I liked it. Question, was the v/o written by you? I hope so because as it is, you rely a lot on some iconic copy written music from Elvis and the Stones. You can only go so far with a project that depends so heavily on other artists -- it becomes an homage or tribute video at a certain point. Some tech issues, the INT car shots had micro jitters and jello. And that early shot of the girl walking out of the house has major focus issues, a shot like that has to be right, get a follow focus and/or assistant or just keep doing takes til you get it right. It's a nice shot, but do it right. You owe us that and you especially owe it to yourself. Film lives on after you. I've shot scenes at night on the beach and it ain't easy. What was your lens? vintage 50mm 1.4 I'll guess. I like the actresses but you kept us 100' away from them with the v/o, I like to see actors act. Overall pretty good, especially in that it's only your first film. It's hard to tell a story.

Some really nice shots in there but I concur with the comments by brianluce and the comments in vimeo.. I would have liked to have some more wide shots to establish the scenes. I realize you propably kept it close to use the same lens but you could have shot the beach scene wide in lighter conditions (twilight) and darkened it down in post. Same would go for the scene when they are leaving the house... (if you didn't have a lot of lighting gear available). It seems like you didn't have enough coverage to make the edit as well as it could be (for that duration).

Hey Nate, why did you feel the v/o and actress had to be the same person? No reason to since it was all v/o. Try and make things easier on yourself for the next film, don't shoot the whole thing at night!

btw, 200 views and only a few people commented. Aren't we supposed to pivot towards filmmaking here? Or is the only way to get comments to film a bush?

One of my friends is a hair stylist and asked me if I wanted to do a short for him to show a "beach" style hair he does for girls. I read this story a few years ago and wanted to do a short on it then but never did, so this came to mind while we were talking. He mentioned one of the girls would be home from school for a week and her, and her sister, were able to do it. Neither one has acting experience and I didn't talk with either until we shot although I've known them as mutual friends for awhile. (In retrospect I obviously should have spent more time with them). The next couple days I storyboarded all the shots and showed him and we talked a bit about it. Then the following night we scouted some beaches and found the one we ended up using. That was a Monday and we shot most of it Wed night. I had also done some testing with the leds in a car prior to the shoot although we shot those last and everyone was getting tired and rainy so I just tried to get some shots I figured I could use (I would've liked to have stabalized those for sure but just ran out of time. I recorded the voice over with the talent in a car while my friend was doing her sister's hair and used a Audio Technica AT3035 Cardioid Condensor mic into a Tascam DP0008. (Did it sound bad?).

Also BTW the only color correction/grading I did was on the shots of the blonde lighting the fire, since it was shot on a different night/beach and ended up a little darker. I pretty much planned out the look I wanted before and then just tried to add a little of the leds when needed (i think the beach scene may be a little to hard of a key than I wanted)

Does anyone have any tips on noise reduction? I didn't use any and wondering if that might clean up some of the lowlight noise? I used Final Cut X (I know many people don't like it but it's what I've got for now)

Thanks again you guys for tips/feedback. I've done a new edit with less of the elvis song and the stones starting just before she lights the fire, like some of you have suggested, and I think I like it a lot more. I'll replace it on vimeo soon.

@surfgypsy No no, the VO sounded real clean and I was very impressed. And as far as the noise goes, there are some fantastic denoiser applications that can clean up footage rather well. But, the best way to keep the noise out of your low-light shots is use fast glass with high-quality a patch (Anything Quantum v9b or later) and try to light the scene to produce the look you want without moving the iso up to far. With the higher quality patches you can move the iso up to and passed 1600 with a little denoise work to produce a beautiful image.

But, it all depends on the look you want, and personal preference. Also, if you're interested in color correction or grading check out @shian and his ColoGhears tutorials. You may only have FCPX, but you can take a lot what he mentions and apply the concepts to your post work.