AE talk:Trailer: Difference between revisions

AE talk:Trailer (view source)

Revision as of 19:50, 23 September 2008

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→‎Intro and v6 draft: if you ever think it would be more productive to chat about this than to post in the wiki, let me know

Iritscen

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 *The above problem (poor directing) comes up in a few other places. Muro's shotgun, for example, will be perfectly unintelligible even in lossess 640x480, at that distance. An example of a situation where the appearance of new weapons will be unignorable is the sniper scope (imagine that Striker swinging a shotgun as he runs towards you, or trying to nail you with Muro's Tractor). Oh, and if you're serious about being happy with that "accidentally cinematic" scene (SBG chick with a messed-up TRMA, who spends ''ages'' reloading), or with the DeLorean footage (jerky manual camera and ghost midget in the foreground), then for the sake of all of us, set your sights a little higher. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] 18:15, 23 September 2008 (CEST)
 *Last but not least, for a file that's freaking over 80 megs, why the frack is the quality so rock-bottom crappy? Frankly, the compression is killing me, and you know I'm not the picky one... posterized shadows, bleeding colors, omnipresent interlacing... the works! --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] 06:31, 23 September 2008 (CEST)
+Your apology in the last edit summary counts for something, but I still need to say this, geyser. This isn't about who's right or wrong or whether I can take criticism. When you say "This isn't a discussion" in your previous edit summary, what you are saying is, "It's my way or the highway." That's not how collaboration works. I don't work ''for'' you; this isn't an employer/employee relationship. This is me, trying to be helpful because you said you don't have time for editing the final product even though you are apparently trying to do just that, one piece at a time. So, by all means, criticize if you must, but <u>do not</u> try to prevent discussion. It could be that you are afraid of this turning into another "s$^&storm", but if that's the case, then you could simply say, "Let's try to avoid a drawn-out argument". I'm actually pretty damn hard to offend in cases where I think someone meant no harm (and I always give people the benefit of the doubt when it's uncertain whether they meant offense). But decrees about having "no discussion" offend me, geyser. It may well be that you don't have time for discussing all the points you brought up (and my time is precious, too, I am swamped with RL responsibilities right now). But that's <u>not my problem</u>; I can't be expected to care if you have time to follow through on comments that you make when I respond to them. I don't mean that in a confrontational way... it's just how things work. I'm sure that no matter how little time you have, you can respond in dribs and drabs, and if that's all you have time for, well, we're not being held to a deadline like a publisher who announced a release date for a commercial game (and those get pushed back, too); I'm not advocating more delays, I'm just saying, don't take out your frustrations about a lack of time for Oni on me. Now, back on the subject at hand:
+*"synchronization"; sigh. This is a two-prong issue I hoped to avoid talking about, but here goes:
+:Issue #1: The audio; this is a chaotic song, with a fast tempo and little beat-differentiation, by which I mean, compare NOLTT to a track from my first trailer draft, "The Hunt"; hear how clear and measured the primary beats are? I find it difficult to hook my editing into the "rhythm" of NOLLT because I can hardly hear which way is up -- so cutting anything on a certain beat feels pointless. That being said, there is some intended and unintended synchro in the video: around 0'30", 0'32", 0'35", 0'38", 0'55.5", 1'03", 1'35", and 1'58". You're right that there is no consistency in the use of synch, though, which leads to...
+:Issue #2: Style; there's more than one philosophy to this kind of thing; while the mainstream trend in stuff like music videos is to religiously tie every cut and cool moment to a beat, some professionals prefer to let the music run its course and not perform such obvious edits; that kind of strict synchro approach can feel amateur ("Hey, look how nifty my editing is!"); that being said, some trailer music works great with synched video (Cf. this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFJXsywOII Neo Ranga trailer]).
+:When I started editing to this hard, grinding music, it felt like I should let the music dictate mood, but not pacing -- in other words, let it drive the overall speed of the cuts and the content of the cuts, but not try to actually make those cuts in time with the music; with a more syncopated piece of audio, I would have gone the other way entirely (and I planned to do so in my original approach to the trailer with my personal picks for music).
+*"dead comrade" scene... what, you want an animated arrow pointing from the girl to the body she's looking at, and then an exclamation point popping up above her, and then little radio waves coming from her wrist when she calls for help? I don't know how to make that scene more explanatory, but i you have any <u>ideas</u>, not empty criticism, I'm all ears.
+*Re opening the AE footage section with the mixed-bag; you are totally right, I dropped the ball on this one, but will fix that in the next draft.
+*Re text that blocks your view when it goes "In your face!" -- yes, this is bad, it wasn't a problem in the '99 trailer because it was on its own screen, going whoosh, then cutting to footage; my text is overlaid on footage to maximize the use of time so it gets in the way and is generally distracting; I guess I will have to find a less obtrusive effect.
