Opening scene from THE LOST SHACK

http://balder.prohosting.com/~raoul23/lost_shack_intro.avi

The rest of the movie is still in post-production, and I don't expect to be done before March.

"daddy likes." -ryan stiles.

i like th blood wash/fade at the end. nice opening too...can you give us any more info about it?

thumbs up.

The red wash/fade was easily created in Premiere. 3 versions of the same clip were put on top of each other.
1) in the Video1A track for the unmodified view
2) in Video2 for the red letters
3) in Video3 for the red background
The track in Video2 uses an image matte transparency (the title in white letters over black). Initially it makes no difference because the clips are the same. But a COLOR REPLACE filter is used to turn the colors to red, starting at 0% all the way to 100%, using keyframes. This makes the title appear. The next step is to apply the COLOR REPLACE filter in track 3, but only starting after the title is there, so that the background also fills with red (the inverse of the same title image matte was used as a transparency).

Hope that makes sense!

The initial titles for the actors' names was done in ILLUSION (buy it! ), by using a pre-made emitter.

For the killer point of view shots I used a Photoshop freeware filter called Dimensia to give a subtle tunnel effect (so subtle it's barely visible in the low resolution, but looks great in full rez). Lots of flashes (fade to white), zoom/pan on image, etc...

Good job, that was spooky

I liked the killer rubber thing, it was kinda funny.

The lost shack thing was well edited, but i didn't think it was that creepy if that's what you were going for.

The matrix thing was powerfully uncool, my friend. I'm no fan of the matrix, but i didn't like that preview thing at all.

SAFilms, thanks for your comments. Really, I didn't know what I was going for when I shot that scene. It was an afterthought and the only scene in the movie that I didn't plan/storyboard. The extra editing/visual effects were put there to hide the fact that I didn't have much good footage. I'm not sure if creepy is the description I would give it, but I certainly feel that the result is "moody" somehow (whatever that means).

Anyhow, yeah, I jsut thought the matrix thing was done WAAAAAY too over the top trying to be cool.

There are a lot of background sounds you don't notice while filming that just seem amplified on tape. Sound is the first thing that makes a movie look amateur. It's always better to use an external mike (the in-camera one is generally cheap quality), and it doesn't have to be a very expensive one. I've used a small shotgun-type mike, connected directly to the camera quite a lot. Make sure to test the mike with your camera before going heavily into productions (my old mic generates noise while connected to my newer D8 camcorder). And always wear earphones, as they let you hear exactly what sound the camcorder is recording.

I haven't used any separate methods of recording sound (minidisc, DAT, etc...). They do have advantages, but the main inconvenience is to have to synch all that sound to the video. Unless you only use it as a backup in the extreme cases where the on-camera sound is bad. I'll probably do that eventually, maybe for my next major project.

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"The emergency networks are taking over from here...our responsibility is finished."