Guns, Smoke and Feathers

[Pikachew]

Description:

I saw Black Lagoon about a week ago and it immediately became one of my top 3 favorite animes of all time. If you haven't seen Black Lagoon- WATCH IT ASAP. Revy is the awesomest female protagonist ever (although she is a bit trigger happy )

Anyway, I've been fangirling over the main female protagonist, Revy. She's sort of Kill Bill meets Kaname Chidori meets Claire Redfield badassery. I wanted to do a character profile and show her relaxed nature, her badassery kickarse skills, and her sinister devious side. I listened to a few songs and I was going to pick the song "No Time" by the Heavy- until I remembered that Foster the People had an awesome song named Pumped Up Kicks. Now, this song says 'he', but we can ignore that because...well it's Revy. The song fit perfectly.

Black Lagoon is one of those animes that is oddly relaxing but at the same time violent and full of gunfights. I tried mimicking that feeling here, as I juxtaposed fast-paced action sequences with the calm and generally serene tone of the song. Anyway, this has taken me quite a bit of work- around 4 days more or less with around the clock editing. I've gotten very little sleep because of this baby. And because internal sync is a lot harder than it looks. I tried a different style with the AMV and I'm pleased to say that I love how it turned out. Thanks for reading, now onto the show!!!

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Special thanks to those that were keeping me sane and entertained throughout the process!

Also special thanks to TwilightChrono for helping me encode this blasted thing :}

[TwilightChrono]

As I've said. I thought this ws a really original video and song choice. I actually found myself diggin this pretty good. I thought the pace kept well with the audio and thought you did a pretty good job at internal syncing. Right on

I hope to see more like this from you. Keep up the good work

[CodeZTM]

That was a pretty solid video. Good action pacing in the chorus and nice editing overall. I liked the combination and felt like they really worked well together. One of those times where the music and video felt destined for each other. I'm not a fan of Black Lagoon, but this video made me feel like the anime was at least moderately enjoyable to watch.

Work on the grammar when typing sentences. Several errors there. I also felt like the slower parts were in need of some work. Towards the middle (around 1:54 to 2:20)), it was several minutes of just head shot of the main girl after head shot of the main girl. She's got a pretty face, but I don't want to keep looking at it over and over again.

[Pikachew]

That was a pretty solid video. Good action pacing in the chorus and nice editing overall. I liked the combination and felt like they really worked well together. One of those times where the music and video felt destined for each other. I'm not a fan of Black Lagoon, but this video made me feel like the anime was at least moderately enjoyable to watch.

Work on the grammar when typing sentences. Several errors there. I also felt like the slower parts were in need of some work. Towards the middle (around 1:54 to 2:20)), it was several minutes of just head shot of the main girl after head shot of the main girl. She's got a pretty face, but I don't want to keep looking at it over and over again.

Bahaha, I tried to showcase different sides of her facial expressions but she likes her booze, scoffs, and cigarettes As for the grammar, it was quoted directly from the anime (though I felt I should have cleaned it up a bit

Glad you enjoyed it though! I think my main goal was to get everyone to fangirl over her badassery...>:3 thanks for the feedback! I'll be sure to not overdo the headshots next time (I'll admit that was my inner fangirl )

[Radical_Yue]

Here goes..........


The Studio Vantype logo at the beginning needs some work. It's just kind of a mix of different defaults. Default flourish, default grunge walls, etc.... Also, the walls don't connect properly at the edges.

The text, while I understand she's a renegade and doesn't feel the need for proper English, it's just very awkward to read. I had to pause it and say it out loud a couple times before it really made any sense. "What'd you used to do" is just...really weird to say... And it's totally silent which makes it feel out of place. You go from soft tone studio logo, silent text and then immediate BANG BANG title. It needs some kind of visual to go with it or audio. Because I have no freakin clue who's asking her these questions, but I'll get to that later.

The title sequence was a bit jarring after the dead silent text and probably could've been saved for the ending considering it's a good 30 seconds before the video even starts.

The start of the video makes sense. Here is the setup, the location, the dirty underbelly of the city where are hero is gonna shoot the sh*t outta things....and that's when the set up kind of ends. The rest of the video just turns into "The many faces of Revy." By that I mean, I have no idea what her motivation is, why she is shooting people, or really anything. And I'm just going to assume the guy she was talking to during the silent text is the one she shares the cigarette with? It's a montage of guns being cocked, her reacting to things, and smoking.

When the chorus kicks in you've got some pretty decent internal sync to the vocals, but the cutting is rather erratic and doesn't give the viewer a good chance to appreciate it. It jumps from fight scene to fight scene without any rhyme or reason. Without any setup due to the montage of faces and guns during the non-chorus based parts, even though these sections are more high action, it just feels like more of the same.

The ending sync kinda falls apart and did she die? I have no real idea o_O There is no real resolution, just a bunch of scenes of feathers and crazy faces....

