Critiques

If you have questions about Anime Boston's AMV contest or want to seek advice, this is the place to ask.
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saffieb
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Critiques

Post by saffieb »

I've entered the Anime Boston AMV Contest for the past 3 years and have yet to make it to the finals. I was wondering if anyone was willing to take a look at my entries and give me some feedback?

AB 2012 Waiting All My Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIveAeSHksc

AB 2013 Twice As Many Stars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuS_Pc7iozs

AB 2014 See You Again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxesb8a1ikQ
AB 2024- Celebi (Pokémon)
AB 2022- Boris Airay (Alice in the Country of Hearts)
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Rider4Z
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Re: Critiques

Post by Rider4Z »

Hi there :) i'll give you some HONEST feedback, and I'm happy to start a conversation and answer questions to the best of my ability.

To begin with, I watched the first 15-20 seconds of all three videos and I immediately noticed a problem you need to address, and that is your footage. In your first video, the footage is clearly zoomed in (maybe to hide subtitles?) and has an unnecessary feathered edge. Typically, a continuous effect like your feathered edge or an odd filter does not add artistic value, instead it can be distracting.

In your second video, you have a resolution problem. You have 16:9 footage squished into 4:3, so the characters are stretched. Again, your effects are distracting instead of inviting. You should never add effects unless they serve a purpose. If they're not necessary, they're probably distracting and you want as FEW distractions as possible. The less work you give your audience, meaning the less you make them think, the easier it will be for them to relax and be absorbed into your story.

Repeating myself for your third video, you have multiple sources both 16:9 and 4:3 resolutions and you stretched and squished to all be the same size. Don't alter the original resolution of your source(s).

Judges will IMMEDIATELY lower their opinion of your video if you ignore these fundamentals. Very rarely will a clever idea grant forgiveness for not understanding the basics.

So this is a start. I can go into storytelling a little later but I don't wanna bombard you with too much information all at once ^^
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Luscia
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

I don't know how much help I'll be, since this was my first year competing, but I'll give it a try. I watched all 3 vids and where there were parts that were really strong, some scenes felt out of place and didn't really sync with the song too well. Personally I feel your romance video was the best of the 3; it flowed fairly well and the song conveyed the emotions felt by the characters. I don't know if it was an effect you placed there or if it was in the anime itself (I have never seen Romeo x Juliet), but the flames were a bit overdone for whenever the chorus came up, again this is solely my opinion.

I saw your drama entry this year in the overflow (funny enough I think it was played right before mine or close to it) and I loved the concept of it, but I feel that the bumper for the victims of the bombing was a bit tacky, as well intentioned as it may have been. It almost seemed like a ploy to maybe get put in the finals by pulling at the heartstrings of a real life tragedy.

Sorry if any of this came off mean, it really wasn't meant to. I wanna help new people make it into the finals as much as I hope to make it myself one day. May I ask what you do to prepare for the creation of the video? Like do you do a time line or listen to the song 10,000 times before picking a series?
Anime Boston 2014 Drama Entry-Sealing My Fate
Anime Boston 2015 Drama Entry- Living Legacy, Romance Entry- Love is Love
Anime Boston 2016 Fun/Comedy Entry-1000 Provisions, Action Entry- Badass Freakin Overlords, Dood!
Anime Boston 2017 Other Entry- We Remember Legends
Anime Boston 2018 Roance Entry- Don't Take Your Eyes off Me
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thetoddfather
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Re: Critiques

Post by thetoddfather »

Rider4Z wrote:Hi there :) i'll give you some HONEST feedback, and I'm happy to start a conversation and answer questions to the best of my ability.

To begin with, I watched the first 15-20 seconds of all three videos and I immediately noticed a problem you need to address, and that is your footage. In your first video, the footage is clearly zoomed in (maybe to hide subtitles?) and has an unnecessary feathered edge. Typically, a continuous effect like your feathered edge or an odd filter does not add artistic value, instead it can be distracting.