+*Motoko is still rough in terms of hair, but hopefully that will be fixed before the final trailer comes out and I will pop new footage in there; her face isn't rough at all, you just can't read its contours when it's rendered that way; at least wait until you see it with smoothed normals and textures before having an opinion. Judging her from that style of render is like deciding that a supermodel is unattractive because you only saw her up-close once, with no make-up, having just woken up, under fluorescent light. Yes, it ''is'' like that. That's a very good analogy and I'm proud of it.
+*The Iron Demon movie is great, that is a good replacement for what's in the trailer now (that is what you intended, right?).
+*Showing an original level in an editor would certainly be better just from a creative standpoint, even if the legal side is not an issue imho
+*I didn't cut the "Blam" out because of the picture not being the best choice. The initial "Blam" is some of the most criminally-bad audio I've ever heard in my life. It annoys the crap out of me. There's no way anyone wants to watch a trailer that opens with that sound. I hoped you wouldn't bring that up because I didn't want to tell you how much I hate that sound, but I simply cannot produce a video with that sound in it. The only solution I can imagine (aside from cutting it out like I did) is finding a new "Blam" that doesn't sound like it's coming from the cheap speaker in a child's toy.
+*Your Oni effect at the end of the intro shot looks very nice... but keep in mind that it pushes the "reveal" of the name forward in time, which leaves an awkwardly long(er) gap before the footage can start, ''unless'' you just want the classic Oni footage to start earlier, which in turn... makes a longer gap to fill with old game footage before the "seven years" transition. Perhaps it won't be too bad, but I did want to avoid boring people by showing them what they might already be familiar with for too long.
+*Muro's shotgun may be kind of far away, but he's shooting at Konoko in the foreground, so the buckshot or whatever you call it is quite evident IMO, so it's clear that there's a new weapon in play; I do see your point about using the sniper scope shot to show off a new weapon; I just don't think it will be very evident. That shot, which I'm quite fond of, is unavoidably shaky, and so would any other scope recording be, so I don't think anyone will notice what he's holding; plus, either it will be swinging up and down as he runs with it, or he'll be pointing it at the camera and you won't see anything because it will be end-on. Plus, I just refuse to replace that sniper shot, it's nearly perfect; or did you think I used the clip with the single falling snowflake by accident?
+*"'''SBG chick with a messed-up TRMA, who spends ages reloading'''" How is her TRMA messed up? And she spends about two seconds on stopping and reloading. I happen to think that the motion there is interesting and draws attention to the details of Steve A's great animation; admittedly, not relevant to the AE... and I think this point is moot because I will have to drop the clip before final cut if I can't get a better-quality version (sorry EdT).
+*The DeLorean shot is admittedly shaky (sorry again, EdT!), but it was the best drive-by clip I had in acceptable quality because someone wouldn't give me a decent version of the footage they took of the car turning onto a street as the camera ran alongside... I wonder who that was....
+*"'''"ONi" is admittedly awkward'''" It beings tears of joy to my eyes to hear you admit that. Re the text I used, I actually thought I was neatly compromising with you by making all three letters capital while preserving the overall heights of the letters in the official Bungie image of the word (and the "i" really looks about the same upper-case as it does lower-case, it's not a letter that changes much between cases, so I don't know why you care about it). I have to say, too, that I understood not a word of what you said in the rest of that paragraph; you asked for a sans serif font... that's what I used! You say "in this version"... you mean, in this trailer? Also, I used four different fonts, yes, but only because I was trying to makes things slightly less boring, and also to present each piece of text in a font that suited it. But if you want, I will use only one typeface for all of it.
+*My ending is inferior to your example ending in one respect, which is that in mine, the first words are way too late in appearing onscreen; that was more an accident than intentional, because I threw that new text in right before I saved the cut. I can fix that. Otherwise, I don't see any differences in timing, so if there's something else there you want me to see, you have to point it out.
+*'''"rock-bottom crappy", "the compression is killing me", "posterized shadows", "bleeding colors", "omnipresent interlacing"'''. Wow.  What can I say, except that I really have no idea what you're talking about? Seriously, this scares me a bit. A couple clips are low-quality, yes... but the compression is excellent (for MPEG-4). If you don't like the darks (not sure I understand your usage of "posterized"), I will save the next one in "OG" Sorenson, it preserves darks much better than MPEG. "Bleeding colors"... you're freakin' colorblind (and so am I)! How could you know if colors are bleeding?! And finally, as to claims of "omnipresent" interlacing, damn you, I had to disprove this thoroughly, so I actually went and counted, and there are 6 clips with interlacing:
+#Disarming of green Striker in classic Oni
+#Spinning punch to TCTF guy in classic Oni
+#Ninja taking out guards in classic Oni (I can fix this one, I chose to blend frames when slowing the speed down, but I can turn that off)
+#Parkouring Mukade
+#Shapeshifting in glass hall
+#Sniper shot to Striker (I think it works favorably here)
+:These clips were all recorded by PC users, and it's not my fault your computers have crappy video capture/encoding abilities. Do you honestly think the handful of clips here are detracting from the trailer? Now, if you're being confused by the text that's interlaced, thinking that means the whole video is interlaced, well it's not; it's only the text rendering. I can't explain it, but I ''will'' look into it; it's a strange symptom but hopefully fixable. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] 21:50, 23 September 2008 (CEST)