I can totally understand you're fangirl mindset. A decent amount of my videos are me fangirling over characters I love (character profiles ftw) which is one of the reasons I understand why this video turned out the way it did. YOU know why she's badass, YOU know what each bullet and each cock of the gun leads to. The problem is, the viewer doesn't. The show is fresh in your mind since you only just watched it a little bit ago and with the short period of time that you took to make the video you probably didn't have time for that fact to hit you. If you've got a character you love and want to show the world just how badass they are, you need to look at it from a perspective of someone who has never watched the show. Possibly look to skilled editors who haven't seen Black Lagoon as beta testers. The text set it up like it was going to be her back story of badassery but then it...well, it wasn't. You gotta get your squeeee'ing out of the way, then take a step back and say "but will this make others want to squeee over how awesome she is too?"

Keep trying.

[irriadin]

I also love Black Lagoon. It's an amazing show and Revy is quite badass

Yue did a great job of giving you feedback, but let me add one more thing. In the second half of your video, we go from scenes that are very bright and in daylight, to ones that are very dark and at night, indoor to outdoor, etc... back and forth many times in a short sequence. Keeping visual continuity is important because otherwise your viewer is going to be disoriented.

[Pikachew]

Here goes..........


The Studio Vantype logo at the beginning needs some work. It's just kind of a mix of different defaults. Default flourish, default grunge walls, etc.... Also, the walls don't connect properly at the edges.

The text, while I understand she's a renegade and doesn't feel the need for proper English, it's just very awkward to read. I had to pause it and say it out loud a couple times before it really made any sense. "What'd you used to do" is just...really weird to say... And it's totally silent which makes it feel out of place. You go from soft tone studio logo, silent text and then immediate BANG BANG title. It needs some kind of visual to go with it or audio. Because I have no freakin clue who's asking her these questions, but I'll get to that later.

The title sequence was a bit jarring after the dead silent text and probably could've been saved for the ending considering it's a good 30 seconds before the video even starts.

The start of the video makes sense. Here is the setup, the location, the dirty underbelly of the city where are hero is gonna shoot the sh*t outta things....and that's when the set up kind of ends. The rest of the video just turns into "The many faces of Revy." By that I mean, I have no idea what her motivation is, why she is shooting people, or really anything. And I'm just going to assume the guy she was talking to during the silent text is the one she shares the cigarette with? It's a montage of guns being cocked, her reacting to things, and smoking.

When the chorus kicks in you've got some pretty decent internal sync to the vocals, but the cutting is rather erratic and doesn't give the viewer a good chance to appreciate it. It jumps from fight scene to fight scene without any rhyme or reason. Without any setup due to the montage of faces and guns during the non-chorus based parts, even though these sections are more high action, it just feels like more of the same.

The ending sync kinda falls apart and did she die? I have no real idea o_O There is no real resolution, just a bunch of scenes of feathers and crazy faces....

I can totally understand you're fangirl mindset. A decent amount of my videos are me fangirling over characters I love (character profiles ftw) which is one of the reasons I understand why this video turned out the way it did. YOU know why she's badass, YOU know what each bullet and each cock of the gun leads to. The problem is, the viewer doesn't. The show is fresh in your mind since you only just watched it a little bit ago and with the short period of time that you took to make the video you probably didn't have time for that fact to hit you. If you've got a character you love and want to show the world just how badass they are, you need to look at it from a perspective of someone who has never watched the show. Possibly look to skilled editors who haven't seen Black Lagoon as beta testers. The text set it up like it was going to be her back story of badassery but then it...well, it wasn't. You gotta get your squeeee'ing out of the way, then take a step back and say "but will this make others want to squeee over how awesome she is too?"

Keep trying.

Thanks for the feedback. In all honesty this was more of a "SQUEEE FANGIRL~" video that I wanted to appeal to me but I thought "Meh, why not share me cakez with zee world" bahaha. I also didn't make the studio intro :< but thanks for the feedback I'll let the creator know !

Now for some response...

Her backstory (in the anime) is rather obscure and the black and white noisy flashbacks were the actual ONLY indicator of what happened in her past (hence why it was a challenge for me to incorporate her "past" ) There were basically five scenes in the anime for me to work with when it came to her past. I did what I thought was best to try and rationalize her crazy-trigger-happy-human-killing self by using symbolism repeatedly throughout the video but I guess I failed miserably at that

In terms of sync, I thought I did pretty okay on that but I guess my cuts were erratic *haz to work on zat*

Anywho, I thank you for your critique. I read your lip-flapper and know you flame with love

I also love Black Lagoon. It's an amazing show and Revy is quite badass

Yue did a great job of giving you feedback, but let me add one more thing. In the second half of your video, we go from scenes that are very bright and in daylight, to ones that are very dark and at night, indoor to outdoor, etc... back and forth many times in a short sequence. Keeping visual continuity is important because otherwise your viewer is going to be disoriented.

Ah yes! I think I know what you're talking about. How it goes from daylight-happy-sarcastic-revy to nighttime-serial-killer-looking Revy, right? If that's what you're talking about I did that on purpose, but I don't think I made it clear then. Must work on that too :>