Please evaluate for me... :P

[Trivun]

As some of you may be aware, I am a member of my university's film-making group, unimaginatively known as the Leeds University Union Film-Making Society (LUU Film-making Soc for short). Well, last semester I was elected Treasurer and as such, being part of the committee, I am bound to help teach newer members some of the niceties of making short films, and to aid in whatever projects they work on.

What has this to do with anyone, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. As part of the workshops we hold for newer members, I have been obliged to present my first short film, which I worked on last year with two former society members, as an example of how we can come up with good short films on a very low budget and with barely any equipment. Despite it being almost a year since we filmed, I've only been bothered to edit it now, and I just finished the last bits tonight (for the record, it's now half past four in the morning in the UK...).

However, I'm not sure it's really that good. Granted, I'm only working on editing, and have a slight cameo in the film, but although I worked with what I had (we really should have done more takes of each scene, but the others were pretty lazy and we had limited camera battery), I still think it's a poor reflection of my skills as a film-maker. So, I put it to you guys as a test!


Note that you may need your sound turned all the way up to hear the music.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is this. What do you think of the film, and how could it be improved? Not that I can improve it at this point, as there's no way to go back and reshoot the footage, but I do need advice that I can give to the amateurs during tomorrow evening's meeting. Plus, feedback is always useful, right?

Oh, and while we're at it, if any of you have made Youtube videos or short films of any kind, please post them here, and we can all laugh at your pitiful skills at film-making applaud your tremendous efforts and skills

 

[Trivun]

Oh, and for the record, I make a sweet little cameo in it as 'Guy In Sweet Hat Sitting On Bench. Because He's Lazy.'

 

[octafish]

I think it flows pretty well, well done. Don't like the sepia effect but otherwise pretty good.

 

[Trivun]

I think it flows pretty well, well done. Don't like the sepia effect but otherwise pretty good.

Well, the lens exposure throughout in the original cut was really bad, it's one of the things I would definitely have changed and improved on if we could have reshot the footage, so the sepia was just to try and cover that up a bit (not the best effect, but necessary at the time). Really, I just had to do the best I could, given the footage and the limited capabilities of Windows Movie Maker. Sadly I don't have any other editing software available, so I was limited in what I could do...

 

[octafish]

I think it flows pretty well, well done. Don't like the sepia effect but otherwise pretty good.

Well, the lens exposure throughout in the original cut was really bad, it's one of the things I would definitely have changed and improved on if we could have reshot the footage, so the sepia was just to try and cover that up a bit (not the best effect, but necessary at the time). Really, I just had to do the best I could, given the footage and the limited capabilities of Windows Movie Maker. Sadly I don't have any other editing software available, so I was limited in what I could do...

I've done the same thing myself when I couldn't match colours from different takes. Monochrome covers a multitude of sins.
edit: Windows Movie Maker is awful, I wish there was a PC equivalent of iMovie, my grandmother could edit video with iMovie.

 

[clipse15]

As some of you may be aware, I am a member of my university's film-making group, unimaginatively known as the Leeds University Union Film-Making Society (LUU Film-making Soc for short). Well, last semester I was elected Treasurer and as such, being part of the committee, I am bound to help teach newer members some of the niceties of making short films, and to aid in whatever projects they work on.

What has this to do with anyone, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. As part of the workshops we hold for newer members, I have been obliged to present my first short film, which I worked on last year with two former society members, as an example of how we can come up with good short films on a very low budget and with barely any equipment. Despite it being almost a year since we filmed, I've only been bothered to edit it now, and I just finished the last bits tonight (for the record, it's now half past four in the morning in the UK...).

However, I'm not sure it's really that good. Granted, I'm only working on editing, and have a slight cameo in the film, but although I worked with what I had (we really should have done more takes of each scene, but the others were pretty lazy and we had limited camera battery), I still think it's a poor reflection of my skills as a film-maker. So, I put it to you guys as a test!




Note that you may need your sound turned all the way up to hear the music.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is this. What do you think of the film, and how could it be improved? Not that I can improve it at this point, as there's no way to go back and reshoot the footage, but I do need advice that I can give to the amateurs during tomorrow evening's meeting. Plus, feedback is always useful, right?

Oh, and while we're at it, if any of you have made Youtube videos or short films of any kind, please post them here, and we can all laugh at your pitiful skills at film-making applaud your tremendous efforts and skills

Honestly this isn't that good. There are a lot of really really bad cuts here. ESPECIALLY at 0:31-0:33. It is a SIN in films to do that. You can't have your character walk from one side of the screen like that and then cut to them walking in the opposite direction. You do that a lot but that is defintly the most glaring. Your cutting in general seems to be very not well done. Cutting should be done on certain beats and your not hitting those beats. I'm not going to comment on the subject matter of the short because like thats your thing so i'm only doing the technical aspect.

