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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Virgin Media Shorts

15:43 / 26.06.09

Virgin Media Shorts is a short film competition based in the UK. I have a film in it which you can vote for... (Called Desperately Seeking Dinosaurs) let me know what you think. There are also some other rather interesting other shorts in here and a whole lot of crap- just wade through the mire and you'll find some good stuff..

I personally like Rewind, Mixtape, The Big Idea (although the pay off is no where near as good as the movie deserves) and Bitch is also quite good.

Has anyone else entered? Any other thoughts on the competition?

I realize i haven't posted on Barbelith for a little while and this may go against the posting etiquette - but I have been a regular poster here in the past and some Barbelove could help me out. If mods want to delete or move this post then go ahead...

13:24 / 27.06.09

Copey - I watched a bit, until the little man demanded attention - really nice framing, technical composition and editing and kind of a quirky feel to the whole thing which worked well - I'll finish watching it soon and write more. I liked the feel of what I saw though, well done!

I've never entered the Virgin thing, but did do the 48 hour film challenge a few Halloweens ago (me and a friend using a small consumer cam, badly acted, no real professionalism to it, just a giggle thing - found on You-tube under Slaughterhouse I think - be warned, we acted in it and bad accent voice over and hamminess are everywhere!) we picked a name and theme out of two hats, then had 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and present the final piece. Great fun, and some of the entrants were of an incredible standard.

13:29 / 27.06.09

Just finished watching it - really nice. Again well done.

What was the music playing in it?

11:04 / 28.06.09

Thanks Benny, the music is the Sian Alice Group and the track is called White. Never done 48hr movie challenge- it sounds brutal! Some friends of mine won virgin last year with a fantastic short called the black hole- which did really well and inspired me to enter.

I've shot a lot of music videos and a couple of coomercials but this is my first 'film' (other than a couple of dodgy numbers at uni safely locked in the vault). The Competition is pretty fierce. I think we're doing well, we seem to be hovering around top ten highest rated but it still early days with a month of voting to go and some bloody good competition . So every vote counts. I'm going to and find this slaughterhouse movie it sounds great!

14:58 / 28.06.09

No problem - it shows that you have some experience, the edit and flow is very smooth, nothing jars and very little is wasted. I like that it's as short as it is. What's the tech spec on it (what did you shoot on etc)?

Nostalgia made me look up the slaughterhouse, but I couldn't see it on you tube, maybe it's gone? No loss though, it was a fun exercise, but the other person i did it with was camera shy, so i had to do most of the infront of camera stuff - urgh! Luckily the theme we were assigned was doco style.

22:59 / 28.06.09

I was about to ask for a link to your film cos i couldn't find it- but that explains it if its no longer up.

We shot on Sony EX1 going straight to hard drive at 1080 50p- its a pretty nifty camera and has a decent enough lens, we used the built in zoom rather than attaching 35mm primes because we had virtually no budget. If you stay on a long lens you get a really nice depth of field out of it. Once i'd cut it we managed to blag a freebee few hours with a decent colorist to grade it. In fact we blagged virtually everything, freebee camera, lights, crew, cast- I cut it myself (i'm an editor most of the time)- mostly its made me fall back in love with film making and made me realise what you can achieve with not much more than a camera.

We had no electricians and used a lot of available light on the day (we only had 2 lights!) the end scene in front of the shop uses no additional lights- we just cheated the actors close to the shop front and let the shop lights do the rest- its a look i really like, kind of lost in translation.

The film is 2'20 - the max length for the competition- pretty limiting but it keeps everything punchy.

Last years winners made this movie The Black Hole which is obviously bloody brilliant and sets a pretty high bench mark...