How To Make Candles - ID# 278

Neuqua Valley

Division: A

Demonstration

Entry Description

A short instructional video about how to make a candle.

Recent Teacher Comments

• 4/18 11:40 am - Great, simple and elegant demonstration! The use of christmas lights worked really well to highlight the candle components and worked well to keep continuity in the video. There was a good variety of camera composition and movement and the pacing fit well to the music choice.
• 3/12 11:11 am - Really nice beauty shots at the beginning. Nice opening script. The narration could be louder. Music fits mood. The video here is really great. Nice use of focus, lighting, and movement.
• 3/11 3:53 pm - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eRwkvdz1mCGrLI_Q8bY_ftw3CV4Bg-tP/view?usp=sharing
• 3/9 5:40 pm - what works very nice looking and effective demonstration; opening shot really set the tone; attractive set up and lighting; good variety of shots and motion; effective ecu's and tight framing; nice use of focus and depth of field. overall, well produced. what could make it better script jumps to cost without transition mentioning only drawback to candles is expense-lead us into benefits of making yourself; what is cost of materials and mention everything we might need; show all steps, ie: cutting; music called attention to itself; ending underdeveloped.
• 3/7 10:21 pm - Excellent production, overall. Your decision to use candlelight lightinge effects while discussing how to make candles was an apt choice, and it led to memorable shots and compositions that took something simple and made it that much more memorable. Good use of shallow depth of field to capture bokeh and good placement of your materials for guiding viewer focus to what's important. The editing contained no visible errors and the original music and voice over was well mixed. The use of bokeh, while nice, got rather redundant. Perhaps varying your depth of field throughout the demonstration to provide additional points of view for your audience would lessen the staleness of your looks over time. From a content perspective, I wanted to hear more detail about the scenting of candles. How much do you use, what do you use, etc. The step-by-step of the making of the candles was good, but the process needed something unique to it. I think most viewers could figure this out without aid of this video but had you discussed scenting more in depth, it would have led to a more memorable demonstration overall.

Judge 1

Positives: Nice use of depth of field with camera shots. Very effective when talking about candles. Good lighting and effects. Nice camera movement.

Improvements: Music was too loud at times and made it hard to hear the narration clearly.

Judge 2

Positives: I think the mood that the "romantic" mood and tone that the creators decided to use worked very well. The lighting, choice of Brian Eno and all the close ups worked well together. They set the stage for what one would need to make candles well.

Improvements: Although this was a simple process it went by very quickly. I might have chosen a better closing than to enjoy, and I suggest you let the light bun instead of blowing it out. The lighting was so fun that the smoke distracted me.

Judge 3

Positives: Very creative cinematography! I loved the shot at 1:08:00. The lighting scheme you chose fits your project perfectly. The shallow depth of field was extremely effective. The surfaces and utensils were all very clean, which helped to sustain the calming night time feeling imparted by your project.

Improvements: There aren't a lot of things I recommend changing, but here are two area where you can try adding dissolves. There is a jump in the action at about 0:56:00. Instead of doing a jump cut at that point try a dissolve. Experiment with the dissolve length to see what works best. I'd start with something very short like 4 or 5 frames. If that doesn't work try something longer. Just after that you go from a shot of a slow push in on a Mason jar to a nice panning shot. Try a one or two second dissolve between those shots.

Judge 4

Positives:

Improvements: