Your 3 best and worst videos and why

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macchinainterna
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Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by macchinainterna » Mon Mar 31, 2014 3:34 am

So what are the best videos you've made? What are the worst videos you've made? What did you do in said videos that you feel pushed your skills further? What videos you feel you could have strongly improved on? Go over all the videos you've made and pick three you consider your best work and then pick three more you think are the worst you've done. Instead of peer review, review yourself and explain why these videos stand out in your opinion.

NOTE: Your very first videos are exempt from being posted on here. We've all come from humble beginnings. We've all made newb mistakes. This is more for the videos you've made SINCE your first video.

My three best
Spoiler :
1. Veneration

Why: This is my best and most passionate video, by far. I pushed myself harder than I ever had before to create a seamless flow between 18 different video sources using almost entirely hard cuts. This was a tribute to my favorite music group and I wanted it to reflect everything I had come to love about their music. It took so much for me to build the confidence in myself and in my editing to make this video as energetic and emotional as I wanted it to be.

2. Twilight (A Monk Parody)

Why: This is the only video I've done entirely with just hard cuts. It's also one of my bigger achievements in effects with my recreating the opening credits sequence to Monk using just Paint Shop Pro 9 and After Effects 7. My heart was all in this for making a parody to one of my most favorite shows growing up. It's the closest I ever came to making a video exactly like I pictured it in my head.

3. Running on the Ragged Edge

Why: This was my breakthrough. My third video ever and it was the one that got me noticed within editing communities and introduced me to several people who later became good friends of mine. This was the video where I discovered my love for internal sync and lyric sync. It's also one of the few videos where I was able to let go of my anxiety and just have fun making it, and I think it shows. I found my editing style with this video, and it has been an influence in all of the videos I've made since.
My three worst
Spoiler :
1. Höllenlaich Faux Trailer (scrapped)

Why: This was truly my worst video and I'm glad I didn't go through with finishing it. Aside from my near-constant use of radial zoom, the concept of the video also makes it terrible. This was supposed to be a fake trailer for an amv I was never going to make. This was a very arrogant and pretentious (not to mention stupid) idea for a video, when I could have just as easily made it a simple Hellsing trailer and let it be that.

2. Number One

Why: For its time this was a big improvement from my first amv. However, there's a lot of repetitive beat sync in the video and some parts aren't synced well at all (in particular the faster drum sequences). I don't consider this a bad video, seeing as it's only my second one ever, and I still love it to this day. Sadly, compared to everything else I've made since this video, I have done much better.

3. Something Worth Fighting For

Why: Crossfade City. Okay, seriously now. I was so disappointed with how Running on the Ragged Edge 2 turned out that I refused to see how half-heartedly I went about editing the first half of this video. I wanted to have a video to hold over RotRE2 and this was all I had made since that video. Even with my friends' beta testing and helping me switch many crossfades out for hard cuts, there were still too many in the first half when I could have easily found ways around using them. This really isn't a video I hate. Considering it was my first time having the confidence to work with my favorite band's music, I'm happy I made it, but I could have put forth a lot more effort than I did.

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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by TritioAFB » Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:43 am

At my case I can't really say which are the three best and the three worst. Because the ones I say are the worst, people says are the best and the inverse is true: ones I say are the best, they are the worst according to people. Kinda confused
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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by GloryQuestor » Mon Mar 31, 2014 6:39 pm

So many to choose from. Here goes:

My three best:
Spoiler :
Don't Stop Mahoro Now! - One of my long-put-off betas I finally brought to fruition. It took a long time to create the effects for this video, as I did not have AE to work with (it's all through Photoshop and pain-staking frame-by-frame animation), and I was very pleased with the results. It's one that I still like to watch to this day.

The Hunt for Admiral Red October - This is the trailer video I was most proud of. I definitely wanted to use Submarine 707R for this, but as the anime did not have any good ways to integrate the other half of the equation (the Ryan scenes), I added in Read or Die to make up for that. It all came together very well, and it's my most favorite trailer I did. :)

KuroKiiro Festival II - Contest OP - Out of the ones that I've done over the years, this is by far my favorite. As the convention is centered around the concept of the Japanese school festival, interweaving the culture fest scenes from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya worked out so well. For a quick video idea, it came together nicely.
My three worst:
Spoiler :
Persona Man - The only reason I really dislike this video is that I used the in-studio remake of the song rather than the original, and the horns really grate in this version. I learned my lesson about using studio remasters and demakes after doing this one. :|

Haruhi3 - This disappointed me a lot because it's such a great concept that I kept promising myself to go back and expand upon, but I never really finished it. The end result is not what I really intended, and if I decide to try this again, it'd most likely be with Persona 4 music and theme rather than Persona 3.

