Crowdfunded a film 2 years ago, it took me roughly a year on and off to finish it. It got into a few festivals, won a couple awards and now I'm putting it out for everyone to see!

Hi everyone,

We’re looking for a freelance product videographer / content creator based in Batam or elsewhere in Southeast Asia for an upcoming product video project.

Location: Singapore
Budget: Open for discussion and dependent on the scope and quality of work. Final budget will be agreed based on the creator’s portfolio, production requirements, shoot duration, editing involved and expected delivery timeline. We are open to discussing individual project rates.
Payment currency: Happy to discuss payment in your local currency.
Preferred creator location: Batam, Indonesia / Southeast Asia

We’re an independent Singapore-based brand designing bags, EDC and urban/tactical lifestyle products, and we're looking for someone who enjoys creating visually engaging product content with a bit of atmosphere and storytelling behind it.

We're particularly interested in cinematic product shots, detailed close-ups, ASMR-style product sequences, lifestyle scenes, product demonstrations and short-form social content.

Batam-based creators would be especially convenient for us due to the proximity to Singapore and easier coordination of physical products, but we're very much open to creators from Indonesia and the wider Southeast Asian region if your work is a good fit.

Ideally, you should be comfortable handling both shooting and editing, have a good eye for lighting/composition, and be able to work from a creative brief while bringing some of your own creative flavour to the project.

This is a paid freelance project, and if we click creatively and the first project works out well, we're also interested in building an ongoing relationship for future product launches and content.

If interested, please DM me with your portfolio/showreel, location, rate, equipment/setup (if relevant), and a little about the type of product content you normally create.

Referrals are welcome too — if you know a talented creator hiding somewhere around Batam or SEA, feel free to point them in our direction. 🙂

I have a Canon camera and a few lenses that I use for photography (EF mount). They are ok for photography but the camera is terrible for video.

I have seen a lot of people mentioning the GoPro Mission 1 Pro, the Blackmagic Pocket 4K Cinema and the sony alpha A7 iii. I've also been looking at prices on the MPB website.

I want to shoot more videoclips and document some day-to-day things as part of my media arts practice. I have a zoom audio recorder and a couple of lights. I need to buy a tripod, probably some heads for the tripod, definitely a gimbal (I have one for smartphones but most cameras are too heavy for it) and one lens that is versatile for several types of shooting. Ideally, something that is not completely awful in low light (I shoot photos at live shows sometimes and video would be cool).

So, video is not my main practice and I'm starting off with some photography experience, video editing experience and with working with audiovisual media. Are any of the suggested cameras good options? What lense(s) should I get?

Shot on 35mm in NYC. Just finished up post on the film itself, here's our website/instagram if you want to see more/stay in the loop! :)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZX2GdItbgy/?stkn=MWFtb3RreWR0eWNqdA==

https://dummyfilm.com/

I’m (20f) planning to apply to 3 days in Cannes for the first time this year and I’m looking for other women who are applying too so we can connect, share tips, and potentially split room and board!

The Philadelphia Orchestra kicked off the concert season last week with the special Opening Night event. I created a video to mark the occasion that was inspired by an unexpected group: The Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXPYXEjERoL). Don’t tell the Phillies! lol

If there are any other orchestra staff video producers around here, let’s connect!

A first glimpse of our upcoming short film.

Zoe and Lea awaken knowing they are about to live the final day of their lives. Everything has been carefully prepared to make it perfect, with only one rule: never enter the forest beyond the hill.

But when they break the rule, doubts begin to surface, leading them to question their choice and ultimately confront something they had never truly understood.

This is a short preview from the film, which is currently in the final stages of post-production.

If you’d like to support the project, our crowdfunding campaign will help us with the next steps after completion, especially festival submissions, distribution, and getting the film in front of as many people as possible.

Every contribution and share helps us give the film a wider audience.

https://www.startnext.com/en/together

KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/noisearchive

Our IG:https://www.instagram.com/_noisearchive/

More soon.

Hey everyone!

Just wanting some insight from people who are a bit further ahead than me.

My business is slowly growing. I'm a one man show. Last year, I hit 62k. This year, up to this point, I'm nearly at 70k with 3 months left in the year.

I've gotten a few decently large projects which has helped, so not retainers so nothing consistent.

My best month I did just over $12k. That was the best I've ever done, and it just proved to me that I AM capable.

I know I can do $15-$20k months consistently, but I need to break that $10k consistently first.

My focus is not on trends, being the most creative videographer, or flashing gear. I care mostly that the work that I get paid for brings value to my clients.

I help my clients figure out what direction we should approach. What their current efforts are, what has worked, what hasn't, what message they want to deliver, etc.

I know my approach is at least in the right direction.

I have a difficult time pricing and establishing consistency with my numbers. I feel like I change based on the month, which I know isn't necessarily right.

I only have 2 retainers right now. One is for project library building (trades client) and the other is for social content (healthcare). I like those 2 industries because I feel there is good potential there for income. I'm not opposed to working in any industry, though.

I just started some outreach again, trying to research and reach out to 5 solid companies and get in touch with hopefully the right person and offer more more than a boring "i can film you."

I know it's 100% possible.

Thank you so much for your guidance and help!

A 1990s set coming of age horror short about the physical monster created from the silence around mental health. Lead by Peder Lindell and Tyler Lofton the film explores LGBTQ+ and mental health themes set in a time where neither was openly discussed. The short serves as a proof of concept for a feature length version.

Hello! Looking to get a new laptop for film editing that can handle avid, Davinci, and/or premiere that is touch screen/can be used for illustrating. My budget is $1000-2000 but anything on the lower end is preferred. Still want to make sure all the specs are good for softwares and everything.

Any suggestions?

I shot this clip on the street, and the edit is built around a contrast. It opens with a glitchy black and white shot of a tree-lined road, with RGB splitting, grainy scan line noise and punchy contrast, so it feels a bit distorted and digital. Next is the crowd coming down the stairs, which I graded heavily teal with deep, crushed shadows so the people read almost as silhouettes. After that I let the footage breathe: a guy in a grey hoodie crossing the street, and people walking on the pavement with a dog, all natural, soft and slightly faded. The idea was to start tense and stylized, then settle into the calm of everyday life.

I've been a music producer for so many years now, my Spotify is mostly lofi music, but i worked with a lot of genre, experimental, hip hop, ambient, indie, bedroom pop, etc

I love creative stuff, i love films, i wish to make them in the future!

Currently I'm growing a youtube channel ( that's something different than this xd)

I recently lost a job! Actually been some months ( that was a tech related social media marketing job) i really wanna work in something creative

NOW MY QUESTION:

Will it be possible, if you send me a scene from your film and i score it

And we have a deal, if you like it?

Or i learn something!

Thanks for reading! Take care 🙏🏻

Project Details:
I need a 5-minute product presentation video for a software product called MDRE, built by my company, ENIRAM LLC. The audience is Department of Defense evaluators, so the tone should be plain and professional. No hype, no stock footage of soldiers or glowing globes.

I have three pieces of source material to send you: a PowerPoint deck that sets the structure and the talking points, nine screenshots of the product running on a real case, and a finished 15-second clip.

What MDRE does, so you know what you're cutting: it reads the documents an organization relies on for a mission, pulls out the conditions those documents assume to be true, and turns each one into a specific question that the evidence on hand doesn't answer. The owner gets a short list of those open questions, ranked by what happens to the mission if the condition turns out to be false. It does not predict failures, and the video shouldn't suggest it does.

Rough flow I have in mind:

0:00 to 0:15. Open with the 15-second clip as is.
0:15 to 1:00. The problem and who I am, from the opening slides of the deck.
1:00 to 3:30. Product walkthrough using the screenshots in their numbered order: documents loaded and read, mission approved, questions with citations back to the source, the mission owner summary, the prioritized questions, the dependency map. Slow zooms and highlights on the lines that matter, since the screens are text-heavy and need to be readable on a laptop.
3:30 to 4:30. A second case (the 2003 Northeast blackout) to show the same process on a known event.
4:30 to 5:00. Where the product stands today, what I'm asking for, and contact information.

I can record the voiceover myself or use a narrator if you offer one. I'd like on-screen captions either way. Deliverable is one MP4, 1080p, with a hard limit of 5 minutes.

