*FILM* Riverside

[Dave]

This film is something I've wanted to try for a while. Basically it's an ambient film of just sound and imagery of a small stretch of partially industrialised river.

It should hopefully be relaxing and perhaps mildly entrancing. Whether it works or fails kind of depends on the quality of the imagery. If it's good enough, then I hope the viewer is caught up in the film, waiting to see what further imagery is to come. If it's full of crap imagery, then I don't blame anyone who gives up on it.
I myself think I have finished up with something better than I thought I would achieve.

It's a vague nod to stuff like Koyanisqatsi and Baraka I guess.... but also an excercise in testing my cinematography skills (if I have any that is!).

By the way, the upload looks too bright to me on this laptop at work, so I may re-upload it at some point... oh and I've just noticed a stupid little audio glitch on the credits at the end. Even so, I thought it was ready for people to watch. Oh yeah... and the very nature of water making shots 'busy' with movement has lead to more pixelation than I would have liked. Lucky I have it in DVD quality for myself! hehe

Sit back, relax, and let the film take hold (hahaha what arty twaddle). I've just mentioned it below, but I recommend watching it with the sound barely audible (after the title bit).

LiveVideo
www.livevideo.com/video/3B325DF7CF574F92BEFA267B33CDA7FF/riverside.aspx

YouTube

[Dazza]

Hi Dave could you put it on Youtube as well as my computer seems to struggle loading it up on livevideo? I saw the first 5 seconds and liked what I saw so looking forward to seeing the rest. It just freezes up though.

[scot]

Very nice dave, some beautiful looking setups there! Good for me to wind down to as work a big pain in the ass tonight!!!

[Hyde]

Yeah that was really good. Only critisisms I would give it would be that it got a little bit repetitive with the water sounds and the music used. Maybe a diff song coming into the middle could have been cool? then again idk... it was still really good.

[Dave]

Thanks for the comments..... oh and DazzaB, I've added a YouTube version:



Hyde... I kind of agree with what you're saying about it being repetitive. I wasn't sure what to do with the sound, and did originally think that maybe the music should change slightly at each point it fades to black. The main reason I stuck with the same all the way through was that I thought it may be more hypnotic.... or failing that, it should start to become unnoticed as you watch through the film. If the music kept changing, then it may distract from the images perhaps?
As for the water sounds, well I decided that I just wanted to have the impression of water throughout, but to try and make it less blatant, I adjusted the volume with each edit so that it at least should kind of fit (volume wise) with what you are looking at.

Both the water noise and music are there to provide a colour to the sound, but I would say it is best to watch it with the sound at a barely audible level.

[Dazza]

Brilliant I really enjoyed the feel of that film ok it was a little long but the shots were fantastic, the cinamatography was absolutely spot on. The music fits perfectly, if you make a film with actors in that style and that quality it will be fantastic.

An excellent job Dave, the small things like the Swans moving in the shots are great and I love the cloud shot. Thats the kind of artistic flair that can make a film look so professional.

[Dave]

Thanks for watching it! Yes, it's probably too long isn't it! haha... but honestly, that is edited quite a bit from the 45 minutes of stuff I shot! I left out quite a few nice little shots, but I just somehow couldn't make them fit with the flow of the film... which sounds odd considering as there is no story or real chain of events to worry about.

Duration is a problem though isn't it. I mean, you can film a right load of god-awful crap, but if you shot it yourself, you can somehow sit through tonnes of the stuff.... if someone else has filmed it though, you would be bored to tears.

I filmed all of that in just over an hour and a half I think. I was just lucky that the weather kept changing so much, thus providing different looking scenes.

The area of river I used is where I used to go on my lunch breaks when I worked at BMW doing accounts. It was a little haven of tranquility to get away from the office business. It's nice having got it on film looking it's best, especially as now I no longer work at BMW.

[RydCook]

Just watched it, i really liked it. You have some wonderfully composed shots there Dave and the film is real candy for the eye. I never thought any of the shots were too long ( shots that go on for too long is one of my pet hates in films! Especially short ones!) The fades and then cuts from black worked nicely, i like how the images bluntly appeared.

his sort of film makes me think of a photograph. Really this film is just a load of moving photographs if you get me? I know what i mean. I see it as something seperate then conventional film, for of an art form.

Critisisms: I felt it odd for some reason when there was a great shot of a bridge.. and then a woman with an umbrella walked in. The rest of the film seems much more about nature and such.. i would have preffered if we saw no humans atall. Maybe i'm being fussy here! But it just felt weird. I was aware there we cars in shots too.. these didnt feel so out of place, but still.. minus these and it would have given the film a more naturalistic feel. It didnt grip me too much.. i looked forward to the next shot certainly, but i did find myself checking how long was left! which is a bad thing.

I loved the titles at the end dave, nice idea! Overall great job mate, getting such beautiful shots and editing them together very well is truely an acheivement, i look forward to more!

[Dave]

You're definitely right about the photography aspect. The way I set about it was to find shots that would make great still photographs and then film them so that you end up with a sequence of 'photos' which still capture the natural movement of the environment.

I was actually in two minds with regards to the woman and umbrella. I did really like the idea of seeing nothing but empty scenes devoid of people, but I guess the fact that I got a bit of a rainbow on film made me want to keep it in.... even though there are blummin' great rain drops landing on the lense.
That rainbow was actually a right swine. I was facing the other way when it appeared and just happened to look round and see it. When I first clocked it, it was really strong and vivid. Got the camera pointing at it and rolling, then SPLAT a massive load of drops of drizzlle on the lense. I had to quickly buff the lense, and start again, by which time the rainbow had nearly all but buggered off again!

So yes.. maybe that woman shouldn't be in there, but the film isn't just about nature though is it.... it's more a combination of nature and man-made stuff (side by side in harmony! haha)... and to some extent showing that the man made stuff can be as interesting to look at as nature if you look at it in the right way.
Bizarrely one of my favourite shots is the wall where the white and red bricks meet.

I love to talk about my own creations.... can you tell?

[fattaxi]

Dave, What settings did you use to upload it looks crisp anything on there

[Dave]

fattaxi said:

Dave, What settings did you use to upload it looks crisp anything on there

Which link are you referring to? The LiveVideo one? That site is generally better in quality than YouTube anyway, but the best thing to do is to take a look at the help pages of whichever site you intend to upload to. Despite all these sites accepting lots of formats, you will find that in their help pages they will tell you which is the best format to use for their site for optimum results.
YouTube definitely say that an .mp4 file of 320x240 is the best format for them.
Can't recall what LiveVideo recommend... I think it's .mov with a slightly bigger screen resolution.

Use SUPER!