Rumic Aja - This was made the first time I got my hands on Premiere, and I have no recollection of what I did to the video to make it look that crappy. Add in those stupid long pauses in the video and really bad resolution ... yeah, I'm glad to be past this very low point. :sweat:
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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by Rider4Z » Mon Mar 31, 2014 7:41 pm

This is gonna be tough for me because I develop an emotional attachment for all my videos, so singling out the worst and the best is gonna be like pulling teeth. So I guess what I'm gonna have to do is separate the cleanest from the messiest.

Cleanest/Best
Spoiler :
These aren't necessarily my favorites, like I said I can't choose between my childrens. They are however the ones I find the fewest amount of technical flaws in. There's little I could do to make em any better.

I'm very proud of this one. I learned the value of high quality footage, smooth transitions and panning (and foot sync). I also tried my hand at masking transitions. I put forth the meticulous effort all for the sake of natural looking timing and the final result paid off.

Now granted I had another vid as a starting point, but that helped me push my techniques and try fancy fast motion camera work trying to copy nostromo.

Funny enough another dbz vid. This one was so simple it was hard to mess up. It's probably the most brilliant song/anime match I've ever made. I mean hello, Gohan's family name is Son for crying out loud!
Messiest/Worst
Spoiler :
is my first AMV Chef battle. It sucks. It's embarrassing. But I learned a lot from it and won my next battle because of it.

is my only Naruto video. I only made it so I could edit something to the song. And I used it for experimenting with keys. They looked cool on the tiny preview screen. Wasn't until I saw it full size did I squirm from the ugly.

still makes me cry every time I watch it ;;__;; the nakama is so strong!! but I also cringe at the crossfade overload. I also got a LOT of flack for using the funimation dub instead of the Japanese. jerks.

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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by CrackTheSky » Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:11 pm

I like the idea of this topic. I'll have to check out some of the "favorites" that editors mention...I always find it interesting to hear what editors think of their own videos years down the line, and why.

My favorites of my own are pretty well settled, so I had to sit down last night and watch through my old videos to determine which ones I like the least...ugh, that was an uncomfortable half hour.

My Least Favorites:
Spoiler :
3: Figured Out
Shudder. I was so proud of this video when I made it. It breaks all my cardinal rules of editing -- too much literal sync, uncreative beat sync, choppy visual rhythm, too many crossfades, weird aspect ratio (couldn't really be helped because of the hardsubs, but still)...just an all-around bad video. There is nothing redeeming about this. The worst part is, REC is an excellent anime, and this just butchers it.

2: Blossom
Just...really cringy for me. Sappy Shinkai sentimentality at its absolute worst; I love Shinkai's sources and I've made plenty of Shinkai videos (too many), but this one takes the cake for mismatched video and audio sources, not to mention the fact that it makes no conceptual sense to put VoaDS and BtC together in this way. Just a really horrible, horrible video which completely undermines the beauty and feeling of the source material.

1: Lain's Lullaby
There are just so many issues with this I don't know where to begin. The whole video just smacks of laziness and a lack of ability...it could have been okay, but my lack of knowledge and skill at this point in my editing career just leaks through every frame. There are some bad instances of literal sync, hideous effect work, poor pacing, it's boring, it's confusing conceptually, scene selection is either random or overthought. It just comes across (like many videos of mine around this time period) as being a project that was done just to have a project to do. I don't regret making it because I'm sure I learned something from it, even if that was just what not to do, but if it were to be erased from memory, nothing of value would be lost.
Looking back on these videos, it's interesting...these all came from my most prolific period of editing (from 12/2006 - 6/2007 I put out 11 videos, and I don't think I've been that productive since then), and that period was also far and away my worst. That whole period was just a mess of crappy videos...I do still like some of them, but more from a sentimental standpoint than an objective one. I suppose most editors go through such a phase, or multiple phases like that. I enjoyed editing every step of the way though so it was never time wasted :)

My Favorites:
Spoiler :
3: Whatever Makes You Beautiful
This was a video that I made and ripped the song/anime combo completely off of another video that didn't have very good editing. More than that, it was an Evangelion video -- an Asuka/Shinji character profile thing, no less. Completely, totally unoriginal in every way, but this marked a huge turning point in my editing style and I still adore this video from beginning to end, every time I watch it. This was the first video where I started to really pay attention to matching cuts in a visual way, and where I started to make zooms a huge part of how I transitioned between scenes, which became a major part of my editing style after this video was released. To me, it's almost like a modern old-school video, and I really like it.