In your second video, you have a resolution problem. You have 16:9 footage squished into 4:3, so the characters are stretched. Again, your effects are distracting instead of inviting. You should never add effects unless they serve a purpose. If they're not necessary, they're probably distracting and you want as FEW distractions as possible. The less work you give your audience, meaning the less you make them think, the easier it will be for them to relax and be absorbed into your story.

Repeating myself for your third video, you have multiple sources both 16:9 and 4:3 resolutions and you stretched and squished to all be the same size. Don't alter the original resolution of your source(s).

Judges will IMMEDIATELY lower their opinion of your video if you ignore these fundamentals. Very rarely will a clever idea grant forgiveness for not understanding the basics.

So this is a start. I can go into storytelling a little later but I don't wanna bombard you with too much information all at once ^^
Besides all these good points, your videos don't have any impact. I watched them and then forgot about them. (sorry to be an ass). Nor do they have a hook, (look at the best action video from this year for one of the best examples I've seen for it). I'll remember the first 20 seconds of that video for years to come.

your song choice while goodsish isn't anything that I'd write home about or remember. The prescreeners see a vidoe once, you need to get them excited for your video, don't make them tune out. (pro tip don't use songs that have won at the contest in the last few years they are sick of them)

Additionally your footage (while it is on youtube) looks very very bad (the romeoxjuliet one has more bands then woodstock (this means that you took it from somewhere and then re-compressed it in a way that it can't display a proper gradient)), it is more then likely off bad fansubs but magnafied on youtube. either way it is no good. The contest is in HD on 40' screens with HD projectors with 300K-1M of tech behind it, if you have issues in your video with audio or visuals the prescreeners will destroy you for it because it will look bad and embarrass you/the con.

If you want to get in you have to start by spending the time to get high quality footage free of subtitles and watermarks. I'm not gonna tell you how to do that there is a website dedicated to making these things.

I've been doing AMV's sense '03 or so but I only got serious about it in around '08 or '10. It takes time and effort to make a goodish (i think most of my videos suck). I have many many large hard drives to hold my uncompressed videos, and have invested in adobe creative cloud so that i am able to edit in a style that suits me and allows me to make precise cuts and edits. Each of my videos also takes me 3-6 months to do so i'm pretty glacial at it.

Finally (sorry to go on), but I have a hard time classifying what category your videos go in. Make sure you classify them right. For example one video I made for accel world didn't make it into AB last year in drama and got first place at connecti con in action. The vidoe that got into action this year (from me) didn't make it into AAC as another editor submitted a better video to the same song. Sometimes its just the category you are in. This year all of the categories were stupidly strong and i'd imagine that great videos didn't get in based on the strength of all categories.

your love of the source material shows but in order to build a strong AMV you need good sources to work from.
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Luscia
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

thetoddfather wrote:your song choice while goodsish isn't anything that I'd write home about or remember. The prescreeners see a vidoe once, you need to get them excited for your video, don't make them tune out. (pro tip don't use songs that have won at the contest in the last few years they are sick of them)
I can more or less agree with this. Where as I get sick of hearing some songs over and over, it isn't good on the prescreeners to dismiss it because the song is overplayed/used. If the song matches well for the video, who cares if it's a song from recent years in the contest? Now this attitude might be another reason why mine didn't make the finals this year as I wasn't the first to have this concept with the song I chose. But you know what? The chances of you being the only one with certain concepts with certain song choices are slim, especially with more popular series. It's how you execute it that is going to matter.
Anime Boston 2014 Drama Entry-Sealing My Fate
Anime Boston 2015 Drama Entry- Living Legacy, Romance Entry- Love is Love
Anime Boston 2016 Fun/Comedy Entry-1000 Provisions, Action Entry- Badass Freakin Overlords, Dood!
Anime Boston 2017 Other Entry- We Remember Legends
Anime Boston 2018 Roance Entry- Don't Take Your Eyes off Me
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Re: Critiques

