[Adam Taylor]

ahh – takes me right back to N-N-N-Nineteen!

hope that doesn’t get pulled down too soon.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

if you are wanting to reveal the second shirt in a more subtle way, i’d reshoot it in such a way that instead of holding his arms wide out , when you want the transition he brings his arms up in front of himself as if he were removing a jumper.

His arms would then provide you with a natural wipe which you could use to follow with a mask revealing the second outfit.

No matter what you do with your current shot, it will be really difficult to make a self revealing shirt look natural when the guy is stood with his arms wide open. Your audience already know that clothing doesnt do that, or that people rarely stand around like that, so the disbelief is already at work in their minds.

just my 2p worth.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

well the one thing you should not scrimp on is the chair.

You’re gonna be sat in it a long time, so make sure its got the support you need.

The Hermann Miller Mirra was at the top of my list when speccing the suite, and was worth every penny.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

you would probably get something more suitable by paying a local joiner to make you a custom desk.

I did that, and now have a desk with plenty of space and a 3 bay, 4u high monitor shelf. In total i think we paid around £500 – £600 5 years ago.

The legs are hefty 4″x4″ timbers, painted. The desk is thick plywood with a veneered top and the monitor rack is veneered MDF. I couldn’t find anything that would give me exactly the layout i wanted for the kit i was buying, so designing one myself seemed a good idea…the fact it was much cheaper than factory made was a bonus!

Most of the stuff i need is built in the desk. The Mac and some of the amps and raids are kept in a standard metal rack cabinet in the next room with cables passing through a hole in the wall. This keeps the noise of fans and hdd’s down, and lets me have the a/c in the machine room even cooler than the edit suite is. Cables for the keyboard and wacom pass into a hole in the desk directly beneath the keyboard (which is raised on small foam blocks to bring it up level with the wacom).

I’ve yet to summon up the courage to cut a hole in the top to sit the tangent panel in.

A simple piece of black fabric stapled to the back of the legs hides all the cables and power lines, and makes the whole thing look so much more finished.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

reminds me of the time i was playing out a news item to our main transmission centre, when a Technical Supervisor came on the talkback to ask me who the cameraman was, and if he owned a tripod?

I told him the name, and said “yes, he has a tripod. Look closely at the edit and you can see it propped up against the wall behind the interview!”

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

ideally I would use the car as the leading edge of the wipe.

To do that i would use a soft wipe but not as soft as the one you used, and keyframe the wipe position so that the car drags it along behind.
Try avoid having any part of the car fading out as that will spoil the effect.

You can create shaped masks to make a more close fitting wipe, but that is not always necessary.

The point of using a wipe is to transition to a different shot. This can be either hidden or obvious.

A hidden one is what i think you were trying but because you placed the wipe in the centre of the car, you actually made it very obvious with half the car being faded out – the result is a bizarre view of half a car driving through your shot.

If you place the wipe behind the car, the soft edge will make the transition less obvious, and the moving car right in front of the wipe will distract the viewers attention from the transition.

Personally i prefer to use an object within the scene to act as the catalyst for a wipe. Depending on the object you can even get away with a straight cut. Often you will see a bus pass through the shot filling the frame, and as it finishes the shot has changed. Often the editor will find another shot with a bus rushing through and do a short 3-4 frame mix whilst both buses are filling the frame. As buses usually look very similar, and moving quickly, chances are the transition will be unnoticed.

The main thing is to keep experimenting, keep learning, and don’t just look at your tv – watch it, and analyse what the editor and cameraman are showing you. You’ll never stop learning!

regards
Adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

Sorry to say but if that was the intention – to show the two different sized lights, then you didnt really succeed.

You only managed a couple of shots with both sizes together, and in both, it was such a wide shot that the small size became insignificantly small. Also, the angle from which you shot the smaller set tended to hide them by optically squashing them in the horizontal axis (circle viewed from an angle becomes an ellipse).

I would have tried to get at least a couple of shots from the other side of the street, looking through the traffic, to show the lights from the drivers angle.

A tilting shot from one light to another would also help establish the two different sets on each pole.

Again, i think much of the problem was being too close and having to use a wider angle lens. On the long end of the lens, you would have had the benefits of the flattening or foreshortening effect that telephoto lenses have.

i would suggest you do some tests with your camera….try shooting a street scene with different focal lengths, some very close and some distant, whilst trying to maintain as similar a composition as possible by physically moving the camera nearer or further away to compensate for the lens focal length. When you watch the footage back, look for the ways your lens has altered the image.

Once you understand how your lens works, you’ll be in a much better place to pick the right shooting position for the shot you want.

Oh, one more thing i spotted on watching it back just now – a horizontal wipe on top of a moving car??really? The wipe should have been either in front or behind the vehicle – definitely not fading out halfway along the car.

Theres a lot to learn, so tick with it and you’ll get where you want to be.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

for me the flow problem is down to both the editing and the original choice of camera position.

As the light changes to green, you hold the shot for too long….but then when you cut to the traffic moving off, the first white car has already gone yet the time you held the shot was not long enough for the car to have got completely out view.

It would flow much better if the light changed to green, then maybe 10 frames later cut to see the white car in the first few frames of motion.

Also, i think the camera position has hindered your shots. You were too close to the lights which has limited your compositional options. If the camera was further away from the junction, you would be able to use a selection of lens focal lengths to capture shots that include the lights and the vehicles.
Shooting close means everything requires the wide angle end of your lens, which in turn distorts the image and makes it look weird and unnatural.

It would have been better to stand on the other side of the street in front of the stopped traffic. At the moment all we can see is a metal post and the back end the vehicles. From across the street we could have seen the front of the stopped vehicles, and the lighting furniture in its entirety. Which in turn would have given a much stronger overview of the situation at that junction. Basically,
You need to walk a bit more between the different camera positions, but its worth it as the pictures would have been more watchable and the edit would have looked much better.

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

Everything said above is really great advice.

My few pennies….You could easily cut that down to 45seconds, and make it much stronger in the process.

The edits need to be a lot snappier. Use the music as a guide, but don’t cut religiously to the beat as that can become very predictable very quickly.

Rather than cut on the beat, look for ways to synchronise action within the shot to the beat. Much more effective at tying the edit together.

The testimonials are dull and tedious. You need to pick the best phrase from within a sentence, not necessarily the entire sentence. If there are two great phrases separated by dullness, then edit and use B-roll to cover. (I’m thinking of the guy holding the kid – his first few words and last few were great – the rest should be lost.)

I forgot who you were promoting (not good for a promotions company!).

The script mentions corporate clients but a long time after the logos had vanished, making the mental link between the two distracting.

Study a few well made commercials and you will begin to realise how much you can cut out, and still leave enough of a shot to tell the story.

In fact a quick exercise – i’d take your edit, switch off the audio then cut every shot to be half its current duration, picking what you feel is the best part of the shot (the middle half might be stronger than the start or ending half). Then switch the music back on and watch it back. I bet it feels snappier without feeling like anything is missing.

Stick with it -it’ll come with practice

adam

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Adam Taylor]

[Mark Suszko] “Is the tabletop in the same shot as the chromakey wall, always?

Yes

Or are we talking two setups in one space, taking turns?”

No

I have pretty much decided upon getting a whole heap of Flolight flouorescents. I reckon 4x 110w daylights to light the screen, with another 4 or 5 to use for the rest of the lighting, including one 220w and having a couple dimmable as well…

Colour balancing wont be a problem, as the room has no external light sources such as windows, and intend to use the same tubes throughout.

These look ideal for my needs, and are a fraction of the cost of Kinoflo’s.

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page