Hello everyone.
My name is Nightmare Man.
I've been a member since 2007 but I've never posted anything.
This is a link to a video I created inside an abandoned High School.
It's since been torn down.
Hope you get a chance to check it out!
Cheers


https://www.youtub...atch?v=SkqbhA3yX3Q

I'll give you kudos for fluidity of motion. Unlike the majority of UE vids, I did not feel like puking from motion sickness 30 seconds into it. Some minor critiques are 1) it ran a little long. I make UE vids and I've learned it's hard to keep people's interest in them any more than 4 to 5 minutes. So 12 minutes is a little long. 2) The location: pristine for sure but a little too pristine for me. It looked more like you were exploring a high school on a Saturday rather than an abandoned high school. So I'll give you high marks for production quality and I'm interested to see where you take things from here.

Thank you for checking out the video.
It's greatly appreciated.
We were able to sneak in a few days before they shut the power off for the final time.
The daytime shots were filmed about two weeks before the demolition began.
It's completely gone now and replaced with a track for the new high school.
I know what you mean when you say it was too pristine, but it never had an opportunity to decay because it was torn down before it even had a chance to collect dust. That's what made it even more risky because there was security on site and there was active construction for the new school. It was worth the risk though, I had well over 10,000 views before I was forced to take the video down. It had entirely too much attention and I was getting threats from people saying that they were going to report me and press charges for trespassing.

Honestly, the video is a bit long. You could really cut down on some shots and remove a lot of the camera focusing part. I see the "feel" you're trying to achieve with that but you don't need a full 4 seconds of blurry video to get the point across. Somewhere around half a second would be more than enough.

Try to cut down the video to a 5 min clip. Just as an exercise. I do that sometimes and you'll be amazed at how much better the video gets.

Once you're at 5 minutes, put a nice soundtrack over it. Music really makes a big difference

Keep on making videos and share them on here. Props for the smooth camera motion.

Nice video! I agree that it ran too long... How did you achieve such smooth shots? Some of them almost look like dolly shots.

If I really had to provide more critique id say cut it down to half the size and work on lighting/ color correcting the shots to really make them dramatic and pop. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Dundalk!! I visit my grandmother there all the time! My parents even went to Dundalk high but I didn't know it was torn down? Or perhaps Dundalk had more than one high school?

Anyways, great film! Was lengthy but whatever, camera movement was very fluid and easy to watch. Like to see what you could shoot at places with a lot more decay!

Hello everyone.
Thanks again for taking the time to watch this.
I really appreciate it.
Yes it was Dundalk High School.
I only had a few days to sneak in and film.
The first night we infiltrated, the power was still on.
We entered through the music wing and there was an alarm beeping in the theater.
It spooked us but after we came to our senses, we realized it was only beeping because the service was disconnected.
I agree about color correction, this was one of my first projects in Final Cut so I had no idea about such things. I may revisit the footage, trim it down, and re release it. I have soooooo much footage that nobody has laid eyes on.
Cheers!

Oh yeah, and as far as the smooth shots......
The place was littered with those old tv carts that were used for instructional videos. I simply cleared a path and placed the camera on top.
It worked like a dolly.
There are a few bumps but I used image stabilization when I edited the flick and it helped to make it easier on the eyes.