Slug & Lede

Sin City Shooters employs the powerful sound of the gun within the first moments of the video. This natural sound is used with a close shot of the pistol being fired. Initially the sound level of the gunshots is high, as the first interviewee begins to speak, the sound is brought down to a lower level and used as an effective transition. The first interviewee is a lively personality and her voice is clear and full. Camera provides perspectives from behind the gun and in front of the barrel. Edits are clean and seamless. Filmmakers use the available landscape for backdrop of interviews well. Though the subject of the video is repetitive and seems hard pressed to find a sound bite worth adding to the piece. The content of the interviews is weak.

In Sin City Shooters, the positives significantly outweigh the negatives.  The variety of angles and different camera shots really help to keep the viewer’s interest.  Specifically, the shot where the camera is in front of the shooter while he is shooting and the bullets are coming directly towards you.  That seems like it would be a hard shot to get, but it was very well executed.  However, the scene at the beginning when the camera panned to follow the running shooter was a little too fast.  It made it hard to follow the main focus of the shot, or anything on the screen for that matter.

Another positive quality of the video was the mix between actual footage and interviews of the people in the shooting league.  Since some of the interviewees were a little boring, I think putting their voices as the background at various parts was also a successful idea.

I would only change two things about this video.  First, I would take out the high-speed panning at the beginning and go for a different approach.  Instead of panning, I’d go for a wide shot positioned in front of the shooter.  This way, you could watch him run and do the shooting course without getting motion sickness.

Second, I would take out some of the interviews.  Sometimes I felt like they were kind of rambling and not really providing any necessary information for the piece.  I think taking a little of that out would really clean up the video and make it even more entertaining for its viewers.

The video entitled Sin City Shooters was a short video piece about a group of people who love spending their time at a Las Vegas shooting range, including bimonthly shooting contests at Desert Sportsman’s Rifle and Pistol Club in Summerlin. The piece is designed to demonstrate the passion the people have for going to the shooting range and how exhilarating target shooting is for them. The people also explain the freindships and bonds amongst each other they they form from participating in the events.

In terms of actual video footage, I think it does a very good job of incorporating multiple shots. The extremely close shots do a wonderful job of portraying the intensity of target shooting. They not only focus on the power of the gun itself but also the force of the bullet hitting the target. In my opinion the interview portions are the strength of this piece. The camera was held very still and follow the 2/3 rule quite consistently. The interviews allow the viewer to gain insight into the people at hand, while still capturing the scene in the background.  The one shot that I thoroughly enjoyed in particular was when they were talking about it’s like a family and the camera is pointed upward into the faces of three people that were standing in a semi-circle. I thought that was a very effective shot and was inserted at the perfect spot in the video. The last strength of the video that I noticed was in the last scene when the video panned from right to left as it followed the girl shooting at the targets.The timing of the pan was consistent and well executed.

The main weakness I noticed was there were a few instances where the shot was taken at too close of a distance and as a result the subject’s head was cut off at the top of the screen. Although the close shot is intended to focus in on the facial characteristics of the person, I found shot itself to be poorly executed. It either needs to be re-shot so the subject’s face and head are fully on screen, or it needs to be taken from a slightly further distance.

Overall the piece was done very well. Static shots weren’t used quite as often as in other video pieces I’ve watched, but considering the circumstance of being at a shooting range, moving shots seem to be more appropriate. After a few minor editing adjustments, the piece will be near perfect. Job well done!

Sin City Shooters is a video clip about a group of shooters who hold contests at the Desert Sportsman’s Rifle and Pistol Club. The piece does an excellent job of featuring individual shooters in interviews and then putting their voices over clips of the people in action on the range. This technique is used several times and mostly the people are talking about their excitement over the sport and their love for it. The first women interviewed shows good emotion and energy and that is captured on camera well, also a young man in a black shirt gives a thoughtful explanation of why he participates and what that means to him.

