Never Changing

[Sephirothskr]

I worked my butt off on this video. Easily the best thing I have ever created. I really hope you guy's enjoy it. I did. Please comment what you think! (Youtube washes out the colors. But it's whatever )

[CrackTheSky]

Hmm...okay, well I wasn't too crazy about this one. My biggest problem with it is the problem I have with a lot of similar modern AMVs -- it's very random. There's no real concept to it, other than smashing a bunch of pretty scenes together. It comes across as very ADD-ish, and the lightning pace of the editing didn't help too much. If there was any rhyme or reason to your scene selection, I didn't pick up on it.

Also, there was a distinct lack of visual rhythm. As many cuts and transitions as you made throughout the video, they rarely seemed to sync up with the music in any definite way. A lot of the time it felt like the video was being edited to another song. It's clear you were trying to sync things up, it just didn't work out a lot of the time and I couldn't figure out the pacing.

I did like that it was relatively simple and straightforward. There was nothing too over-the-top in terms of effects or anything, but on that note, a few things to consider: first, you went a little crazy on the flash transitions. For a video of this nature I think hard cuts would have served you better. Same thing with the "push" transitions (i.e. the majority of the transitions from 1:53-2:03 if you're not sure what I'm talking about). Aaaaand the blur transitions (also, a note on Gaussian blurs: they tend to look a lot better if you don't make them too heavy). Again, no real rhyme or reason to them, and they didn't really add anything to the flow of the video. It came across like you were experimenting with them a lot and just decided to throw them all into the video willy-nilly. And one final note on transitions: Try not to ever use the chroma key transition like you did at 1:25 and 2:42...I don't know that that ever looks good.

From things you've posted elsewhere around here, you seem like an editor who wants to learn and who takes criticism well which is why I'm writing all this up. Most people who post here would read something like this and not apply, just ignore it and move on. And you have every right to -- this is all just my opinion so you don't have to listen But you seem like a good guy and if there's one thing I got out of this video, it's that you have the technical side of editing down. You know how to put together a video, utilize transitions, use your editing program. In my opinion, the next step is to start paying more attention to the music and get a feel for how to match visual flow with the pace of the music. That's something that honestly just takes time and practice, and I would recommend watching a LOT of videos in your editing downtime. Try watching some not-so-modern stuff, when editors HAD to rely purely on concept and raw editing and didn't have the luxury of using effects and transitions to carry the video.

Anyway, yeah, so I didn't really like this one but I love your attitude, and I love your enthusiasm, and I love that you're bringing a younger voice to this community Keep making stuff, keep contributing, keep doing what you're doing!

[Sephirothskr]

I appreciate the criticism. The reason why the pacing wasn't consistent was because my image for the video was to start out very fast and show the happier side of things, bright yellow and orange colors. Then as it went down, I started switching to the lyrics pacing more than I did the beat, and the scenes I chose were more sad, or romantic. Towards the end I went full blast romantic and happy. There WAS a bit of rhyme and reason to the shots I chose, because usually as I said, there would be bright shots, then I would choose dark shots. The overall theme was.. the way I would describe it is starting in the evening, going to the night, and then the dawn of a new day. (Also it's kind of funny when you said the flashes because I literally only laid down a flash transition twice throughout the whole video, the others would just be additive dissolves or it was part of the original clip). But yes, this was my first time making a "good" amv IMO. I think I really captured what I saw made others good. Maybe I don't have the telling a story part down just yet.. but I think my transitions and flow is getting a lot better.

And on another note, those were not chroma key transitions, they were some boris continuum ultima transitions. They're a form of wipe I think. and at 1:25 when it cuts to the forest, that was a gaussian blur transition. I think I only used it like... twice the whole video. I tried not to be redundant.. but I know my pushes were everywhere. They just made for good transitions and I always see people using them so I'm like "OH IMA GO USEM." It's kinda funny.. My goal for this video was to not butt spam flashes, which I didn't.. but I did that for pushes -_-........

And on on final note, if you've seen chuunibyo, the anime itself has a very strong theme that connects well to the song. So that anime helps my message a bit more I think. I think next time i'll try to be a bit slower. Every video I make is usually hardcore rock music and has slow stuff. I got tired of it and wanted to make something fast . My other two videos I'm currently working on are a LOT slower than this one. One is on a hiatus due to me not figuring out what episodes Itachi is in.. ><..... the other is a rock song that's more story oriented then editing oriented for attack on titan.

[Replay Studios]

Hmm...okay, well I wasn't too crazy about this one. My biggest problem with it is the problem I have with a lot of similar modern AMVs -- it's very random. There's no real concept to it, other than smashing a bunch of pretty scenes together. It comes across as very ADD-ish, and the lightning pace of the editing didn't help too much. If there was any rhyme or reason to your scene selection, I didn't pick up on it.

Also, there was a distinct lack of visual rhythm. As many cuts and transitions as you made throughout the video, they rarely seemed to sync up with the music in any definite way. A lot of the time it felt like the video was being edited to another song. It's clear you were trying to sync things up, it just didn't work out a lot of the time and I couldn't figure out the pacing.

I did like that it was relatively simple and straightforward. There was nothing too over-the-top in terms of effects or anything, but on that note, a few things to consider: first, you went a little crazy on the flash transitions. For a video of this nature I think hard cuts would have served you better. Same thing with the "push" transitions (i.e. the majority of the transitions from 1:53-2:03 if you're not sure what I'm talking about). Aaaaand the blur transitions (also, a note on Gaussian blurs: they tend to look a lot better if you don't make them too heavy). Again, no real rhyme or reason to them, and they didn't really add anything to the flow of the video. It came across like you were experimenting with them a lot and just decided to throw them all into the video willy-nilly. And one final note on transitions: Try not to ever use the chroma key transition like you did at 1:25 and 2:42...I don't know that that ever looks good.

From things you've posted elsewhere around here, you seem like an editor who wants to learn and who takes criticism well which is why I'm writing all this up. Most people who post here would read something like this and not apply, just ignore it and move on. And you have every right to -- this is all just my opinion so you don't have to listen But you seem like a good guy and if there's one thing I got out of this video, it's that you have the technical side of editing down. You know how to put together a video, utilize transitions, use your editing program. In my opinion, the next step is to start paying more attention to the music and get a feel for how to match visual flow with the pace of the music. That's something that honestly just takes time and practice, and I would recommend watching a LOT of videos in your editing downtime. Try watching some not-so-modern stuff, when editors HAD to rely purely on concept and raw editing and didn't have the luxury of using effects and transitions to carry the video.

Anyway, yeah, so I didn't really like this one but I love your attitude, and I love your enthusiasm, and I love that you're bringing a younger voice to this community Keep making stuff, keep contributing, keep doing what you're doing!