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watch A variation on a theme: Plato's Allegory of the Cave

That was really funny. Especially the scene where he trys to grab her cleavge!

The make up and costume of the two cavemen was very convincing, and the shadow figure of the cat came through very well.

Enjoyed the flasher aswell. Here in the UK we get quite a lot of flashers running around in the local parks for real which i always find really funny when i hear about it on the local news.

Enjoyed watching your film.
 
That was awesome!! Really funny, and I loved the premise. A perfect example of a great short. Definitely put that in festivals after, if you can. I too, loved the flasher, and the boob grab. But really, I just love the way it was done. Great job. Classic.
 
Dude, Plato is the man and his "Allegory of the Cave" is pure genius.

Well done short. Great interpretation! :D
 
Thanks for the kind words guys. Plato also has an "Allegory of the Sun" where he gets into gods and religion, I think I'll do a follow up with that one.
 
Thanks knightly and LOC.

If I promise not to hate you, would anyone like to tell me where I need to improve? I know it's not an easy thing but if you have an interest in helping a filmmaker improve his craft I'd appreciate it.
 
During the flasher scene, the screen direction changes (flasher jumps from right of frame in one angle to left in the reverse, then back). This means you "crossed the line" when shooting the second angle. Draw an imaginary line between the two primary subjects interacting...or the primary direction of action, then keep all your camera setups on one side of the line. To cheat a fix in post, flip the footage to place the characters on the right side of the frame...this breaks if you have memorable scenery behind or if you have more than two subjects in the frame.

The images all seemed a bit flat lighting wise. Although it doesn't seem to be over exposed. You could imply the sunlight more strongly by dropping the mids a bit to strengthen the shadows and coloring the over all image a bit warmer. The whites were a bit too white for me.

Edit timings were nice and tight...doesn't seem to be any extra footage hanging out there for me to be annoyed with. Sound is nice and clean, echo may have been a bit heavy for the cave on the voices. Perhaps the "OOOH!" in the beginning could have been that heavy on the echo and then dial it down a smidge to let the voices stay more "present" for the rest of the piece. Acting was a bit silly, but this piece kind of called for that, so I don't know that it's completely out of place. I like the dynamic between the two cave guys.
 
Thanks knightly, exactly what I need to hear.

Warmer is good, I can see that too now that you mention it. When you say 'drop the mids' you mean the mid tones in the video that I would adjust by lowering the Gamma?

And please excuse my newness but whites being too white? I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.

Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
 
I'm not sure what you're using to edit...there should be a way to adjust the separate darks, mids and highlights. I like to get the Image to look a little less videoy by hiding the lack of dynamic range. The trick tends to be in the mids which you can get to using the curves or the color corrector or whatever comes with the editing package you're using.

For the whites, just throwing the white balance toward the warm will change the highlights (and mids) to look warmer. If you play around with the color tools a bit in whatever you are using, you should be able to find a good look.

I did these in preview ... it's got rudimentary color controls, but it'll give the idea:

mixer.JPG
crewcalls_concept.jpg
 
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I'm using Vegas 6 and it has both color correctors and curves. Do you mind if I e-mail you screen shots? This is one trick I don't want to miss out on.
 
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