Finished Short Film: Stand

[kemenyi]

Wow...i love the look and feel of the piece

[harmonic01]

That was pretty cool. :D Really a pleasure to watch. :D

[Purc]

Wtf again a movie without heavy gun fights and car chases? haha

No just kiddin. Its a really beautiful and original movie. Like someone saif above me, a pleasure to watch. You did a good job !!

ow btw.. didnt saw any "bugs". Well and even if i saw them i dont border. The overall movie was great!

[sarmiento]

beautiful. . . really beautiful :)

[Jaycee77]

Great job there, love the grass sequence towards the end,

[Joscci]

Steve... that was an excellent short... very beautifully executed. So, congratulations not only for starting it... but most importantly, for getting it finished! :thumbsup:

The things that cought my 'eagle eye' lol:


There seemed to be a strange white line surrounding the sillhouette of the red faucet during the close-ups... probably a compositing issue... but no biggie.
When the water was flowing out of the water pump, you 'might've' forgotten to account for the wind's effect upon it. Considering how hard it was blowing, the water should have been shifting towards the wind direction as it flowed out of the water pump.
The shot where the water is shown quickly drying into the ground would have benefited from fast time-lapse cues, such as the clouds changing (like you did towards the beginning of the short -- excellent effect, by the way), and the very least the shadow of the tower changing position as the water dries out.
In either case... that's 'nit-picking'. It's amazing how much you said with such a simplistic subject, and of course... the music drives the whole thing really well.

Awesome work, Steve. :thumbsup:

Cheers.

P.S. Looking forward to the Quicktime or AVI format, so I (and everyone else) can save it. :)

[monovich]

thanks for the compliments guys!

I'm going to fix that white line compositing issue for sure when I get back. A lot of people have pointed it out. :p
I'll also have a time-lapse on the water drying up. people have mentioned that a lot also.
not sure if I can fix the water not reacting to the wind, but you are right about that...

Hope to have the link posted back soon!

[TomR85]

Really nice! Loved the growing grass. I have seen many shorts that had a great opportunity to be something but have been killed by bad/lack of music and cinematic, but you have a great combination.

[TimNikias]

I have to second Joscci's motion about an AVI or MOV. The video stutters on my machine, and it really shouldn't with the connection speed (240kbps down) and processing power I've got (Dual Core System with 2GB RAM). That aside, I like to pause on single frames or rewind certain scenes (after a first and complete look) just to look at the details, it might be my end, but I don't have controls for that in flash/firefox.
And bandwidth-wise I just see that people willing to watch it again, or show it to friends, will have to download/stream it several times, instead of once.

But the movie looks great, has a nice quality-feel to it and from what I could hear Ben Beiny did a great job as well. I hope there'll be an AVI soon, I like to collect good shorts. :)

Regards,
Tim

[ivanisavich]

Hey man,

Seems like a good little film, although it was barely watchable because of the current encoder (flash)....it stuttered the whole way through for me and watching through to the end was quite painful.

I definitely recommend getting an avi or mov online if you want people to watch this. I can guarantee your average layman will turn it off after the first 10 seconds of stuttering.

[kingmango]

Really good film. The grass sequence is exceptional.

only niggle is no play controls and every time I watch it it stutters for the first minute or two while it's loading.
Firefox and a 700/k avg down.

ok one more niggle... the wood could be more weathered after the storm. when the water is drynig up you have a close up of a xbrace and the angles are super sharp perfect points.

[zome]

a-ha, i can't see it!

[Chris Bacon]

that was great, loved the ending, the music work SOOO well.....magical.....loved it



chris

[monovich]

If you guys are having trouble with the FLV, some people are getting it to work nicer by grabbing it out of their cache and playing it with an FLV viewer. I will try to get a QT up asap, though. I don't want to require workarounds for a good viewing experience. I put this FLV up before I left on vacation, so I can't get to the original QT to re-compress. I have a version with fields with me that I may just put up as a QT in the mean time...

sorry about the trouble.

[monovich]

ok. QT is uploading now. see first post for the link.

[ivanisavich]

Thanks for posting the QT...finally got to see it without the choppiness problem and I gotta say, it was great! Wonderful music choices and some great visuals. There were some editing/compositional things I personally would have done differently, but overall it was a wonderful piece and I hope you plan on doing festival rounds.