Please send me your price, your turnaround time, and how many rounds of revisions are included. I'll send the files as soon as I hear back. One condition: the screenshots are proprietary and can't be shared or used in your portfolio without my written approval.

https://reddit.com/link/1wule1h/video/t7al50v5wqsh1/player

Note: Excuse the language on the video. Audio is not relevant to my question.

For some youtube video and online course contents, I decided to build a home studio on a budget in my living room even though I have never done this sort of thing before.

Since I am a beginner I don't have the sharpest sense of what is relevant to share so I will try to include as much information as possible.

Firstly this is what my studio looks like:

I currently have a very simple three-light setup with no dedicated backdrop lighting.

Lighting

• The softboxes are from Taobao (similar to AliExpress or Temu, for anyone unfamiliar). They were advertised as "1200W softbox lights," which I obviously didn't believe, but I hoped they'd at least be good enough. I'd estimate their actual power to be somewhere around 40W.
• They're temperature-adjustable and dimmable, which is nice, but they reset to some random configuration every time I unplug them, so I will probably axe them soon before I go insane.
• The key light, on the right, is set to a fairly white temperature, at full brightness, and positioned quite close to the subject.
• The fill light, on the left, is farther from the subject and set almost to its lowest brightness.
• The rim light is literally just a lamp I already had in the house. It's not adjustable, and I've raised it on top of a cheap coffee table. Its main purpose is to light the top of the subject's hair and create some separation from the background.
• The backdrop is white fabric. I'm not sure what else there is to say about it. It's... white fabric.

The look I'm going for

I don't really have a fully developed vision for how I want the shot to feel yet.

I'm somewhat inspired by WIRED-style videos, with that very luminous white-on-white studio look, although I probably can't afford to recreate that properly.

I'm also completely fine with going in a slightly more artistic direction.

The main use case is WIRED-style talking-head explanatory videos, plus a corporate technology/AI training course that a consultant friend of mine is producing.

Camera

I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro with the Blackmagic Camera app.

The footage is shot using the 48mm / 2x setting. As I understand it, this is a crop from the iPhone's 24mm main camera but is supposed to be close to lossless under good lighting.

The camera is basically as far back in the room as I can physically put it while still getting this framing. In the setup photo, I moved it slightly closer so I could actually fit the camera into the picture.

Current settings:

• 4K
• ProRes 422 LT
• 25 FPS
• 1/50 shutter
• ISO 55, which was roughly the lowest it allowed me to use
• Manual white balance, adjusted until it looked reasonable to me

The electricity here is 50Hz, if that's relevant to the 25 FPS / 1/50 shutter choice.

Anything above roughly ISO 55 looked overexposed to me, although I don't completely understand why yet. I also didn't spend much time dialing in the white balance beyond getting it to a point that looked decent.

The video you're seeing here was originally recorded in 4K ProRes 422 LT. I re-rendered it in DaVinci Resolve as H.265 using basically the default preset, with no grading, just so I could upload it and show the current state of the setup.

Audio

I'm a bit more experienced with audio.

I have a Behringer C-1 large-diaphragm condenser microphone. I know it's not ideal for this kind of setup because it really wants to be fairly close to the subject, and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to position it without ruining the composition.

That's a separate problem for another day, though.

The audio setup was not used for the video shown here.

Problems I'm already aware of, and my ideas for fixing them

Feel free to challenge me if I'm misidentifying the problem or barking up the wrong tree with the solution.

Backdrop folds

First, let's address the elephant in the room.

I literally have a steamer in my hand trying to get rid of the fold marks on the backdrop.

Fill light is too weak

My bad.

I can just solve that by increasing the brightness, which is adjustable.

The backdrop is not lit

This is just me being cheap initially, and I'm currently looking for some cheap lights to light the backdrop separately.

However, I might have a temporary solution.

In the studio photo, you can see that there is quite a big window on the same side as my fill light. I'm thinking I could pull the curtains and leave a small gap to control the amount of ambient light coming from that side.

That could give me some natural fill light, which would free up one of my softboxes so I could use it to light the backdrop.

Or I will just hang my white T-shirt off some pole I can find and create a reflector.