Post by Rider4Z »

Luscia wrote:I can more or less agree with this. Where as I get sick of hearing some songs over and over, it isn't good on the prescreeners to dismiss it because the song is overplayed/used. If the song matches well for the video, who cares if it's a song from recent years in the contest? Now this attitude might be another reason why mine didn't make the finals this year as I wasn't the first to have this concept with the song I chose. But you know what? The chances of you being the only one with certain concepts with certain song choices are slim, especially with more popular series. It's how you execute it that is going to matter.
it's not that they consciously dismiss a video because of an overused source, it's the lack of originality that makes them groan. while it is possible to win judges over by your skill and storytelling, you are setting a very high bar for yourself that can be difficult to clear. I had four entries in my current contest to the same song. 3/4 of them were well worthy of making finals in my opinion, but only one made it through (and barely). As much as a judge tries to remain unbiased, it's not possible as they are human beings.

But that being said, if you wanna make a video to a specific song then go ahead and make it. Worry about making yourself happy with your work. You have to like it first before anyone else will. :)
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

Rider4Z wrote:But that being said, if you wanna make a video to a specific song then go ahead and make it. Worry about making yourself happy with your work. You have to like it first before anyone else will. :)
Couldn't have said that better myself.
Anime Boston 2014 Drama Entry-Sealing My Fate
Anime Boston 2015 Drama Entry- Living Legacy, Romance Entry- Love is Love
Anime Boston 2016 Fun/Comedy Entry-1000 Provisions, Action Entry- Badass Freakin Overlords, Dood!
Anime Boston 2017 Other Entry- We Remember Legends
Anime Boston 2018 Roance Entry- Don't Take Your Eyes off Me
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Re: Critiques

Post by Atree »

Not an editor, but I thought that another perspective supporting these lovely folks might help. I'm no expert, but I like to think I've seen enough AMV contests to be able to provide a useful opinion.

I strongly agree with everything said (especially the quality comments), but I want to underscore this.
Rider4Z wrote:it's not that they consciously dismiss a video because of an overused source, it's the lack of originality that makes them groan. while it is possible to win judges over by your skill and storytelling, you are setting a very high bar for yourself that can be difficult to clear. I had four entries in my current contest to the same song. 3/4 of them were well worthy of making finals in my opinion, but only one made it through (and barely). As much as a judge tries to remain unbiased, it's not possible as they are human beings.

But that being said, if you wanna make a video to a specific song then go ahead and make it. Worry about making yourself happy with your work. You have to like it first before anyone else will. :)
I experienced this exact situation this year. I apologize to the AMV's editor that I strongly suspect will see this, but a huge factor in my decision not to vote for their entry was that I remembered another AMV in the same category years earlier using the same song. I feel bad about this, because it was a good AMV with a good concept (which plenty of other people recognized too because it did win - congratulations!), but I couldn't get over the fact that another AMV had done something similar and arguably better before. And won. Conscious or not, I was definitely comparing the two in my head and the one from five years ago* won.

However, like I said, the entry in question from this year actually won its category! So this can be overcome with enough hard work. There is hope.

As for new input... Be careful combining multiple anime. This is, of course, in reference to your last video.
While some love it, I become wary when I see AMVs utilizing multiple anime. In my opinion, it is too often a move to pander to crowds. It can be done very well but it had better be darned good to break down my wariness. Also, be careful about coherence when it comes to multiple anime AMVs. I say this since that last one seemed to be leaning towards Drama, which is a genre that I find coherency most vital to.


*I thought it was only a year or two ago at the time though, so wow. My bad. This just goes to show you that a viewer's memory can stretch pretty far back though.
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Re: Critiques

Post by thetoddfather »

Atree wrote:Not an editor, but I thought that another perspective supporting these lovely folks might help. I'm no expert, but I like to think I've seen enough AMV contests to be able to provide a useful opinion.

