Quick Vid BMW E36

Quick video I shot and edited in about 30 min with my T2i and 50 f1.8. Obviously there is alot of things I could do to make it better, but I was too excited/anxious to get a final product.

Take a look:


http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=yyuKtU5mDXg

Back to the drawing board.....

I didn't find it interesting at all.

If I didn't see the emblem, I would have never known it was a BMW.

Didn't care for the tid bits of clips.

Looks clean man

...why all of the closeups? Why not show more of the car?

Sorry, didn't interest me that much .

Was this just a test or practice editing? There didn't really seem to be a point to any of it other than just some footage pieced together.

Thanks for the input guys. As said, this was thrown together in about 30 min total, there was no point, it was just footage put together as a quick little video. If I were to do it again, I would do some shots of the full car, and overall more interesting footage. But yea, it was just practice shooting and editing.

Was there something wrong with the camera when you did that...?

NG8JGFX wrote in post #12497511
Was there something wrong with the camera when you did that...?

why do you say that?

I liked the way you cut it. The engine roar at the end was anti climatic imo though. Maybe a closeup of a wheel peeling out as you take off right after the engine roar or something like that.. Or even just the mph needle spinking then fade to black and all you hear is tires screeching, I don't know.. Maybe some background music at some point also..But for a quick little "test" video you put it together pretty well.

What software did you use to edit?

Sony Vegas

If you've ever seen those early student films, where they show the character opening a door, closing the door, walking down a hallway, opening a door, closing a door, walking into a room, etc. etc. -- it's not good because there's no drama, it's monotonous. Your shots of keying in and turning on the car are similar -- there's no drama to the shots. There's no story being told. It's just some guy opening and turning on a car, woo.

Part of the reason it's so flat is the acting -- the guy opening the door looks nervous and stiff. Part of the reason is that the cuts are too long. You can stop the clip of the keying in when he puts the key in the door -- we know what's going to happen after that, no need to show it. Part of the reason is because the shots have no drama in them, either natural (the car is a neutral grey so not a lot of contrast going on for visual drama) or camera-induced (panning, craning, focus shift, etc -- anything where the camera forces the viewer to look elsewhere which creates drama). For example, the little tiny clip where you pan around to the front of the car, has some motion and some interest to it.

Also, run your exhaust sounds through a compressor or gently through a limiter to get some more oomph out of it. The compressor will make it sound "larger than life" which is what you want.


Because of the content of the tree shot and the water-drops-on-the-car shot, the shakiness of handholding brings out some unappealing artifacts (mostly from rolling shutter) -- in any case, those two shots could really benefit from a tripod. A handheld shot typically looks best when the subject and/or camera are moving which in part helps mask the shakiness. For an unmoving subject and camera, though, stick to the sticks.

hope that wasn't too harsh, just trying to be more descriptive than "it's not interesting"

Nice write up Chippy with some good advice.

Naw, not too harsh at all, thanks for the tips guys