My first video, Akame ga kill

[furious purpose]

Hey

So, I made a video



It was my video to learn using sony vegas, took me like 6 hours to make. I dunno if that's even a long time or not, I have no sense of context. Just wanna get some tips and whatnot.

Marvelous.

Thanks

[UnluckyArtist]

Started off well enough and had a nice dark tone but as soon as the extra sound effects came in the flow was no mo.. I did see what you were going for though.

[furious purpose]

Do you mean after the bag dropped? What would've helped keep the "flow" ?

[UnluckyArtist]

A little bit before the bag is when it kinda disconnected for me, you could have just kept the type of pacing you had in the beginning (slow, stopping with the music) while going a little faster with the movements. Also not overlaying as much and not ending so suddenly would've made this alot better.

I liked the music choice, seems like you picked the better part of the whole song.

[Peaceful_Asylum]

First of all, the scene selection wasn’t very good and the pace that you decided to go with didn’t really work. The break down in my opinion for making an AMV is first taking the time to draw a story board to have an idea where you’re going, because it feels like you just put scenes to music. After forming your story, research scenes, sync to the music, add transition points, and eventually technical skill will come into play where you can photoshop, draw, etc to make your AMV stand out. Everything comes hand and hand, but the major thing to make an AMV is the transitions and timing.

Going back to the pace of your AMV, (and this also ties in with the transitions,) when the string instrument comes in, maybe try adding quick, fluid transitions there so it will be matching every other note or maybe every other stroke, then when the long note comes in, have the drawn out scene like in the start, but even then a drawn out scene can be too long. You really need to work on timing as well, because everything is about flow, if you have stuff too quick, it feels rushed and out of place. When things are sitting there for too long, it’s not just out of place, but cringe-worthy. I saw what you were going for with the dark setting and feel, but the transitions, as well as, like I said before, the scene selection, were all poor to say the least. I might be able to analyze the story by saying that she killed the man protecting her friend, and then becamea monster herself. You went from a psychological horror feel where these two were going to be stalked or mentally tormented by someone from the shadows to just action. The story doesn’t really have to be original, but it gives a good basis to have where your idea can go. A writer, for example, goes through great lengths and time to create detail so that their world can be brought to life in their readers’ minds. One thing that really kills me is lack of continuity, because you were just everywhere with this.

I will give you this thought, despite having a lot of other major flaws, you timed the lightning well, but there’s a lot of wasted potential with the music. The time between 32-35 seconds, you took advantage of the music, as well picking good scenes for that part, but after that you degraded back into the slow scene selection where it almost felt like someone just took clips and put it to some music they liked. I mean, I don’t make AMVs, but I can sit down and take Windows Movie Maker, pick some scenes, stick them into it, then play some music. I don’t mean to sound rude, but brutal advice is the best, because when you’re kicked down the hardest, it is then where you test your true mettle, like getting back up and proving someone wrong. From that you will become better and stronger an individual. Good luck.

[furious purpose]

Oh wow, thank you for taking the time to write that! I do agree the scenes weren't necessarily the best (I screwed myself from the get go, the entire sequence lasted less than half the length of the song D=) and I'll try to focus on thinking more about tying transitions with the music.

I will say though that I didn't have a story in mind, more just the idea of creating an atmosphere. I doubt I will be creating an amv to tell a story anytime soon. I'm not much a fan of story heavy amvs. I'm more into the simple aesthetic of it and conveying a general mood.

Thanks for your honest critique, I wouldn't worry about sounding rude, I'd rather someone be rude and tell me how it is than friendly but effectively lying

[CrackTheSky]

Eh, I thought the video was fine. It wasn't awful, it wasn't great, and I've seen a LOT worse first videos. I do agree with pretty much all that's already been said -- there's a weird disconnect between the first half of the video and the second half. I realize you weren't trying to tell a story but there should be some coherency to the scene selection, and the switch from inside the house to being out in the street was confusing and could have used some kind of connector, so to speak.

There was also a lot of wasted potential when it came to sync. There were so many cool sounds and prominent beats that went un-synced. Not that every sound needs to have something synced to it, but I definitely would have liked to see more. I also really tend to not like half-transparent overlays, and they looked kind of awkward in this video. They really messed with the visual rhythm, too. I think the video would have been fine if you had just stuck to one video track, but then again you said this was a "learning the program" video, so I'll let it slide

Oh, one other thing to nitpick, from a technical standpoint: the watermark in the upper-right...tsk tsk.

But, you did do a bunch of stuff right. As a mood piece I think you mostly nailed it, the song and the scenes have the same dark aesthetic so good job there. You also clearly understand internal sync (syncing up motion within a scene to a beat rather than using a cut or effect), which I personally prefer so I liked the way the video flowed, a lot of the time. I mean, overall there's a lot of potential and promise in this video, so I'm interested to see what you come up with down the road. Unfortunately it just feels very incomplete, more like a work-in-progress than a finished video. Since you clearly didn't use the whole song it might be worth entertaining the idea of fleshing this out some more and making it into a full, complete video using the entire song.

And, to give you some context for the time taken...six hours isn't a lot of time, but once you get the hang of editing a lot can be done in six hours. On average, a video that uses no (or simple) effects that's 3:30-4:00 long would probably take me in the range of 10-15 hours to create, if that. But I've been editing for eight years and know what I need to know about Vegas inside-out, so I'd say six hours is pretty quick to put something like this together, if you're learning on the fly. Nice job.

[furious purpose]

Holy balls I wasn't expecting this much feedback, this is top. In most forums your first few posts are largely ignored so this is great.

Anyway. A connector between the two scenes sounds so obvious now that you've said it, but definitely something its missing and yea haha I got a bit experimental trying to do weird rhythm stuff with a few layers of video. I guess I should tone it down a bit until I've got some more experience behind me. Also you have no idea how helpful that time estimate is to me, I'm never fully happy with things I do, I always try and tweak it, so knowing how long it generally takes gives me a red flag for when I might be getting silly with working on something

Thank you so much for watching and writing all that out, I really genuinely appreciate it

[CrackTheSky]

It helps that you didn't just post something and then expect people to watch it, you actually asked for feedback. And then, when someone responded with constructive criticism, you asked for more details and responded in a positive way. This goes a long way to getting people to respond around here, when you're new...most people just post their videos and run, with no intention of trying to get feedback so they can improve. You have the right attitude, it'll serve you well.

And if you ever need help with betas or anything, feel free to PM me!