Inspirational campaign speech.

Politician turned editor I presume?

Cool action guys, all the editors seem to be a good match for each other because, for the most part, I couldn't tell when one part ended and the other began.

I would have wished for a slightly longer segment to allow for "breathing" like 2:13 or still based around action just not at 100% burst speed all the time, a respite from all the over the top action and energy VFX that could serve as a build up to come back even stronger and explode with energy, because constant bombastic scenes on screen for a long period of time can numb the viewer to their intensity if he is overexposed to them without propper progression or build up.

You ended the video strong with my favorite sequence and sync from 2:40 - 2:44 very satisfying to watch, wouldn't change anything about it.

Kivlov, I'm 99% sure that there isn't a single scene in this video that is not generated or animated by AI.

Since this is the first work where you took editing seriously (according to the description), I will write down below some things "bullet point style" (as you seem to enjoy that format) that I think could have been better, perhaps you will consider some of them and it will help you in your future videos:

- There is hardly a moment in a video like this where a linear wipe transition is better than a hardcut or a fade/crossfade, it should be reserved for moments that justify it's usage such as following the movement of what's happening withing the frame itself or if someone gets hit by an explosion and it's mimicing the shockwave to transition to the next scene and so on, also an example from the first 25 seconds of the video: changing transition types from zooms and slides and radial blurs and fade outs all in a row without the song changing or the tone of the scenes shifting feels whimsical but senseless, sometimes simple really is better.

- Static frames that make me wonder if the video player has frozen like at 0:34, 2:16 and 2:31 should be avoided, perhaps animate a subtle zoom or a camera pan, or even animate exposure/curves ever so slightly from the start till the end of the scene to induce a sense of motion where there is none.

- Lip flapping throughout the entire video where the characters are yapping but ignore the song completly, you matched the position of heads of the characters at 0:35 - 0:38 , but it didn't cross your mind that perhaps having them speak the entire time felt a little strange?

- Lack of continuity of the actions presented on screen break immersion and discourage the viewer to make an effort to try and follow the drama presented, they start to believe there is little rhyme or reason to the order of the scenes and therefore disregard otherwise hard hitting moments or any sense progression the video might have had, the video is riddled with these but a simple example is at 0:45, the girl has her head pierced and falls to the floor with her eyes closed, then the next scene she is standing tall looking at the horizon in the same exact setting and area with something in front of her (can't tell what it is maybe the one who stabbed her previously?).

- At 0:58 the beat drops and.... nothing happens? You crossfade the audio to another song and there is no action or build up released in the video? I'm not sure letting the first song hit it's climax only to change to another song within 2 seconds was the right call here it felt terrible when watching, like when a DJ at a concert switches songs right at the drop as a joke to make the audience laugh.

- Some scenes are slowed down way too much so the repeated frames overstay their welcome, examples at 1:18, 2:30, 2:34, 2:58, 3:57

- The action editing and sync are overall unsatisfying, the only part where I felt the video was in a complete match with the music was from 2:49 till 2:52, the combination of timeremapping, transitions, FX, internal sync and a sequence of scenes that make sense as a small segment, for the rest of the action scenes they often times overstayed their welcome or didn't feel impactful or made me wonder "why are they suddenly fighting? This video seems interested in showing flashbacks and tragic moments so where does this action sequence fit in all of this?"

Excuse me for mostly speaking about what I considered the negatives but I find it more valuable to the editor than simply praising what they're already good at. Good luck in the contest ^^

I love this anime, didn't expect to see an AMV with it in this BC, I would never associate this music with this anime in specific but I think I see the vision...

I would prefer if the entire intro up to 0:48 had slower cuts instead of feeling so obligated to keep up with the music, scenes like the girl hugging the man's arm at 0:25 and the mc acknowledging her first tear at 0:35 felt fitting to stay for much longer on screen because the vocals take a brief pause so you could let those scenes "breathe" a little just like the song did.
The scene of the girl at 0:44 when she rests her hand against the moon and leans against it would also feel nice to stay longer on screen due to it being the first time the violin sounding instrument is put into focus when the vocals stop.

