by downwithpants » Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:50 am
rose4emily:
I watched your third stone video (v 1.2). ~ I haven't watched any of your previous versions, so I don't know what direction your changes have taken.
Start to 1:46: The sequence has a very nice simple, innocent, and summery feel too it. At 1:38 the steam coming from the plant is too hard to see with the brightness of the video, so it's kinda hard to tell what's going on... so if you add color or turn down the brightness it might help there.
1:46-3:02: 1:46 is a nice change to the more energetic sequence of hakura hitting naota with her vespa, but it shows a very motionless scene of naota from 1:49-1:53. Again it seems to get too bright from 2:12-2:20, as the scenes no longer stick to simple close ups of the character's faces (which is easier to pick up under the bleaching), but show more complex scenes where you need more details to see what's going on. 2:26-2:48 looks really nice in the bleaching, with the action matching the development in the music.
3:20-3:47: At 3:20, the scene change is a bit too sudden it seems. We're suddenly moving from naota, minami, and hakura on the bridge to naota at home, but since everything is black and white and bleached, it might be hard to pick that up without prior knowledge of flcl scenes, and then one would be wondering where did minami go and why are they indoors? Maybe a fade transition or a fade to white and back from white would better present the scene change. Ditto with the change to the railroad crossing scene. During the railroad crossing scene, alternating between images of naota and hakura implies some dialogue, which doesn't fit with the music too well.
3:58-4:54: From 3:58-4:14, the scenes seem to a bit to relaxed against the developing music section, which is increasing in complexity and pace. The scene of Minami's cigarette at 4:15-4:19 seems to interrupt the sequence of the preceding and following sequences that would otherwise flow one after the other. But the increasing chaos demonstrated in Hakura, Minami, and Naota's behaviors from 4:19-4:54 are fitting to the music.
4:55-5:20: The video release the tension well at 4:55. At 4:58-5:10 I don't think the bleaching is necessary. We've already seen the simple-texture idea and left it before, so it seems unnecessary to return to it for 12 seconds.
5:20-5:44 works very well with the relaxed section in the music. Actually the bleaching might work well here, after 5:28 where we see the characters.
5:45-6:36: are you going to hold the bridge for that length or is that just filler material for now?
7:14-8:16: This section worked really nice, with minami following kanji while the music develops over a repeating motive in the bass. Is the switch to monochrome (7:21-7:55) intentional or just an experiment?
8:16-9:00 This section seems a bit awkward as the video segment alternates between scenes of stillness or constant expected motion, to scenes of rapid unexpected changes in motion. But with some hammering out it seems like it could work.
9:02-9:20 This section feels out of place as the music has relaxed again. The scene of kanji descending is a bit too effectsy, and it doesn't seem to fit in the direction of the video, looking at the previous and following scenes. In contrast, 9:45-10:05 seems like the video needs more action, as the acoustic guitar plays rapid solos.
10:05-10:18 works wonderfully. The music (both soloing acoustic guitar and supporting violins) is very dissonant over the bass. This really supports the idea of Naota realizing Minami's guilt as arsonist really well. 10:18-11:14 also looks neat with the scribbled japanese text over the free form in the upper instruments. It does end kind of abruptly though at 11:14.
11:14-11:32, although it does lead in to the following section, does at the same time take attention off from the Minami arsonry story to Hakura's ood behavior.
11:32-end: The rest works pretty well. At 13:01, the action in the video continues on, even though music dies down, so it doesn't seem as well supported by the music. It would be nice to see the change to the explosion in the video at 13:18 against to change to the long legato notes in the music at 13:15, if you can get frame by frame editing down. A similar effect was produced at the end of Kevin Caldwell's Engel.
I noticed there are a lot of shots of the power plant throughout the video. Maybe you could explore and develop that as a recurring theme in the video.