by Kinematics » Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:29 pm
Another run of excellent videos.
Groups E&F - 3
[Ileia] AMV Pop Culture (As Performed By Alchemists)
The only video to draw directly from the song's original intent: pop culture. I recognized most of the styles, though it really only struck me as a direct parody when the Pop Up Video notes showed up. Yeah, a bit slow. >?>
Watching through the second time, and paying attention to those elements, it was far more obvious. But then, that's what makes them part of the 'pop culture' of AMVs -- they're distinctive styles, and something that most people have seen and can easily relate to.
I didn't see any immediately noticeable faults, as the style trumped the content. To an extent I'd say that the video itself was only mildly entertaining, but that's also part of the point; it's not a video for the sake of a video, it's a video for the sake of common elements we share and recognize.
[Mally] Pop Culture
Odd mixing in of live footage. A certain amount of originality, but also felt a bit lazy; that is, not as much work was done with the live footage as with the anime footage.
One of three (out of the 7 from both groups) that used a single anime source for footage. Nichijou definitely works well with the overall tone.
Very good sync and effects. Visually it all flowed together well (good direction)?
Doesn't seem to have any particular focus, just a mix of random happenings, so nothing to really pick out as 'wrong'?
[pacotacoshell] Pop Culture
Excellent sync, and very well constructed overall flow and direction. Mood and intensity were maintained throughout, with very good lyric match. About the only thing I could maybe find fault with would be the color balance transitions over the course of the video.
Only minor complaint on clips chosen is the Digimon (I think?) bit at ~2:55. The flat coloring really looked out of place compared to all the more 3-dimensional looking art from the rest of the video. There were a couple other clips from Digimon earlier on, but they included enough texture to not feel wrong.
[xDreww] Razzle-Dazzle
Focused more on the dance aspect, and really pulled it off well.
Some bits early on, plus the slower bits in the middle ('turn things back'), felt 'softer' -- like the editing wasn't quite as tight and precise as it could have been. Possibly intentional, and not something I'd say is 'wrong', just a subtle feeling that it could have been slightly better.
The pure dance segments generally fit in quite well, with the dancing pretty much always feeling like it belonged with the song (one issue: 1:51, final hand movement was out of sync with final note)?
Top picks:
??? Can I say all 4? meh.
I'd probably always pick pacotacoshell's Pop Culture as one of the two, but my other choice keeps changing.??
Group G&H - 3
[animAe] Game[play] Boy
The third of the single-source videos, this time using TWGOK.
It's easy to make the connection to this anime based on the lyrics of the song, but taken as a whole it feels a bit weaker.
A lot of the early cuts felt a bit disjointed and random, and hard to get a feel of a flow. Basically, the pattern was his direct interactions in the 3d world, followed by a retreat to the 2d, but with touches of the 3d thrown in. However, while I can see that after the fact, while watching it generally felt kind of random.
The sync with his arms and hands motions was very well done. The intermediary bits were generally well placed, but the sync was a bit off at times. The intro period (0:38-0:53) felt way to slow relative to the music.
Main problem was the feel that most of the video was just an adaptation of that one scene, with filler at the beginning to lead up to it.
There's at least three ways you could approach the construction of this video using this source, and I think a more all-encompassing view using the full song length could have worked better. The way it was done felt too limiting.
[irriadin] Hotpot Special
Weak impact at the start compared to most others.
Interesting idea to use a different source per element of the song, however the "I could be your boy" period seemed to drag on a lot with the same video source (and mostly the same scenes, for that matter), with minimal lyric match. Bubbles in the middle of that could have helped add impact, but mostly just floated there, and didn't really do anything.
Other than that middle bit, though, most of it worked ok. Lot of general randomness in scene choices, though.
[VivifxAMV] Just Another Anime Mix
Strong start.
My favorite "I could be your boy; you could be my girl" segment out of these videos, though mixing in the older, lower-quality footage was a mild annoyance.
Lip sync occasinally wasn't quite on spot (eg: 0:25, Kyon at 1:07, 1:17), and there were a couple cases of errant lip flap (eg: Mio @0:22 (second), 2:14, 2:23)?
Slacked off a lot in the last ~20-30 seconds.
Top Picks:
[VivifxAMV] Just Another Anime Mix
Bit of a tossup between the other two. There were bits that I liked, but also bits that dragged both of them down.