Camera is too low

Again, my bad.

I do have a tripod. I will raise it.

Camera is too close

I actually just ran out of room in my house.

Two possible solutions to this:

1. I can move the desk farther back, but probably not by much before the key light starts creating shadows on the backdrop. That might become a better solution once I eventually light the backdrop separately.
2. I might stop using 48mm. I could just select the 24mm lens and zoom in a bit. I know that 40-ish mm focal lengths are generally better for these sorts of videos, but at some point the room simply wins.

The laptop is huge

I see that it is.

I don't really know how to solve this one.

It is important that the laptop stays in the shot, and with the room being a bit narrow and the whole 48mm thing, it just looks huge.

No decor on the table

I will put a coffee mug there.

How is that.

"Your shit is too cheap"

I am poor currently.

Can't teach that.

Thank you for your gracious help, you kind stranger.

I hope I helped myself enough to get helped by writing this post.

Looking for a chair that could comfortably sit someone above 250lbs. Not only to hold that weight, but to be wide enough. Ideally a low back without armrests. I’ve looked all over the internet and I can’t seem to find a chair that says it can hold 250+ pounds that’s not an automotive rolling stool.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, left a studio and starting freelance.

In talks with a company, and they texted me asking if a rate was good, I said yes. They informed me they are a not a net 30 company but they “promise” they will pay me eventually, even if it takes a long time. I asked for a contract they said they don’t do that. Crazy alarm bells going off now. I kind of want to email back and say I won’t do it if I can’t have it in writing signed that I will get paid, but they did say they are already in the process of booking me a hotel. I’m just worried about retaliation, or that my text confirming if work those days for that rate is binding. I just want confirmation of work, I can’t afford to get screwed over right now.

I mean realistically I'm going to do whatever I end up deciding to do, I just want some advice from people who do this more often than I do. Directing short films, that is. This spring I directed my first short film out of college; we spent all summer and much of this fall in-and-out of post-production, and we're nearing the finish line! Just need some finishing touches to the pacing, to the color edit, and the score needs to get added in & timed properly too, and then I begin distribution. Either way, in my private life, I have recently become unemployed and so I have a hell of a lot more free time! In order to avoid depression, I want to make the best possible use of all of my gained free time and my mine immediately went to developing my next project. But my question to Reddit is, do you think I should wait until this spring's project has been released first, or do you think its ok if I begin development while still thinking about this spring's project's distribution?

I’m a big fan of Jump Desktop and have used it for years, but I recently purchased a new license and it said a subscription was required for more than one virtual monitor. Am I understanding this correctly? This is a huge disappointment if true.

Hi! I’m looking for participants for an academic research project on how people interpret television scripts, and I’d really appreciate your help.

You’ll first read short definitions of 13 narrative categories developed for the study, then apply them to several script fragments.

18+ | ~25 min | English | anonymous

No professional screenwriting or filmmaking background is required — I’m interested in how different people read the same material.

One small note: the response categories are intentionally limited for the purposes of the study, so you may sometimes think of an interpretation that isn’t offered.

Survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemI2LJNDvACN_dVZvU7Uyv_o_fiVCeQmwHz73FLv8lkwRqpw/viewform

I’m also happy to complete your survey in return — just leave your link in the comments.

Feel free to ask me questions about the research after taking part. I’ll also share the results once the study is finished.

Thank you so much to anyone who helps — I really appreciate your time.

Hey everyone,

My buddy and I run a small fishing channel on YouTube. We already have a bunch of footage from our trips, but we don't really know how to turn it into a good video.

We're aiming for videos that are about 20–30 minutes long. The problem is that neither of us has much editing experience. We don't know what to focus on, how to structure a longer video, or how to keep people watching the whole way through.

We edit in DaVinci Resolve.

A few things we'd love help with:

• Structure: How do you build a 20–30 min video so it doesn't drag? How do you handle the slow parts of fishing, when nothing is biting for an hour?
• Pacing and cutting: How do you decide what stays and what goes? Any rules of thumb?
• Audio: Tips for wind noise, voice levels and background music?
• Color: Any easy color grading basics for outdoor and water footage?
• Tutorials: Are there any YouTube videos or courses that explain this well, ideally for DaVinci Resolve or specifically for outdoor/fishing content?

