My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

ah, good ole fashioned fighting... it never gets old.

Good job, I lol'd.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

lol the sound effects were soo bad that it was funny

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Too slow for what you were going for. If you didn't do it for this, you should fully choreograph and get the whole fight sequences from multiple angles, allowing for fast cuts as needed. Points where it's stuck on a long shot for a long time while a fight is going on is a bad idea. And if it was just thrown together on a whim in a single afternoon, you could still set out a simple plan for fights and allow for improvisation in between. In this way, you could give yourself clean spots for cuts while still keeping things open enough that it won't take a great deal of planning. It looks like you MIGHT have done this a little, but there really should be a LOT more cutting in there.

Also, it's way too long to not have anything to it. If you want it long enough to be interesting, try putting some real plot into it, because as it is, it's slow and long. Then again, that might just be because of slow cuts making it feel slow.

Oh yeah and as far as camera work goes, someone manning the camera on a tripod is always preferable to a dead tripod. However, it's got to be steady. Ideally, if the camera is not moving, it should be on a tripod with someone there to man it, and if it is moving, you need to have it planned out and make sure your camera man can be reasonable steady. In one shot I see that a tripod was used as it should have been, but the zooming was jagged and distracting. Your camera work has to be smooth or it will look bad. And seriously there are pans and zooms here that should be cuts. It's just really weird, because you clearly have the means to edit, yet at the same time, don't take full advantage of it.

Overall, I'd say that the major problem with it does lie in the camera work though. Smooth zooming, panning, etc. and better cuts would have been great (although I guess the "better cuts" part would be more of a the person directing and/or editing). A decent plot worked in would have been nice, but with nice cuts, I'd think it would cut the time down short enough that it might still be interesting. The fighting/stuntwork/whatever seemed actually pretty good considering the source.

ps the skateboard presence seemed really out of place. If you're gonna do that, it should be someone ESPECIALLY FAMILIAR with skateboards, and not just rolling around, but other things involved with it like STOPPING AND DISMOUNTING, and hey, how about PICKING IT UP. In addition, it seemed to serve no purpose at all... if you're gonna have a prop as specific as that it should be more important. You could have just as easily had the person slip on a banana peel as on a skateboard, you could have had the person rolling up just walk up instead. Another cheap way of adding in skateboards to a film if you really want would be to showcase an amazing feat (ie have someone do a nice trick as they enter). Other than that, a skateboard in the shot is not needed at all.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Dude...we made it for fun. We were practicing for a real fight movie and we just put this together in a sloppy way, you weren't suppose to take it seriously. Oh and the skateboard belonged to the guy sitting on the rail, he put his skateboard down to relax...kinda thought that was obvious that it belonged to him

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

LMAO. That was a good laugh. Good job!

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Thanks

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

moo

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

For Afrobean, I helped with this movie, and I can find probably ten times as many flaws as you can, and the skateboards were just brought there by the two skaters and had not planned to use them in the movie. We needed some way to transport them during the movie so we just half-assed it and did it during camera time.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Because I didn't even watch the whole thing.

ps I know the instances in which a shaky camera adds to the effect, and for you to even bring it up here implies that you think this is one of them. I'll be blunt; it's not.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Thanks for being "blunt" (lmao, Simon) As I said before, I can tell what's wrong with this movie, ten times your ability, we were lacking people to man the camera at all times, and why even give us tips if you won't watch the whole thing?

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

Afrobean basically said anything I would have brought up, but the most annoying bits were that the camera was usually too far away and your cuts were too long.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

I'm confident that my level of experience is about the same as you, and even if not, I would say that my knowledge of theory is virtually unmatchable in high school students. In short, I am more than qualified to give advice to someone else of a similar experience level.

It's times like this that I really wish I had some of my projects from when I did this work in school.

Yeah, man, **** steadiness. When I go see a Jet Li film, I want the screen to be shaky as hell. I want to see Blair Witch: Fighting Edition, The Movie.

Not much of an excuse. It takes extra effort, but fast cuts can still be made without anyone manning it. Heck, I recall doing an entire project by myself. It was a guide for how to apply griptape to a skateboard I think. Anyway, I did the camera work, on screen talent, deciding camera angles, where to cut, etc. And I still had a cut in place every time I could reasonably apply one just to keep things interesting. Think about the news. When you watch the news, they don't sit on a long shot for 30 minutes. They cut around and do things to keep it interesting. And heck, think about the concept of a long shot. Used for establishing and things of that nature usually, especially in cases where large sections of the setting are not needed to be seen during the "action" (could be drama or comedy or anything, I just mean, the "meat" of it). The only time you'll see long shots during a fight scene is if the characters are moving across large areas of terrain or in establishing shots (such as a long shot of a "standoff").

Because it's easier to type up a post if I type it while the film is still running.

Also, I did see the whole thing after I posted, and I did notice the tripod in that shot, but I didn't think it was worth commenting on. With all the other things I had already said, a continuity error is nothing. And in fact, I was rather sure that you would have seen it yourself, and I was confident that you would use this opportunity to learn from your mistakes.

Re: My friends and i made a movie. Called Greed.

For once I agree with Afrobean's uberseriousness.

You made a somewhat terrible movie, Afro obviously knows quite a bit about this subject. You should take the advice he gives you humbly instead of making excuses. I don't care if it was a joke or just for fun. If I get annoyed or bored watching it (which I did) then you failed at your presumed goal of entertainment.