Nice light touches . The caricatures were done well. The chroma-key worked well enough, in keeping with the overall technical tone. I had trouble reading the organisational chart in the horizontal pan. They're always trouble, anyway, and maybe that could be replaced by a more visual approach. Your department people are, I find, rather wooden and too wordy. Your approach was light-hearted and that has worked well, but your section heads haven't kept that going. Probably not easy to manage, but their stuff needed heavy editing before shooting and perhaps you could have given them shorter screen time (even with similar dialogue) and more camera angles to give them some animation. These are all issues that I encountered early on so I recognise them only too well. But mine was deadly serious and the worse for it!

Thanks very much for the compliment slacy.

The camera was one of two JVC DV550Us that we have here at the college (3 - 1/2" CCDs). We've had them for about 2 years now and I remain impressed with them. The only option added was a Canon 20:1 lens as the stock one is merely OK. BTW, this camera would've been great for you on your recent restaurant manager shoot. Like you, I'm not a big fan of auto anything but this camera has a feature called FAS (full auto shooting) that I've used successfully in the past. On one shoot recently, I did a walking shot from a music classroom (lots of flourescents) out the door past several makeup rooms (incandescents) and out onto a stage lit for a show. I knew I'd never be able to walk and adjust anything at the same time so I took a chance and flipped the FAS mode on. All I can say is amazing!! Colours and video level stayed consistent all the way through the shot.

The mic was the Tram TR50 lav that came with our Lectrosonic UHF wireless. They sell it as a kit with a different model # but that's the mic used. The key is proper talent mounting to prevent interference from talent clothing. Tram has a number of mounting accessories to make this easier.

I'm used to doing these shoots by myself but, because of time constraints, I bought in a free-lancer to help me out. She's a former student who's been doing a lot of freelance work lately on various video & film shoots and her experience proved extremely valuable. She was a real pleasure to work with.

I have a basic 4-light Lowel kit (2 Totas & 2 Omnis). I picked up a Photoflex Silverdome soft box a few years ago (much cheaper than a Chimera) and use it a lot now. Every shot in the video was lit with the soft box (with a 500 W. Tota) as the key. Fill & backlight were the 500 W. Omnis. I carry several dimmers with me and used them a lot on this shoot. Fill light was sometimes direct (dimmed down and usually diffused with some Opal frost) or bounced off a piece of foamcore.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.

Mike

Thanks Serena. Your comments are appreciated, especially the "been there, done that" line.

I can't take credit for the caricatures. They were done by another department member who has great artistic skills.

I had trouble reading the organisational chart...

I knew that would be a problem when I did it. The original version took about 90 sec. to do the whole move and was of excellent quality. Because I didn't want to bore viewers, I sped it up considerably with a drop in readability being a consequence. I'm sure the encode to a wmv file didn't help either.

Your department people are, I find, rather wooden...

I agree completely. My whole career has been in the educational/corporate world and I dread doing a shoot with anyone not experienced in front of the camera. The usual result is the "deer caught in the headlight" syndrome with people freezing up. I did my best to put them at ease but there are times that, no matter what you do, people don't really want to appear in front of the camera - and it shows.

BTW, this started out as a serious video. It wasn't until almost the end that I was told "no, we want it to be funny". That's when I started scrambling to come up with additional footage, etc.

Mike

"I've put both a 320x240 and a 640x480 version of it for download ("right-click - save as"). Both are about 26 MB.
Hope you like it."

silly question...but shouldn't the 320 file be half as big than the 640 file? why are the BOTH 26mb?

but shouldn't the 320 file be half as big than the 640 file?

I was just as puzzled after I was done rendering. I went back and checked to make sure I hadn't done something wrong during the encoding. Maybe someone here has an answer?

Mike

A very interesting docu film! I liked the monkeys! A small note about chromakeying, have you tried using chromablur first, with chromakey? Plus, you need more back lighting, usually above and behind the subjects, to help stop spill from the green screen.

Oh, yes, I liked your blending of the caricatures with the actual persons.