Army of Wltrs redux, NS fragmovie
fanatic
This post has been edited. Join Date: 2003-07-23 Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
This post has been edited. Join Date: 2003-07-23 Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
This is the improved version of the ENSL 2009 Movie contest winner, Army of Wltrs. Featuring some of the best frags and editing ever seen in an NS movie.
It’s taken a lot of effort, but I think it has paid off. While you may not notice them all, the changes are too many to list. I especially tried to improve on the things that got commented on when the original movie was released. Specifically that the movie was too dark, too blurry and that the intro was sloppy. There’s also about 25 seconds of new footage, mostly in the first part of the movie. The most easily recognizable changes are also in the first part of the movie.
If you missed the original Army of Wltrs, this is a great time to see it in improved form. On the other hand, if you have seen it, this is a great time to rewatch it. I’m glad to finally be able to release this, I hope you enjoy it. Drop some comments and let me know what you think!
<a href="http://www.ninelegends.com/releases/army-of-wltrs-redux/" target="_blank">Link to release page with download links</a>
The youtube stream doesn’t work at the time of this posting. It has to be processed first. It should work in a couple of hours.
It’s taken a lot of effort, but I think it has paid off. While you may not notice them all, the changes are too many to list. I especially tried to improve on the things that got commented on when the original movie was released. Specifically that the movie was too dark, too blurry and that the intro was sloppy. There’s also about 25 seconds of new footage, mostly in the first part of the movie. The most easily recognizable changes are also in the first part of the movie.
If you missed the original Army of Wltrs, this is a great time to see it in improved form. On the other hand, if you have seen it, this is a great time to rewatch it. I’m glad to finally be able to release this, I hope you enjoy it. Drop some comments and let me know what you think!
<a href="http://www.ninelegends.com/releases/army-of-wltrs-redux/" target="_blank">Link to release page with download links</a>
The youtube stream doesn’t work at the time of this posting. It has to be processed first. It should work in a couple of hours.
Comments
The logo bit could've been improved, but that's the best I was able to do. I'm no graphics wizard unfortunately.
Tone down the blur-o-vision by about 50%; it's a nice effect but it's really overdone here and it gets in the way of the action. It's hard to call this a frag vid when you can barely see what's going on. With that change I could probably really enjoy this vid.
[Edit] This is a toned down of the original that was too blurry? Wow. I stand by the 50% comment though. The blur effect should be subtle enough not to be distracting/obscuring and present enough to notice the benefit between having it on and off. I really don't think it even needs to be that obvious, just a touch to bring out the fast and frantic movement. /£0.02
I agree that sometimes it's hard to see how the frag is going down, but overall solid.
I've seen Radial, I think AoW has a lot better sync (just watched to see to confirm it), even though its a cool movie aswell. Its like comparing RPG games to FPS-games, its just a different concept.
I've seen Radial, I think AoW has a lot better sync (just watched to see to confirm it), even though its a cool movie aswell. Its like comparing RPG games to FPS-games, its just a different concept.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->There's a time and a place for motion blur. I don't think having it turned on practically the whole time is using it to its full potential. Using it as a 'highlight' to bring out effects (especially with slo-mo) is imo a better use. One implementation I could see working well would be to slow down the action when the player sees a target, let it run briefly with MB, then quickly ramp up the timescale to see the kill in all its clarity (sort of like a bullet-time effect, but not exactly). Or another one would be having the kill play out at full speed and then slow-mo with MB to highlight the death anim (and, like you said, the blood spatter, etc.).
When I watch a frag vid I want to be informed, impressed, and be able to disect what's happening so I can really appreciate the player's skill. How long did it take for him to react to when the enemy was first on-screen? What was his first movement? What angle was the enemy approaching from? Did he change direction greatly/slightly? How fast? - motion blur literally blurs out a lot of these subtleties.
Sure motion blur can be a nice addition, but when it's used all the time it loses its efficacity. It's like how some fly-on-wall-style dramas really over use the fast zoom/minor zoom tweak function to ram it down the viewer's throat that this is fast-paced and edgy, but it actually turns out to be distracting/disorienting. It happens a lot with novel techniques. All I'm saying is less in more. But that's my opinion, if you wanna go down the arthouse/music vid road then you don't have to be so concentrated on telling a story; it can be more about eliciting emotions and providing an experience.
So yeah, you're right. It's personal preference. If other people like it then it must be doing something right.
That said, the motion blur did turn out a bit excessive. I used pretty much the same settings most modern CS movies use, but the frantic movements in NS don't jive well with that. Making a movie without any motion blur is not an option -- unless you want to jump into a time machine and travel back to 2006 (and even then no motion blur was lagging behind the development).
Personally I see everything in the movie clearly, but that's because I've gone through it so many times. It's something you get used to.
We had a chat about it before and pretty much came to the conclusion that the best way of using this kind of motion blur is to use the same method that Michael Weicker did in his "Mousesports: Ready Willing & Able" CS movie. Which is to say, using frame-resampled motion blur for the vast majority of the movie, and switching to ingame-sampled motion blur for only the sections of rapid camera movement. Its tricky to do that and make the transitions seamless though.
fyi Crispy, Radial sucked :s so much stuff in it that I should have fixed.
P.S. I still prefer Radial. And that's even considering the far superior syncing in this. It is probably down to the variety on display rather than the quality of either the source footage or production/editing. And I prefer the intro and most of the music in Radial, which is always going to play a fairly big part in endearment and rewatch potential.