But when the video picks up steam I really enjoy it and wouldn't change anything about it pretty much, perhaps the elevator segment at 2:08 till 2:17 lasts a bit too long and theres some lip flap here and there, also the credits seem to invoke a more "carnival haunted house attraction" with the dirt roads and spooky foggy woods with vegetation and tombstones that feel much more "stock footage" horror collage and not related to the identity the rest of the video seemed to be going for, but these things doesn't detract much from the video.

My fav part was definitely the slow dreamy segment from 2:34 all the way till the end.

Kroner -AMV-,
The man spared a few months to make the video, I can spare a few to write him a comment too v_v;

Hey Fury, first of all congrats on the 1st place and on your business accomplishments, pretty inspiring stuff for other editors hoping to follow video editing as a profession, also big comment(s) incoming.

Contrary to the genre tags labeled on this video I didn't feel it as much of an action or drama or sentimental, I think it's more of a character profile (if the city counts as a character), creating a visual experience with several elements and colors (almost too many to count) all animated and shifting to create a living city/atmosphere you imagined, overdosing the viewer with visual information, if there is a story I couldn't retell it in text format, I remember people driving cars, riding bikes, fighting with knives, playing the guitar on stage, dancing on the street, taking the subway, eating and getting shot.
Every scene feels like pawns being used to represent the life in the city you envisioned, more than them being actual characters in the video with feelings or struggles, so I can't ever feel sentimental over a video of this kind, but it can be eye candy and that's what I will judge it as.

On the technical side though, I haven't ventured into 3D software such as C4D/Blender/UE4 or tried mixing it with anime so I can't judge or excessively nitpick that part as a creator due to not having a clue what tools were used to make it, but I can imagine the effort it took so I'll be nitpicking them only on an aesthetic standpoint as a viewer in almost bullet point fashion for constructive purposes hehe.

To start I'll choose just 5 scenes that bothered me on first viewing, maybe not huge problems (or even considered pedantic) but considering how detailed every scene is I'm not sure how these went by unnoticed by the beta testers or if simply neglected due to a tight deadline:

https://i.gyazo.com/4c90d263d0a06bcca1e5227511abb7a6.mp4
The waves in the center feel like an overlay because the movement of the water itself does not match the displacement of the reflection, so there is a dissonance between the implied movement and what I'm actually seeing.

https://i.gyazo.com/97f7c1258ecd82aaad3a5908daea177b.mp4
Reflection vanishes as the scene plays.

https://i.gyazo.com/0c081a36f573f7d2c0d1cf5f0c580856.mp4
Light post is "transparent" while it was correct in the source: https://i.imgur.com/qy9YTWP.png

https://i.gyazo.com/62996585764a9b1802320828750bcf51.mp4
Tracking of the character here is unfortunate, since it's such a linear 2D motion I think it would have been better to do it manually than leaving it as is, but it's odd how it couldn't be tracked to that surface.

https://i.gyazo.com/19e1ab780bc4837aa7fb00cd64349b27.mp4
As the focus of the camera shifts from the glass to the background, the rain drops sliding down the window remain crisp and not affected by the depth of field.

Besides those there's also several instances of masks morphing without the actual character moving such as this: https://i.gyazo.com/dbaca44c4a93da2589442e24ce099577.mp4
But that might just be a result of a rotobrush overlook because I doubt you would mask the same frame twice manually.

---------
The other only real thing I think could be easily improved in future works is both the use of stroke after masking out characters (which is present in some scenes but not in others) and overall compositing color matching which is lacking in some comps as well. Some examples:

https://i.imgur.com/dDjqfBI.jpg
The characters felt oddly out of place here not sure if it's because their exposure is cranked up to the max while their dark clothing is super flat in contrast, as an example the skirt and legs of the 2nd girl from the right looks particularly worse than the rest, I think matching the characters' exposure to the background and adding a lightwrap would definitely sold this scene better.

https://i.imgur.com/5O4QV2a.jpg
Contrast mismatch from the character to the background, his head looks like it has a white solid at low opacity on top of it it's super flat contrast-wise unlike anything in the background, you can make things lighter in tone and light flooding the dark spots yes but it can't all be nearly the same shade of brightness it's missing the shadows.

https://i.imgur.com/lRxQkwH.jpg
Opposite of previous example, contrast is so hardcore the face starts losing detail, and it's almost as white as the white screen right behind the character.

https://i.imgur.com/zgb0dlO.jpg
Lack of stroke on the arm makes this shot feel very strange almost like it changed art style on the fly, also I think the light cast on the character from the trashcan on fire should be the same color as the fire emitting the light, would ground the character more in that space.

https://i.imgur.com/bnKmmSo.jpg
Lack of stroke here makes the character nearly blend with the background like a chameleon and both his inner strokes/eyebrows/hair look strangely dark, for example his hair is a huge surface on the screen and is straight up zero from 0-255 on the brightness table, I'm not sure why this is since most of the dark surfaces and scenes in this video are usually a hazy black, greyed out filled with light from this neon city more than crushed "true" blacks, you can make things dark but losing detail on large surfaces is something to be strongly avoided.

I was going to talk more about the video itself and not the technicals but I ran out of space and don't want to flood the comment section any more than I already have, in the end my comment turned out oddly like a beta test (which is something to ponder about), but I hope to see stuff like this fixed/implemented in future videos, also maybe it's just me but after watching it more than 5 times I forget how the song sounded like the next time I try to remember it, maybe it's a genre of the AMV which has become more and more popular with videos like "Nards - A Moment Apart", "JazzsVids - La La Land" and "JazzsVids - Void Eternal", but this aesthetic direction and lack of importance/absence in both lyrics and the characters seem to be common in most of them, which for me makes it hard to be personally connected with the work, I guess you could call it "commercial art".

TL;DR technically ambitious and complex eye candy video that had some oopsies and could use some polish but in the end it's still an accomplishment, congratulations on your work and all the awards that came with it, good luck and ideas in future projects.

Remembering one's own childhood, what you wanted to be and all the loving moments with parents that will never come back, eventually getting blurrier over time, dreaming about teen love and eventually building a family of your own leading to a fulfilling life sprinkled with meaningful heartfelt moments of both great joy and sadness.

But nope its monday already
the alarm clock is ringing
chop chop wagie get in the cagie
this is no time for dreaming

https://i.imgur.com/yXCFtXO.jpg

W.P, I give up https://i.imgur.com/pV7TIX5.png

W.P, if different sources have different aspect ratios, chose an aspect ratio for your video that will "encapsulate" any of the variations, if you don't wish to scale any of the anime that is, example:
- Ghost in the Shell= 1920x1036
- Tekkonkinkreet= 1920x816
- The Animatrix= 1920x810

If you only used these 3 anime, what resolution must your video be taking in consideration you DON'T want to scale any of the anime? It would have to be at least 1920x810, the widest resolution of them all. There's no need to add any black bars during editing, set the project itself to the resolution you want from the start and edit it like that.

W.P:

How is this different from adding black spots to a picture without black spots?

W.P:

In China, changing the video output ratio is rare, basically all videos are 16: 9

W.P:

changing the ratio is not my consideration

Your video (without the black bars) is 1920x800 (aspect ratio of 2.40:1), when you fullscreen a video of that aspect ratio on a 16:9 monitor (1920x1080 for example) it automatically has black bars at the top and bottom because the vertical size of the video is smaller than your screen, example: https://i.imgur.com/P9Jlw15.mp4

Also if you watch it on a ultra widescreen monitor, it won't have black bars at all, because it fits the extra wide screen perfectly, most movies are either in 2.35:1 or 1.85:1 aspect ratio (yes even in China) and all of them form black bars if watched on a 16:9 monitor (when fullscreen).

People don't hate black bars (or they shouldn't), what people don't like is 16:9 videos with black bars added on them, it's useless rendered pixels making file size needlessly larger and when compressed on streaming websites the black bars can even start to blend with the scenes themselves. If you want your video to have black bars when viewed, render them in the proper aspect ratio and don't add the bars by masking a black solid or by any other means, list of common resolutions/popular aspect ratios for each: https://blog.chameleondg.com/post/111891072017/resolution-aspect-ratio-cheat-sheet

I confess.

Kroner -AMV-:

You could still split your comment then

You might be onto something

NIGHT:

Технику не поленился расписать MrNosec.

When they remove the 5000 character limit I'll consider it.

I was looking forward to the winners of this competition, considering the prize pool I was sure editors would bring the best of their abilities, even using this occasion to finally finish huge projects they were working on for a very long time.

I appreciate the effort put into this video, I'm sure a "crossover action/drama" can be very tricky to execute successfully, but unfortunately it also requires pedantic technical level to feel coherent throughout, this video has many shortcomings, some so glaringly obvious that I noticed during first viewing and ruined the impression of a few scenes.

First of all, it's in 720p, I know you started this more than 2 years ago but your Kyoani tribute from 2 months ago is also in 720p, so I don't think that was a factor that influenced this. This is the first scene of the highest quality download provided by AMVnews: https://i.imgur.com/cNveFoo.png look at the banding on the hair and gradients, it's like a bad anime streaming website, even worse on yt, it says it was encoded with AMVSimple but I don't think that's the problem here. Also, on Youtube the bitrate of your video is tied to what fps & resolution you upload your video in, simply upscaling your video to 1080p or 1440p specifically for youtube would greatly boost the quality of your video, that is if your source didn't look like this in the first place.

Some of the masks that aren't even moving keep morphing and changing shape, like so: https://imgur.com/S1YFUDt.mp4 why is that? It doesn't happen often at all and the only moving part of the car is the opening door, there's no need to draw a new mask every new frame for an object that literally is frozen in place and only one part of it is moving, and even if the camera was panning in the anime you could just move the mask around since it's always the same exact shape and size throughout the whole scene and make another mask for the moving part.

There's also many compositing overlooks that go by mostly unnoticed but they should be obvious for other editors and most of all, the author, for example at 0:25 the hair on the left character has a bright outline/stroke, while the character on the right which I suspect belonged to that scene already has a thick black outline, not to mention this odd overlaying of perspective by the character furthest away to occlude the hair of the character in front of him going by the camera's perspective https://i.imgur.com/r2c5FIN.png, the photos on the wall somehow having more exposure than the light coming from the right of the frame https://i.imgur.com/9NNNMrM.png, the tracked text and flares here are unfortunate https://i.imgur.com/bwwNuIS.png, I think that's enough examples of this.

The motion graphics segment at 1:17 felt really tacked on, monochromatic red grading, rotating graphic elements, text with motion blur all with an old film grain overlay effect evokes an aesthetic not present anywhere else in the video, when it cut back to anime footage it was jarring how raw everything else felt in comparison, despite being a crossover.

The sniper scene is where all suspension of disbelief that this could actually be believable is lost, the changes of perspective make no sense no matter how aesthetic you might find them, for example this is his first POV https://i.imgur.com/LGUcxBu.png clearly at the same level and focusing on them.
Next thing you know hes aiming at some surface which looks like the floor predicting blood to splatter on it https://i.imgur.com/Jw6Nczt.mp4 this makes no sense on how he can get a look at the floor from this perspective or why he was staring at the floor intensely to begin with if he was already aiming at both of them before.
It couldn't be because he lost sight of them when they lowered themselves during the fight and was looking for traces of blood to indicate the outcome either since he is clearly aiming at him while he's on his knees in the next POV https://i.imgur.com/HTw6NBF.png

When the song peaks at 2:40 it was so damn underwhelming, after watching "Beautiful Crime" by "Kazumoe" before this, I know how impactful this song, and this part specifically, can be in a music video, but the build up is just panning shots of two characters frozen in place staring at each other while slowly zooming out and finally fading out, despite the song being literally a smothered screaming chorus getting clearer as it reaches the climax with ever louder looping instrumentals, and when it finally drops he just casually sprints, the hair at 2:46 was an easy enough fix but I won't get into that.

TL;DR this had many sloppy stuff that could be easily fixed, but if it's good enough for you and you're content with the outcome, all there's left of me to do is congratulate you on completing it and the awards that came along with it, well done.

Hamasaki:

It's funny coming from you...

Even though it doesn't really resonate with me personally it's kinda cool, been a long time since your last AMV.

Small things that tilted me were the ways you broke your own sync rules that were established since the start of each segment of the video more than once, for example since the very first cut, you sync the beat by changing to the next scene, or with an effect like glow/exposure e.g. 0:33, or even some internal sync using pixel motion to match the steps at 0:36.
But then at 0:45 nothing happens at all you could have easily timed the character turning around to the beat or something, just feels like an oversight and sloppy more than actually wanting the scene to stay on the screen for longer to benefit the video, since all the beats after are paired with a visual response again.

The hand at 1:33 moves way to fast for how large it is, it is absolutely absent of weight, even for a transcendent heavenly entity it should feel grounded with the world that surrounds it, it's speed when it gets slower is just fine but as it enters the scene it looks like scaled up footage, which it just might be but the way it's edited it feels like it doesn't belong.

At 1:52 you start snapping glow to the reoccurring sound and feels consistent, up until 2:01 where again nothing happens, easy fix by timing her to look up as the sound plays or adding glow only to the bg if you wanted her untouched/focused on.

Some comps such as 2:15 when the stars light up the light shed on the rocks feels very artificial, as in doesn't actually blend with the actual surface and looks like a feathered hand drawn mask instead.

The scene at 1:41 was definitely my fav and the biggest wow moment for me, despite the odd blue little boys floating around in such a warm looking scene https://i.imgur.com/NJ5uvLw.png

Should have placed higher in the contest, judging by the winner videos I've watched.

delicia

The description almost made me not want to watch it, but hey this is more entertaining than I expected, you have a great feel for the song and can definitely make the viewer feel the tune as well, along with some exceptionally cool trippy imagery at times.

Araragi getting turnt was definitely my fav part, that 2:10 - 2:22 segment was fire and I still feel like rewatching it several times, good shit

Wish there were more of these

Most likely my fav entry from this JE

Congratz on best action!

I missed this video when I first browsed the contests entries, but after checking the finalists and watching it I must say it's one of my favs from this contest, very cool work, the calm parts stood out to me much more than the rest, best of luck!

"composing" is out of order this triggers me immensely pls fix
https://i.imgur.com/lt2yKFv.png

Kroner -AMV-, from movies of course

I mean the video itself isn't bad, but I can't really enjoy it due to the song constantly switching from angelic autotuned nightcore girl to an eurobeat lightshow rave you'd find in a gay bar in europe.

The tone is all over the place and it definitely doesn't match this anime or it's monochromatic nature.

This was a nice AMV honestly, I personally don't like how the after-drop sounds but it's well executed in the video, also this anime looks rad I'll definitely check it out when the bluray releases

The sync off the shirt being ripped and eventually going pop to the distinct note at 1:29 is more addicting than it should

I didn't understand anything of what they were saying, it's probably just the lines from the movies themselves but in russian I suppose, but adding a .srt file like many others did before you couldn't hurt.
I know russians love to express devotion to and vigorous support for one's country, but adding subtitles in english would simply benefit your video and not make most people instantly lose interest due to the language barrier.

The 60fps here simply felt unnecessary and added for the heck of it as little to no changes to the original speed were performed other than making it playback faster, and it's only actual 60 frames per second or nearing that value when scenes are played back at a fast enough speed in the more "action" segments of the video, there's no attempt of motion interpolation as far as I can tell.
The colors of the clip are also way too saturated at times, to the point of being unpleasant, specially for a trailer with this tone which is supposed to have that "serious cinematic" look, and over saturation is quite the opposite of that, also the light leak style with magic bullet's "haze/flare" and "anamorphic flare" was nice in some scenes, like outdoor ones, but in others it just looked quite overdone with lens flares protruding from peoples face like their skin is somehow a LED light.

PS: Not really sure why I'm being referenced in the comments of this video, as far as I'm aware I don't really own evangelion and/or the act of rendering ones video in 60fps, nor did I invent them, so if someone else mentions me, try not to get worked up about it again