2: Phobia
The video of mine where everything came together -- the editing, the effects, the lip sync, the scene selection, the pacing, the mood; it's about as close to a perfect video as I ever came, by my standards. I just love the visual flow in this video. I look back and wish I had done a few things differently, but those complaints are minor, and by and large when I watch this I still can't believe I made it. I wish I had submitted it to cons, because I think it would have done well, but I never did for some reason :/ Oh well.

1: Safe and Sound
Not a technically perfect video, not a particularly good-looking video, but heck if it isn't my favorite of mine. Of all my videos I feel this one tells the clearest story, and has the most emotional impact. Besides maybe Phobia above, I don't think I've ever had a better song/anime combo in a video. I love the pacing of the editing, I think the beat sync is perfect and not overdone anywhere, I love the way the scene selection in the video builds and builds and then climaxes...I love pretty much everything about this. Still gives me chills to this day. I liked this video when I released it, but I love it now...I grow fonder of it each time I watch it.
As I look through my videos, I often wonder if I've peaked as an editor...I sure hope not, but I doubt I'll be able to top these three, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's kinda sad but it also gives me motivation to try harder. Heck, it gives me motivation to try at all, since I've more or less been out of the game for the last several years. Here's to an excellent 2014 and beyond :beer: :awesome:

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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by ngsilver » Tue Apr 01, 2014 8:26 pm

I've made a lot of videos over the years. Takes a bit to really go through them and figure out what is good and what is not. I love most of my videos all for different reasons and there are very few that I don't like. With the requirement of leaving out your first video considering I find it to be my worst and least favorite it's really hard. I'm not going to consider any troll videos I've done or any of the ICs I've done but haven't released, or even the slew of 'preview' vids I've done. These are only based on what I consider my released vids, so here we go.

Least Fav:
Spoiler :
3. - While not as iterative as 4, Dance 3 sits as my least favorite of the series. I didn't experiment any with the placement of the gifs, placing most at full screen. There wasn't really any playing around with the ARs or moving things around or really any of the interesting things I had done with the previous videos in the series. I even flat out used the same gifs I had in the previous videos at some points. Overall the song itself just didn't really fit well into the theme TBH. It just overall felt rushed and uninspired. I just really don't like it much and that's why I hid it from view in my profile.

2. - In the end, this video was really just an excuse for me to use this song from the BGC2040 OST and for me to practice more on using the opacity rubber band, overlaying clips on top of each other, and messing with clip speed. I only used the 1st ep of the show and really the end product is just a mashup of different scenes from that episode. I wound up using what I learned from this in the next videos I worked on but the end product could really be thrown away. It's just random scenes.

1. - Despite the listing on the org, this was my 2nd video, not my 1st. I had a number of drawbacks getting this video together originally. I was still capturing my footage with a Haupagg PVR at the time and the DVD I had wouldn't capture due to macrovision so I bought a dubbed copy on VHS and caped that, so quality was pretty bad. I left so much black space between scenes in this one. The scenes I used were close malgamations to what I thought would match the lyrics but in the end it just came out to be a random set of clips that fade in and fade out (I just learned about the opacity rubber band in Premier 6.5 when I made this video) and I used tons of stock transitions. Overall I just feel the video is un-inspired looking back at it. I appreciate the things I learned from making the video, but meh, I could do with out it being attached to me.

Worst of all time! - I just really HATE this video. Transitions galore. Subtitled footage. Linkin Park. The list just goes on.
Best Fav:
Spoiler :
1. - Many have said this was one of my worst vids and it didn't go over well. Too pretentious? Maybe. Text that people hate. Sure. But honestly I love this video. There isn't anything I would ever want to change in it. I really pushed myself with the vision I had for it and did what I would call my best editing work using this source. I pushed what I would call my style to the max. Simple editing techniques, cuts, no fades, and lots of internal sync and jump cuts galore. Most hated the text usage in the video however I feel I did exactly what I set out to do with it by mimicing the style of the original music video for the song. Overall I think this video portrays exactly what I set out to do with it, juxtaposing the story of Nausicaa and her personal journey with the journey the singer goes on through the lyrics. Despite what most think, I really do believe this was my best work to date.

2. - Considering the majority of this video was pretty much done as part of a 2 hour IC I'm honestly impressed myself with what I was able to do. Sure, the final version had a lot of changes, tightening up of scenes and timing wise, but the final product is not much different then the original IC version. Overall just this fact alone I find impressive to myself of what I was able to do in such a short time putting my mind to it. Sure, many have criticized this video for the loose editing style and while it's true the editing here is much looser then my usual fare and way more loose then your normal Ippo video but a fast paced action video wasn't what I was going for with this video. Overall what I enjoyed about this video is the attention to the changes in the musical style and how I changed the pace of the editing and fight based off of that. The only thing I'm somewhat regretful about is failing to show Date's arm getting broken, which would make the fact that it is during the final scene more understandable to the viewer. I do love how with the music in the background it almost sounds like Date is singing the lyrics that are not there in the song when he talks to Ippo at the end. It's not your average action video though I consider it more a drama, and that's another thing I really love about it.