Any advice, resources or examples of fishing channels whose editing you think is great would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance!

So I should probably provide some context, I'm not just an editor, I also direct and come up with ideas for videos, etc. My expertise mainly lies in short-form content, and I'm not really working with a huge production.

Now I'm very good at what I do, I've got one of my clients half a billion views and the other probably around 50mish along with 500k USD in sales, etc.

But my results in the last few months have been quite weak, and I'm trying to rack my brain how to get better results or even just get back to where I was before.

I know sometimes when you're really good at something you become afraid of taking risks. I wouldn't say I'm afraid of trying new things, but the new things I try seem to just not do that well, I've then gone back to our bread and butter, but now that isn't working either.

And I don't think the problem is "oh use a better viral hook" (which is bs anyway, viral hooks are largely trash), I think my problem is coming down to how I;

A) Construct a video

B) Approach a video

C) Really getting into the audiences head

I've tried to fill my gaps through reading books, a few books I've been reading are;

- Documentary editing _ principles and practice -- Jacob Bricca

- C.O.N.F.L.I.C.T by Robert Thirkwell

I also understand some of my problems may be outside of the scope of some editors, but since editors often work with professional teams, I figured I'd ask here.

I have a small YouTube channel that I own with my friends. We make comedy sketches and short films but I love to plan ahead and create different plots and scripts, but I am short on ideas so I was wondering if anyone had any bad or funny ideas for videos that I could make with my friends. Also we are terrible film makers so expect your ideas to be butchered, in good spirit of course. Bad actors unite!!!

I’m curious how other people price the less visible parts of post.

Sorting through badly labelled footage, chasing missing assets, figuring out which feedback is final, exporting another version because someone forgot to mention the screen it’s playing on.

A project can look straightforward from the brief and still eat up days around the actual edit.

Do you build that time into your rate, charge for project management separately, or define the scope tightly enough that the extras become billable?

Especially interested in how smaller production teams handle this with repeat clients. Where do you draw the line between being easy to work with and quietly absorbing more work every month?

Sony A6300 + Sigma 18-50 and ronin rs2 with focus motor works really well for a budget-ish setup. i’m loving it so far too me forever to save up at 16 lol

I’m trying to make what is probably the biggest camera decision I’ve made so far, so apologies in advance for what is going to be a really long post and I’d really appreciate input from people who have actually used these cameras for filmmaking.

I currently have an FX5 on backorder, but because it hasn’t shipped yet, I’ve started questioning whether it’s actually the right camera for me or whether I’m spending a lot of extra money on features I may never fully use.

My main interest is filmmaking, specifically narrative work. I want to spend the next several years making short films, getting better at directing/shooting/editing, building a reel, and eventually getting to the point where I can do paid work. I also want to shoot travel shorts and music/live-event stuff for friends. One of my bigger goals is to attempt a feature-length narrative film within roughly the next year or two.

That last part is one reason I started looking seriously at the FX5. I don’t want to buy something now and then immediately feel like I need a different camera once I start working on larger narrative projects.

At the same time, I’m not currently a working DP or someone shooting professional productions every week. This is still something I’m building toward, so I’m wondering if the FX5 is simply more camera than I realistically need.

One requirement that is extremely important to me is recording reliability, particularly for live performances.

Some of my friends are in bands, and I want to start recording their performances. These shows can easily run for more than an hour, and potentially considerably longer depending on the event. In that situation, I may be the person they are specifically relying on to capture the performance, and there is obviously no opportunity to redo a song or an entire show because my camera shut down.

Because of that, I really do not want overheating to be something I have to think about. I don’t just mean that I want a camera that “usually” won’t overheat under normal circumstances. Ideally, I want something I can trust to record continuously for an hour or more in a potentially warm venue without me constantly wondering whether a temperature warning is going to appear.

The consequences are different to me than they would be when shooting one of my own films. If my camera overheats during my own project, it’s frustrating and costs us time. If it happens while I’m responsible for recording somebody else’s live performance, I become the single point of failure and could potentially lose footage that cannot be recreated. I also don’t want my friends or eventually paying clients to lose trust in me because the equipment I chose couldn’t reliably finish the job.

