Utena - "Your Lips Are Red" (St. Vincent)

[ginshirou]

EDIT: Video updated and re-uploaded, thanks to the admins and thanks for your patience!




First video.



So many problems, I know, I just wanted to learn the software and get some feedback. Thanks.

[CodeZTM]

More variety of scenes, editing out lip flap and cut down the length of the scenes, and this would have been really nicely done.

Even as is, it has an interesting flow and interesting editing. Wish it had repairs like above, but still pretty good.

Oh, and it's not a crime to use more than one episode.

3/5

[meleechampion]

I really like the foreboding feeling of the song and the buildup, but after the fight it seems... I dunno, bland.

Code mentioned it, but you'd really would get a better video if you cut down on the lip flap.

I like the style and I liked the scene selection, and I liked the storytelling, even if I didn't quite understand it. Nice job.

[ginshirou]

I really like the foreboding feeling of the song and the buildup, but after the fight it seems... I dunno, bland.

Yeah, I've tried to tweak it. That last verse in particular runs way too long, and I had trouble cleanly cutting the audio because of everything going on with the song. I didn't have any good ideas on where to go to end it after the duel but didn't want to just chop it off - though maybe it'd be better with just a fadeout?

Code mentioned it, but you'd really would get a better video if you cut down on the lip flap.

Yeah... still figuring out how to do that, particularly in motion shots. But there's parts that are really bad.

I like the style and I liked the scene selection, and I liked the storytelling, even if I didn't quite understand it. Nice job.

Thanks!

Even as is, it has an interesting flow and interesting editing.

Wow, thanks! I might revisit this down the road once I've gotten a better handle on Vegas.

Oh, and it's not a crime to use more than one episode.

I did in a couple spots - the Nemuro 100 and fire are from ep22, young Touga is from ep7 I think. But yeah, it's almost all from ep1.

EDIT: Oh yeah, masking, that works. Probably should have learned to do that before I submitted the video.

[qyll]

D'oh, you removed the video.

Could you upload it on the site or back on the tube so I can watch it? I adore this song but always thought it was way too hard to make an AMV to.

[purplepolecat]

Loved it. Especially for a first video, this showed real flair. The composition and scene selection were lovely, and there were some really well thought out sync moments, particularly when the music changed pace.

The editing kinda ran out of steam around the 4:00 mark though.

In addition to the technical nitpicks above, aspect ratio is slightly off, 4:3 TV shows should be 640x480.

Other than that, good job, keep 'em coming !

[ginshirou]

Loved it. Especially for a first video, this showed real flair. The composition and scene selection were lovely, and there were some really well thought out sync moments, particularly when the music changed pace. The editing kinda ran out of steam around the 4:00 mark though.

I keep waiting to get torn apart. Thanks for the compliments!

In addition to the technical nitpicks above, aspect ratio is slightly off, 4:3 TV shows should be 640x480.

I fought with that more than anything before I realized I had ripped my source DVDs with the wrong pixel ratio. If there's an easy way to get Vegas to crop or resize instead of letterbox, I'd be all over it.

Other than that, good job, keep 'em coming !

Will do!

D'oh, you removed the video.

Yeah, I was really unhappy with the quality of the preview render and YouTube output, probably from rendering to WMV. It also looked like I had uploaded an older render to YT in a subconscious attempt to make every possible newbie mistake.

The upside is that I polished it a little before re-uploading it, so it might be worth another look. Nothing huge, just found a way to tighten the end a little, add some context and mask some of the lip flap. It should be back up here and on YT shortly.

Damn but I'm having fun with this though, even when it's frustrating.

[Kionon]

In some ways, I feel like purplepolecat. For a first video, this did show real flair, but I am going to leave my good impressions for last.

A little background. To say Utena AMVs are kinda my thing would be an understatement. I make at least one every year. My first released solo edited video was Utena. I have more Utena videos from others than any other series (over forty Utena AMVs), and Utena is my third favorite series after KOR and Touch. Most people on the org are well acquainted with my Utena fandom. This makes me far more critical about the use of the series than others.

Let's talk about the technical aspects first.

