ProjeKct Life

[Coffee 54]

Otohiko:
Ok, since I have no test coming up and apparently can't sleep, I'll get some nitpicking in. Ok, first there's the umm... That one part... No... Damn, this is hard. I know! Not enough 'splosions. No video's complete without explosions every five seconds at least. I say trash what you've done and start over from the beginning, keeping in mind the five second rule. Or you could always edit the explosions over the work you've done already, like I did with mine. Just wait till you guys get a load of the new beta. You'll think, "How did I ever see anything good in this without the 'splosions?"

Ok, seriously now. I do in fact have some real nitpicks. 0:23, I don't like the yellowish ding tint thing. 0:59, seems like it should be moving faster, maybe, I'm undecided on this one. 1:23 - 1:32, I'm not sure about the drum beats here either. So chalk that one up to a 'maybe' too. Other then that I loved it. Hands down fantastic.

[jasper-isis]

GO! YOUR EDUCATION IS CLEARLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY VIDEO SEGMENT

Eh, I think I bombed it anyway. Oh well.


Anyway, your beta is looking very nice. I especially like your changes to the action part - the new scenes make the video all the more dynamic. Most of the things I'm going to suggest are based on my personal stylistic preference, so feel free to disagree, as this is your segment. Here we go in chronological order:

0:05 - yup, I like this cry out of the darkness. Makes the beginning a little more "mystical" in some sense. It seemed to me that the lights faded out just a hair too abruptly, which kinda makes a bump in the continuity between the first two scenes. Maybe you can let the light fade out for, say, a second longer while the baby pictures start fading in on top of it.

(Hey, you said you wanted nitpicks. )

The baby pictures - nice! I noticed the sharper and brighter quality. However, make sure you're using a bicubic or lanczos resize algorithm. The outlines here are a little jagged, which reminds me of the doom-worthy Nearest Neighbor resizing filter. xP

0:22 - caught that little additive dissolve in your fade to the last baby picture. I don't really like additive dissolves, but that's just my personal preference. That one right there is barely notiecable anyway. Disregard this comment if you want. xP

0:23 - that's a tricky ping to synch to, as you don't have anything to work with but a still image. I personally like regular brightness/contrast adjustments better than the colored shine that you used. If you somehow know how to make a ripple effect, it'd be a great way to fade out right here. If not, then I suggest applying a gradually increasing horizontal fast blur to help with the smoothness of fading out.

0:36 - black bar ahoy! It's at the bottom of the screen. The bars pop up in other random places around the video too. I guess you forgot to crop some of your footage clips. Also, on a technical note, try to use LanczosResize when you're sizing upwards - your footage looks a bit too soft.

0:38 - . Launches the viewer right into the middle of the action and compliments the music very well. You should try applying one of your zoom transitions at the way beginning, to kinda throw the perpective outward from the exploding building as if the viewer were being blown away. Don't know if it'll actually look good, but it's worth experimenting with.

0:39 to 0:45 - I really like this part. The more "jittery" clips are perfect. I think it's worth a try to fake the shakiness on some of the more static clips (like 0:51 and 0:59). It'd take a lot of keyframes and motion adjustments though.

0:51 - excellent match! But isn't there a tiny gap of black video before this clip? I think this clip can benefit from a fast zoom out (motion setting, not transition), to give an illusion of more hectic motion than there actually is.

0:52 - the new snake-like monster... thing... that you've included is pretty cool. It's slightly less disgusting looking than the swarmy tentacle things but is just as appalling.

1:01 - love this shot.

1:18 to 1:23 - the shots of her flying into the air seem a bit slow. I feel that they are somehow break the flow of the video, like you've run out clips and had to make do with just those two. I still think it'd be nice to pair a shot of something spinning wildly out of control with that glissando at the end.

The hospital scene - my biggest gripe about this section is that it's very... regular. It is dull in comparison to the dynamic motion of the rest of the video. The black flashes (which I personally don't like much xP) occuring at equal intervals add even more to the regularity of this section. I think one way that you can improve this section is by using a bigger variety of clips (for example not repeating the cardiograph at 0:29). You can try clips of Juna being carted into the emergency room, or more clips of her drifting away from her real body. I think the concept of "Life" will come though here no matter which clips you choose to focus on, so it's probably best to use clips that'll keep the video flowing.

