The Quickening - Videos

[truax575]

what happened to group F for round two, the list says completed yet there is no group F

[Radical_Yue]

Semifinal Group ABCD

Going to ignore most video artifacts, as I assume they're pretty much all coming from the source material at this point.

HD sources = Noisy and bandy as all hell.

From the sound of it, you're probably using a rather nice LED monitor. The only reason I say that is before when I was using an adorable little LCD monitor I was quite happy. Now I've moved to a rather large LED monitor and dear lord...EVERYTHING IS UNCLEAN! D: D: D: SO DIRTY! >_______o There are a very, very, VERY, small amount of videos that don't at least suffer from a bit of noise and banding for me anymore. Stupid super detailed monitors ;_;

what happened to group F for round two, the list says completed yet there is no group F

This

Updated with Group H & G results.

You may notice that F is missing. That is because every last person in Group F dropped and failed to send in a video of any sort.

To balance things out, I randomly moved 1 person from Group H to Group F and the third place winner from Group G to Group F. They're all on the same schedule now so those who have been moved will not have to edit at different times. I only moved people to balance things out.

Due to the short period of time between Round 2 & 3 and the fact that no one from Group H has been eliminated (MimS was unable to turn a video in) the judging has been skipped.


I have also decided to align the songs so Groups E, F, G & H will all get the same song. Originally there would be 2 songs, but I've flipped a coin and the song has been decided.

[truax575]

Semifinal Group ABCD

what happened to group F for round two, the list says completed yet there is no group F

This

Updated with Group H & G results.

You may notice that F is missing. That is because every last person in Group F dropped and failed to send in a video of any sort.

To balance things out, I randomly moved 1 person from Group H to Group F and the third place winner from Group G to Group F. They're all on the same schedule now so those who have been moved will not have to edit at different times. I only moved people to balance things out.

Due to the short period of time between Round 2 & 3 and the fact that no one from Group H has been eliminated (MimS was unable to turn a video in) the judging has been skipped.


I have also decided to align the songs so Groups E, F, G & H will all get the same song. Originally there would be 2 songs, but I've flipped a coin and the song has been decided.

ok thank you, it all makes sense now

[Kinematics]

From the sound of it, you're probably using a rather nice LED monitor. The only reason I say that is before when I was using an adorable little LCD monitor I was quite happy. Now I've moved to a rather large LED monitor and dear lord...EVERYTHING IS UNCLEAN! D: D: D: SO DIRTY! >_______o There are a very, very, VERY, small amount of videos that don't at least suffer from a bit of noise and banding for me anymore. Stupid super detailed monitors ;_;

Unclean! Unclean! So true ; ;

I've been poking half-heartedly at some 10bit encoding ideas. Will see if anything ever pans out.

[Centurione]

[Centurione] Don't Stop Me Now

Nice use of Apollon for the instruments. A couple selections ran counter to my expectations (eg: low notes while he's at the high end of the piano), but sync was excellent, and discrepancies easily ignored.

Pretty much everything up to ~0:42 (where she jumps from the diving platform) was decently solid.

Crashing into the storage locker seemed to come out of nowhere. Ill placed.

Stopping of the bicycle after crashing into the railway bar felt disjointed.

Entire unbraked run on the bike, while somewhat matching the lyrics, really didn't match the mood.

Trash can lid on her head at 0:57 was reused later in the video (1:25).

Not sure how the lyrics match up at all during this section (0:55 - 1:00).

Crashing her head into the post at 1:30 for the start of the 'rocketship' lyrics?

Other than the bit at ~1:46, there seems to be less and less coherency from here on.

Too much running.

The riff at 2:11-2:13 was good.

Honestly, while the primary video source was TGWLTT, it felt like a fairly weak choice paired with Apollon. Pretty much every Apollon segment helped bring out the energy of the song, but it's explicitly background, and needs the forground series to pull the video along, and that was only somewhat the case for TGWLTT. There were a number of segments that played well to the lyrics, but there was too much that felt like rather generic footage that didn't really contribute much.

Thanks, this is very useful. Actually, you're a really good critic as you've mentioned all the parts that I rushed when I suddenly knew I have less time that I thought xD. And I realized TGWLTT is a bad choice too late. But still, it's recieved much better than I thought it would so I'm quite glad

[Radical_Yue]

E&F and G&H videos are now available~!

We only had one lame per- I mean, one drop!

[Kinematics]

Another run of excellent videos.

Groups E&F - 3


[Ileia] AMV Pop Culture (As Performed By Alchemists)

The only video to draw directly from the song's original intent: pop culture. I recognized most of the styles, though it really only struck me as a direct parody when the Pop Up Video notes showed up. Yeah, a bit slow. >.>

Watching through the second time, and paying attention to those elements, it was far more obvious. But then, that's what makes them part of the 'pop culture' of AMVs -- they're distinctive styles, and something that most people have seen and can easily relate to.

I didn't see any immediately noticeable faults, as the style trumped the content. To an extent I'd say that the video itself was only mildly entertaining, but that's also part of the point; it's not a video for the sake of a video, it's a video for the sake of common elements we share and recognize.


[Mally] Pop Culture

Odd mixing in of live footage. A certain amount of originality, but also felt a bit lazy; that is, not as much work was done with the live footage as with the anime footage.

One of three (out of the 7 from both groups) that used a single anime source for footage. Nichijou definitely works well with the overall tone.

Very good sync and effects. Visually it all flowed together well (good direction).

Doesn't seem to have any particular focus, just a mix of random happenings, so nothing to really pick out as 'wrong'.


