A Young Man On The Move
The subject of this video short is an eleven-month-old named John. He is a busy and on-the-move young man. The short was shot with a Sony DSC-F828 still camera with a video feature.
The opening long shot shows the stage for the short and zooms-in to introduce the actor and his wheels. The second shot is an over-head close-up that backs away and arcs down and then arcs right to show perspective. The next clip is a long movement shot from the subject's eye level. The side-view left to right movement shot adds dynamics. The first in-bound shot is a low angle shot and shows the subject racing to a collision and blackout. Next, the mode of transportation changes to hands and knees and the long movement shots are repeated. The end still is not flattering but the close-up shows the subjects determination.
The Sony MPG video output was converted to DV in Visual Hub and edited in Final Cut Pro. The clips were put together with cross-fade transitions. Text was added in Final Cut Pro. Nothing was done to the sound. The finished video was re-compressed to MPG4.
Lighting was one problem that could have been adjusted with more time to do multiple takes but the subject was not amenable to second attempts. All the shots were hand-held which leads to shaky pictures. The camera auto-focus was too inconsistent and left many frames out of focus including the crucial last few close-up frames. The editing was straightforward but left me wanting to re-shoot the whole thing with a different camera.
This was great- some of the shots you got I wondered how you managed it, one time it looked like you got ran over ;0P
ReplyDeleteI understand your feeling over the lighting- I had major issues with that too- I thought that the lighting was fine it was mellow and since you had no altered sound it made it feel...like I was actually seeing it. :)It is funny that you said it left you wanting to reshoot the whole thing, I did 4 different videos :(
Too cute! look at him go! great job, he's very cute
ReplyDeleteI LOVE how the walker bumped into the camera and the screen transitioned into black for a bit. Creative. He's adorable!
ReplyDeleteHow cute John is on the video! It was great that you were able to make him looked into the camera. Good job.
ReplyDeleteExcellent job James. I can tell you spent a lot of time editing the transitions so they were timed out just right. The fade out, fade in effect is what really made it stand out for me. Although you said lighting was a problem, I thought it was fine. I felt like I was on the move with him.
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part was when he plowed into the camera and it went black at 1:00.. Nice editing job! One thing I would consider would be to make the cuts just slightly more abrupt considering how much he's running around. Where is he going? He's exploring!