My Second PR Vid (Feedback Very Appreciated)

[FuzzySquirrel]

Lol at the end. Good video

[McBumLuv]

Nice video overal. Though I think you should either slow down the shots in the editor whenever possible, if only so that you can still hear the bullets/background sounds.

Nice use of music as well. And lol at end, It's only Moonpie!

[McBumLuv]

Also, whenever possible, see if you can get clan mates to record First Person Video, which If you can incorporate would make it very good indeed


And though this isn't as much a critisism as it is a suggestion, you could perhaps focus more on the storyline each squad goes through, and not just the battles they fight. Although with that music of yours, it's pretty amazing as it is.

One of the things pr has done on its own is it has created an eerie feeling and scene in every map. For instance, in insurgency maps, you can be traveling along in a humvee/landy when suddenly you're ambushed by an IED/RPG. The point is, simply being IEDed isn't as moving as getting to "feel" for the characters and their mission, however slightly, before they get hit.

If you are interested in that, I would suggest sticking with one squad, and playing them as the main characters of your film, and sticking with that squad. You can show some of their interactions with their own team, however. IE, infantry squad uses APC as transport, but APC comes under fire, they bail, APC blows, they regroup, and they progress from there.

Note that none of these are criticisms of your film, only suggestions of how you might want to direct future ones. Your style is up to you, though you may find some cool things to try from the rest of the community as well.

[McBumLuv]

About following the squad for more than just the battles, I agree with you. But my goal with this video was to make a cool recap of the best moments from the week, rather than make a more cinematic piece. However, I think it's a good suggestion and I'm going to include more things like that in my next video.

I recognized that, which is why I was fairly hesitant at posting it in my first comment. However, I think you would be a very good director/editor for such a feat, from what I've seen so far.

One final suggestion, unless you're panning out/following a bullet, try to not move the camera with the WASD during free look. It's usually fairly choppy, especially when trying to keep pace with something. Try instead to find good angles, or follow a character when on the move. This wasn't a problem very often, but when you do these, you should fell all the more immersed.

[Liquid_Cow]

Pretty good. A couple of tips:

Smooth camera movements... avoid jerky start and stops, especially multiple start and stops in a single shot. Either pan the camera or let the vehicle/person pass a fixed camera.

Only pan in one direction per shot, don't go back and forth

Less slo-mo, save it for special scenes such as the chinese trooper getting hit on the bridge, that was great the way his head snaps back.

The slow mo of the APC getting hit by Chinese HAT is good, but it would have been better had you actually seen the launch of the missile then cut to the APC blowing up.

Don't let things move through the camera, cut just before the person's leg dissolves,

Have a plan. Real movies start with pen and paper, they make a story board with all the shots they want then go and shoot the scenes. Even though you're capturing game play you can still do the same. Make a plan (hint: watch a couple of good war movies and take notes on the battle scenes, what makes a good one what makes a bad one), draw little stick figure "shots" of what the scene should look like for each one, then go out and find the shot you want. You can also change up the process a little by drawing out the scenes you have on small single pages (with noted of what vid and time they come from) then lay them out on the table randomly and start pulling them together to make a good sequence.

And remember, just because you have a good clip doesn't mean it belongs in the video. Hollywood shoots hundreds of hours of film for a 2 hour movie, much of it "ends up on the cutting room floor." If it does not fit, toss it.

[Liquid_Cow]

Not a problem, I love watching a well made vid. Personally the best PR one i've seen yet is the .5 trailer. I'd recommend you watch it and the other trailers, but don't watch it as a player, watch it as an "art student". Use your gut to feel which parts work and which don't, then watch it again and try to see what it is that worked so well or didn't. Take notes then use them when you're making a vid.

Another favorite in the silly category is Mine
Watch this one and you'll notice a lot of the shots they use a fixed camera, and when they move the camera they sometimes use a quick dual axis move (may fav is the opening of the knife fight sequence) where the camera moves and pivots at the same time. A moving camera creates distraction all over the screen, you want the viewer to be looking where you want them to look, fixed camera lends itself to that better than a moving one. Bear in mind that there are absolutely times when a moving camera works, but the scene has to be right, and so does the machine you're "filming" on to avoid jerky shots. They also use some great shot locations in Mine such as under the trash container and dual action shots where there are two things moving at different angles. And the dance sequence! I like to move it move it...

I wish I had the time/computer to do vids myself, until then I look forward to seeing yours!

[Liquid_Cow]

Hey I was inspired to try a movie myself and came across this website with some pretty good instructions. One thing of interest was the ability to program a camera path, so the camera can be "told" to move, which may provide a smoother camera action than you can do by "hand"

BattleRecorder - Planet Battlefield

[Liquid_Cow]

Here's another site which talks about setting up a single player server on your computer and making your own BR files. If you DL PRSP you'll be able to run bots and stage short battles so you don't have BR files that are an hour long just for 5 min of shots. If you have access to a regular server you can do the same, get a crew together and shoot some short scenes. The only problem is controlling your "actors." People get bored quickly, so make a plan then set up the shoot, get it done quickly and let them kill each other, otherwise you'll only get one session done and nobody will come back for #2.

BF2S Wiki other:battlerecorder, BF2S.com

[Liquid_Cow]

Well, all this talk of videos got me motivate, so I captured a bunch of short takes and made this, my 1st game video...