Aspect ratio, aspect ratio, aspect ratio. Utena is Standard Definition 4:3. This means you should release your video in 640x480. You have it in 720x480. This is fine, if you set a flag (which tells the player to show it in 4;3), but increases filesize. Without a flag, everything looks flattened.

Encode. You have some issues during fades and high action scenes with macroblocking (big pixels you can see). This means you haven't found the optimum bitrate to handle the high motion scenes. I hate for you to have to replace it again, but between encode and aspect ratio, you should produce another copy.

Let's now talk about stylistic choices.

I am not a fan of MTV style credits, for both personal and practical reasons. I personally think they look bad. Practically, you can not submit videos to certain cons if they have MTV style credits. It is much better to have credits before and after, that you can remove for blind contests. It also makes sure that, in my opinion, the video looks cleaner and your viewer is not distracted.

Lip flap. Mentioned by others, there is simply too much of it in this video. It is distracting, and for this song especially, does not fit. Utena offers plenty of scene choices where lip flap is not an issue. There are also ways you can eliminate lip flap be creative frame redistribution or even clips using overlays of closed mouths that can eliminate lip flap from significant portions of a given scene.

Japanese language use. I didn't understand your use of the beginning scene at all. Your audience will, as a majority, not understand it. And the significance is limited at best, because the information is available nonverbally through Utena's facial expressions. If you understand Japanese, and you believed your audience understood Japanese, perhaps I would better understand it, but this isn't the case for your audience as a whole. At least not on the org.

Editing flow. This is where you show that you have a better grasp of sync than the majority of first-time editors. Your cuts indicate that you are trying to follow the rather disjointed nature of both the lyrics and the aural qualities of the music. This is very impressive. Let me say that again, before I go off into more negatives, so you have it in your mind. This is very impressive. Most first videos focus on either action synced solely to the lyrics or solely to the aural qualities of the music. Rare is the first video that can do both, especially given the rather schizophrenic nature of the song in question.

However, I say this with the caveat that this is indeed a first video, and you could have done it better. You stayed on many scenes far too long, and many of your scene choices were far too chronological even when your cuts mirrored the frenzy of the music. Knowing what I know about the series, I felt there were some much better scene choices that could have been utilised for certain lyrical passages. Intentionally presenting those scenes, across the entire series, in a way that was intentionally non-chronological would have presented a far better representation of both the expressed disjointedness of the music while hammering home that the same sort of mental disjointedness exists in the characters of the series, and indeed, cause and effect are intentionally blurred in the series for dramatic effect. That you were able to tap into this, and demonstrate to me that you were aware of it, and aware of some of the ways in which you could present it shows a very well developed sense of artistic deconstruction. We simply need to work on your scene identification and editing skills so that you transcend a work that shows you understand where you were trying to go and a work that actually gets you there.

That really was positive, I swear. Good job.

[CodeZTM]

ginshirou, when Kionon writes a book about your video, that is something to be VERY proud of.

[ginshirou]

Aspect ratio, aspect ratio, aspect ratio. Utena is Standard Definition 4:3. This means you should release your video in 640x480. You have it in 720x480. This is fine, if you set a flag (which tells the player to show it in 4;3), but increases filesize. Without a flag, everything looks flattened.

I'm reencoding my sources as I write this, lesson learned.

Encode. You have some issues during fades and high action scenes with macroblocking (big pixels you can see). This means you haven't found the optimum bitrate to handle the high motion scenes. I hate for you to have to replace it again, but between encode and aspect ratio, you should produce another copy.

I can tell encoding is going to be the bane of my existence.

I am not a fan of MTV style credits, for both personal and practical reasons. I personally think they look bad. Practically, you can not submit videos to certain cons if they have MTV style credits. It is much better to have credits before and after, that you can remove for blind contests. It also makes sure that, in my opinion, the video looks cleaner and your viewer is not distracted.

I ripped a second MPEG2 version without the logo or bumper for contest submissions, and I'll see if I can get it up on sendspace and add an indirect link. But I'll keep that in mind for future vids, thanks.

Lip flap. Mentioned by others, there is simply too much of it in this video. It is distracting, and for this song especially, does not fit. Utena offers plenty of scene choices where lip flap is not an issue. There are also ways you can eliminate lip flap be creative frame redistribution or even clips using overlays of closed mouths that can eliminate lip flap from significant portions of a given scene.

