Excellent stuff, and the music works really well as a mood setter. The light coming through the roof around 1:18 is beautiful.

The dolly up to the house at 2:00 is sicccckkkk. Nice work

terrific!!!! i especially like it at 1:50, that wide shot. why don't use a xenakis piece?

Nice! That segment at 2:00 looks straight out of a horror movie! Great soundtrack to go along with this!

Impressive framing, lightplay, colors and music: splendid work Zak! In my opinion just a bit long without a voiceover telling the story of that house ;)

i hesitated before writing these few words...but i decided to let my heart speak:
first, i liked this one a lot: memory, tragedy, and poetry, in a intense mix.
i wish though you tried the same narrative approach with "painted hills", give more time to some shots and avoid the zooms and the pans (it's like painting over the painting)
here it works perfectly with the ways you move in space. your body tells the story. there the stilness. but stillness needs the complicity of time and detail.
Detail, in turn, unravels the whole.
a master of french cinema - Robert Bresson - once said: "Provoking the unpredictable, in suspence." (in reference to the last shot also)

palermo may 2009

UAU!!! Love it... its very insight...

Kept expecting someone to jump out.

Music makes it so scary.

Great stuff ! your best shoot is definitly the 2:00
The music works fine. But can I give you an advice of music who can work also great ? Did you try with the soundtrack of "28 Days Later". There is some good songs who can fit with your great shoots.
Cheers

stylish!!! xtreme cool colorgrading and boombastic sound fx; i really love it. greets, Uwe

oUTSTANDING!
pURE poetry.
yOU found such impressive places!!!!!!!!!

wow DAMN that was crazy. Normally, you don't see a lot of dark films on vimeo, so this is super-refreshing.

What did you use to stabilize your various shots?

The photo is amazing! It made me feel weird in a cool way! great work.

Spooky, cool! Nice work. Was that old appliance in the second house called a 'HOMART'? Wonder what it was/did?

[1:50] is absolutely beautiful. [2:00] is amazing as well. How did you find these places? Did you just use available lighting?

why did you delete my comment. i have an opinion.

i like the shots, but i dont like the emotion you are projecting onto them.

Nice work! I like the solitude of the place

Mate, great work. Beautiful composition with some really well thought out shots. Did you use the XH-A1 for this?

Such great clarity!

Great job !

I love the ambiance and the scene !
(it seems do you use Looks builder for the color or not ??)

Great place to shoot a music Vid, but I take it that is not in the UK!? Great collection of old places very nice, but I will be taking the idea for a music video, just to let you know..!

the horse hair plaster. fields. I wonder what insanity....
great vid. I would hope my 8mbit connect will act like one someday to watch it clearly.

Fabulous

This is really impressive,freak and scary,kind of sick though. Not boring for sure! Congratulations. You are really good

I f ing love this, I love places like this. I had found a derilict building which is huge and impressive that I wanted to go and try something like this in but apparently it's too dangerous.. Well done its great work my friend !!

I can't begin to tell you how much I love this! It's epic. I would have been way too creeped out to go in that house though...

;-)

Bravo!

Wow, that was amazing. I loved it. Around 0:15 there is some really smooth side rolling footage, did you use a rail? Also around 3:30 are you using a DOF adapter? Again awesome video, thanks for posting.

AMMMMMMMMMMMMMMAZING !!!!
great everything.
no more words.

Very nice! the quality is great too. how did you export this?
codec, bitrate, resolution?

Congratulations, for the video, the sound, the area, thanks for sharing this beautiful video.

Amazing shots! I love the dollies..

It's difficult to add anything to the already extensive responses you have solicited but you're video was excellent. Much of the scenery reminded me a lot of playing the video game Fallout 3 (post apocalyptic) but more realistic vs animated. I recently purchased two different HD camcorders and would like to experiment more with them. Your work inspires.

Critics are nothing more than worthless imbeciles with nothing credible of their own to show for.

Stunning imagery Zac.
Mind if I ask the type of camera used and the post production workflow?

Cheers
D

Hi Zac,

I like it. Much of my still photography is of a similar nature.

I wonder how Atmospheres from the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack would work with your film?

Dude...this is crazy good! You sure know your way around the A1. That's my weapon of choice as well, and i love what you've done with it! Come over to my page and check out a few of my vids!

Great work Zak.

God I love this!! I could nitpick a few shots but I won't. You really have something here!

Very nice, I'm looking to do something similar. Love the dolly work... Bravo!

Ok Zac, I have to tell ya my vimeo brother you need to pack up and head to Hollywood, this is one of the best videos I have seen here on vimeo. I could watch it over and over again oh wait I have lol ... Good job my friend, we really need to get together and shoot some stuff. And as others have said the sound in this video if pure perfection they fit so well together ... Take care, oh and I to love abandoned places.

First I want to say, you had some great shots in there but...

