Nicholas Jenkins

Agreed. It all depends on story.

God, there are so many to list... <_< I'm really quite taken with David Newman's work on Serenity. The theme especially is exactly what the film needed (not to mention Jack Green's AWESOME cinematography). I'm also a big fan of some of John Williams' work, especially his early work with Spielberg. It's a little too much now I think, but it was magic at the time.

Ok, thanks for all the tips. My main problem was just keeping the correct aspect ration when reducing size, but I finally got the math all figured out. :) Got it down to 90 megs (which is just fine for me).

Hey all, Ok, trying to reduce the size of my quicktime file to around 200-300 megs. Right now I've got it at 775 using the H.264 compression. I LOVE this compressor for internet viewing but I can't quite figure out how to shrink the physical size of my movie and retain my aspect ratio. Right now my dimensions are 854x480. Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks.

Ok. The good and the bad. The Good: Overall really nice framing and camera movement. Lighting for Black and White is tricky when you've become occustomed to color. The contrast is nice. The film seems interesting. The Bad: The contrast could be cranked just a little in post, some of it gets a little muddy. I'm not sure I have much of an idea as to what the film is actually about from what's presented in that trailer. (This is the graphic designer in my) Wrong font choice and placement at the end. The Tempus Sans Serif doesn't fit the mood or era of the piece. Something you can try is to look at fonts used in noir pieces from the era. Your goal is to place the audience in the world and that font takes us out. The Coen bros. made an interesting choice in their font and style for marketing The Man Who Wasn't There, check out those posters to get a good idea. Overall dude, I'd love to see the final film and think you did really good work. :D

Dude, that's gotta feel good. Can't wait to see it. :D

I don't think this is a bad idea. But I tend to think of 80-90 minutes being the bare minimum for a feature. 20 minutes kind of being the max for a short as allot of festivals get a little irritable at having to watch much longer things.

First, find some sort of monitor that you can view what you're shooting in Black and White so you're not guessing about contrast. Shooting in B&W is different in terms of balance than color. With color, you can sculpt with different colors/temperatures of light. With B&W you're dealing entirely with contrast. I'd advise to shoot for a fairly mid range contrast (so you have grays and have definition to those mid range grays) and then pump the contrast in post. My biggest thing is to get that monitor that can be just black and white.

Correct. The song is about lost love so we have set of her performing on a stage in an empty bar and one set which is her walking through the empty apartment, looking at the life that was. We looked at a few videos that we felt were appropriate and thought it could be similar. Nickelback's Save Me was heavily watched, though the concept for that video was phenomenal... ours is pretty simple.

I agree :)

Wow, I turn around and my thread has esploded :P In the case of the artist I shot for, the key is that she wants something she can put up on her website to showcase her performance and song in a high quality from multiple angles and add more story to it than a simple live video could do. It's self advertisement and fun for her. Plus, this only cost her around $300 so it's a bargain.

I considered it but have so little interest in doing a "Reality Show" that I just decided it ain't worth a million bucks. I'll be much happier teaching and trying to develop my own little indy films. Too many hoops and contracts. Wouldn't want to be away from my wife for four months straight either. I know some film shoots may have to be that way, but in our current financial status, that'd be too much of a strain. Mainly it's the whole "Reality Show" thing. Not for me.

What I ended up doing was setting up the dolly track and then getting 3 or 4 takes of a dolly shot going both ways through the entire song. So far it seems to be working. We'll see once I shoot the other half of the video and get into editing if it worked.

I get "Document Contains no Data" :(

Nice, I think it worked well. Thanks for all the info :)

Couldn't have said that better myself. Plus, I think allot of beginning movie makers are drawn to the horror genre simply because it's a genre that excites them in one way or another. Also, if horror turns campy, I think it's a little more acceptable.

Do you mean like documentary? Or narrative films based on extreme sports? I'm addicted to Mixed Martial Arts (UFC) and wrote and directed a short film about the physical toll of this type of sport. Does that count?

Well, it worked really well. And I quite like this version of the song :P How do you go about storyboarding/shot listing something like that? Every single thing you'll need or just know the basic set ups and go from there?

I never recommend Best Buy for tapes. At least the one here in Missoula is overpriced. I've found good deals at Target actually. But tapestock.com should have some decent prices as well. B)

I'm in the middle of building my shotlist for a music video shoot and was wondering how any of you other "Video" makers have gone about this. Since there are so many shots and cuts I'm coming up with a Baz Lurman type shotlist, correlating to the timecode of the song. In short, it's taking a long time. Anyone have advice for a quicker way to do this?

Being in school, getting to the movies is tough. Quite frankly, I find that I end up going to the movies when I've had a REALLY bad week and usually go just for an escape, something fun... which lead me to see Jackass: Number Two twice. :D Don't knock it, it's an exhillerating experience. Plus it was nice to see the camera crew moving away from PD-150s and 170s to DVX-100s and an HDcam. If you watch the two movies back to back, the difference is REALLY amazing. But I am REALLY looking forward to seeing Children of Men, The Queen, and The Prestige.

Stuart, I'm getting ready to shoot a video that's very similar in terms of camera moves and shots. You're averaging about one cut per two seconds (though it picks up later to be about 1 cut per second at times) so I'm sure there was allot of reseting and getting the same shot over and over for different moments in the song. One thing I'm interested in knowing is, on average, how many takes were you doing?

The biggest thing that stuck with me about this film was the openning credits sequence. It just really was everything I wanted Superman: The Movie to be. As I get older, I find that I just don't care for much of anything that took place in Metropolis, but I love everything (story, acting, design, shots, lighting) in Smallville and the fortress of solitude. It was just epic. Great stuff.

Well, first and foremost, everyone should have THEIR OWN JOB TO DO. That way you don't have five grips, the DP and AD all crowded around monitor talking about a shot. I can't tell you how to direct. I can tell you that "HEY THAT WAS A BAD KISS LETS DO IT AGAIN" is probably not a good plan, if it was a bad kiss... you want to do something DIFFERENT!. So the note should be "That was ok guys, let's do it again but this time I want you to take more time before the kiss". But keep in mind that, the characters should not be "kissing". The scene is not about characters kissing. The scene is about two people having a revelation and the physical action of that revelation is a kiss (or hug, or hi-five... it doesn't really matter). If you just tell your actors "NOW KISS", then chances are, the kiss will look very stiff and "staged". Lead your actors through the scene, beat by beat. This is one of the reasons I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of rehearsals. It's time to talk through each scene and find out what the actors can bring you as part of their craft. If you tell your actor "This is a scene about kissing" then you're sunk. If you tell your actor "This is a scene about discovery" then you have moments you can build up to and find physical actions for. Maybe it's written into the script that they kiss, but in rehearsal you find that kissing isn't necessary. Maybe it's just a look from one actor to the other. Cracking the Whip... this is touchy. It's a powerful feeling to be a director. It's a powerful feeling to be able to yell "CUT!". But don't let that power turn you into a tyrant. You'll never be as impressed as to how HORRIBLE things can go once your crew has decided they don't like you. I feel like Directing is like being a manager. A good manager typically doesn't "crack the whip" unless they have a really smart way of doing it so everyone feels like they're an important part of the team. I guess the thing I'd say to be careful of is becoming a bully. I ran my set on my last piece as such. If I needed to adress the entire crew, I did so. Once we started shooting though, I would typically leave that to my AD because I needed to be working closesly with my Actors and DP.

Well, $600 is a whole lot more than I was looking to spend. I was thinking of a good tape solution or something. But I didn't know those were out there so it's good info anyway. Thanks.