To make a technical critique though, I noticed a thin white outline around the windmill's geometry in some of the storm shots. To get rid of that (assuming the outline appeared after you compositied the geometry of the windmill on top of the storm atmospherics in your compositing app), all you have to do is remember to interpret your footage with a pre-multiplied alpha, and set the multipy color as the color of the background you rendered the windmill layer onto (usually black, although your outlines were white so I'm assuming you rendered them originally on a lighter background). If you forget to use a pre-multiplied alpha, that's when those outlines will appear. Hope that helps! :D

[Varinder]

Excellent short film, i really enjoyed it. I usually see a lot of short films on cgtalk and this one is probably one of my favorite ones. Great job monovich! I really liked your watching your sky shots.

[monovich]

ivanisavich - thanks for that tip. A lot of people have mentioned those lines. It's definitely on the top of the list of the things to fix next week. The line is actually coming from my depth matte. I'm using the depth matte as a quickie fog layer on the top of the geometry and where it meets the actual geometry it doesn't quite overlap enough, so I'm getting that white line. If I could just expand the depth edges about 1 or 2 pixels I could get rid of it, but I hadn't found a quick trick to fix that and I moved on because of time. It'll get fixed along with some other things before it goes to any festivals and such.

That said, critiques are still welcome. I won't be changing much editorialy, but I'm still open to tweaking things herea and there before I call it 100% done.

Varinder - Thanks for the post. I'm glad you liked it!

[skycocoon]

If you guys are having trouble with the FLV, some people are getting it to work nicer by grabbing it out of their cache and playing it with an FLV viewer. I will try to get a QT up asap, though. I don't want to require workarounds for a good viewing experience. I put this FLV up before I left on vacation, so I can't get to the original QT to re-compress. I have a version with fields with me that I may just put up as a QT in the mean time...

sorry about the trouble. :buttrock:

[ivanisavich]

Hey man,

Well if that's your problem that's just as easy to fix (in theory). Assuming you're using After Effects, just throw a simple Matte Choker on that layer and either do a negative or positive matte choke to expand or contract your alpha :D

Lemme know if that helps

[ivanisavich]

And/or, if that doesn't work....use your geometry layer as a track matte for the depth fog layer to prevent the overlapping edges from showing :D

[JonStoll]

Dang!

Well done, well done. I am constantly looking for little stories that "take the time." You have taken the time to make this animation actually feel like an experience. Instead of some thing that I watched that just looked interesting. I think that is a hard thign to accomplish, especially since everythign these days is so fast paced which in my opinion kills alot of stories. Well done I really think the music and the animation felt good when the grass was growing. Good job

[monovich]

And/or, if that doesn't work....use your geometry layer as a track matte for the depth fog layer to prevent the overlapping edges from showing :D

yes this one could work. I have the depth layer, which is a greyscale layer (obviously). Then I have a brown solid layer luma tracking the depth layer to create the brownish fog. that layer is laid on top of the geometry to make everything screen back like fog. Doing a negative choke on it could work, but because it's a luma track of a greyscale layer I'm not sure how it'll choke. The depth layer has lots of soft gradients. Either way I'll try it and when I fix it I'll let you know how it goes. thanks for the tips!

[monovich]

Dang!

Well done, well done. I am constantly looking for little stories that "take the time." You have taken the time to make this animation actually feel like an experience.

Thanks Jon. There were a lot of times when I fought with wether or not to cut shots shorter and move things along, but I kept most longer, even to the point of being a bit uncomfortable. I thought about Lawrence Of Arabia where they just held shots for an eternity - in the end it gave scale to movie. Maybe it's an indulgent director thing to do, but when I hear from people that they like that it takes time, it helps let me know that the decision was okay after all. :)

[manx]

Wow, that was really beatiful! Everything is so well put together. I love that sky.

[Saihtam]

it's a great short movie! really nice, and good Job!

[SMWilly]

YES! The grass sequence is incredible!

[SteveH]

Is your bandwidth gone for good? I'd love to see your movie - sounds great.

