Holy crap, what was I drinking?

blabbler · Post by **blabbler** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:54 am

Hehe, thanks for the comments everyone. I'm quite pleased with this one, if only for the reason that

I ACTUALLY BROKE THE 40s BARRIER!

w00t.

It only took about five hours to do the video and maybe three for the stupid credits sequence. WHICH is in no way an excuse for the sloppy editing, of course.

My justification is that I keep starting a video, get hung up on details and start something new after spending ten hours working on the first five seconds. So it was nice to bang something out and get it up here.

CrackTheSky said: ...The first half of the video was the worst part...

Doh, busted. You're right about the non-existant crossfades too. I just knobbled the opacity to fade clips in and out.
I thought the flow was pretty good for the first part, and that it didn't fall apart until the middle, but when I watched it again thinking about the transitions, I realised how much crossfades would smooth out the quiet section of the song...

The jumpy bit at the start is supposed to be the tv on the fritz, but I suppose I really needed to establish that better somehow.

Ah well, you live and learn.

Of course, I spent most of my time getting the posing pouch sequence... just so.

Cheers,
blabbler

Brad · Post by **Brad** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:48 am

Honestly, I don't know what Crack is talking about... You don't NEED crossfades all over the place in order to establish an editing rhythm or fit the flow of the song. I thought the cuts worked perfectly here. I'm not saying it's a perfect video, but I certainly didn't think the first half was bad at all.

blabbler · Post by **blabbler** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:51 am

Nah, to be fair I absolutely get what CrackTheSky is saying, especially his comments about the posing pouch.
Wtf was up with the cuts to static? They were all over the place. There are also tons of dips to black and scenes popping up, but no real rythm.
It doesn't really start to flow until the slime really gets moving. Also that falling down bit with officer asshat and his ho' was totally random.
And the continuity! Lol. Night! Day! Night! Day!

Anyway, I think the real problem is all the blank screen time. I have difficulties with that, I draft out like 5-10 minutes of footage I want to use, then pare it down as I 'edit 'until there's nothing but 30s of footage for a 2 minute song + a sh$t load of nothing in between.

That said, I was quite pleased with the 'bookend' format. Oh, and welsh trip-hop-hip-pop credits are just so underused round here.

Cheers,
blabbler

Greggus1 · Post by **Greggus1** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:55 am

AtomX wrote:Honestly, I don't know what Crack is talking about... You don't NEED crossfades all over the place in order to establish an editing rhythm or fit the flow of the song. I thought the cuts worked perfectly here. I'm not saying it's a perfect video, but I certainly didn't think the first half was bad at all.

x2

Douggie · Post by **Douggie** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:04 am

Seems like I have already seen it... I can't remember that! :O

Anyway, am going to download it soon, but reading from the comments, I just like to state the following:

slow segments in songs does not mean you have to use cross fades!

So, I said it! There are tons of other ways to control rhythm and pacing in your AMV and I think too many people think that the nature of a slow transition fits the slow rhythm/pace of a song. But in contrary, fades are mostly to make a break in continuity as smooth as possible. Hard cuts is the way our eyes and brain work (in my perspective, like your blinking your eye) and there should be a reason to use any other transition - if not, stick with with the hard cuts. I mean, my average use of crossfades/fade to black per video is about 3 I think (except for my IC-vids, but the next segment explains why).

Plus I think, (cross)fading is used as a way of cheating most of the time, as you can choose any scene and (cross)fade it into any scene you like and it still won't look wierd. Hard cuts on the other hand requires much more control of continuity, harder timing and better scene selection. This doesn't mean that crossfading is bad, but I just think that the use of it is overrated and mostly used to make a transition work, instead of choosing another scene, change the timing or do something else to make it work.

I can ramble on and on about this, but I won't... I tell you my comments about your video later!

blabbler · Post by **blabbler** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:02 am

You're all very nice to say that CrackTheSky is overreacting, but he's simply (I presume) noticed that I pulled this out of my ass without putting in as much effort as I probably should have. Many cuts are jarring, and I don't doubt that several transitions would benefit from a crossfade (which simply didn't occur to me).

This should perhaps be viewed as a bit of fun, or as a personal exercise in finally getting a (pff

) full length video out.

CrackTheSky · Post by **CrackTheSky** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:12 pm

You can all bitch about me not liking hard cuts all you want, I still don't think the video had any flow in the first part

Falconone · Post by **Falconone** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:49 pm

hm, i must say the first part was not my tast, this noise effect was crazy and at this places not good, in my eyes.
After a while it goes better. After all i give this video only 3 points... sorry

meleechampion · Post by **meleechampion** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:54 pm

Mmmm... that felt good. I had to turn my volume up though. =)

I'm not sure what people are talking about, I liked the whole thing.

blabbler · Post by **blabbler** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:23 pm

But you're a penguin.