Wow, great work!!!! What camera did you use on this?

Thanks guys!

I used the Sony DSR-250, but for the scenes in the car I used an XL1s...only for its size.

Jeremiah

That was REALLY powerful. I'm sure you see a few things that you would like to change, but it looked flawless to me. Even the wmv quality was good and it streamed without a gitter.

I liked the edit when the shot glass goes up for the first time and you cut to the beer swig, then the slap cuts to the shot glass slam. Next shot, another nice transition to the boss scene.

Story unfolds really nice, all the info we need is provided in just the right bits... not too much, not too little.

Night driving scenes were sweet.

Liked the time shifting between the night driving and the outdoor preaching. Came together great when Charlie walks out from behind the tree. We knew why Charlie was at the tree but it was a nice final scene to show the rope.

Great acting, good choice/use of music. Great timing. Good story - heavy subject but presentation was not heavy handed.

I got a chill up my spine a couple of times and will deny that I may have had a tear in my eye if anyone asks.

I hope you have the confidence to post another of your videos. Your work is very inspiring.

Very Powerfull Message! Well done!

WOW! I hope you are entering this into a short film contest. It's pro quality. By the way, I didn't see a credit for the scoring of the music so I'm assuming you did that too. Very well done. Really brought out the emotion for me. Thanks for sharing.
Randy

Wow! Thanks for the kind reviews! I'm so glad you enjoyed the video. One of my worries was that the story wasn't clear enough, but I'm glad you guys got the message. It really is a powerful story...even more so since it's true.

I would like to enter the film into some festivals..however..the music is not my original work..but music pulled from various soundtracks...all the music is listed at the end of the credits.

Thanks again,
Jeremiah

Great job Jeremiah.
I don't think you could get much more "obvious" without trashing the feel of your work. The story was completely clear and, as mentioned, unraveled comfortably and evenly. There's a few things *I* might have done differently, but there is very little work out there that folk couldn't say that of. I hope you find a way to enter this into festivals.
I've started a new thread asking for options when we come across stumbling blocks like copyrighted material. I hope we get some answers that will help us all.
Good show!

Fantastic job. I certainly echo many comments on story, shooting, lighting etc.

Duncan

I am officially blown away. Powerful subject matter and, while predictable, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Excellent acting, nice setups.

You should mask out the reflected highlights on the side of the car when he leaves the bar. Very distracting.

Would love to see this but for some reason I get gibberish when I load the link into firefox - just a bunch of text and stuff...

Any ideas?

Firefox does that with my .wmv's also. I don't have Windows Media Player defined to wmv in firefox. Usually I right click the wmv link and save as.

Try right clicking here

One can also open up Media Player first, Ctrl-U to fetch a URL, and paste the link there.

Hard to imagine you'd only be "slightly confident" enough to show us your film - it's beautifully shot, acted, amazing lighting quality - and the story had me intriqued from beginning to end.
Agree 100 % that it should be entered in film fests! Congrats on a fine piece of work.

Thanks again for the compliments. You have no idea how you guys have boosted my confidence in what I love to do. I attend a big church that puts on large dramas every Christmas and Easter. I had them show my video 30 minutes before each show. I was blown away by the response. Standing ovations, many nice comments, and people asking for copies of the video...too bad I had to turn them down. God has really blessed this video and it's amazing what He's doing with it.

On another note. Have any of you guys entered into a fest before? Is there a way I can enter my video as it is...without worrying about copyright issues?

jeremiah

Dude - that's great stuff! Thanks for sharing.

Jeremiah -

You might want to consider re-scoring the piece - There are a couple of threads on this board about royalty free music (even one that grew out of this message thread) that has some very good suggestions and might be of use to you.

I think the work is outstanding and deserves to be seen and distributed - I'm sure you could find good royalty free music to allow for that.

Just MHO.

Bruce

Definitely check out the site from AcidPlanet that Spot recommended in the other thread related to this one. Some cool stuff there.

Wow!,
You did a better job than a lot of independent film makers I know. I had to download it for it to play smoothly, but the quality was one of the best .wmv's I have seen.

John

Yeah, how did you encode the WMV? I obviously can tell what bitrate it is, but what tool did you use for the encoding?

Lots of threads about getting music clearance. Bottom line: there is no way for you to economically get it done, especially since you have so many different clips. If you only had one copyright holder to contact, you could write a letter or make a call, but you've got quite a few. The biggest problem is, once you go that route, what do you do if they say no?

BTW, was the true story on which this is based ever published, and if so, where?

Also, I've watched this more than once, and each time I have a hard time hearing what the voice of God is saying. Maybe that's the point, or maybe that is a comment on my sporadic church attendance ...

I just encoded the avi file using a demo version of vegas 6 (because I still lack the $250 necessary to upgrade). Used the windows media 9 version i think...kept at original size...23.97 fps...90% quality...and i think thats all the settings that I set.

I know...I did use a lot of different music...and on average about 30 seconds from each song..not even the whole songs. This whole music thing is sooo frustrating.

Yes, the true story was published in a book titled "Mega Shift" by James Rutz. Mega Shift It's a book with a compilation of awesome, powerful, and inspiring stories of the incredible things that God is doing around the world. Things that normally don't hit the news stands. Some people read the book and think.."that's crazy"...but they are true..and the majority of the stories are documented where they can be. The story I used can be found on the bottom of page 4-5. If you go to that link you can actually read it on the "look inside option".

Ah yes, the voice of God...which happens to be my voice :o) ...yeah...I've never been happy with the level of God's voice (in the movie that is)...I've messed with it several times to no satisfaction...however..i think I'm going to boost it a little more. Is the voice understandable at all?

Thank you for your interest...I'm having so much fun with this!
Jeremiah

Interesting... when the "voice" said, "Preach" I couldn't quite make it out and it was only when the man started preaching I realized what had been said. I thought this was intentional! IMHO you should leave that just the way it is.

And BTW I agree with all others - I see nothing about this that says "amateur" to me... it puts mine to shame :) Well done!

Yeah...the whole voice thing...i wanted it to be just on the threshold of hearing...where you heard it...but not sure that you heard it. So you have to be really quite in order to hear and understand...kinda like how it is when God speaks to my life. You have to make yourself listen so you can hear.

However...do to the poor quality of my speakers...and the differences between all the other speakers around the world...it's hard for me to get it just right....audio has never been my specialty

Jeremiah