The ending - nicely done. Did we ever reach a decision about the Prelim Credits (a.k.a. title card, I'm guessing)? I think it would be quite nice to have them start coming in on top of the Earth clip at 1:46. They'll "finish" at 1:50 and fade out completely by 1:53. Then you'll finish up back in the hospital with Juna's revival. I think Pen-pen had recommended a scheme similar to this earlier. Pen-pen, what do you think?


Wow, that was pretty long-winded. It looks like a lot of criticism, but really I'm just elaborating on the few little things that I've found. I like this track a whole lot and I love what you've done with it. Can't wait to see your next beta!

[Otohiko]

My rambles in response - thank you nitpickers!

I say trash what you've done and start over from the beginning, keeping in mind the five second rule. Or you could always edit the explosions over the work you've done already, like I did with mine. Just wait till you guys get a load of the new beta. You'll think, "How did I ever see anything good in this without the 'splosions?"

Good point - hardly anything good ever came from me without those...
There's some good paper cutout explosions in KareKano episode 19, I'm sure you could work it into your segment somehow

0:23, I don't like the yellowish ding tint thing.

Gah! Foiled again. When will I get this right... Something needs to be synched there, but I can't for the life of me figure out what....
I'll have to admit I've been mostly happy with it from the start when I just had the colour change, but noone else seems to think so - well, off to look for more effects we go...

0:59, seems like it should be moving faster, maybe, I'm undecided on this one.

Yea, that's most definitely one of the parts I'm not quite happy with. I'll really have to dig deep to pull out some more footage to be able to speed it up/revise it though.

1:23 - 1:32, I'm not sure about the drum beats here either. So chalk that one up to a 'maybe' too.

I think they're not quite lined up properly, which I only noticed after rendering the beta. If I time them better, who knows... it's just that people complained about not enough sync etc. in this section before.

0:05 - yup, I like this cry out of the darkness. Makes the beginning a little more "mystical" in some sense. It seemed to me that the lights faded out just a hair too abruptly, which kinda makes a bump in the continuity between the first two scenes. Maybe you can let the light fade out for, say, a second longer while the baby pictures start fading in on top of it.

Good idea. I'll look over it. The early section should definitely not have abrupt fades.

The baby pictures - nice! I noticed the sharper and brighter quality. However, make sure you're using a bicubic or lanczos resize algorithm. The outlines here are a little jagged, which reminds me of the doom-worthy Nearest Neighbor resizing filter. xP

...because it probably IS nearest neighbour (I suspect that's what premiere uses) resizing it to the wrong resolution as I mentioned before. I just messed it up while rendering. The aspect ratio is messed up right now, thus the distortions. This has nothing to do with the actual video source, although I also did quite a bit of cropping/resizing on that since my footage was the wrong aspect ratio for the project to start with. If any of the scenes don't quite look right, it's probably because of that. I think some will have to be edited or replaced because of resizing issues.

0:22 - caught that little additive dissolve in your fade to the last baby picture.

Ah, good catch actually. Although I'm a sucker for additive dissolves (they're maybe 15% of transitions generally I use), in this case you're probably right because the rest of them were cross dissolves - so it would only make sense to keep them all cross dissolves. I'll see if it looks better that way.

0:23 - that's a tricky ping to synch to, as you don't have anything to work with but a still image. I personally like regular brightness/contrast adjustments better than the colored shine that you used. If you somehow know how to make a ripple effect, it'd be a great way to fade out right here. If not, then I suggest applying a gradually increasing horizontal fast blur to help with the smoothness of fading out.

Right - I'll see if any of these work out better. I honestly tried just about any cheesy effect imaginable and it still gives me trouble...

0:36 - black bar ahoy! It's at the bottom of the screen. The bars pop up in other random places around the video too. I guess you forgot to crop some of your footage clips. Also, on a technical note, try to use LanczosResize when you're sizing upwards - your footage looks a bit too soft.

