Interview with sculpture painter/collector (feedback please)
Hey guys, this is my first doc/interview and I am having a hard time judging my work. I generally deal with narrative shorts and so forth and I am having a hard time figuring out if I should trim off some of footage or if it is fine so far.
Any pointers will be very helpful.
THANKS!
[ame="http://vimeo.com/8201411"]Jim Lawrence Interview on Vimeo[/ame]
Very interesting.
A great opportunity to get someone like this to talk in an environment with such richness.
How did you pull that off?
Good use of cut ins of movies and the stuff in the room.
Well done, Ramash.
Technically, as the resident audio nazi, I have to tell you that the sound is very poor indeed. The talent should've been mic'd with a lav. The framing is poor too.... rule of thirds. The shots of the objects in the room are shaky and there's vignetting in the corners of frame.
Mind you, I did watch all 8 minutes because the subject is interesting, but I was glad when it finished because that sound was starting to hurt my ears.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Great, great stuff! This really intrigued me! There are just a few minor things that bothered me. The vignetting was unnecessary, and you could have done without it. We'd like to see EVERYTHING in the room as much as possible since it's decorated with lots of amazing sculptures. The audio has already been addressed, but perhaps you can download some kind of noise-remover to get rid of that hum. Otherwise, I loved this video, and it was truly some interesting stuff!
I 100% agree that the audio is almost unbearable and the jerky handheld does not work for B-roll footage. On top of using my camera mic, there was this really loud annoying "hmmm" coming from the lights. I had to use noise removal to even make it listenable.
I wanted to buy a mic, but my interview date got set up so fast that I did not have time for it. And it was a nightmare shooting in a room with so much glass; reflections everywhere!
I feel kind of bad showing this to Jim (the person I interviewed), but I think he will be very understanding. He's a great guy. I meet him in a costume store when I went to buy fake blood for a short I was doing. We ended up talking about horror films and he gave me his card.
Then when I was assigned an interview as class assignment, he was the first person I thought of.
But thank you guys.
Anymore feedback please?
Not much I can say. but I second the opinions about the audio. I like the beginning shots+music a lot.
Also placing the subject directly int he middle of the shot was not very visually pleasing. Like HnR said, Rule of thirds!
But I liked the subject/and B-roll shots.
Good Job!
You'll never know if you don't go. GO!
Im with H&R on this, framing was terrible. Really uncomfortable. Sound doesn't really bother me a great deal - as long as I can hear it. If you were shooting this for telly, you'd never work again. But as it happens you're not. Great little effort even if it is sloppy, good content too...
The cutaways (B Roll) you didn't really give the eye too much to focus on... They were too quick and jerky moments, you had a tripod use it... When you don't use a Tripod for Cutaways (B Roll) when you're not that good to start with, you look lazy - take your time, you're not shooting news. Hand-held if its not done correctly looks a sloppy/lazy lalalalain mess...
He's too small in the frame, and slap bang in the middle... Dont be afraid to move stuff about, craft your interwiew...
Thanks for the input guys!
The main problem with the audio I had was that it was hard to hear him even with all maxed out.
And the camera was shaky, even for hand held it could be better...
But the nice topic and great masks more than compensated
My comments will not be about sound at all, even though that is highly important.
The main thing about interviews (which is basically a documentary) is that people will enjoy it more if you have a lot more B-roll about what he is talking about the majority of the time. I know I don't enjoy watching a Talking Head for a minute or two without it cutting away, so in the future, (or even now, you could do this) write down things that he is talking about and include things like that to be placed in.
After frankenstein, it takes about 1 minute (a little longer) before you add more footage. And I didn't understand the footage that was at that point.
You'll continue to get better as you practice. Keep doing interviews. Will be nice to see your progress.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote