It would be awesome for you to continue your own review on them. Considering there seems to be a general consensus that some of the "first cut" videos were not as good as some of the other ones on pages 3 or 4.
Vote Now for Film Fest's Viewer's Choice
- Thread starter Kelly Helder
- Start date
Agreed, criticism is alway welcome.
Also, is it not possible that the 'First Cut' thing indicates the order in which the videos were submitted and processed? Leaving aside quality concerns, having the Escapist staff pre-select what they consider to be the best videos somewhat defeats the purpose of viewers choice, doesn't it?
Then again, maybe it's just a way to mess with our heads
Also, is it not possible that the 'First Cut' thing indicates the order in which the videos were submitted and processed? Leaving aside quality concerns, having the Escapist staff pre-select what they consider to be the best videos somewhat defeats the purpose of viewers choice, doesn't it?
Then again, maybe it's just a way to mess with our heads
No. No Keep them coming. I trust a one line review over a blue ribbon at the moment. (Though that possibly because i'm a tad sour I didn't get one. haha) Would love to hear any feedback you have on Chosen trailer if you've seen it. Haven't had much in the comments yet.Callate said:
Thanks for watching and for the feedback. Audio issues I've addressed in this thread and in the Unearthed thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.242451-The-Escapist-Film-Festival-2010-Unearthed]. Regarding tone, for the pilot episode I wanted to convey what the overall tone of the show would be like (which is quite different from most Escapist content), but it does unfortunately mean that the light humour element of the show didn't get to surface. As a game Minecraft has a lot of elements that are "horror-esque"; I'm not going for horror, but it definitely helps for an "atmospheric" style.Callate said:
Minecraft is, though, a game about mining, so you'd expect a fair bit of darkness anyway. If I said that the next episode would take place entirely in the daytime, would that give me your vote?
The videos that say First Cut... I hear no commentary by our panel of expert judges. Is that to be added later? Do I find said snippets elsewhere? Am I up shit's creek without a paddle? Will our heroes survive their fight with the man-eating ham sandwich?
But seriously. Where's the commentary.
But seriously. Where's the commentary.
@Callate: Thanks for taking the time to watch our video (Q.E.D.). Thank you even more for taking the time to review it. Dave (the guy in black) was indeed intentionally monotone. As to Jim (played by me, lol), I have no excuse except to say that I'm a poor actor, and can try to do better in the future! As to the voices not matching the lips, that just sort of cropped up when we cranked all the render settings to minimum (our 190mb version would not upload). We have tried to send a version to the Escapist where everything matched that came in at 190mb, but we have not heard anything back about it. Thank you very much for watching.
To all- I'm glad you appreciate the criticism I've offered so far. It's inevitable that I'm going to step on some toes, but I'm trying not to varnish anything and be honest without being a bastard. And I hope to get to every last one of the entries (someone should!), so bear with me.
Press To Continue: This is all very professional, and the commentary on the various games is informative and entertaining. However, the "guess-o-vision" is completely superfluous.
Twisted Trailers: The seed of an amusing idea here, but I don't think the creator really had enough footage to work with to sell it, and the audio has some unfortunate and clashing overlaps, especially in the last third or so of the video.
Noise: This earns my respect for lampshading its lack of budget without using that as an excuse for poor quality or trying to make what amounts to "we're so lame" jokes. It's genuinely funny (to my sense of humor, at least), well put together, and it's a crying shame that it didn't make it to page one.
Sunder Episode 1: This is the first entry I've seen where I actually want to suggest pulling back on the special effects. The editing is jumpy, sometimes at the expense of the story. It's clearly an ambitious effort, but I don't think the creators quite have the resources to pull it off.
What's the Dillio: Yep. That's about how my entry got put together, too. I don't know where you'd go from there, but as a self-contained film, it's fairly amusing and the animation is nicely done.
Jetman Jam: Ooh. Rendered graphics. Shiny. No, quite seriously, this looks very good. It's a pity most of the humor falls flat.
The Kindly Word: (*sigh*) I'm so sorry. It would actually be kind of cool to have a book review segment on the Escapist to go with the movie reviews and the (multiple) game reviews. And this is never going to be it, because it's just the creator talking into a camera, and however entertaining she may be, that's completely contrary to the flow of just about everything else on The Escapist. It may be that having some sort of animated visual seems thematically inappropriate to the creator for a book review, but y'know what? That's also a good reason for book reviews to be text.
More to come, probably tomorrow.
Press To Continue: This is all very professional, and the commentary on the various games is informative and entertaining. However, the "guess-o-vision" is completely superfluous.
Twisted Trailers: The seed of an amusing idea here, but I don't think the creator really had enough footage to work with to sell it, and the audio has some unfortunate and clashing overlaps, especially in the last third or so of the video.
Noise: This earns my respect for lampshading its lack of budget without using that as an excuse for poor quality or trying to make what amounts to "we're so lame" jokes. It's genuinely funny (to my sense of humor, at least), well put together, and it's a crying shame that it didn't make it to page one.
Sunder Episode 1: This is the first entry I've seen where I actually want to suggest pulling back on the special effects. The editing is jumpy, sometimes at the expense of the story. It's clearly an ambitious effort, but I don't think the creators quite have the resources to pull it off.
What's the Dillio: Yep. That's about how my entry got put together, too. I don't know where you'd go from there, but as a self-contained film, it's fairly amusing and the animation is nicely done.
Jetman Jam: Ooh. Rendered graphics. Shiny. No, quite seriously, this looks very good. It's a pity most of the humor falls flat.
The Kindly Word: (*sigh*) I'm so sorry. It would actually be kind of cool to have a book review segment on the Escapist to go with the movie reviews and the (multiple) game reviews. And this is never going to be it, because it's just the creator talking into a camera, and however entertaining she may be, that's completely contrary to the flow of just about everything else on The Escapist. It may be that having some sort of animated visual seems thematically inappropriate to the creator for a book review, but y'know what? That's also a good reason for book reviews to be text.
More to come, probably tomorrow.
Thanks for the review. We know the editing's a bit jumpy--the original script was 11 pages in official format and the original cut was 8 minutes with the intro and credits. As for the fx, all the explosions are just placed a bit distant, though I think there are some subtle effects that some might notice weren't actually in the shot. I really wish I could've put the intro on the show--that's the best example of the use of the fx. As for resources--not gonna lie, we made the whole thing with 1 $5, and that was just for the one shot. We wanted to do a bit more set wise and would love to show you what we have planned for episode two, I'm just afraid we might never get to. Thanks for the feedback. But that said, what did you think of the concept? Writing? Acting? Cinematography? General Execution?Callate said:
@Callate: Twisted Trailers: The seed of an amusing idea here, but I don't think the creator really had enough footage to work with to sell it, and the audio has some unfortunate and clashing overlaps, especially in the last third or so of the video.
Alas, after conceiving of the idea we realised none of us have a microphone, hence we were forced to rely on the in-game voices, which fairly limited the possibilities. Obviously something we would correct if we won.
Still, criticism much appreciated!
Alas, after conceiving of the idea we realised none of us have a microphone, hence we were forced to rely on the in-game voices, which fairly limited the possibilities. Obviously something we would correct if we won.
Still, criticism much appreciated!
Personal highlights now include Creature Caster Masters, Radiogame Theatre and Show About Games Show. Although The Cooperators and Nerd Wars! have some potential, if not technically masterful. And I honestly can't tell if I love Nintendobo or not.
(For bias purposes, mine's Jump The Shark.)
(For bias purposes, mine's Jump The Shark.)
Okay... I've watched almost all of the shows on the first page and a few on the other pages.
In conclusion: I will NEVER be able to watch all of them...dammit. And i have to agree that though the First Cut is kinda useful, still, it bluntly murders the chances the non-first page videos have. And some of them are pretty good. But some of them are not.
Still, it seems that i am a little bit too generous with the voting. I haven't picked one video that should win, so I'm giving votes to several of them.
In conclusion: I will NEVER be able to watch all of them...dammit. And i have to agree that though the First Cut is kinda useful, still, it bluntly murders the chances the non-first page videos have. And some of them are pretty good. But some of them are not.
Still, it seems that i am a little bit too generous with the voting. I haven't picked one video that should win, so I'm giving votes to several of them.
Woohoo, just finished watching them. Was writing my thoughts but there were a lot of them. Should I post them up or will it simply annoy people?
I'm not making negative reviews just running down my favourite points really, but it goes on a while as I mention a lot of videos.
EDIT: actually reading it back I am a little negative but in a constructive way. Anyways I comment on a lot of videos, so if people are interested I'll post it up.
I'm not making negative reviews just running down my favourite points really, but it goes on a while as I mention a lot of videos.
EDIT: actually reading it back I am a little negative but in a constructive way. Anyways I comment on a lot of videos, so if people are interested I'll post it up.
I don't know why people would be shy about taking criticism. If you wanna be internet famous, you will have feedback whether you like it or not! And some of it won't be pretty.
Glad you found most of it entertaining.. the "guess-o-vision", while it's the part I'm least happy with too, it is also a content vector while giving people some time to think about the answer (or hit up googleCallate said:
) - be it holiday themeing or even some hints if it's a particularly obscure one.I'm chuffed you consider it professionally produce tho
Okay here goes, there is a huge amount here. It's in no particular order other than the order that thoughts came to me. Also if anyone was unfortunate enough to have seen my video RESET TO ZERO then I wouldn't mind some feedback. I'm well aware it's not visually very impressive but I'm wondering if the story and characters work.
Here we go, like I said, I wrote a lot. I'm not going to go into too much detail because hopefully I can persuade the people who bother to read this to watch the videos themselves.
As a general rule yes the best films are on page one with a "first cut" ribbon, however, this is a generalisation and there are most definitely some of the "first cut" that are not nearly as good as some of the later ones. I would say that the "first cut" ribbon represents the best combinations of good writing and good filmmaking, as having both is a relative rarity.
A lot of the "first cut" videos are well shot and well performed but the concepts and writing are merely okay, I would put JUMP THE SHARK and BREAKING BLIZZARD in that category as well as a few of the others, but they definitely show potential and in the five minute time frame that's kind of enough. In this regard I'd also have put the last winner A GOOD KNIGHT'S QUEST in the merely okay but shows potential category, although for me the series trundled along the merely okay route with all too few occassional moments of brilliance (Cooper's goodbye in episode 16 stands out for me as the best moment of the series).
Outside of the "first cut" ribbon THE ADVENTURES OF ZEBRA SANTA still gave me the biggest laugh when the villain tried to escape on a jet powered sombrero. As well as that I enjoyed;
£5 BUDGET: NOISE - very amusing and made good use of it's limited resources, I'd love to see what they could come up with with a little more time and money;
THE AMMO MAN - slightly stuttered pacing but pretty good none the less;
NERD WARS - slow start but once it got into the fight sequence it was great;
FALCON MAN - simple idea, not too sure where it's going, but very intriguing;
LOADING COMPLETE: THAT GUY WESKER - just the right level of silly to appeal to my sense of humour;
PANGEA - very nice idea and the Scott Pilgrim style editing during the opening worked pretty well but after that it got more than a little choppy, with dodgy shooting, dodgy editing and very dodgy performances, also I'm not really sure what it's about in the sense of what is the design of the word and what are those characters up to;
CHOSEN - good concept and very intriguing, certainly made me want to see more but was much too short to make a real lasting impression and even though I only watched it last night I can't really recall anything particularly memorable about it;
SPEAKING IN THE FIRST PERSON makes me smile, perhaps partly as a massive Half-Life groupie but I think it's a cool idea and would definitely tune in to see more;
JOSH & CHAD: COOPERATORS is another great idea that could be very funny although it's hard to judge based on these short snippets but I'm prepared to give it a chance.
Also we're not short on comedies about people trying to make games or working on games, or creating/writing something, with in my opinion BETA being the best structured and CARMEN 1.0 the most inventive. This is a category my video (RESET TO ZERO) sort of falls into but mine is ultimately about the gaming industry trying to kill or kidnap anyone not conforming and would quickly turn into a comedic thriller. These set ups are all fine with similar styles of humour but I fear they are getting washed out by each others presence, as they're characters and humour are quite easily interchangable and thus it's hard to pick one that stands out with the exception of the above mentioned.
Specific comments, TWISTED TRAILORS gets old pretty quick, it had one big gay joke and it drags a little although I'm glad I stuck with it the whole way through and saw the guest appearance as that made me laugh.
JETMAN JAM which is getting some praise is pretty weak in my opinion, the animation is nice enough but the pacing is a little up and down, the audio is dodgy and most of the jokes are stolen from various sources, in fact I'm fairly sure there's a joke from Blackadder in there with completely unchanged dialogue.
CASTLE TOWN seems a mash-up of 'Legend of Neil' and 'There Will Be Brawl' which sounds kind of cool but 'There Will Be Brawl' is the kind of genius that's hard to replicate so not sure this series could pull it off (by the way if you don't know what 'There Will Be Brawl' is then what the hell is wrong with you! Watch it immediately!).
A VERY PROVIDENT PUNT is obviously 'Doomsday Arcade' for movies but at least they're self aware enough to loosely make that reference themselves. Could be a very funny series of film parodies which would make a change to crappy film parodies that actually make it into the cinema (Disaster Movie and the like). The Twilight set up was short but a good example of this.
VS MODE looks like it could be a great series, it's very well structured and shot but it never really pops perhaps because the presenters need a little more energy to their performances.
PRO-GAMER GAUNTLET is a great idea with great character designs and performances but it's just not a very good film, most of the jokes all fall a little flat for me, but there's definitely potential for greatness.
ESCAPE THE GAME is very well shot and very atmospheric I'm just not sure where it's going, the concept comes across as a little dull, but I liked it as a sort of arty piece.
OPINIONATED REVIEWS - BEFORE IT WAS FILM - WHAT'S THE DILLIO and any other review/commentary/editorial type shows are all fine, I'm just not sure we need them, not exactly short of people expressing their opinion on this site and Zero Punctuation outshines everyone else anyway, but like I said they're all fine with the three mentioned above being the best.
-- Having said all of the above the best of all are probably the first three videos on page one --
NINTENDOBO is fucking brilliant, absolute genius. I don't think it'll win because it's certainly not going to appeal to everyone (there's an understatement), but it's still great.
CREATURE CASTER MASTER is a much more likely winner. Its nicely animated, has good pacing, great characters and is genuinely quite funny with a good balance of general humour and gaming in-jokes.
GAME SCIENCE is a great concept and I think has a huge amount of potential. It's very funny as well as very well constructed.
________________________________________________
Anyone not mentioned who wants to pester me for my thoughts just ask and i'll post them, I might be the only person outside of the judges to have watch everything after all, lol.
Here we go, like I said, I wrote a lot. I'm not going to go into too much detail because hopefully I can persuade the people who bother to read this to watch the videos themselves.
As a general rule yes the best films are on page one with a "first cut" ribbon, however, this is a generalisation and there are most definitely some of the "first cut" that are not nearly as good as some of the later ones. I would say that the "first cut" ribbon represents the best combinations of good writing and good filmmaking, as having both is a relative rarity.
A lot of the "first cut" videos are well shot and well performed but the concepts and writing are merely okay, I would put JUMP THE SHARK and BREAKING BLIZZARD in that category as well as a few of the others, but they definitely show potential and in the five minute time frame that's kind of enough. In this regard I'd also have put the last winner A GOOD KNIGHT'S QUEST in the merely okay but shows potential category, although for me the series trundled along the merely okay route with all too few occassional moments of brilliance (Cooper's goodbye in episode 16 stands out for me as the best moment of the series).
Outside of the "first cut" ribbon THE ADVENTURES OF ZEBRA SANTA still gave me the biggest laugh when the villain tried to escape on a jet powered sombrero. As well as that I enjoyed;
£5 BUDGET: NOISE - very amusing and made good use of it's limited resources, I'd love to see what they could come up with with a little more time and money;
THE AMMO MAN - slightly stuttered pacing but pretty good none the less;
NERD WARS - slow start but once it got into the fight sequence it was great;
FALCON MAN - simple idea, not too sure where it's going, but very intriguing;
LOADING COMPLETE: THAT GUY WESKER - just the right level of silly to appeal to my sense of humour;
PANGEA - very nice idea and the Scott Pilgrim style editing during the opening worked pretty well but after that it got more than a little choppy, with dodgy shooting, dodgy editing and very dodgy performances, also I'm not really sure what it's about in the sense of what is the design of the word and what are those characters up to;
CHOSEN - good concept and very intriguing, certainly made me want to see more but was much too short to make a real lasting impression and even though I only watched it last night I can't really recall anything particularly memorable about it;
SPEAKING IN THE FIRST PERSON makes me smile, perhaps partly as a massive Half-Life groupie but I think it's a cool idea and would definitely tune in to see more;
JOSH & CHAD: COOPERATORS is another great idea that could be very funny although it's hard to judge based on these short snippets but I'm prepared to give it a chance.
Also we're not short on comedies about people trying to make games or working on games, or creating/writing something, with in my opinion BETA being the best structured and CARMEN 1.0 the most inventive. This is a category my video (RESET TO ZERO) sort of falls into but mine is ultimately about the gaming industry trying to kill or kidnap anyone not conforming and would quickly turn into a comedic thriller. These set ups are all fine with similar styles of humour but I fear they are getting washed out by each others presence, as they're characters and humour are quite easily interchangable and thus it's hard to pick one that stands out with the exception of the above mentioned.
Specific comments, TWISTED TRAILORS gets old pretty quick, it had one big gay joke and it drags a little although I'm glad I stuck with it the whole way through and saw the guest appearance as that made me laugh.
JETMAN JAM which is getting some praise is pretty weak in my opinion, the animation is nice enough but the pacing is a little up and down, the audio is dodgy and most of the jokes are stolen from various sources, in fact I'm fairly sure there's a joke from Blackadder in there with completely unchanged dialogue.
CASTLE TOWN seems a mash-up of 'Legend of Neil' and 'There Will Be Brawl' which sounds kind of cool but 'There Will Be Brawl' is the kind of genius that's hard to replicate so not sure this series could pull it off (by the way if you don't know what 'There Will Be Brawl' is then what the hell is wrong with you! Watch it immediately!).
A VERY PROVIDENT PUNT is obviously 'Doomsday Arcade' for movies but at least they're self aware enough to loosely make that reference themselves. Could be a very funny series of film parodies which would make a change to crappy film parodies that actually make it into the cinema (Disaster Movie and the like). The Twilight set up was short but a good example of this.
VS MODE looks like it could be a great series, it's very well structured and shot but it never really pops perhaps because the presenters need a little more energy to their performances.
PRO-GAMER GAUNTLET is a great idea with great character designs and performances but it's just not a very good film, most of the jokes all fall a little flat for me, but there's definitely potential for greatness.
ESCAPE THE GAME is very well shot and very atmospheric I'm just not sure where it's going, the concept comes across as a little dull, but I liked it as a sort of arty piece.
OPINIONATED REVIEWS - BEFORE IT WAS FILM - WHAT'S THE DILLIO and any other review/commentary/editorial type shows are all fine, I'm just not sure we need them, not exactly short of people expressing their opinion on this site and Zero Punctuation outshines everyone else anyway, but like I said they're all fine with the three mentioned above being the best.
-- Having said all of the above the best of all are probably the first three videos on page one --
NINTENDOBO is fucking brilliant, absolute genius. I don't think it'll win because it's certainly not going to appeal to everyone (there's an understatement), but it's still great.
CREATURE CASTER MASTER is a much more likely winner. Its nicely animated, has good pacing, great characters and is genuinely quite funny with a good balance of general humour and gaming in-jokes.
GAME SCIENCE is a great concept and I think has a huge amount of potential. It's very funny as well as very well constructed.
________________________________________________
Anyone not mentioned who wants to pester me for my thoughts just ask and i'll post them, I might be the only person outside of the judges to have watch everything after all, lol.