Hey ORG,
I reached into the archives and wanted to give Cowboy Bebop another shot at the AMV limelight :p. I would love feedback on this one to get better and I am happy to give you proportionately detailed feedback on anything of yours you like -- just leave a link at the end of your review!
Feedback wanted for Cowboy Bebop AMV
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Kireblue
- Forum Admin
- Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:44 pm
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Contact:
Re: Feedback wanted for Cowboy Bebop AMV
I really like the flow and pace that your video had during the first minute, but after that, it felt like you put the video on auto pilot a bit. Around that time, the movements of your characters stopped matching rhythm of the song, and you stopped syncing as hard on the heavy beats and snaps. I noticed that you did have some scene changes on them, but they kinda got wasted when you did long crossfades and fades to black. Heavy beats and snaps typically work best with hard cuts, and prolonged notes are what work well with fades.
And speaking of fades to black, I feel that a lot of your scenes would have been nicer if you hadn't faded 100% to black. Even if its only for a frame or 2, having your video go completely black can be jarring and hurt the flow of your video. To avoid fading to 100% black, I do a trick that I call "crossfading to black". It's kinda like a mix between a crossfade and a fade to black because instead of fading out to a black screen, you fade out to another scene that's halfway fading in. Here is a visual example of what the tick looks like on a timeline.
At about the 3rd frame, my upper clips starts to fade, but doesn't completely fade out till frame 7. And at frame 6, my bottom clip starts to fade in, but doesn't finish fading in till frame 12. So for frames 6 and 7, my two clips are technically crossfading. So at no point will my video ever have a completely black scene because even when my upper scenes ends at frame 8, the slightly faded in bottom scene will ease that a bit.
Moving on to the 3rd minute of your video (specifically around 1:45), I feel that you went back to the good flow that you had in the beginning , but you still missed some good sync moments by fading instead of hard cutting. The fades worked really well during the buildup to the climax, but you should probably avoid fading to black in the middle of a climax.
Overall, I liked this video a lot. A few small adjustments would have really made it awesome, and so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what you do in your next vid
And speaking of fades to black, I feel that a lot of your scenes would have been nicer if you hadn't faded 100% to black. Even if its only for a frame or 2, having your video go completely black can be jarring and hurt the flow of your video. To avoid fading to 100% black, I do a trick that I call "crossfading to black". It's kinda like a mix between a crossfade and a fade to black because instead of fading out to a black screen, you fade out to another scene that's halfway fading in. Here is a visual example of what the tick looks like on a timeline.
At about the 3rd frame, my upper clips starts to fade, but doesn't completely fade out till frame 7. And at frame 6, my bottom clip starts to fade in, but doesn't finish fading in till frame 12. So for frames 6 and 7, my two clips are technically crossfading. So at no point will my video ever have a completely black scene because even when my upper scenes ends at frame 8, the slightly faded in bottom scene will ease that a bit.
Moving on to the 3rd minute of your video (specifically around 1:45), I feel that you went back to the good flow that you had in the beginning , but you still missed some good sync moments by fading instead of hard cutting. The fades worked really well during the buildup to the climax, but you should probably avoid fading to black in the middle of a climax.
Overall, I liked this video a lot. A few small adjustments would have really made it awesome, and so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what you do in your next vid
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DopplerDo
- Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:33 pm
Re: Feedback wanted for Cowboy Bebop AMV
Kireblue, thank you for the awesome feedback. Holy crap does feedback like this help me improve fast! Let me just quickly say: I love this org 
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I love this comment, because it is really at odds with my intentions:
As for the fades to black, I realize that I am addicted to the feeling of a fade-to-black myself and that gives me a wicked bias that turns other people off. Check out my real movie MV "Come Home" for the Great Gatsby if you want to see what it looks like when I have no sense of goddamned restraint on this. As one solution, besides backing off the technique a little bit, I would have never thought to do your "crossfading to black" technique. I am really excited to start using it and thanks for sharing it! Baller advice and I even got a screenshot
!
Ifff you're up to it, can you dig into your soul and articulate what "good flow" is to you? I think we all know how to drop markers and be sync gods that way, but sometimes that is at odds with other advice and preferences I've heard. For example, Rider4Z told me earlier this year that one of her major issues with my "Warriors" vid was the predictable, beat-to-beat timing. Once again, I had that advice in my head making "Desperado," but I didn't do as good as a job as I would have ideally liked. Maybe there is no middle ground in a Venn diagram, but I'll be damned if I don't ask and seek this gold :p.
Thanks again, KB.
