YouTube- Final Words of an HLG Player Another machinima short I whipped up today (well technically yesterday). Let me know what you think! Thanks in advance for watching! Sorry about the lack of description, it's almost 3am here and I really need to get some sleep!
Haha, I love this. It's so clever! So so well made too. Use of camera-turn-on sound effects, and the dropping of the camera on the floor, with the shadow, and the destruction of it. Perfect, mate!
I liked the concept and I liked some of the execution, but it needs some tightening up. The voice-over works at some parts but sounds like you're trying hard not to laugh at others. I've heard from actors, and read in articles that faking fear/hysteria/sadness are especially hard because you can relapse into sounding amused and laughing when you really aren't. I'd suggest trying to alleviate that, though it's not entirely easy to do so. The video was far too dark to make any sense, while I realize you were trying to obscure the area and make it seem more like you're hiding, and in the end, contrast more with the final reveal, it just doesn't do anything. You might as well be staring at a blank screen and hearing the voice over, which you could do, or you could lighten up the area a bit more. Another qualm is the fact that the area the enemies come from is so bright in contrast with the area the protagonist is in, it doesn't make any logical sense to have such a bright area next to a dark area with no over-spill in how clear the area is to see. I'd distance that place a little at least. You also seem to cross the line at the very end, like you're turning to the left when turning to the right makes much more sense (you essentially do a 270 degree turn when only a 90 degree one was necessary). It's disorienting, but I suppose it gets the basic job done. That being said, I understand that you were using two different maps (which is fine) and that's why you turned that way, but if you flipped the entrance of the enemies to the right, it'd work much better. It may seem like I'm ripping it apart, but as mentioned before, I liked the concept enough to actually comment, which I normally don't do.
Cheers for the comments guys, especially SargeantSarcasm, that's possibly the most constructive criticism I've ever got, even from people on machinima.com. Having listened to the video again, I have to agree that it does sound like I'm laughing in parts. This was all recorded first time though as I challenged myself to complete it all in a day. Looking back on it, I probably should have recorded the voice over again to get it perfect. As for the lighting issue, I agree it could have been lighter throughout. My original idea for this was for the enemies to enter from outside so the sunlight would flood into the room, instantly making it much brighter, but I can see that it was really too bright in contrast as I made the beginning part so dark. The "sunlight" effect was achieved by placing a blue light to spawn after 90ish seconds, and I think it rendered it too bright which could easily have been corrected with some basic video editing. This was all recorded on one map, which was basically a T shape with a roof over it. The protagonist was crouching in the righthand corner at the bottom of the T. The two enemies spawned on the right hand side of the T. The camera turned just over 180 (almost 270 as you said) degrees to see them coming in from the protagonist's right. I agree a clockwise turn would have been less disorienting, but my first part of film ended by the camera turning counter-clockwise, so in the next part of filming (where the enemies came in) I had to continue the turning of the camera in the same direction. It doesn't seem at all like you're ripping it apart, thanks a lot for the criticism, I'm sure it'll help me in future. Thanks for taking the time to comment. Out of the number of people who view threads, very few seem to comment, and even fewer post helpful comments. P.S. Thanks for the sub ElementNineteen!