I strongly agree with everything said (especially the quality comments), but I want to underscore this.
Rider4Z wrote:it's not that they consciously dismiss a video because of an overused source, it's the lack of originality that makes them groan. while it is possible to win judges over by your skill and storytelling, you are setting a very high bar for yourself that can be difficult to clear. I had four entries in my current contest to the same song. 3/4 of them were well worthy of making finals in my opinion, but only one made it through (and barely). As much as a judge tries to remain unbiased, it's not possible as they are human beings.

But that being said, if you wanna make a video to a specific song then go ahead and make it. Worry about making yourself happy with your work. You have to like it first before anyone else will. :)
I experienced this exact situation this year. I apologize to the AMV's editor that I strongly suspect will see this, but a huge factor in my decision not to vote for their entry was that I remembered another AMV in the same category years earlier using the same song. I feel bad about this, because it was a good AMV with a good concept (which plenty of other people recognized too because it did win - congratulations!), but I couldn't get over the fact that another AMV had done something similar and arguably better before. And won. Conscious or not, I was definitely comparing the two in my head and the one from five years ago* won.

However, like I said, the entry in question from this year actually won its category! So this can be overcome with enough hard work. There is hope.

As for new input... Be careful combining multiple anime. This is, of course, in reference to your last video.
While some love it, I become wary when I see AMVs utilizing multiple anime. In my opinion, it is too often a move to pander to crowds. It can be done very well but it had better be darned good to break down my wariness. Also, be careful about coherence when it comes to multiple anime AMVs. I say this since that last one seemed to be leaning towards Drama, which is a genre that I find coherency most vital to.


*I thought it was only a year or two ago at the time though, so wow. My bad. This just goes to show you that a viewer's memory can stretch pretty far back though.
When Strangers like Souske came out I voted for it (way back in the day). While i'm happy to have people associate my video with that one, its kinda apples and apple sauce, in that we both used the same song but what we had to work with was very different. He had 50~ eps to work with (FMP 24, Fumufo 13 and TSR 12 pr 13), I had 6-7 + 1 ova(out of 15 possible, watch the show to find out why).

I also spent a lot of time and effort making sure that if you hadn't seen Gargantia that you would understand the story that I was telling (that being said it absolutely isn't the main story from gargantia), where if you watch strangers like Souske and haven't seen full metal panic a lot of scene choice is lost imho.

But never the less the point is valid, song choice or reuse can kill your video or kill it winning depending on in it makes it in or not.

One piece of advise I can give about song choise is use and addaptive music service like pandora or spotify to find new songs. I like to use spotify to make a playlist of songs i'm thinking about making AMV's to and then listen to it until I know every beat and cut and lyric before I start editing.
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2011 Finalist Romance
2014 Finalist - Action, Winner - Romance
2015 Winner - Romance
2016 Winner - Action
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saffieb
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Re: Critiques

Post by saffieb »

Sorry it took so long to actually come back to this. I wasn't getting notifications that anyone was responding to it.

I really appreciate all of the honest criticism you guys are giving me and I want to thank you for taking time out of your days to actually give details and explanations.

Looking back on it, I agree that the first one was really bad (I did take it from an online source-and I did feather it to hide the watermarks). I also know that the quality isn't good on these either, but I don't know how to fix that- they look great when I watch them on my desktop. (Could it be that on my PC I'm watching .avi, but I upload it as .mp4?)

I think one of my big problems is that I'm really having trouble with the mechanical parts while working with SV Movie Studio. I don't want to come across as making excuses, but I seem to get stuck when rendering with it- especially framerate and pan/crop. I'll ask more about that later, if you don't mind of course. (And I think that the pan/crop is what might be messing with the resolutions).

Can you tell me which sources are 16:9 and which are 4:3. I'm really lost when it comes to the numbers and technical issues.