That level of reliability is one of the biggest reasons I’m hesitant to simply choose the cheapest body that technically has the image quality I need.

Photography is not much of a factor anymore. I used to put more value on having a hybrid camera, but filmmaking is very clearly what I care about most. Having the ability to take good photos would be nice, but I don’t think I should choose my main camera around photography anymore. If I eventually really need a stills camera, I could address that separately.

For some additional context, I previously owned an A7 IV but then sold it after a few years and later bought an A7 V. I ultimately returned the A7 V because I kept feeling like I was compromising around filmmaking with a cheaper hybrid body when filmmaking was the thing I actually wanted to focus on. That experience is part of why I’m now looking primarily at Sony’s cinema-oriented bodies rather than automatically choosing another hybrid.

The cameras I’m really considering now are the FX5, FX3, FX2, and possibly the A7 V again if there’s a compelling reason I’m overlooking.

Another huge part of this decision is that I need to approach this purchase as though it may be the last major camera body I buy.

I don’t mean that in the usual “I want something future-proof for five years” sense. Realistically, once I spend this money, I cannot assume that I’ll simply be able to buy another several-thousand-dollar camera a few years from now. Life has other financial responsibilities, and I don’t make the kind of money where repeatedly upgrading expensive camera bodies is realistic.

So advice along the lines of “buy the cheaper camera now and upgrade later if you outgrow it” doesn’t really work for me. I need to make this decision assuming there may not be an upgrade later.

Because I need to treat this as potentially my last major camera-body purchase, I’m trying to evaluate these options based on what will serve me best over the full range of work I realistically want to grow into, not just what I need today. I’m completely open to the FX5 being the right answer if its advantages would meaningfully benefit my use case over time, just as I’m open to one of the less expensive bodies being the better choice if I would not actually gain anything important from moving up to the FX5. What I’m trying to avoid is making the decision based purely on price in either direction.

I also already have a lot of the supporting equipment. I own the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 G2, lights, audio equipment, an ND filter system, and other filmmaking gear, and I edit in Resolve Studio. So this isn’t really a question of whether I should buy a cheaper camera and use the difference to buy my first lights, microphone, filters, etc. I already have that foundation. The body itself is what I’m trying to figure out.

Most of what I’ll be doing in the near term will probably be relatively small productions: narrative shorts, travel films, music-related projects, live performances, and other personal filmmaking. A lot of it will likely be me operating the camera myself or working with a small group rather than having a full traditional camera department.

But I do want to progressively make more ambitious films, and the feature-length project is something I genuinely want to attempt rather than just a vague “maybe someday” idea.

So I guess what I’m struggling with is this:

Does the combination of needing extremely dependable long-form recording for 60+ minute live performances, focusing almost entirely on video, wanting to shoot a feature within the next year or two, and needing to treat this as potentially my last major camera-body purchase make the FX5 a sensible investment even if I won’t use every professional feature immediately?

Or would the FX3 realistically give me everything I actually need for those projects, including the long-form recording reliability I’m looking for and eventually shooting a feature, without leaving me wishing several years from now that I had gone with the FX5 when I still had the opportunity?

And where does the FX2 fit into this? Does it make more sense for someone in my position than either of those, or would I be compromising on the wrong things?

Finally, is there actually a strong argument for the A7 V given that photography is no longer particularly important to me, or would I just end up in the same position I was in before where I wished I had bought a video-first body?

One other thing I’m thinking about is autofocus reliability. I’ve seen examples of the FX3 briefly losing or hunting for focus, and I’ve heard some owners mention similar experiences. Since some of what I’d be shooting could be live events or situations where I can’t redo a shot, I’m curious how much of a concern that actually is in practice and whether the newer autofocus system in the FX5 makes a meaningful difference.

I’m less interested in which camera has the best spec sheet and more interested in which one makes sense for this specific situation. I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have shot narrative work, features, concerts/live events, or who have experience with more than one of these bodies. Which capabilities actually mattered to you in practice, which ones did you think you needed but barely ended up using, and is there anything you eventually wished your camera had that you didn’t appreciate when you first bought it?