See above - again, the problem is that I was dumb enough to forget that Arjuna is NOT 3:4 when the project started, thus I'm having to resize, crop, and otherwise butcher it to be the right size. Can't just drop the source now that I started. I try to keep the black bars only where they're not really very obvious. If they are, like here - away they will be done with.

Footage softness probably due to the same issue. The only thing I can do is sharpen it later, I think.

0:38 - . Launches the viewer right into the middle of the action and compliments the music very well. You should try applying one of your zoom transitions at the way beginning, to kinda throw the perpective outward from the exploding building as if the viewer were being blown away. Don't know if it'll actually look good, but it's worth experimenting with.

Ah yes. The trusty old Cross Zoom. Thanks for the idea - I'll see if I can work it in here.

0:51 - excellent match! But isn't there a tiny gap of black video before this clip? I think this clip can benefit from a fast zoom out (motion setting, not transition), to give an illusion of more hectic motion than there actually is.

You clearly have better eyes than me on these things...

That's probably due to running out of foootage. I can easily work around it in this case though, thanks for the idea.

0:52 - the new snake-like monster... thing... that you've included is pretty cool. It's slightly less disgusting looking than the swarmy tentacle things but is just as appalling.

Heh, at least it's not moving at -100% like those other ones were

1:01 - love this shot.

I personally thought the colour is a bit too saturated - nothing major though...

1:18 to 1:23 - the shots of her flying into the air seem a bit slow. I feel that they are somehow break the flow of the video, like you've run out clips and had to make do with just those two. I still think it'd be nice to pair a shot of something spinning wildly out of control with that glissando at the end.

I can probably do that. I actually found that I have more possible footage for this than I though, but now the issue is that I'd have to rework a good chunk of the section before it to change the ending, which I'm a bit reluctant to do. I'll look around for something though...

The hospital scene - my biggest gripe about this section is that it's very... regular. It is dull in comparison to the dynamic motion of the rest of the video. The black flashes (which I personally don't like much xP) occuring at equal intervals add even more to the regularity of this section. I think one way that you can improve this section is by using a bigger variety of clips (for example not repeating the cardiograph at 0:29). You can try clips of Juna being carted into the emergency room, or more clips of her drifting away from her real body. I think the concept of "Life" will come though here no matter which clips you choose to focus on, so it's probably best to use clips that'll keep the video flowing.

Again, I've also realized I have a bit more footage for that and the reason I probably didn't work it in is because I was lazy to rewise the whole section. Have no exceuse now though

The ending - nicely done. Did we ever reach a decision about the Prelim Credits (a.k.a. title card, I'm guessing)? I think it would be quite nice to have them start coming in on top of the Earth clip at 1:46. They'll "finish" at 1:50 and fade out completely by 1:53. Then you'll finish up back in the hospital with Juna's revival. I think Pen-pen had recommended a scheme similar to this earlier. Pen-pen, what do you think?

Yea, I added the earth clip mainly out of consideration for the credits. If anything else is needed there - I'll work it in on Pen-Pen's request. I'll even make the title if you want.

*phew*

Thanks again. Back to working on this tomorrow I suppose. I'm in no rush to wrap it up, but it'd be nice to have it off my back sometime soon, anyway

[jasper-isis]

0:22 - caught that little additive dissolve in your fade to the last baby picture.

Ah, good catch actually. Although I'm a sucker for additive dissolves (they're maybe 15% of transitions generally I use), in this case you're probably right because the rest of them were cross dissolves - so it would only make sense to keep them all cross dissolves. I'll see if it looks better that way.

Hehe, I think the reason I don't like additive dissolves (and all of Premiere's transitions, actually) because I feel like they don't give me enough control over my editing. All of my fades and are done with rubber bands on tracks 2 and above - just personal preference I guess.

0:36 - black bar ahoy! It's at the bottom of the screen. The bars pop up in other random places around the video too. I guess you forgot to crop some of your footage clips. Also, on a technical note, try to use LanczosResize when you're sizing upwards - your footage looks a bit too soft.