 

[Trivun]

As some of you may be aware, I am a member of my university's film-making group, unimaginatively known as the Leeds University Union Film-Making Society (LUU Film-making Soc for short). Well, last semester I was elected Treasurer and as such, being part of the committee, I am bound to help teach newer members some of the niceties of making short films, and to aid in whatever projects they work on.

What has this to do with anyone, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. As part of the workshops we hold for newer members, I have been obliged to present my first short film, which I worked on last year with two former society members, as an example of how we can come up with good short films on a very low budget and with barely any equipment. Despite it being almost a year since we filmed, I've only been bothered to edit it now, and I just finished the last bits tonight (for the record, it's now half past four in the morning in the UK...).

However, I'm not sure it's really that good. Granted, I'm only working on editing, and have a slight cameo in the film, but although I worked with what I had (we really should have done more takes of each scene, but the others were pretty lazy and we had limited camera battery), I still think it's a poor reflection of my skills as a film-maker. So, I put it to you guys as a test!




Note that you may need your sound turned all the way up to hear the music.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is this. What do you think of the film, and how could it be improved? Not that I can improve it at this point, as there's no way to go back and reshoot the footage, but I do need advice that I can give to the amateurs during tomorrow evening's meeting. Plus, feedback is always useful, right?

Oh, and while we're at it, if any of you have made Youtube videos or short films of any kind, please post them here, and we can all laugh at your pitiful skills at film-making applaud your tremendous efforts and skills

Honestly this isn't that good. There are a lot of really really bad cuts here. ESPECIALLY at 0:31-0:33. It is a SIN in films to do that. You can't have your character walk from one side of the screen like that and then cut to them walking in the opposite direction. You do that a lot but that is defintly the most glaring. Your cutting in general seems to be very not well done. Cutting should be done on certain beats and your not hitting those beats. I'm not going to comment on the subject matter of the short because like thats your thing so i'm only doing the technical aspect.

You know what, the really silly thing is, I absolutely agree with you. However, I'm afraid that I didn't really have a lot of choice. The guys who did the actual filming kind of rushed it, and so they only ended up doing a single take for each scene, which if I'd had my way I'd have made them go back and do retakes, and shoot each take from different angles to get the maximum possible footage to work with when editing. I realise that makes me sound like I'm making excuses, but I'm not. If I could go back and do it again we would have a lot more footage than that (though admittedly we did have to cut quite a bit of stuff because the stupid actor kept looking straight at the camera... the idiot...).

I did end up showing it tonight to our society president who generally quite liked it (for the record, he does do this as his uni course so he knows quite a bit about cinematography, and editing in particular). He did point out a few problems, but again those were down to the footage rather than the editing.

Of course, I could just avoid all blame completely and pass over it as saying it was meant to be like that, that I'm pioneering a new experimental way of making films... but that would be childish and obvious of me. Ah well, I guess my next project (which has a lot more planning and time put into it) will be better... thanks for the feedback, anyway

 

[Jamash]

For a title called "Rush", the person doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

The way he was rushing looked like he wasn't actually in a hurry to get anywhere and that he was only walking slightly quicker because he was directed to, not because he needed to.

He seemed too laid back and wasn't believable as someone who was rushing due to a time constraint or deadline... having his hand in his pocket almost all the time made him seem far too casual, because if you were really trying to get somewhere in a hurry you would have you hand out for balance and to enable you to move faster with confidence, even if you weren't breaking into a jog or run.

I'm not saying that it should be a homage to Run Lola Run, but he should put a bit more effort into his gait.

 

[Hollock]

I know you had too but the sepia tone wasn't working for me dawg. It was pretty good, not the best but pretty good. Well here's my little short film. A backstory; I had a film festival at my school and I made this with two friends. I had to film it on a laptops webcam when I was by myself, and an Ipod when I was with my friends. And when I converted the ipod stuff from quicktime to mov. I had to use this program that every 15 seconds would have a big THIS IS A TRIAL thing pop up on the middle of the screen, so I had to cut all those out, and there were like 3 minuets of shots I couldn't use because they would take up to much space. Before we entered everyone told us we would win, but it turned out it was voted on by people casting votes and not judges. And not too many people came and the group who had 10 people in it won because they all voted for themselves. Here's the finished product and I cut out their names and a bit of the opening (to put it in context I [the guy] get all liquored up for the first 30 seconds) for to sharing with you. Enjoy, I called it "it's all in your head, but the monkey is real."

