by Jezebelle » Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:09 pm
Good job, Aud!
Without the vicinity conversation, it's kinda like listening to a recording of a show instead of the playlist, or listening to a live show while I'm at work. The vicinity interaction adds so much that's hard to capture, but just the crowd dancing, the music, Klinical's bit of chat, and the neat venue give a taste of what some people are missing. No, I'm not suggesting you add in vicinity chat. It would cover up too much of the screen if the font was big enough to read at that resolution. They'll just have to come to the party for that.
And yeah, the credits bit was pretty neat. Nice effect.
As for suggestions, I'd say reel in your visual distance until just before things start to disappear, since you can't see out any of the windows from there anyway. The Grind is notoriously harsh on framerates, but lowering the visual distance so the poor old engine doesn't have to bother with those asteroids and such outside helps. At that position, all the people and objects and lights you could see were plenty to worry about already.
So many people dancing in place without (apparently) saying or doing anything doesn't look all that exciting compared to the dance club scenes Hollywood arranges. If I could think of a way to slowly and smoothly pan the camera around the room, that's what I would suggest. Abrupt or uneven movement would be worse than holding still, unless maybe it goes with the song.
Just one other tip comes to mind. As I understand it, you recorded video of the whole 3-hour show to pick a segment. That's too much material to do anything with, but it makes sure that if anything particularly interesting happens, there's a good chance you recorded it. If you're going to cast a wide net like that instead of staging your own interesting bits, use a clock and a piece of paper. Write down the time you started recording and note anything interesting you see during the show and what time it happened, so you can subtract the times later and find it quickly. I don't know this app, but if it's recording the audio too, you can note good songs or interesting turns of phrase the same way.
This was good, especially for The Grind, but there's room for improvement if you want to keep playing with it.