See above - again, the problem is that I was dumb enough to forget that Arjuna is NOT 3:4 when the project started, thus I'm having to resize, crop, and otherwise butcher it to be the right size. Can't just drop the source now that I started. I try to keep the black bars only where they're not really very obvious. If they are, like here - away they will be done with.

Footage softness probably due to the same issue. The only thing I can do is sharpen it later, I think.

Actually, after months of having your old beta, I JUST noticed those bars - and that's only because I set zoomplayer to fix aspect ratio on the fly. For some reason XviD doesn't play black as fully black, so I was able to tell the difference when the bars were juxtaposed with zoomplayer's black AR-fixing edges. (You know what I mean. )

About that softness - how are you doing the cropping and resizing? I'm assuming that Arjuna isn't anamorphic. In that case, then make sure that when you're resizing back up to 720x480, you're using a sharp filter like Lanczos. Anyway, most of the softness is probably from the compression, which doesn't matter for a beta anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.

0:52 - the new snake-like monster... thing... that you've included is pretty cool. It's slightly less disgusting looking than the swarmy tentacle things but is just as appalling.

Heh, at least it's not moving at -100% like those other ones were

Hey, -100% speed is a trick that I use a lot in my videos. As you already know, it's pretty useful for prolonging short clips. Ever Searching's got -100% clips all over it.

Thanks again. Back to working on this tomorrow I suppose. I'm in no rush to wrap it up, but it'd be nice to have it off my back sometime soon, anyway

Haha, I can kinda relate. I've create too many new project folders in my computer, and this is currently the longest-running video still in progress for me. I should probably finish it up by this weekend.

[Otohiko]

I'll send bum the crap (~8mb) version in a sec (just making a note here).

Otherwise, I've been watching the other two full segments a lot, and I honestly wish I could nitpick like that...

Jasper's continues to impress me with the editing (my only slight nitpick is that the story might not be as obvious to someone who hasn't seen the anime), and Coffee54 - simple story that comes across very clearly (though I think there's some longer scenes where the editing could be tightened up, the approach you took is actually growing on me quite a bit). Very good segments both, again.

Honestly, right now this IS starting to remind me of Instrumentality in the sense that we have a number of very good stand-alone, complete videos with a story, except here they're very short and to the same continuous music. I actually like it that way, even if there's obviously will be quite a transition from segment to segment

[bum]

I'll send bum the crap (~8mb) version in a sec (just making a note here).

8MEGS Man, I aint on broadband. Oh well, guess I'l suffer for m art.

Otherwise, I've been watching the other two full segments a lot, and I honestly wish I could nitpick like that...

Dont worry you'l be able to do a whole lot of nit picking when I release a full beta sometime next week hopefully.

[Otohiko]

I'll send bum the crap (~8mb) version in a sec (just making a note here).

8MEGS Man, I aint on broadband. Oh well, guess I'l suffer for m art.

U CAN DO IT!

Heh, sorry - I'm no expert at making things too small and anything more compressed hurt my eyes/ears....

...only an hour of downloading or something, I guess

[jasper-isis]

Coffee54 - simple story that comes across very clearly (though I think there's some longer scenes where the editing could be tightened up, the approach you took is actually growing on me quite a bit).

Same here! The more I watch your beta, the more it grows on me. For some weird reason I'm especially liking your fade-in at 0:39. The speed of the fade just matches so well with that note in the music.

[Songbird21]

Pen Pen- Would it be alright if I cut a small loop out of the end of my segment? It's very repetative and I'll have trouble making it interresting otherwise.

[Coffee 54]

Thanks for the comments all. (blushing)

I actually have a revised beta: Link

You all thought I was joking about the explosions didn't you. Didn't you! Well I was, only two fairly minor changes in this one. The first comes at 1:04. In this scene it kinda looked like he was shooting a booger. I didn't want any booger shooting in my segment so I took it out and elimated the lip motion as well. The second is at 1:21. I was never really fully happy with this small part of the video, so I changed it up a bit, synced it a little better.