.I love this comment, because it is really at odds with my intentions:
I know exactly what that feels like as a viewer to feel like you're sort of waiting through a weak part of video for something cooler and this is an awesome opportunity to adjust my senses about what creates that. Do you have any time stamps or specifics about this? I would love to be more conscious going forward about this.I really like the flow and pace that your video had during the first minute, but after that, it felt like you put the video on auto pilot a bit. Around that time, the movements of your characters stopped matching rhythm of the song, and you stopped syncing as hard on the heavy beats and snaps.
As for the fades to black, I realize that I am addicted to the feeling of a fade-to-black myself and that gives me a wicked bias that turns other people off. Check out my real movie MV "Come Home" for the Great Gatsby if you want to see what it looks like when I have no sense of goddamned restraint on this. As one solution, besides backing off the technique a little bit, I would have never thought to do your "crossfading to black" technique. I am really excited to start using it and thanks for sharing it! Baller advice and I even got a screenshot
!Ifff you're up to it, can you dig into your soul and articulate what "good flow" is to you? I think we all know how to drop markers and be sync gods that way, but sometimes that is at odds with other advice and preferences I've heard. For example, Rider4Z told me earlier this year that one of her major issues with my "Warriors" vid was the predictable, beat-to-beat timing. Once again, I had that advice in my head making "Desperado," but I didn't do as good as a job as I would have ideally liked. Maybe there is no middle ground in a Venn diagram, but I'll be damned if I don't ask and seek this gold :p.
Thanks again, KB.
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Kireblue
- Forum Admin
- Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:44 pm
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Contact:
Re: Feedback wanted for Cowboy Bebop AMV
Sorry for taking so long to reply to you. Hmmmmm. This is a really hard question. To me, flow is a rhythmic consistency in the way you edit and sync to the song. Music has its own natural flow within its tempo, but when you add video to it, you have the power to ride the flow of the music and create a new flow that blends in with it. The best comparison that I can think of is a surfer riding on the flow of a wave and moving his body in a consistent motion to create his own flow on top of it. For video editors, the wave is the music, and the footage is the surfer. I'm not really sure if this analogy is useful, but its what came to my mind when I tried to think of what flow means to me.DopplerDo wrote: Ifff you're up to it, can you dig into your soul and articulate what "good flow" is to you? I think we all know how to drop markers and be sync gods that way, but sometimes that is at odds with other advice and preferences I've heard. For example, Rider4Z told me earlier this year that one of her major issues with my "Warriors" vid was the predictable, beat-to-beat timing. Once again, I had that advice in my head making "Desperado," but I didn't do as good as a job as I would have ideally liked. Maybe there is no middle ground in a Venn diagram, but I'll be damned if I don't ask and seek this gold :p.
I think that Vivix did a much better job in this video at describing flow than I ever could lol
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DopplerDo
- Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:33 pm
Re: Feedback wanted for Cowboy Bebop AMV
No problem at all, Kireblue! You're doing me a favor and really helping me out, so we're on your schedule 
!
Haha I actually looked up this video and watched it the day I replied to you in my own research on the topic. Vivifx is an amazing editor whose skills I only wish I had at this point, but I kind of don't completely agree with more than the technical aspects of flow shown in the video about matching movement/pans, colors, content-match etc. On a meta level, I myself block and break up a song into phases, but breaking it up into sections like "dancing" and "romancy stuff" doesn't work for me. While I totally see the point about the awesome flow it creates, I often see creators putting pure visual flow and asthetic above storytelling -- it comes across as frivolous a bit to me. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not the kind of video I'm interested in creating. Just writing about it now, I am doubly aware that just talking about flow is borderline impossible.
Well, while I noodle on this, I want you to know I put your cross-fade technique into practice in the video I'm working on now. I was a little skeptical of using it in some situations, but I have to admit, it pretty much just works in all situations. I have more than once said out loud in front of Premiere that you are a goddamn genius. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have organically thought about your cross-fade. I am super grateful for the advice, as always.
!Haha I actually looked up this video and watched it the day I replied to you in my own research on the topic. Vivifx is an amazing editor whose skills I only wish I had at this point, but I kind of don't completely agree with more than the technical aspects of flow shown in the video about matching movement/pans, colors, content-match etc. On a meta level, I myself block and break up a song into phases, but breaking it up into sections like "dancing" and "romancy stuff" doesn't work for me. While I totally see the point about the awesome flow it creates, I often see creators putting pure visual flow and asthetic above storytelling -- it comes across as frivolous a bit to me. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not the kind of video I'm interested in creating. Just writing about it now, I am doubly aware that just talking about flow is borderline impossible.
Well, while I noodle on this, I want you to know I put your cross-fade technique into practice in the video I'm working on now. I was a little skeptical of using it in some situations, but I have to admit, it pretty much just works in all situations. I have more than once said out loud in front of Premiere that you are a goddamn genius. Honestly, I'm not sure I would have organically thought about your cross-fade. I am super grateful for the advice, as always.