Don't Door Me

Comment

Comment by stib on May 20, 2011 at 12:35pm

You need to establish the scene a bit more. Use some parallel action - is there an shot of the guy in the car before he opens the door? Also you 'crossed the line' with the shot of the guy falling on to the road. He was falling screen left to screen right, but the next shot has him going SR to SL. The tricky thing is that the line starts out being the path he is riding, but on the door opening it changes to the line between the cyclist and the door. If you can use the next shot (the one with the driver's reaction taken from next to the car) to cover the door hit it will make more sense.

I think you need to lose about a dozen frames before the door impact. You can see the cyclist slowing down too much. In fact, If you can set up the scene with the bike approaching the car from the WS taken behind the car, and then cut to the shot from the side with the driver going for the door - before the cyclist enters frame, you might create a bit more tension, as the viewer will know what's going to happen, without seeign it. As it is the action looks a bit staged.

Some sound effects will sell the action a bit too. See if you can find / make a good impact noise, and that will help cover the lack of any real impact. Hey another thought just occured - you could cut from guy riding bike to guy in car, stay on a CU of his face as he opens the door, do the collision off screen with sound effects and only then cut to the shot of the guy hitting the road. Just a thought.

Oh, and we don't need a leader. Colour bars are for lining up analogue equipment, they're quite redundant if you're not outputting to tape. I haven't put colour bars on anything I've cut for years, including stuff for broadcast, because thankfully enough I don't have to dub it to digibeta or SP any more.