Video For Critique

[Blaise Douros]

I’m gonna be brutal, so don’t take it too personally!

There is no overarching story to this piece. You could cut this down to the story about the pearls and iron, and that would be a nice piece all on its own, but the rest just seems like rambling.

The talking-head interview is lit really hot–try dropping this footage down by a half-stop or more. It seems a little too yellow for my taste. You could fix that by grading the white balance a bit cooler.

You need a LOT more b-roll for this. You’ve got some visible jump cuts, and TBH, she’s not a very charismatic interview subject. So you need to cover all of that up by shooting beauty shots of the finished jewelry pieces, closeups of her hands sketching, more stuff of her in the workshop…anything but watching her staring off disinterestedly in different directions in the room while she thinks about what she’s going to say next.

Speaking of that, cut out all the long pauses, ums and uhhhs, lip smacking…it’s your job to make her look articulate and interesting, and you can do that by improving the cadence of her speech. That’s why you need more b-roll.

Try starting the section on the iron piece with the clip of her talking about contrast. Then let her tell the story of how she used that principle to design the piece.

Cut out the whole last section where she is talking about what she doesn’t do. Nobody cares about what she doesn’t do, and it makes her sound really negative, especially when that’s the last thing we hear her say.

Finally, add a little bit of motion to the still images, and use cuts instead of fades to get away from them.

My two cents.

[Aaron Star]

I think think your skintones and highlights are to high, and work on CC the greenish lighting balance on her face.

[Curtis Cosby]

Hey, Thanks for the “harsh” criticism. That is why I posted it, I feel one of the ways we get better is to hear what others with experience see is “wrong” with it and try to incorporate that going forward.

I am not sure if I will get a chance to recut this anytime soon but I am going to try and do that with some of your suggestions. I do have some b-roll I’m not sure if it will be enough to do the edit your mentioning above but I may give it a try.

Thanks again
Curtis

Curtis Cosby
Multimedia Assistant

[Curtis Cosby]

I’ll definitely look into to some more color correction. I feel like the footage always falls apart on me. Your example looks pretty good so maybe I am doing something wrong. I’ll look more into that and see what I can come up with.

Thanks
Curtis

Curtis Cosby
Multimedia Assistant

[Blaise Douros]

h.264 footage (which is what I assume this is) will fall apart with heavy correction, but it should be able to hold up with subtle adjustments. Aaron’s example is pretty much what I had in mind.

Even if you don’t recut this for the client, it might be worth it for you to create a new cut just so you can practice refining the story. Going back and improving your own work with new knowledge can be hugely helpful.

Good luck!

[Laurence Bartone]

Excellent – my thoughts (almost) exactly. I’d love to see a bit of classic Charleston.

bartone.com