A fantastic film!
Please change your custom user title from "Orbiter amateur filmmaker" to "Orbiter professional filmmaker". You're the best! :hail: rseferino
Sometimes I want to throw the book at people if I find something wrong and am already fired up about it.
At least I'm not the only one. Anyways, I didn't know what a professional actually was until well after I got into photography so I can't blame you for using it. However, it's someone who is making money, often a living, off a specialty. There are plenty of professional photographers who produce bad photos. I find being called an expert or an artist flattering unlike a professional. An "expert" could do what they love for no money, so they have a greater desire to make something great an improve rather than someone with money. That is being a true artist, which is a very respectable quality and one that probably everybody who posts videos here has.
Unfortunately, I do not agree that rseferino makes superb videos. I've had this seemingly unpopular opinion for quite some time, and was waiting for the right time for me to be able to adequately put it into words. I have been stirred partially because of my last post in this thread (in which Pipcard made an outstanding intro) and partially by finally having enough knowledge to put my dislike of his videos into words. It's time for me to write an occasional endless criticism, and hopefully keep it fair. By writing this, I will better organize my thoughts and help me improve as an artist and I hope I can help rseferino improve too.
A summary is in the first two paragraphs:
I've really thought that your videos have been novice for some time. Recently, you have made great improvements in your composition given all the limitations of Orbiter. Honestly, I can learn a thing or three about your framing pre-launch. I've disregarded vehicle launches for too long because I wanted to show the wonderful solar system. Once I determined that visiting all the planets manually for my "Voyager 2" video was impractical and become proficient with scenario editor, I used "Voyager 2" as a gateway to show the beauty of the solar system. This point will become relevant later.
Being tuned into the photography world, I couldn't elaborate much on film a while back but I knew there was always something more fundamentally wrong with videos like these. Photos and videos tell stories very differently. Now I can put my criticism into words and find examples of the major factor I dislike, your storytelling. It is essentially that your videos feel rushed, from the music selection which drives the tempo of your video to the camera angles once out of the atmosphere. (Pipcard had this problem too after the first excellent 1:20 of his video that I admired, but he was able to keep the tempo together.)
Like always, I find your music selection to be unfitting. In this case, the song is always fast-paced but your video doesn't fit the tempo created by it at all. The music selection always just seems to be a way to add something to listen to while watching your videos. At the end, the song and video just fade out without getting to a suitable point, an either rushed or novice thing to do. I personally spend a long time choosing the song I want to use, going through many different albums, looking for songs that show a lot of mood and vary in their speed and intensity. Also, the song must not be too distracting and not dictate when I cut every single scene and how they would look. It needs to mesh with my initial idea for the video, climaxing at certain points that will not hurt how fast I plan to cut my scenes. It may be necessary to cut the song at multiple points or create a new song, both of which I have resorted to.
Now for a specific section in your video, as I mentioned before, the way you composed the scenes in the intro stands out. Unfortunately having the too frequent and too fast panning is a rash decision. However, if some pans were slowed, they would work together even better up to the first minute. The scenes have good composition and variation, showing unique angles and taking you to a place that people playing Orbiter usually don't see. That's visual storytelling with flavor. That's something I should take note of for my future Orbiter videos, many of the camera angles you use. But things immediately fall apart, and they do so dramatically. The problem you have from here is present in all videos of yours I can recall.
Before I say what it is exactly, I want to go back to my videos since "Voyager 2" so I can use them as an example. I try to show the audience camera angles they don't normally see from Orbiter, and I often spend time thinking what is unique. I try not to rush this process and play around with various compositions and clever tricks to show something in a different light. That is really taking someone to a place they haven't seen and telling a story about the wonder and beauty in our universe. I must consider the resolution of the textures (a big limiting factor) and the subject of the scene. This has become on par with using the rule of thirds when framing and choosing my focal distance in Orbiter. There may also be a few scenes that are heavy on special effects to occasionally mix it up and add a new dimension.
Simply put, your videos become incredibly rushed in the way you cut them and frame the spacecraft. Not only is there constant
fast cutting, but you constantly use
jump cuts. The emphasis is important because this is where your videos really show weakness. There's not much to it more than that; the framing you use can be replicated without much effort. Using those two techniques in bold is a way to produce videos fast and with little thought. The scenes may constantly go back and forth between the front and rear of the spacecraft, but they're still at the same focal length and feel like jump cuts. Repeatedly showing events from multiple different angles that are easy to frame are unsatisfying. The scenes become unmemorable and unimportant yet they are relied on to advance the sequences. Even the launch of the first Skylab crew has the same fate of the rest of the video, where many new angles could have been implemented. The consistent tempo and lack of creativity that doesn't distinguish the second launch are harmful.
To jump between significant events that are far apart in time, I tend to use fades which you have done around two-and-a-half minutes which is a good break from the constant jump cuts. I may not be a fan when people use the orbit outlines (I never desired to access this feature or discover what it is called because I now mostly use Orbiter for videos) because it's a cheap and easy way to show the passage of time, but I must admit that those few seconds of footage were cut well. If you teach yourself new techniques rather than relying on the same basic cutting methods and fades, it will be very beneficial. It is always good to increase your knowledge of a subject then make sure to practice it rather than staying in the same ditch.
You have the tools and the expertise to change the way you shoot and edit videos, but I've never noticed anything new. The poor visual storytelling you use has always been similar to previous videos. In Orbiter, try to play around with focal lengths for compositions that are unique. Also, if you can find the Flyby MFD, I encourage you to try it out. The editing program you use offers a lot of opportunities for special effects and tricks that can be explored. Effects, I have found, work great when used subtly to offer a new dimension in your videos, as I mentioned earlier. By blurring, the depth of field can be controlled. With glow and blur, re-entry effects can be created. These effects are unique and add something that cannot be recreated at all in Orbiter. If you spend the time to learn how to use more features of the editing program, you can come up with wonderful, special films.