Someone else told me that they couldn't figure out the concepts were behind the videos (especially the last one) I was trying to be clear and just matching the clips with the lyrics. Did I do something wrong?

I really didn't mean for the last one to seem tacky or disrespectful in any way. Someone else told me to nix the ending before I sent it in, I regret not listening to her before.

I've already started working on next year's entry, so I'd like a little more feedback if you have the time. Just so you know ahead of time, I already plan on redoing the first 6 seconds. Also, I was planning on adding flashes from 35-40 each time it said "fight". Would that be too distracting? And I know there are subs- this is just a rough draft, I haven't gotten the actual footage to work with yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_ZwYC8 ... e=youtu.be

One more thing (sorry ^^;). I know this isn't strictly anime-related, but I did another AMV (RotG) that I'm extremely proud of, if you'd be so kind as to take a look?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGwYMjmxTa4

Thanks so much everyone for your time.
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

Your rough draft for next year's entry seems to be set to private. However, I watched the RotG one and from someone who has yet to see the movie; the story you were telling with the song and clips were very clear. So in my honest opinion it can cater to an audience who knows nothing of the original source material. I will ask though, cause I honestly have a problem doing this as well (seriously like all but my latest 2 videos do it) and that is; was there any other way to transition the scenes without cross fading them? I only ask, cause again I do it too and the more I watch my older stuff and even my entry from this year I started to think of it as a crutch, so I have just been trying not to use it (doesn't mean I won't if no other transition will work for the scene.) Overall I did like the RotG one. As for the ratio, numbers and technical jargon... I am quite useless sadly as I too have no idea on that kind of stuff.
Anime Boston 2014 Drama Entry-Sealing My Fate
Anime Boston 2015 Drama Entry- Living Legacy, Romance Entry- Love is Love
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Re: Critiques

Post by chaobunny »

SaffieB wrote:I think one of my big problems is that I'm really having trouble with the mechanical parts while working with SV Movie Studio. I don't want to come across as making excuses, but I seem to get stuck when rendering with it- especially framerate and pan/crop. I'll ask more about that later, if you don't mind of course. (And I think that the pan/crop is what might be messing with the resolutions).

Can you tell me which sources are 16:9 and which are 4:3. I'm really lost when it comes to the numbers and technical issues.
In SV you want to make sure that your input settings match your output settings, so if your video sources have a certain framerate and resolution, you want your final project settings to be the same, otherwise weird things happen and timing gets messed up/the footage will look funny. Pan/crop shouldn't affect resolution as long as you don't alter the aspect ratio of the rectangle bounding box.

If you look on the back of the DVD case on the bottom strip it will say what the aspect ratio is. I have my No. 6 DVD case in front of me now. The little bar on the bottom has, from left to right, the bar code, then the rating, then the info about the DVD (region 1, etc) and then next to that it says 16:9 Anamorphic widescreen. If you see that it means the source is 16:9. I can't speak for older DVDs when widescreen wasn't even a thing yet but if it is 16:9 it will definitely say so. Generally older sources are 4:3 and newer ones are 16:9. Mixing them is tricky but when I do that I usually stretch the 4:3 ones to preserve the widescreen quality of the newer sources. They'll look a little funny, but less funny than squishing the widescreen ones in my opinion at least.

The numbers literally just refer to the ratios of the video. 4:3 = 640 x 480, 640 / 480 = 4 / 3. You can use these ratios to size up or down, for instance to make it HD sized (1280x720) you will want to keep the height but adjust the width, so mathematically that is 4 / 3 = x / 720 and so the width is 720 * 4 / 3 = 960, and checking you will see that 960 / 720 = 4 / 3.