The action shots used are extremely valuable to the piece and really are the reason behind it being successful. Many of the clips show impressive scenes of the shooters in action and these also include some of the gear and targets are shooting at. Viewers catch a good look at many different types of wepons that might interest them and targets that look out of the ordinary. Also, the camera angle used is impressive including scanning of the scene following people as they go from station to station on a course and the camera angle which gives the perspective of being shot at by one of the contestants. Even during the interview sections the background is intriguing, but not overly exciting to take the attention off of the subject that is talking in the scene.

Although many things where done very well in this video, several things could have been improved. One interview in particular added very little to the piece as a whole. The man in the red shirt mostly just said he was from somewhere else and usually shot at other places but had come there today. I know this adds the aspect that people come from other areas to participate, I thought that it took to much time in such a short piece. I would have preferred to see a manager or someone who had some kind of authority interviewed and asked questions about the people who come to the site and the atmosphere of the community. Also, the women interviewed at the begging and end of the segment pretty much repeated herself. She had good energy and excitement but not nearly as much as seeing someone shoot and blow up targets, I would have preferred that segment to have been changed and have asked her another question or put it as a voice over with action shots of people shooting.

Overall, I think the piece was good and the camera work was the best part. I do feel however that when working with such a short segment that better quality material could have been shown during some of the video.

Sin City Shooters, a video by the Las Vegas Sun’s Evelio Contreras, documents the bimonthly meetings of a Vegas-based pistol club.

The video opens with the pop of small gunfire, a noise that becomes the soundtrack of the piece as it moves to interview several club members.  The interviews are intriguing–one older woman in particular seems to be certifiably insane–and benefit from steady camera work.  The same cannot be said about some of the other shots; the camera was clearly not on a tripod, and its movement (which is more excessive than normal tilt or pan shots) often becomes distracting.

The shots are edited quite well, and the sequence flows from one shot to the next.  Interview subjects are identified by labels on the bottom of the screen, a touch that is more a courtesy than anything; I found myself not really paying attention to names, marveling instead at the sheer lunacy of the group.

Despite the fact that some of the camerawork seemed to have been conducted by an epilectic 4-year-old, Sin City Shooters is a successful video.  Short and to the point, its depiction of gun-crazy Nevadans shows a side of the city that we rarely see.

The Las Vegas Sun posted a video on their website on December 1, 2008. The video was done by Evelio Contreras and it was called Sin City Shooters.

This video was very professional. It was easy to watch and it flowed very nicely. The speech was not choppy and the video was good quality. The camera seemed to have been on a tripod during filming because there was no unnecessary shaking of the camera.

It was very easy to get a feel for the Sin City Shooters and the video was filmed in a way that made you feel like you had met the Shooters themselves. The camera did not stay in one place the whole time. There were over the shoulder shots, close-ups, medium shots, etc. The variety of shooting techniques made the video very interesting. 

About 30 seconds into the video, a husband and wife are shown. I believe it would have been best to do a zoom shot on them to get a closer look at their faces and how much they enjoy being there. 

The text at the bottom of the video that ocassionally popped up with names and titles could have been seen as distracting. I thought it was actually perfect and was a nice way of letting viewers know who was speaking and what they do. It was also nice because it did not stay in the video long, allowing the viewer’s eyes to move back to the subject speaking.

Overall, the video flowed very smoothly and was extremely well done. It was short, concise and still informative. I would highly recommend others to watch it.

“Sin City Shooters”is a 2008 video shot by the Las Vegas Sun about the Sin City Shooters club in Summerlin, Nevada.

The video is extremely well done because of the good mix of different camera angles and shot types.  This was the major strength of the piece. Two shots that were used particularly well were the wide shot and pan shot. The wide shot was used appropriately to give the viewers an idea of the surroundings, which appeared to be the sweltering Las Vegas desert complete with beautiful mountains in the backdrop. The pan shot was used very well to follow two of the shooters as they moved from target to target. This can be a difficult shot because you have to follow at just the right pace and keep the camera steady will doing so. The camera operator did a good job of keeping the camera from shaking and moving at just the right speed as he/she followed the shooter.

