Montage Combat P3nguin

Worst. Montage. Ever. Nothing was good about this montage, the clips were ridiculously bad, (a single no scope body shot?), and the editing was painful.

 

*sigh* Im really sorry but this montage is bad.

First of the editing- Wow, cut the clips to just the kills and NEVER USE WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER. Add some music, sync it with the music. Make it an experience for the viewer and not just a bore for 6 minutes. And get rid of the little stop start at the start of the clips.

Secondly the gameplay- The gameplay was bad, there was nothing great, all the clips were very average. And at 2:03..... really? Really? And under no circumstances never put grifball kill in a montage, even if its a triple mega killionare.

 

always have ur clips from a frist person perspective unless your doing a small persective point of the other guy getting killed after uve shown us snipe him, the clips were horrible, u managed to get a overkill in team snipers great!...........but u used the shotgun and grenades, your a terrible sniper u missed a guy with 4 shots the get him with a noscope body shot, WHY do you think that is montage worthy i get those all the time and i still think lame. alot of your clips had lag, some or ur multikills were BS like the one on orbital where u snipe one guy but u sumhow get the other. the same goes for last resort where u snipe the ghost pure laggy luck it didnt register until 3 seconds later so we dont know how accurate ur shot was.
this is by far the WORST montage i have ever seen....GRIFBALL REALLY??

 

This montage was so bad it made me lol. You missed more snipes than you had kills

 

are you a captain?

 

fail. why go after the sniper if ur not very good with it. u should stick to ur calling: AR...
and thats from me, a "random" HA

 

It pained me to watch this... i'm sorry some of the clips might have been ok if you had added some music or something, but something like a triple kill with rockets, is not montage worthy at all..

 

Windows Movie maker, right? This is not really montage worthy, this is stuff that everyone does everyday. Don't try to make montages on movie maker or it will turn out really badly, I tried once with really good clips and got 2 stars. random: 2 pikas, same page. Just that awesome.

 

To be honest. I get better clips in like 2-3 games.

 

Seeing as there is a lot of criticism being flung in this thread but very little of it being constructive I thought I would post my thoughts.

I'm sorry but I have to agree that it really was not that good. There are several reasons why; Many of the clips were lackluster, I did get a bit bored near the start, there was nothing that made you seemed overly special and the lack of music and editing added another nail to the coffin.


Clips

The first three can be thrown together really. A main problem with the montage was there was nothing that drew me in, nothing that kept me interested. I can see on a few of them how you may have been entertained by them but a problem with clips like that is that the humour or (for lack of a better pharse) wtfness doesn't always convey if it was not experienced by the person.


For example if you teammate gets betrayal sniped out the back of you warthog while you dropping off a hill at the time you might be a bit confused and find it rather funny. However, if you re-watch it, some of that is taken away due to the situation no longer being there. At the time it was a laugh because it was unexpected. Watching back it loses some of it allure and to others its just a clip of a betrayal. The context of the situation doesn't apply to them.

I can't say exactly how to improve this way. It generally comes with 'experience' in that you realise that certain things are humourous or cool over time while others are only that during the time of happening. There's not hard and fast rule when it comes to choosing clips for a montage as everyone likes different things. May advice might be just to get other people to look at certain clips before you add them to the montage to gauge their reactions, preferabley people you know and trust to give you an honest answer.

Also only pick those clips that make you sit there and stare at the screen with a frown as your wondering what the hell happened or make you laugh a bit too much. My general rule is that if it makes me stop playing the actual game proberly then its worth saving. Many of my own saved clips are of times I've actually laughed so much that I've found I can't play for a good half a minute of so after it happens or something along those lines.

Again that's not the best way of putting it, nor is it the only way of choosing, it's how I go about it, but hopefully you get the jist. Choose the moments that truely stand out to you, rather then those that are rather cool. If you think of creating a montage and a couple of clips jump to mind, throw them in there. If you have to trawl through you saved clips and pick loads out that fit the bill in someways but don't jump out at you then maybe their not the best to put in


Music

Now it's not a huge deal if you don't have music on a montage and yet it is. Sure a montage should be engaging enough to watch that you don't need the music and, I've found, if the person is entertained by the clips then they don't pay a huge amount of attention to the music. However, music needs to be put over the clips for background noise. Why you ask?

Notice in films when there is a partiuclar part where people aren't speaking or nothing major is happening (or something major IS happening) you might just here music over it. The point is to fill the gap. You won't here music over speaking parts or the music will be died down. There's a point to this as your brain will only really focus on the one. However, if there is only visual stimulus (in montages that is the clips) then the brain can also process acoustical stimulus (music) so add some. We don't want to here the noise from the game as we know them. A little music helps people get in the mood.

Speaking of mood the music should reflect the mood your trying to convey with the clips. Is it a Funtage? Go with some upbeat music. Choose something that fits with the tone of montage. My choice if NEVER go for excessive metal. It's not just that some people don't like it, you'll get that will every song you put on a montage, but large amounts of noise screaming out of speakers can distract you from the clips. Or it does to me. Again its my choice. Again choosing music comes easier with experience but think a lilttle and then it is fairly easy to decide.

Remember you can also ask others for their advice.


Editing

Here's a major biggy with montages and in fact any Machinima or video. Content is important and editing is right up there with it. If you have the best content but the editing is shoddy then people get bored or annoyed and switch off.

Right so what editing software do you use? While people are screaming MOVIE MAKER, I want a definate answer.

IF you are using Windows Movie Maker stop there! Why? Because movie maker is a shockingly bad piece of kit for editing montages or other things. Sure its ok to change a power point into a short 'film' but thats about it.

I know that most decent editing software out there costs, but if your serious about making videos then your going to have to pay. You knew that when you decided to pick up a capture card. You might as well buy a decent editing software.

If you have access to a Mac then iMovie is fairly good and comes free with it. You can easily find better but it will do in a pinch and it far better the Window Movie Maker.

If your up for spending a bit then look around. You can get some decent editing software for fairly cheap and it will work perfectly for what you looking for. Some capture cards come with editing software so maybe check if yours did. I also believe a friend of mine downloaded some software (that is pretty nice) for free of the interwebz somewhere so I'll look into that for you. I use Adobe Premiere Pro (Only CS3 at the moment) which is pretty damn good (or so I think anyway) so if you do have the chance to pick that up (its fairly costly I believe) then try and grab that.


However, don't give up because one didn't turn out well. We all have to start somewhere so have another go and see how it turns out.