Likewise, 16 / 9 = 1280 / 720 and to resize to standard height is approximately 848 / 480 (the math isn't exact here but it's the closest pixel approximation).
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Re: Critiques

Post by saffieb »

Luscia wrote:I will ask though, cause I honestly have a problem doing this as well (seriously like all but my latest 2 videos do it) and that is; was there any other way to transition the scenes without cross fading them? I only ask, cause again I do it too and the more I watch my older stuff and even my entry from this year I started to think of it as a crutch, so I have just been trying not to use it (doesn't mean I won't if no other transition will work for the scene.)
I do know of others, like flash (I tend to overdo that one, myself), fade in and out, and things of that nature. The others I know of seem a little outlandish to me ( spiral, sliding doors, push out...) These are all on SV,
chaobunny wrote:In SV you want to make sure that your input settings match your output settings, so if your video sources have a certain framerate and resolution, you want your final project settings to be the same, otherwise weird things happen and timing gets messed up/the footage will look funny. Pan/crop shouldn't affect resolution as long as you don't alter the aspect ratio of the rectangle bounding box.

Oh, I HAVE been altering the aspect ratio to get rid of the widescreen...oops. But I still can't fix the framerate. I think I mentioned this to you before, Chao, while chatting on YT, but my render tempate in SV will not change the framrate from 29 to 23, even of I change the framerate of the footage to 23. Nor do my SV Project settings offer 23...

I think fixed the problem with the rough draft (As a precaution for any spoilers, this is a SAO AMV- even though I haven't finished the series myself).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_ZwYC8 ... e=youtu.be
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

SAO is one of my favorite series to date, so I am happy to see you try and attempt an AMV for it. That said, I am digging the concept with this song, but why sync the monster to where it says "a moment to lie". In context to the series some scenes with Kirito would fit for the lying. But obviously go with what looks and fits best for you. Also, the scenes from the Fairy Dance arc seem to be quite grainy in comparison to the Aincrad arc. Also in terms for the contest rules; the scene you show at the start with him logging in has subs that aren't at the bottom of the screen and I am fairly sure those subs would be against the rules.
Anime Boston 2014 Drama Entry-Sealing My Fate
Anime Boston 2015 Drama Entry- Living Legacy, Romance Entry- Love is Love
Anime Boston 2016 Fun/Comedy Entry-1000 Provisions, Action Entry- Badass Freakin Overlords, Dood!
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Re: Critiques

Post by saffieb »

The reason I was syncing the monster was because, technically, Kirito was 'lying' about being the monster (looking back, it does seem like a bit of a stretch. I think I will redo that part)

And, yes, I know the subs are wrong and footage isn't great, I downloaded them from youtube to use for my draft until I got the actual footage.
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Re: Critiques

Post by saffieb »

I have an updated rough draft of the video. What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItIU1-n ... e=youtu.be
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Re: Critiques

Post by Luscia »

Now that I see it as a whole video I think it's coming along nicely. I do give you credit for using the Fairy Dance arc as a lot of SAO videos I have seen don't use it. I do find all the fades to be a little hard on the eyes because they are so quick and rapid, but due to the way the song flows there isn't much you can do it about. (My opinion of that might change since I do have a slight headache at the moment, so bare with me) This also may have been a playback error from Youtube itself, but near the end when it is slowing down and you show all the other characters there are quite a few spots where there is nothing but black. Is that just placeholders for when you figure out what to place there? A couple of times when I watched it the player went black when I know there was footage there, only reason I ask.

There are 2 scenes that have a weird transition; one in a scene with Kirito at 1:24 where it shows a close up of his eye and another at 1:55 when it fades from the commander to Kirito.
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saffieb
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Re: Critiques

Post by saffieb »

Thanks. To be honest, I was planning on just using the Aincrad arc, but it seemed to be more difficult to find enough clips so that I didn't have to reuse some of them. I'm starting to get some other ideas for transitions as well. They are placeholders at the end, I'm still undecided about what to put there. Any ideas? And thanks for letting me know about the transition errors, I've corrected them.

I'm happy to report that some of the footage has come in, so my next draft will most likely be better.
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