The interviews were excellent, the “rule of thirds” was followed perfectly. The interviews were a big part of why video was the right medium for this story. Hearing the voices of the shooters, especially the woman, allowed people to hear the excitement in her voice firsthand. I also liked the gunshots that could be heard throughout the piece, the gunshots weren’t too loud and didn’t disrupt the piece at all. This was very important because the interviewers, especially the woman, described the sound very enthusiastically as an important part of shooting.

It was hard to find weaknesses in this piece, but I feel that there were a few. The first has to do with the caption below the video, which mentioned something about the club holding bimonthly shooting contests. Nothing was ever mentioned in the piece about shooting contests, it was about the enthusiasm the these people have for shooting.

While the story used many different types of unique shots, there were a few that could have been done differently. At the 37 second mark, there is a very wide shot of a man shooting in the direction of the camera. The wide shot was unnecessary, it showed a couple of people standing around behind the man as well as some parked cars, and the surroundings had already been seen in a previous wide shot. A medium shot or even a close up illustrating the facial features of the man probably would have worked better.

Last year the Las Vegas Sun featured a video piece about the Desert Sportsman’s Rifle and Pistol Club in Summerlin, Nev. The video, which clocks in at just over a minute in length, was produced and filmed by Evelio Contreras.

The opening shot with the close up shot of the hand gun at the beginning is a cool and effective way to start the video. It gives the viewer a good idea of what the video is about right away. Also I like that the shooters miss the target occasionally. This gives the video more of a candid feel so that it doesn’t rehearsed. It’s also a cool technique that the camera pans along with the movement of the individuals. It reminded me of the scene in Goodfellas when the camera follows Herny and Karen through the restaurant. I also like that it includes interviews from three different people which is the perfect number of sources for this length of story. I think that the line “it’s a lot of good time spent with a lot of good friends,” was the best quote in the video.

My biggest critique of the video is the boring subject matter. If it wasn’t for this class I would absolutely never watch a video about a gun club. However the thing about journalism is that many times the reporter may have no interest in the material that they are covering but it is their job to make it as interesting as possible. Another thing that I didn’t like was that the gun shots were too loud. Being that I am not a gun person this displeased me right away. My final complaint is the video’s short length. It just seemed like it all happened so fast that it was kind of hard to figure out what exactly the video was about. Upon second viewing it seemed obviously that this video was simply a feature piece about a gun club in  Nevada.

The filming techniques used are well done and overall I feel that the reporter did a good job. I would give this video a rating of three out of five.

The Las Vegas Sun video Sin City Shooters explores the the thrill and fun participators feel while spending a day at the shooting range.

Perhaps the best part of this video was the opening scene. It began with the loud pangs of a pistol firing with a close up on the target being hit, as well as the gun being fired. This immediately got my attention and I was curious what exactly this video was about.

In addition the author of this video, Evelio Contretas, manages the frames and shots very well. A majority of the video was composed of medium shots. This worked  well because it allowed the audience to witness the full shooting experience with both the shooter and target in view. These meduim shots were also formating within the rule of thirds, making the picture balanced and easy to view.

The video was very short and fast past. I felt these factors to be both a positive and negative to the video. The content presented was well timed and should not have been any longer. But for someone who has no knowledge of shooting range activites, this video seems a bit arbitrary. I would have liked the video to have some more background information and go more indepth into the topic.

Sin City Shooters, is a video on a shooting competition, which is held in Las Vegas at Desert Sportsmen. Evelio Contreras’s video is a short clip looking into the world of shooting competitions.

The video did a great job with mixing different shots and angles showing the shooting competition happening. I liked that instead of watching a person talk about shooting the voice over came on while they were in action.

The extreme close up of the gun mixed with the medium and close shots of the people in action kept the piece moving. During the piece there were many medium shots of the groups of people together teaching each other different movements. The camera was in the action, which showed how they shot and that the shooting competitions are a community of people getting together.

One thing that I noticed that I thought could have been improved was the use of the voice over with a shot of a gun at the beginning of the video. I would have preferred to see the woman shooting because it was her voice over at the beginning of the piece. I enjoyed watching the video and thought that it was a great piece, which was a good use of video. I do not think that a written story or an audio slideshow would do this justice.