Antman's Short Film Contest #20 - Open Genre (3 required elements)

[Timbit]

Quite the thread here... First about the contest, then about an editing problem (or rather, getting it to run!), and now we're onto firearms.

[Shaunp007]

Switzerland totally mobilized for WWII in a grand total of 3 days. Really interesting reading about the swiss and their fortifications and tunnels in WWII.

[Shaunp007]

I am fixing my last film and trying to have fun with it. I wanted to have some smoke in that picture of the empty highway. I worked for about an hour tonight just trying some things out. Please pick smoke or no smoke. Please give your first thought about the smoke. During live action it will be billowing ever slighty upward.

[Vishus]

Hard to say without seeing it in motion, but in the still, it looks better with the smoke!

[Shaunp007]

with the smoke!

Thanks. I'm still gonna play around with it. To me there is something still not right with it.

[Playing]

Smoke looks great. I know how difficult this is as I did it with a dust cloud.

[Shaunp007]

Thanks for the help. I am correcting the film and addressing everyone's suggestions. Its great having a community where talented people give good help. I have like 8 or 9 issues I'm correcting and should be done by Sunday or so. I will release the "corrected" version in the footage section. This smoke was not asked for, but it is something I wanted in there since I filmed it but ran out of time before the submission deadline. I like how the road is framed and takes your eye directly to the smoke. There are a few other frames where I tried to use lines, framing or lighting to direct eyes to the subject.

The smoke is from a still frame of an oil fire from the first gulf war. At first it was really dark and black and would not match this scene at all. In after effects I used the "tint" command to lighten it and then cut it out and then feathered it. Animating it will be the easy part...just some use of "liquify" to twist and bloat it just a tad.

[Playing]

Looking forward to seeing that.

[Shaunp007]

The revised version of my film is up and running on Vimeo. I will be placing a link to it in the Footage Section. Here is the short list of items that I fixed.

1. Annoucer Voice stumble
2. Jump cut in the car at the end
3. Why is the character going out to the woods anyway? Now it is explained
4. Character at the end did'nt look like zombie, now he sorta looks different
5. Removed large blood pool that looked fake anyway during shooting scene.
6. Removed blurry shot of me when the radio announcer first comes on, reshot the scene.
7. Mic handling noise in the very beginning
8. Other various mic handling noises...
9. Smoke in the distance special effect in the empty highway scene.

Well thats it. Go the footage section and watch it if you want.
Thanks for all your help

Shaun Pontsler

[Shaunp007]

I should have made mention of the title of the thread where the updated movie can be found..."Alone Special Edition" ..its not really special, I just didn't know what else to call it. I'm not very good with titles.