks from off camera and it sounds like he wasn't mic'd and his voice was just picked up from the mic of the kid on screen. Through that whole scene the music was noticeably louder than the actors' voices and at points made it difficult to hear what was being said. In the color scene, there is a very noticeable hum. It sounds like it might be room tone being played too loudly. The scenes in between aren't much better.

 

A final note, your opening credit music is "The Ecstasy of Gold" by Ennio Morricone from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with a beat laid under it, however, you don't credit Ennio Morricone anywhere. In fact you give credit for the score to two other people. What you are doing is STEALING. As long as you're not making any money from this video you probably don't need to get rights from the copyright holder (though, if you want to be fully protected and completely legit about it, you should). However, you MUST credit Ennio Morricone or the creator of any piece of original work if you use their work in a video. To do otherwise is completely disrespectful.

[Ryan Zarra]

Your chroma key falls apart really badly at about 1:53 when the boys are pushing the girl around. It looks like it was caused by her shadow falling on your green screen. This could have been avoided if you had blocked your actors further from the screen.

 

You've also got some "floating" people at around 3:03 caused by the camera reframing and the background not tracking that movement. This can be easily solved by using tape to make some white or black crosses on your green screen. You can then use these as reference marks when you make your key and match the background to any camera movement.

 

Another thing I noticed is that all your keyed in backgrounds with walls are created so that the walls are perpendicular to the camera's angle of view. It really limits the depth and perspective of your images. It just looks like your actors are standing 6 feet in front of a wall (the green screen, which they are), rather than creating the illusion that they are in a real environment.

 

You've got a few nice shots. Overall, there's too many white shirts and hats blowing out and not enough highlights on the actors' faces. Other shots have shadows that are too dark and hide a lot of detail that I would like to see. The combination of the hats and top-lighting is a major cause of this. You either need to put your key in at a lower angle or get some fill on the actors' faces. The few color shots at the end are okay, but look kind of like they are just lit with the room's ceiling lamp. The final shot of the mom looks flat in color and underexposed in B&W.

 

The sound is pretty bad throughout. Some of it is due to bad recording and some is due to a bad mix. The opening scene is a good example. At one point the detective kid talks from off camera and it sounds like he wasn't mic'd and his voice was just picked up from the mic of the kid on screen. Through that whole scene the music was noticeably louder than the actors' voices and at points made it difficult to hear what was being said. In the color scene, there is a very noticeable hum. It sounds like it might be room tone being played too loudly. The scenes in between aren't much better.

 

A final note, your opening credit music is "The Ecstasy of Gold" by Ennio Morricone from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" with a beat laid under it, however, you don't credit Ennio Morricone anywhere. In fact you give credit for the score to two other people. What you are doing is STEALING. As long as you're not making any money from this video you probably don't need to get rights from the copyright holder (though, if you want to be fully protected and completely legit about it, you should). However, you MUST credit Ennio Morricone or the creator of any piece of original work if you use their work in a video. To do otherwise is completely disrespectful.

 

Hey, thanks for the critique. Yeah, our sound was the overall problem at the end of our screening and we noticed that, it's a very bad mix job as I have no idea about anything in sound, yet still did the post sound mix. I also began noticing alot of rips and leaks as I went through it again. Thanks for the suggestions about lighting the actors, we really should have incorporated light at the bottom. We did this project after 5 months of 'film school' so alot of people on the crew don't have too much experience other than those 5 months, as well as really RUSHED it.

 

About the musical scores, as far as I know it doesn't breach copyright infringement because it is sampled then chopped and other things were added to it. I didn't even realize it's from Ennio Morricone. The tracks came from a friend who produces hip hop beats that has been bought by notable artists like lil wayne and gym class heroes. I don't think it's STEALING per say, it's like the issue with Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer and the current fab in the hip hop scene with sampling music tracks, but that's my opinion. I guess it's up to the entertainment lawyer if I were to pitch this.

 

Anyways thanks for the feedback and suggestions, appreciate it.

[Matt Read]

"Sampling" without obtaining a license is illegal. Somehow the rumor has circulated the country, that if you use less than 30 seconds of a piece of music, you can legally use it without acquiring rights. This is just that, a rumor, a complete fallacy. The only way you can possibly get away with using unlicensed music is to not make a profit from it. However, even this is dubious and one would do well to acquire a license before using copyrighted music for anything. Not that it matters, but the song in your video has not been "chopped" at all. There are no apparent alterations to it at all, with the exception of the beat. In the case of your examples, MC Hammer licensed "Superfreak" before using it, Vanilla Ice was universally criticized as a thief and was sued (though it never went to trial and is generally assumed that he settled out of court) and current hip-hop artists almost certainly obtain licenses before sampling songs.

 

In truth, I could care less if you paid for a license or not, because Mr. Morricone probably doesn't own the copyright to his scores, some record label or movie studio does. The main thing that concerns me is not that you didn't license the music, but that you didn't credit the original artist who created it and instead credited someone else entirely. To me, that is where the real theft occurred. Maybe it's that you truthfully didn't know it was by Ennio Morricone, maybe your friend honestly didn't think it was illegal, maybe your friend knew exactly what he was doing but didn't bother to tell you the song was almost entirely created by someone else. I don't know and don't I care. But now that you know, you need to ensure that proper credit is given. And giving a "featuring Ennio Morricone" credit is not enough, his name needs to be first and you can give your friend a "featuring" credit or "remixed by" credit, because, honestly, your friend did very little in creating how that song sounds as it is in your video.

 

Also, you really should go out and rent "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Segio Leone is a visual genius with an amazing sense of pacing. No filmmaking education would be complete without a viewing of it.