Heh, found this in a search, and misread the original date as Jun 02 rather than Jan 02. So, since I've already written up a response....
I'm just finishing up my newest video, and in general I think it went through four phases:
1: idea/brainstorming - what's the video about in the first place? what sorts of scenes match up with which parts of the song? what is the plan for the overall feel of the video? basicly, artistic stuff.
2: collecting the footage - rip all the DVDs, clean them up, convert to a nice editing format in preparation for the actual video creation process. technical all the way.
3: editing the video - all the stuff that goes into making the video what you want. 95% artistic, with a little technical stuff for effects and such
4: final video output - the actual video is done, now it's time to rewatch, finding combed frames that were missed in step 2, or lip syncs that got out of alignment, and whatever else is necessary to make sure that there aren't any distracting flaws in the final product. completely technical, since the video itself is already done by this time.
So, what does the viewer see? Basicly, it moves in the order of #4, #1, and #3.
(4) If the technical side is too distracting (bad compression, lots of combing, staticky music, etc), they (actually, I should say 'I', since this is probably more personal than general...) won't even get to the point of paying attention to the video itself, or only be able to give partial attention. The role of the technical side is to make it so that there is nothing in the way of the viewer actually enjoying the video.
(1) This comes in a bit before and a bit after #4 (the viewer probably knows enough to be interested in downloading the video, after all), and is usually only of relevance to determine if the viewer will have any interest in the video in the first place.
(3) The video itself. There are so many possibilities here that it's not worth trying to give examples. Basicly, did the video do a good job of conveying what the creator intended?
So, what sort of responses do you get? Remember the saying about first impressions? If there's a technical problem, that's what they're going to remember first and most (usually).
At the same time, the _last_ part of what the creator does is a big technical part, which means that that's going to have a stronger influence on what he sees in the video. Not necessarily the major influence, but something that's always going to be in the back of the mind. The more technology improves, the more there is on the technical side to improve that experience, and the more information there is out there on how to fix those problems, the more this becomes an influencing factor.
Speaking of comments, in some ways the comment structure here lends itself towards thinking in terms of the technical merits rather than the artistic merits. The "originality" score is one that I've never really understood how to think of it. Is a basic fight video original because it uses an obscure anime? Is a DBZ/LP video automatically unoriginal because there are so many of them out there? (probably, but this is theoretical
According to the current system, yes.
However, I would think that this would be more about artistic originality. But then, how do you rate that? Where's the rating for Internal Consistancy? For scene choices that flow well from one to the next? Yes, you can always write that sort of thing in the comments, but generally the first thing you want to do is explain why you picked the scores you did. Without an anchor point to work from, how do you explain that "I think this has some artistic merit", or "Artistically, this belongs in the dungheap of history"? People who aren't RTF majors or art majors generally don't have the vocabulary to analyze these things in a freeform format.
I once had an idea to create or adapt a 'visual language' to describe visuo-musical effects, as used in AMVs. Musicians have a huge variety of effects they can use, from the simple choice of instruments, to the amps and microphones used for recording, to the final mixing itself. Even removing the modern electronic aspects from it, classical music and operas contain many descriptives to allow communication of precise aspects of music (arpaggio, pianissimo, retardo, acapella, etc.). It's possible RTF types might have a better vocabulary for such things, but for the most part we rely on a bare handful of terms (cuts, fades, crossfades, 'effects', possibly a few others). Without a proper vocabulary, how can we even have a solid discussion about artistic construction, never mind merit? That vocabulary *is* there on the technical side, so it's no wonder it's more readily used.
anyway... further comments are welcome.
--
David
<-- there should be a sad smiley here but I don't want you to see my tears.