[pacotacoshell] Pop Culture

Excellent sync, and very well constructed overall flow and direction. Mood and intensity were maintained throughout, with very good lyric match. About the only thing I could maybe find fault with would be the color balance transitions over the course of the video.

Only minor complaint on clips chosen is the Digimon (I think?) bit at ~2:55. The flat coloring really looked out of place compared to all the more 3-dimensional looking art from the rest of the video. There were a couple other clips from Digimon earlier on, but they included enough texture to not feel wrong.


[xDreww] Razzle-Dazzle

Focused more on the dance aspect, and really pulled it off well.

Some bits early on, plus the slower bits in the middle ('turn things back'), felt 'softer' -- like the editing wasn't quite as tight and precise as it could have been. Possibly intentional, and not something I'd say is 'wrong', just a subtle feeling that it could have been slightly better.

The pure dance segments generally fit in quite well, with the dancing pretty much always feeling like it belonged with the song (one issue: 1:51, final hand movement was out of sync with final note).



Top picks:
... Can I say all 4? meh.

I'd probably always pick pacotacoshell's Pop Culture as one of the two, but my other choice keeps changing...





Group G&H - 3

[animAe] Game[play] Boy

The third of the single-source videos, this time using TWGOK.

It's easy to make the connection to this anime based on the lyrics of the song, but taken as a whole it feels a bit weaker.

A lot of the early cuts felt a bit disjointed and random, and hard to get a feel of a flow. Basically, the pattern was his direct interactions in the 3d world, followed by a retreat to the 2d, but with touches of the 3d thrown in. However, while I can see that after the fact, while watching it generally felt kind of random.

The sync with his arms and hands motions was very well done. The intermediary bits were generally well placed, but the sync was a bit off at times. The intro period (0:38-0:53) felt way to slow relative to the music.

Main problem was the feel that most of the video was just an adaptation of that one scene, with filler at the beginning to lead up to it.

There's at least three ways you could approach the construction of this video using this source, and I think a more all-encompassing view using the full song length could have worked better. The way it was done felt too limiting.


[irriadin] Hotpot Special

Weak impact at the start compared to most others.

Interesting idea to use a different source per element of the song, however the "I could be your boy" period seemed to drag on a lot with the same video source (and mostly the same scenes, for that matter), with minimal lyric match. Bubbles in the middle of that could have helped add impact, but mostly just floated there, and didn't really do anything.

Other than that middle bit, though, most of it worked ok. Lot of general randomness in scene choices, though.


[VivifxAMV] Just Another Anime Mix

Strong start.

My favorite "I could be your boy; you could be my girl" segment out of these videos, though mixing in the older, lower-quality footage was a mild annoyance.

Lip sync occasinally wasn't quite on spot (eg: 0:25, Kyon at 1:07, 1:17), and there were a couple cases of errant lip flap (eg: Mio @0:22 (second), 2:14, 2:23).

Slacked off a lot in the last ~20-30 seconds.



Top Picks:
[VivifxAMV] Just Another Anime Mix

Bit of a tossup between the other two. There were bits that I liked, but also bits that dragged both of them down.

[Radical_Yue]

Have some videos~!

[Kinematics]

Semifinal EFGH


[animAe] Boring Metropolis

Lots of distracting video artifacts throughout the video, the type that I can't just attribute to source material.

The sync during the bridge (~2:00+, particularly 2:05+) seems slightly off.

As far as content.. this is a very difficult one to evaluate. Lyric match was mostly quite good; effects were mostly pretty good, though tended to stand out sometimes; the inserted jokes felt a bit cheezy -- though certainly intentional, it feels like it weakens the video a bit. Still, it was pretty solid.

However, despite all that, it just felt a bit bland. There were parts that worked very well, but also parts that seemed to lose the energy of the video. It seems to put too much effort into the jokes of "how far we've come", but never really drew that out of the original source, which really didn't seem well suited to express that to its fullest.

Overall, an adequately decent job, though it feels like it's perhaps a bit limited due to the source material.


[Ileia] Partners in (Fighting) Crime

A new (main) source for the contest. Works very well with the song.

Some ugly artifacting around 2:17.

Good direction. Color/tone transitions were all handled well (though there were a few bits where the brightness differences disturbed things).

Excellent thematic and lyric matchup throughout, though perhaps a bit too 'clean' (and I don't mean the video CGI). I can only say this as a subjective feeling, but it seemed a bit too sterile. There was nothing really wrong technically, but it never really seemed to grab me.


[Mally] - Colon

Conceptually, the sources work great with the song. Execution-wise, though, things just didn't seem to pull together as well.

Lot of periods where the screen was just too 'busy', too much use of the time-travel effect from S;G, etc. Was fine in the intro segment, but not so much with most places where it was used in the lyrics.

Lyric match and general thematics seemed a bit clumsy. First verse was good; second verse seemed to have no real match.

After more watching and comparing, I think it broke down most due to the audio edit. The last 30-45 seconds were a continuous repeat of the chorus refrain. Since you dropped out the bridge and interlude, there was the lack of the buildup that could have been used to better pace the storyline. The ending ended up feeling like a random mishmash of stuff, just throwing stuff in at maximum energy.



Top Picks:
[Ileia] Partners in (Fighting) Crime
[animAe] Boring Metropolis


Took a long time to write this review up, as it was hard figuring out what to say. Things felt 'wrong' for all the videos, but it was hard to figure out what, exactly, was wrong, other than, "This video could have been better."

While I picked animAe's video for my second choice based on execution, I'd say that Mally's video had the greater -potential-. Ileia's video was technically masterful, but lacking something I can't even begin to guess at.

[Radical_Yue]

LET THERE BE FINALS!