[WEGAME]<object width="640" height="441"><param name="movie" value="http://www.wegame.com/static/flash/play ... ram><param name="flashVars" value="xmlrequest=http://www.wegame.com/player/video/A_Da ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.wegame.com/static/flash/play ... layer=true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="640" height="441"></embed></object><div style="display: block; font-size: 11px">Watch more videos of <a href="http://www.wegame.com/games/bf2/" target="_blank">BF2</a></div>[/WEGAME]

Orriginally I was going to narrate it, make it tell a story, but I got so frustrated with WMM that I cut it down and used Pinacle instead.

I tried playing with various angles for the shots, found that moving the camera really sucked the frame rate down, that its better to focus on the begining of the battle recorder file than the end, and funny things happen when you don't DL the entire BR file.

Let me know what you think.

Edit... Hmmm, video doesn't want to insert, here's the linky:
A Day at Karbala with GCA

[McBumLuv]

[wegame]A_Day_at_Karbala_with_GCA_2[/wegame]

There you go, you only need the ending part of the URL (it'll be the vid's title most of the time, in this case it's A_Day_at_Karbala_with_GCA_2), the rest of the <object><pram<whatever> **** is just when posting in blogs and stuff.

As for the video, the editing and shooting was very well done. It's really too bad you didn't narrate it, because it was build up amazingly, and reconstructing the story line, and choosing what action you would want to include would've turned this video from a good quality game recap to a great story, too. Only thing I had issues with was the goldencamel URL jumping into the screen while you were building up suspense while panning through the city. Would've been better to have it set up like an opening credit, where the name pops up while the scene is rolling, or where the scene stops on a frame and the name shows up, then continues on.

[Liquid_Cow]

Thanks Luv, knew someone would set me straight... and thanks for the feedback, I may still do the narrated version, complete with sound effects. The only problem is that time spent editing is time not spent playing PR!

[edde]

Anyone seen or like this short film!?

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[Liquid_Cow]

Here's movie #2, this one was my original intent for Day at Karbala before I got so frustrated with WMM and switched to VideoSpin...

Once again it was supposed to be wide screen but it got forced to 4:3 when uploaded, I'll try to fix that ASAP.

[WEGAME]They_Were_Watching_Wide_Screen[/WEGAME]

edit: Got the widescreen uploaded, fixed link

[Makee]

Quite good video Colonelcool, others as well!

I think it is really good, particularly for a beginner in video production, it isn't too long to become boring and it is enough long to tell the story well, it has its funny part at the end which leaves quite good feeling after watching, and for its purpose, you said you wanted to achieve, I think it did its job quite well.

Must also say that you got few really good tips to improve your skills, I would just like to add few more.

First would definitely be, something LiquidCow started to talk about, Free Time. Video production is one really hungry time eater!
Personally, I gave up on my 10 minute Bf2 video after some two months of work on it, I was somewhere on a half way to finish it but I just couldn't do it anymore.
So, lot of free time and one fast and powerful machine are two things you really need to have and quality of a movie is completely dependent on that.

About production itself:

First thing I've noticed, don't hate me pls, is inappropriate use of shot length.
You have to use shot lengths in a way to express wanted dynamic of movie.
In general, long shots are used to slow down storytelling and short ones to speed things up, to bring more action feeling, in other words, in action movie you need to have a lot more 2 - 5 second shots.
But you don't have to worry, you can actually play with it however you like.

For example, if you want to extend some scene showing it in slow motion, np, just take more clips of it from different angles, all in slow motion, and in post production show all that scene with quick shot exchanges of same thing, from different angles.

Also, maybe even hardest thing to do in whole story, when movie has music in the background all shot exchanges have to be precisely synchronized with all music changes.


I think that there is no better example to learn from, than this one:

Apocalypse Now - Ride Of The Valkyries

or in extended version: Apocalypse Now - Helicopter Attack

I can't think closest match in real movies to what we are trying to do, battlefield action with music in the background, and all that made by a legend in a masterpiece.
I'm suggesting you to watch it several times, first time for the story itself and after that just watch the shots, take look on their length, purpose and the way of using them in whole story.
In extended clip, you can see how legend plays with shot length and dynamic, when troops are boarding those choppers, Coppola had really long static camera shots there but dynamic of that moment is shown by simple fast running of soldiers just in front of the static camera.
Also, try notice that big difference between shot lengths when some conversation is on and when only music is in action background.

Sorry, but can't express myself better in English, hope you can find something helpful in this, thus said.

[Mj Pain]

Damn!! Liquid Cow, the second one was awesome

[Liquid_Cow]

First would definitely be, something LiquidCow started to talk about, Free Time. Video production is one really hungry time eater!

Yes it is, it took me about a two months to put my latest video together (run time about 8min). I usually work in 2 hour blocks 2-3 times a week. Watch BR file and look for good clips, keep note pad of times when action occurs, replay BR and record some scenes, replay BR at least a half dozen times and get different camera angles of some action, cut together clips in various orders and look for a story to emerge, write an actual paper story board, edit to be a cohesive story line, look for new clips which help the story lines, overlay the music, edit clips to match the music, find new clips to fill in spaces and voids, watch content make sure it fits the "story line," rough out the narrative, lay down the draft voice overs, edit script where needed (a lot), play it all together, edit sound levels so music doesn't drown out voice, lay down master voice tracks, redo them when I realized the mic gain was too high and everything I just made sounded like ****, splice together with new master track, adjust and fine tune audio timing, "print" film and find I forgotten to adjust the settings to wide screen, re print video, post and hope people like it, drink beer and check emails.

Movie making also eats up a lot of memory and disk space, I just deleted the "temp" files of various clips, it was 10 gigs (actual movie in high res is about 220M).

Excellent observations Makee, as I said earlier in this thread, find any battle scene that you like and watch it with a note pad and pen, take notes on what the director and editor was doing with the shot, what worked and what looked wrong.