Garrett Shannon

I would say, if you can afford it, buy a domain and host the videos yourself. Youtube quality makes not only the resolution suffer but I feel like it flattens out the image so much. If there ever was a time to not host something on youtube it would be a cinematography reel because you are trying to sell yourself based on the quality of the image which is suffering greatly because of youtube compression. If buying a domain is not an option I would suggest playing with different compression and gamma settings and then uploading them to youtube to see how to best compress your reel for upload to youtube. Check out this article: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/you_t...redux_gary.html

My advice would be to shorten up the reel. If people want to see more they can look at the individual commercials or music videos but reels in my opinion should be shorter and include what you consider to be the best of the best of your work. Work that you are proud of or that you feel represents your style should make up a reel. If whoever is looking at the reel is enticed by what they see then they are likely to browse the rest of your site but if the reel is too long and they loose interest then you have lost them. Cheers.

You may disagree but I think you should have the control/play bar underneath the video so people watching can pause or watch a shot over without having to view the entire reel. Cheers.

Complete the dolly move on the shot of the boy standing at home plate.

Hey all, Finally got a website up and running and I was hoping to get some feedback about the way the website is organized as well as any and all comments on the reel. If you have any problems or suggestions I would love to hear them. Thank you so much. If you don't have anything nice to say... say it anyway. Cheers. http://garrettshannon.com/

Do you know what stock you are using? If you really want to get some contrast another thing you could do is bring in some negative fill on the side of the face opposite the window. That way you have good exposure on the front of the face and then 2 over on one side and maybe 1 or 2 under on the other side. One thing I like to do is place a practical or somehow light up the background directly behind the dark area on the talent's face. This is a good way to create separation without adding a rim or back light which sometimes looks cheesy in my opinion and it also emphasizes the darkness on the face. Cheers.

If you are dealing with street lights and car head lights, it's most likely going to be closer to 32k than say 56k but you aren't going to get a perfect match as film lights will be balanced precisely and all the other lights around you aren't being made with a "film friendly" color temp in mind. My personal thoughts on motivating with moonlight are that it is unoriginal and unrealistic especialy for lighting people in a car. To me it also seems impractical as unless the moon is directly in front of the windshield there simply wouldn't be enough moonlight for it to be lighting the faces of people sitting in a car. I think car interior lights would be a much better idea or even something like a flashlight or a lantern if that suits the story. Cheers.

I am a fan of the XH A1; It is light, has a decent lens, great image quality, and many options to fine tune a certain "look" I have to agree with Steve about going tape-less though. If not for durability reasons then because it seems that solid state recording is the way things are going. If you can afford it I would recommend looking into the Sony EX1. I recently shot two different projects on the XH A1 and the EX1 respectively and would be more than happy to elaborate or show you some of the footage if you are interested. Cheers.

awesome, thank you so much.

I have seen a lot of people talk about how they have downloaded DOF tables. I tried searching for some specific to the lenses we use at school but couldn't find any... was just wondering if anyone had a good place to look. We use Zeiss Super Speed 35mm Primes with Arri PL mount on an Arri SRII Super 16mm. I am assuming they are the MKII series but not sure. Thanks everyone. -Garrett