To much unmotivated movement in my opinion. When you shoot with a dolly, it's important to make sure that you're moves are motivated in some way. I felt like the dolly and some of the handheld movement was being used just for the hell of it sometimes. In a piece like this, you have to consider the subject you are shooting. In your case they were abandoned structures. They have an eerie feeling to them, so you should run with that and pick your angles, shots, and movements to suite the environment. I'm a huge fan of well framed, locked down shots. There's something about that perfect framing that you can't beat. Better to pick your shots very wisely and sparingly, and let them tell a story. Let the shots hang for a while, allowing the viewer to really examine the image. You had some really nice angles in there, but I felt some shots didn't fit and took away from the big idea.

I really love how the A1 looks, it produces such a sharp image. I'd love to have one as a second cam, it's such an under rated camera.

Anyways, that's all personal opinion, take it with a grain of salt. I'm in no way trying to bring you down or tell you that your work was bad, because it most definitely was not. Keep up the good work, and keep capturing those killer shots.

Very nice work you have. Love the concept.

I like that video a lot were was the old Power Plant? I like to take photos of old buildings and such...

All I can add is, I really thought that the rabbit was going to explode.....I do agree with Alex Horner a lot though.

Phenomenal! As I side note, I love the layout of the house at 3:00 .

If I can give a little constructive criticism: The way it's edited gave me the sense that I had reached the end of the video three times. A different segue between the locations, perhaps giving some sense of travel would make this even better.

Could I possibly ask which camera you used on this short?

Where are these places? Especially the first location?

This is an excellent and artistic look of the reality you´re trying to represent, and in fact yo did do it. I also have an XH-A1. Can you tell me witch settings did you use in the camera for this video?

where are these places?

Thanks for answering my question Zac. What I meant by your workflow is the software and encoding settings used to output to vimeo. If you can share this I'd be most grateful. Your video is very very crisp at full screen on a 20inch DELL monitor with no visible macroblocking.

As for my critics comment and your response, I guess you're a better man than I am. My philosophy is simple - if you want constructive criticism ask an industry professional but each to their own. I personally pay no attention to critics because they know not what they talk about.

Anyways, thanks and keep up the good work.
D

I love being frightened, your shots were excellent. may I ask what the music was from ?

please check out my Industrial Ruins video, its sorta similar only theres a hot model standing around... =)

that was so creative! nice work

Very cool! Reminds of Half Life 2 somehow. What kind of tripod and what kind of dolly do you use? And how did you get the shot of that round, white-painted metal piece (maybe a part of a boiler) with all the graffiti? It looks like a dolly shot but the camera does not move in a straight line. Awsome stuff. Wanna see more.

This is awesome, really enjoyed it.

The video is incredible, creeps the hell out of me.
It's very inspiring, just watching it I thought about a short plot for a horror short.

Amazing work with the emotions.
I wish there were places like that near here.

whats the music that you used???

hey zac if you want to try I made bean bags they are great, you throw one down and set the camera on it presto you have a steadier shot you can get soy beans for real cheap at winco and make a bag with them. I used some old black material that looks similar to leather to make one. I use mine alot when shooting news for low shoots or throw one on a fence or any surface. just a hint

Loved it! I too have an interest in abandoned places, and found this little house in Utah. Quite an eerie place.
vimeo.com/3966223

Sweet, loved the waterfall.

this is beautiful.
lots of grunge, great work!

Awseome!!
This video could be used in Half Life 2 and Stalker!

an immensely chilling atmosphere. Great eye for composition. 2:00 is a truly chilling shot...and honestly i think it's more of the emptiness that exists behind the house that frightens me more. I'm jealous of this setting lol.

btw i was looking to purchase a new hd camera...somewhere between 3 and 5 thousand you think the xh-a1 is the way to go. The quality of this video is exceptional

really good work

matt

This video looks simply brilliant. What program did you use to compress the final edited version? and what were your settings?

exelent

wow that was awesome! Beautiful and creepy at the same time. May I ask what camera you use?

"I don't like the emotion you are trying to project..."
What other emotion can you project? I think it would be difficult to display these locations with "happy feelings" or anything other than what you did. The soundtrack only enhanced the pre-existing emotion. I really like it. It is unique and brilliant. Nice codec as well.

Very very nice film! Amazing footage and great soundtrack to. Really enjoyed the pace in this movie. There is a some horror movie about it to. Fantastic work Zac.

Cheers

Whuuuhuuuu, a bit scaring but excellent! "A place that was once a centerpiece in a few people's lives"...nice description, really.

this is awesome!
cant stop watching your video!
also the music works perfect with the video.
please can you tell me what a soundtrack you used
at timecode 2:25 ?
sorry for my lousy english...

A good video indeed, but for me and it is only a point of view, there are two excellent movies in the content.

The one being of Industrial decay and the other the quite astounding isolation of the 'house on the prairie'.

I think that the present movie just falls short of satisfying the viewers expectations. We need a little more in the way of narrative to support the beautiful imagery.

Maybe audio references to the sound of the machinery and the laughter of distant lives might have given us a little more cause for optimism!

If You unsure whether to include an edit..leave it out!

It is clear that we can expect great work to come and I will be looking out for it.

Bob

Very good camera work!
That's impressive...
What part of Russia are you living in?

Ok, I jsut saw I got confused...I thought you were part of albatros films. Now I see you're actually in the states, just forget the earlier question! :)

Amazing. Sorry if this already got answered, but where is this?

More please.