[benmerrick]

Hey,

I have unlimited bandwidth so if you want to upload it to my site thats fine

[maxon]

I would like to see the movie as well. :) Please upload... :D

[monovich]

finally revised, found a mirror, and reuploaded. hopefully this one will last. Much thanks to Lamont!

and yes, this time it's Quicktime so you can download it if you like.

http://digitalweaponx.net/monovich/FINAL_EDIT_V5_web.mov

[JmTm00]

I realy enjoyed the "build" sequence at the beginning :thumbsup: U did that in LW :eek: man, this soft is like black magic to me! Overall fx is positive imo. The only thing i dont understatd its storyline, but im a bit tired so forgive me ;) Greets

[monovich]

wow. I hate to do this again, but gotta take the film down. I'm going to submit it to different places and so far the word is that it's better if it isn't totally spread around online. It's a learning process this whole thing is!

So, bon boyage for now, but it'll be back.

thanks everyone.

-sf

[lehmi]

what festivals are you sending it to?

do you really need to be it offline then?
always wondered why people who submit their stuff to festivals are not showing it online... any reasons?

just curious...
anyway, good luck with the festivals!

[Varinder]

I'm sure monovich would love to keep his film online. But some film festivals have rules about not showing their films online and only to be seen at their film festivals. If you think about it, you'd lose a lot of the audience because they'd simply watch it online instead of going to the film festival and watching it on the big screen. And i'm sure as filmmakers you'd want people to watch your movies on the big screen and not on the computer.

[monovich]

Back from the dead. I had to take it down for Stash, because they wanted to premiere it. Didn't submit it to festivals. I'd missed most deadlines for '06 and didn't want to wait till '07. I didn't make it for festivals anyway, so no big deal.

link to a nice sized QT:

http://www.monovich.com/FINAL_EDIT_V5_web.mov

[SuperSpank]

Really, Really Nice

[isamuraiqat]

seriously amazing! i just love the idea so much and how you invested your capabilities in JUST the right way! cheer m8!

[anandbhutkat]

hai really good work, & good music tooo....its really great
which software u used for grass sprading

[amitb]

hey, i hav a doubt, y is that fast wind not effectin the water flowing out of tap......... is their is any particular reason for that......

[Winner]

white lines ? compositing errors ? time lapse water drying what ?

come on guys... this was a fantastic short. I didnt even notice any of that stuff because the setting and execution was so captivating.

I loved the sequence as the windtower constructs, with the camera rotating around as the day draws to evening...

i loved it... loved it. and the final shot was beautiful.

monovich... dont stop doing this mate, you have a genuine gift for it.

edit:

its an utter disgrace this thread doesnt have front page... and 4 stars ??? come on people this is quality stuff here...

[ffourier]

Hi,

there is some really interesting things but others a little worse.
This is poetic, nice idea, water effect is really impressive, and i'm very fond of your grass effect (even if it is paint effect :) ).

But I really don't like the clouds, I thinks they does not fit with the rest of the scene. Some render are really good (for exemple the closer shoots) but other are a little bit strange...

But overall it is really good work.

How did you proceed for the water ?

Edit : agree for the music :)

[monovich]

Thanks for the nice comments, guys.

hai really good work, & good music tooo....its really great
which software u used for grass sprading

I used Sasquatch by Worley to do the grass spreading.

amitb - I forgot to make the water from the faucet affected by the wind. :p

destroyfred - The clouds were really hard to get right because I didn't have time to tweak things a lot. I was on a tight deadline.
I did the water with simple geometry and displacements controlled by weightmaps in some situations. For instance, when the water was spreading, I made just the edge of the circumference diplacee with simple fractal noise. It worked better than I thought.

[Buhby]

This has to be one of the best animations I have ever seen!!! Definitely wonderful, If I could pay for this, I would!!!

[andyburm]

fantastic piece Stephen, love the mood - especially the grass growing sequence. :)

[boeseRaupe]

Geat! I like the whole film, especially the construction of the wind wheel. Fantastic work!

[Arenyth]

Hey there, this is a fantastic piece!

I have a quick question for you, if you don't mind.
I'm currently storyboarding a piece that takes place in the sky, with a LOT of clouds. I've been trying to find ways around using actual particles/fluid effects/etc because I don't know much about them, but I'm in love with the story so I'm willing to try. My question is how hard was it for you to animate the clouds coming in? Did you do that all yourself, and on your own machine? Are you an effects specialist or was this your first time with effects like this? I have a render farm at my disposal, but I'm worried about render times. Do you mind if I ask your specs on the computer and your render times? Clouds just confuse the crap out of me, and you're the first person I've seen to actually use them as a main part of their piece. I'm rambling I know. Thank you for anything you can tell me, or advice on whether or not it's feasible. Thanks!

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