[JoeLopezIII]

Vimeo

Password: Parkour

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Last edited by JoeLopezIII; 12-07-2010 at 12:50 PM.

[wshi]

Amazing job man! Just curious, which scenes did you use the 35 in?

[JoeLopezIII]

Thank you!

The scene where it is snowing and the two characters (John and Zach) are on the playground was all shot with 35mm.

[jolepp]

Great job with that, occasional lip sync misses, but this is probably related wathing it over the Internet or could simply be the sound output buffer on the laptop.

[johnmflores]

That's pretty fantastic. The production values are great - kudos to the K-x and the videographer. But more importantly, the stories and the flow are compelling. Great decision to start and end with the grandma story and the personal/self-esteem aspects of parcours

Great job.

[SebastianP]

great job!
I appreciate those who have in their video productions some story. If the story, video angles, music, video cut is good thet i will apreciate even more.

Congratulations!

[dragonfly]

I watched the video and I enjoyed it. There were a variety of different panning/zoom shots that worked well.

[JoeLopezIII]

Thanks for all the compliments fellow Pentaxians! The lip syncing seems to be a problem over the internet as when i view the original file everything seems to be fine.

To view this documentary you need the password: Parkour

[tuco]

Good video, nice angles and a pleasure to watch. Was it intentional on the indoor narrative shots of John to have the color balance off that much? You can correct that in a video editor as well as apply a steady cam filter to some of the handheld shots.

[FullertonImages]

I think overall, this a a nice effort, and had a lot of good stuff going on. But I think there are some things that could use some improvement or fine tuning. I think the biggest thing that I didn't like about this video is that it's just very slow moving and there are a lot of unnecessary shots, and dead spots. The beginning is very long, and it could an intentional effort for me to stick with it and not just navigate away. It felt to me like this video was 50% random shot of nothing really going on with some kind of artistic pan or zoom or focus change, 20% people standing around not really doing anything, 10% stretching/warming up, 10% parkour, and 10% talking. I think the video could easily be tighten up, and made into a sub 5 minute cut, without losing anything important. I understand wanting to tell a story, and wanting to be artistic and all that, but thee were a lot of shot that neither advanced the story nor were parkour.

The other big thing that I thought detracted from the overall experience, is that the lighting on the main kid's face during the interview segments was really harsh. It looked like it was just overhead house lighting, and was definitely casting some nasty hot spots and raccoon eyes. I think by working a litle more to improve the lighting design for such a crucial part of the video, you could have drastically improved the overall feel and production value.

Lastly, there was a whole bunch of focus racking, off target focus tracking and out of focus people in scene. Idon't know if that was on purpose or not. To a degree that sort of thing can be nice looking, and really give a video that home video kind of down-to-earth feel to it, but I felt too often the focus was just all over the place, or whatever I felt like should be in focus, wasn't.

All in all, good effort. It's sure a whole new world getting into video from photo stuff, or learning how to work with the intricacies of an HDSLR if you're coming from the video world. So no matter which side you come from, there's a big learning curve. I'm somewhere on it myself, and spend more time frustrated than not.

Cheers,
Ben

[NecroticSoldier]

I'm no expert... but it made me want to parkour. I didn't cry or anything... but I felt something there ;(. I really liked the video, but I think my attention span is sorta low, so it seemed a bit long to me. I hate manual focusing on the K-X video. You did a pretty good job on that though! Did you practice a lot on it? I never knew the K-X could make a nice Documentary like that. There is no external mic input, so how did you record the sound? It didn't sound mono to me.

[crewl1]

Wonderful, both technically and creatively.
Would love to hear what lenses you used for the various scenes and locations.

[er1kksen]

Hey Joe, as a fellow Fredonian, any chance I could meet up with you sometime to get some pointers on shooting video with the K-x? I'm living up in East Aurora at the moment but I should be in town later this week.

I'm particularly curious how you k-x video shooters are dealing with the battery drain. Even with lithiums it seems I have trouble shooting much footage.

Also; where the heck is that glorious wooden playground located? I was just reminiscing the other day about the ones I remember all around the area when I was a kid, and grumbling about the fact that all the ones I know have been replaced by metal-and-plastic day-glo monstrosities. Childhood will never be the same.

[chromo]

I would say that, just in a couple of places, the continuity suffered slightly when jumping from one scene to the next where there is a large difference in lighting/exposure.

Other than that, Fantastic job. Great creativity in keeping the interest flowing.

Well done. Wish I had the same ability.

[JoeLopezIII]

I have just looked back at all the replies to this video and am utterly astounded.

I cannot tell you enough how appreciative I am of the Pentax community. By far your support, compliments, and critiques have proven to be very beneficial. Every comment has impacted me in a positive way when looking back at this short experimental documentary.

Lenses used in film:

primarily 35mm f2.4
kit lens 18-55 f3.5

sparingly used:
50mm 1.4 pentax smc
135 f2.8 vivitar close-focusing macro 1:2 lens


Audio Recording (in camera, except for coffee shop interview):

External Tascam DR-07 Digital Audio Recorder attached with a cold shoe mount to the top of the camera.


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After reading over your comments I am pleased to inform you all that during my last semester as an Undergraduate in Communication I will be working on a much more extensive documentary with the same subject matter. All your comments have been very inspiring for me and I will do my best to produce a great film. I will especially pay more attention to my story structure and production value next time around.