 

[clipse15]

As some of you may be aware, I am a member of my university's film-making group, unimaginatively known as the Leeds University Union Film-Making Society (LUU Film-making Soc for short). Well, last semester I was elected Treasurer and as such, being part of the committee, I am bound to help teach newer members some of the niceties of making short films, and to aid in whatever projects they work on.

What has this to do with anyone, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. As part of the workshops we hold for newer members, I have been obliged to present my first short film, which I worked on last year with two former society members, as an example of how we can come up with good short films on a very low budget and with barely any equipment. Despite it being almost a year since we filmed, I've only been bothered to edit it now, and I just finished the last bits tonight (for the record, it's now half past four in the morning in the UK...).

However, I'm not sure it's really that good. Granted, I'm only working on editing, and have a slight cameo in the film, but although I worked with what I had (we really should have done more takes of each scene, but the others were pretty lazy and we had limited camera battery), I still think it's a poor reflection of my skills as a film-maker. So, I put it to you guys as a test!





Note that you may need your sound turned all the way up to hear the music.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is this. What do you think of the film, and how could it be improved? Not that I can improve it at this point, as there's no way to go back and reshoot the footage, but I do need advice that I can give to the amateurs during tomorrow evening's meeting. Plus, feedback is always useful, right?

Oh, and while we're at it, if any of you have made Youtube videos or short films of any kind, please post them here, and we can all laugh at your pitiful skills at film-making applaud your tremendous efforts and skills

Honestly this isn't that good. There are a lot of really really bad cuts here. ESPECIALLY at 0:31-0:33. It is a SIN in films to do that. You can't have your character walk from one side of the screen like that and then cut to them walking in the opposite direction. You do that a lot but that is defintly the most glaring. Your cutting in general seems to be very not well done. Cutting should be done on certain beats and your not hitting those beats. I'm not going to comment on the subject matter of the short because like thats your thing so i'm only doing the technical aspect.

You know what, the really silly thing is, I absolutely agree with you. However, I'm afraid that I didn't really have a lot of choice. The guys who did the actual filming kind of rushed it, and so they only ended up doing a single take for each scene, which if I'd had my way I'd have made them go back and do retakes, and shoot each take from different angles to get the maximum possible footage to work with when editing. I realise that makes me sound like I'm making excuses, but I'm not. If I could go back and do it again we would have a lot more footage than that (though admittedly we did have to cut quite a bit of stuff because the stupid actor kept looking straight at the camera... the idiot...).

I did end up showing it tonight to our society president who generally quite liked it (for the record, he does do this as his uni course so he knows quite a bit about cinematography, and editing in particular). He did point out a few problems, but again those were down to the footage rather than the editing.

Of course, I could just avoid all blame completely and pass over it as saying it was meant to be like that, that I'm pioneering a new experimental way of making films... but that would be childish and obvious of me. Ah well, I guess my next project (which has a lot more planning and time put into it) will be better... thanks for the feedback, anyway

Ok i'm doing film and tv production at uni and i'm in my fourth year and to be brutally honest if i had done this in high school media I would've gotten a poor grade. the cinematograpy itself isn't anything exceptional, the only shot of note is the one from :38-:47 and while you blame the end result on your lack of time/footage and the like there was nothing here preventing you from cutting that shot done as its way too long.

 

[Trivun]

For a title called "Rush", the person doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

The way he was rushing looked like he wasn't actually in a hurry to get anywhere and that he was only walking slightly quicker because he was directed to, not because he needed to.

He seemed too laid back and wasn't believable as someone who was rushing due to a time constraint or deadline... having his hand in his pocket almost all the time made him seem far too casual, because if you were really trying to get somewhere in a hurry you would have you hand out for balance and to enable you to move faster with confidence, even if you weren't breaking into a jog or run.

I'm not saying that it should be a homage to Run Lola Run, but he should put a bit more effort into his gait.

A fun fact for you - the stupidest bit about that was that we were in a hurry to film it anyway, because we had a very limited battery life for the camera. So I'd have thought myself that the guy could have ran a bit more. Though getting an actual actor in would have been a lot better (though not exactly practical given our limited budget and resources). The guy who was acting was a member of the film-making society with me, and he kept looking at the camera on most takes. That's also why the later shot where he walks into the corridor from outside was cut very short and went straight to him walking up the stairs. If I'd cut it any later then you'd have seen him looking at the camera, grinning, and it would have looked even worse. If you look carefully, you can actually notice a few times when he does look at the camera, where I couldn't cut it because of the limited footage I had to work with. That pissed me off no end when I was editing it...

I mean, I'm all for breaking the fourth wall when it's done properly and in context (or, you know, to creep the audience out), but sometimes it's just pretty damn stupid...