Excellent superb film !!! Clearly a PROFESSIONAL work !!! Loved the ending !!!
Just one question: why are the blacks so washed out and grey? I know this is done on purpose to give it a "cinematic look", but movie theaters did their best to MINIMIZE this flawed look cause by ambient light (for example by painting their walls black or by using black curtains). So why try to recreate that flawed look? And why even try to outdo it and make it look even more flawed and washed out?
This is overdone by videographers today (in my opinion) just as the HDR look was overdone by stills photographers a few years back.
I know I am in the minority opinion here
Not sure how to 'REPLY ALL' so I'll reply to just yours and hopefully the others will find it!
Hey All, thanks for the kind words and feedback! Have tried to respond to everyone’s feedback.
Re: tripod, yep I decided early on that it might be nice to have all the office segments locked down, no movement, in contrast with the dreamy beach shots as more free flowing/hand held. Side note: That was also my first time ever using the ronin-m, so it was a bit of a trial by fire using it at a sandy wet beach of all locations!
Re: Accents
To be fair, this hadn’t even occurred to me that some of the Interviewers dialogue may not be intelligible. Partly because being British his accent is quite common and partly because I knew the script inside out and always had it playing in the back of my mind when he was saying it. Interesting observation tho. Agree with Moffatross, that was a pretty standard English accent, Scottish or Irish can be super tough unless you’re a native UK.
Re: Grading
I won’t lie, I definitely struggled with the grading of both the office and the beach shots. For a few reasons. I’d say 1 big reason was that it was the first time using S-log2 for anything other than a quick test here and there. I generally use a tweaked cine gamma profile. But for this I thought F*** it, let’s go all in! S-log2 and first time using Ronin-M. See what I get out of it, see what I can learn. And I definitely learnt a ton. It’s all very well reading up on forums and watching tutorials all day but until you bite the bullet, make mistakes and try something for real you never really learn. This seemed like a great opportunity as there was no client as such, so if I did make a complete balls up then i’d only have myself to answer to…. and you guys
Secondly, and I hate this excuse but there were some really big time constraints. We (myself and sis) started discussing the possibility of even entering the competition about 10 days before the deadline for submission. So we really didn’t leave ourselves much time at all to come up with the whole story, shoot it, and edit it. Of course, as this was off our own back we had to fit in the filming around our own schedules, and of course this meant post production time was nowhere near as long as I wanted it to be. It would literally be a few hours a night after a days shooting on my ‘real’ job. I was also juggling 5 other projects in the same week so it was a complete nightmare as you can imagine. Hard to be creative when you’re stressed haha. First world problems.
Skin tones in office… yeah I tried a few different grades where I kept the ‘integrity’ of her skin intact, but it just didn’t seem like a big enough change. I can see how it definitely looks almost ghoul like though. And perhaps there isn’t enough difference between the reality/dream grade. Definitely something I can see now in hidden sight but at the time I just needed the edit out the door.
Beach grade:
I did want something wishy washy, so hence the low contrast. I guess a cheat to get that dreamy look. But again I can see how it does and doesn’t work. Ideal situation is I would of had a few more days to ponder different grades. It’s always nice to be able to have a break from a project and come back to it with fresh eyes. With this there wasn’t really that option.
Re: Long periods of silence:
I guess I was aiming to not have to rely on music. For a start, good music is a pain in the A* to get hold of. Especially for free and in such a short amount of time. Secondly I really wanted the challenge of creating something just with diegetic sounds/foley. I’m not 100% happy with it at all but was hoping the general ambience, of either office or beach (wind, ocean) would be an interesting enough sound scape to carry the film. I’m not a professional sound guy though, so this was all very much me hoping for the best. A dedicated audio guy would of done a lot better job! But as it stands, again learnt a ton.
Overall:
Thanks all for the feedback. I genuinely agree on the grading not being super strong in this. Or at least, a bit to divisive. Time wasn’t on my side and it’s actually quite reassuring that the little voice in the back of my head that was saying “you can do better than this” was actually right!
Onwards and upwards!
PS: if any of you are mega bored, I shot this a few years ago and it picked up a few awards. Ironically the top comment is on the grading haha!
). The toughest regional accents to understand are the ones that are both rich in different sounds and rich in dialect. Newcastle (England), Belfast (N. Ireland), Aberdeen (NE Scotland), Glasgow (Central Scotland), Moffat ( Southern Scotland ;-) ) etc. The English accent in the video was as bland as an English accent can be, and is almost 'BBC standard' now that the BBC have dropped the 4 weddings and a funeral plummy stuff, whereas English West Country (e.g. Cornish) like E. Anglia, is quaint, Brummie is almost funny, Manc/Liverpool is typically animated etc. N. American accents must be much of a muchness and though I reckon I could distinguish many of the regional accents of the USA, I don't think I've ever failed to follow a dialogue I've listened to.