Still working on my techniques for reducing this. There was quite a bit of frame redistribution in the first version and more masking in the newest one. Can you point me to any resources that help me out with overlays and masking in Vegas Pro 9, especially in scenes with motion?

Japanese language use. I didn't understand your use of the beginning scene at all. Your audience will, as a majority, not understand it. And the significance is limited at best, because the information is available nonverbally through Utena's facial expressions. If you understand Japanese, and you believed your audience understood Japanese, perhaps I would better understand it, but this isn't the case for your audience as a whole. At least not on the org.

I just realized that before I read your post, too, when I decided to caption the beginning for YouTube and saw how distracting the whole thing was. And my rationalization for it - her facial expressions make the language irrelevant - was the same as your explanation as why it's unnecessary.

I'm understanding this as a preference against using audio from the show at all in that scene; would using the audio from the dub be an option?

Editing flow. This is where you show that you have a better grasp of sync than the majority of first-time editors. Your cuts indicate that you are trying to follow the rather disjointed nature of both the lyrics and the aural qualities of the music. This is very impressive. Let me say that again, before I go off into more negatives, so you have it in your mind. This is very impressive. Most first videos focus on either action synced solely to the lyrics or solely to the aural qualities of the music. Rare is the first video that can do both, especially given the rather schizophrenic nature of the song in question.

However, I say this with the caveat that this is indeed a first video, and you could have done it better. You stayed on many scenes far too long, and many of your scene choices were far too chronological even when your cuts mirrored the frenzy of the music. Knowing what I know about the series, I felt there were some much better scene choices that could have been utilised for certain lyrical passages. Intentionally presenting those scenes, across the entire series, in a way that was intentionally non-chronological would have presented a far better representation of both the expressed disjointedness of the music while hammering home that the same sort of mental disjointedness exists in the characters of the series, and indeed, cause and effect are intentionally blurred in the series for dramatic effect. That you were able to tap into this, and demonstrate to me that you were aware of it, and aware of some of the ways in which you could present it shows a very well developed sense of artistic deconstruction. We simply need to work on your scene identification and editing skills so that you transcend a work that shows you understand where you were trying to go and a work that actually gets you there.

That is fantastic feedback, and it's stuff that I've thought more and more about each time I've watched it. I'm still trying to feel the balance between presenting too much and not enough, cutting too fast and staying too long. There are things that look and feel right during editing that drag while watching - I'm hoping that's a sense of scale that'll improve with experience.

For scene selection in particular, I really wanted to stress how simple the show starts while just hinting at the complexity that would follow. It's not my intention to flesh out the characters or retell the series in this video - I was really aiming at just retelling this first episode's story, in all its simplicity, to contrast Utena's straightforward initial motivations against the surreal manner in which everything plays out. I was also afraid that if I got much more ambitious with the storytelling, I'd try to do things that my editing skills couldn't accomplish, and I'd get mired in it, lose confidence and never finish. Just getting this out the door and getting this sort of feedback is enough of a confidence boost to think bigger for the next one.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say is yeah, I could have made a better video to this song from the entire series, but I'm not sure if I would have ever finished it.

Trust me when I say that while this is my first AMV, you and I might have lots in common in loving this series. I was watching VHS fansubs of this voraciously back in 2000 and it's the only full series I still own. I had selected almost all of the scenes from memory while listening to the song and had it mostly storyboarded before I had even started ripping my DVDs. I love the complexity of the characters, but I deliberately wanted to avoid dwelling into that in this video. I cut poor Juri out altogether, for example, because she had no impact on the story I was trying to tell; Miki got left in only to try to break up the Student Council scene.

That said, I've been rewatching the series for the last couple weeks with an new eye for clips to use in AMVs and seeing a lot of missed opportunities. I'm torn between trying to work them into this video or walking away from it before it becomes the only one I ever make. And remake. And remake.

That really was positive, I swear. Good job.

That was great criticism and I appreciate it. Thanks so much for watching it!

ginshirou, when Kionon writes a book about your video, that is something to be VERY proud of.

Ha! I think that'll go in my sig.