3. tied with We Need for Speed - It's just way to hard to determine between these two which I love more. Overall when I think about my 'racing' vids I can't think about one without thinking about the other. Together they both represent a progression in my style and technique working with internal sync and pacing and one almost naturally leads into the next. The Checkered Flag holds a place in my heart partially due to having gotten the idea for putting that song with that source from a friend of mine, while We Need for Speed holds a place there as well just from my realization of how well those sources mixed while I was working on a source video for an IC I was running at Colossalcon. The Checkered Flag overall I find to be a fun romp using an awesome series. Need for Speed is an adrenalin high showcasing how much anime like the Speed Racer movie is. Checkered Flag showcases some of my love for internal sync where as Need for Speed showcases more of my mastery of it. I plan to remaster both videos now that I have the BDs of each show and I wouldn't mind cleaning up a section in the middle of each where I feel it's a little lacking in direction.

Close runner up - and - It was really tough to decide between the two above and these two, both of which share similar traits in how I remember them. Dance 5 I love as being the video in that series where I basically broke the mold and rut I had put myself into with constantly trying to reference the 'jokes' that were in place with the previous videos in the series and getting back to the roots of what Dance was, which was 90s music put do gifs for just pure fun. I feel I pushed the technique of mixing the gifs together in fun and interesting ways, making segments more and more complicated as the video moves on. Also the addition of actual footage from anime rather then just gifs upped the quality. With Dance 7 I further perfected that style and added in yet even more actual anime footage, especially at the begining in a way that I felt lulled viewers into a false sense of hope thinking that there wouldn't be gifs until BAM I hit you over the head with it. The resolution upgrade was partially there to showcase how nice some of the anime source was but also giving me more screen real estate to play around with mixing different gifs together. I think in the end it displayed the original theme of 90s music to gifs in a fun way just as good as the original Dance, if not better, despite using an 80s song (though it's the new mix from The Wedding Singer so still kinda 90s.) My favorite part of 7 is how I didn't even once bring in any old jokes from previous videos in the series, so it stands up well on it's own. Oh, and I had tons of fun working on the credits :D
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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by Chiikaboom » Wed Apr 02, 2014 12:36 pm

Breakdances into thread.

3 Best
Spoiler :
1. Butterflies - I made this video during a really rough time in my life and while its not perfect, its very sentimental to me. It was made for the people in my life who stopped me from committing suicide.
2. Spider Bite - I started this video on a whim actually, but im pretty proud with the internal sync. I really wish I had higher quality footage for certain parts but overall i think it turned out pretty cool.
3. Usagi Swing - I like how I was able to use mostly scenes of Usagi herself rather than just random pretty scenes like most sailor moon amvs are. Not that im saying this video is better than them, just that I'm proud of myself for not relying on overused scenes. Also the song is great ;p
3 Worst
Spoiler :
1. Attack Of The Otaku - Basically my "naruto phase" of amvs. I literally can't watch it. I'm proud of the effort that went into it but I resent that its probably the video I'm most well known for.
2. Danse De Raven - FAIL GERMAN TITLE. Also I rushed the ending of this video and I hate that I did because I could have done so much better. I should have spent more time getting better scenes instead of half assing it the way I did.
3. Manic Lullaby - The visuals are just hideous on this. Again, I rushed the second half, and literally can't watch it without cringing at several parts.
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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by soleher » Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:09 pm

Chiikaboom wrote:
Spoiler :
1. Butterflies - I made this video during a really rough time in my life and while its not perfect, its very sentimental to me. It was made for the people in my life who stopped me from committing suicide.
I'm watching this video in a whole new light now. Thanks for sharing.

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Re: Your 3 best and worst videos and why

Post by macchinainterna » Sun Apr 06, 2014 6:55 am

Chiikaboom wrote:
Spoiler :
1. Attack Of The Otaku - Basically my "naruto phase" of amvs. I literally can't watch it. I'm proud of the effort that went into it but I resent that its probably the video I'm most well known for.
I pretty much feel the same way about most of my PMVs and Anthology contributions. While yeah, I had a great time making them and I am proud of the work I put into them, it just really irks me that the majority of my subs on YT will ignore (or harshly criticize) anything I upload that isn't a PMV, whether or not it's a better video.

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