Lulu - Final Fantasy VII AC - Pervading Shadow

[Lulu]

After a computer crash.........then the quality was not good. I realized I'd ripped the imported/subbed version rather then the American version. Switch and bait??? You'd think. Oh no, the import has 4 vobs, and the American 6. So with 12 days left until the deadline I had to replace every single clip from beginning to 3/4. But I made it.
Hope you enjoy.

I picked the song for AC back in NKode, I had a feeling about this song.
Hope you enjoy.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUqXyWXUUM[/ame]

www.epicalstudios.net/videos.htm

[ShadowNOS]

I really enjoyed that one, right at the start I didn't think you could pull that song off with the footage but you did. All the rotoscoping effects you did were neat as well. My beef would probably be the parts where the scenes like stopped and went frame by frame. At first I though wmp was glitching so I closed and reopened it . Aside from that pretty well put together. Nice work lu

[Lulu]

LOL I did that in the last video hehehehe

[Raistlin]

This was a video I had been waiting a long time for. I wasn't sure how it would come out or what it would be like. Now that I've enjoyed it, I offer you my thoughts of Lulu's Pervading Shadow.

Epical Editor - Lulu
Music Choice - Immortal by Adema
Footage - Anime/Game - Final Fantasy VII Advent Children

Presentation

Because this was a competition submission, opening credits were not created. Only 1 point is available for credits which were present.

Presentation Score - 1/1

Quality

When the footage was moving. It was great. During one or two of the freeze frames the frozen images sometimes were caught during fast motion and seemed blurry. I also noticed a tiny bit of graininess right at the very end at 3.25 just when the blur effect is used. Aside from that, very nice.

Quality Score - 4.5/5

Music Choice/Atmosphere

This music choice sent shivers up my spine. Needless to say it was a solid choice to use. It gave Lulu the ability to tell a story and had a lot of opportunities for effects, clip placements, lyric syncs and had an overall atmosphere that really hyped up the whole idea of Advent Children. People wanted to see action, story bedamned! They wanted to see Cloud and Sephy go at it. To actually see Bahamut in all his destructive glory. While the editor didnt use the Bahamut scenes, the song she chose, fit well because it is all about shutting up and getting down to some fighting. I know who you are, what you do, I dont like you, and have a damn good reason not to, lets scrap. It has a heavy action beat with a bit of drama overtones. Like the movie, the video plays on the history of the game. Enough with the pleasantries, lets f*ck stuff up. The lyrics match the story (what little there is in AC) very well yet still keeping pace with all of the action thats available in it and adding a dark foreboding atmosphere.

Music Choice/Atmosphere Score - 5/5

Difficulty/Effort

Being a few years in the creative process, this better have packed a punch. And Lulu delivered. Mixing a good amount of action from the movie while adding her own little spice to the story, this production really hit home with fans, fellow staff and competitors alike. Well planned track mattes were used in the beginning to really set the stage and tone. The editor caught some great lyric syncs right off the bat to get you into it. Throughout the video strong track mattes are used, but not over used. They're placed with a purpose and have meaning. When those aren't being used, lyric syncs and solid timings bring up the back end to keep the action flowing. Some blurs fit well. The smoothness of some of the track mattes are really what show through though. If you look closely you can see how well Lulu fused two seperate clips together with no distortion or pixellation. In this case, the action fit well with the song, timings were, for the most part on very well and the overall feel that the lyric syncs created were gold.

Difficulty/Effort Score - 5/5

Plus/Minus

PLUS .00 - .12 - Solid opening. I loved the timings with Jenova and then the track mattes with Cloud.
PLUS .19 - Yes, I actually loved the freeze frames. Not sure how it threw people off. First time I saw them I figured they were great.
PLUS .56 - Great Lyric Sync
PLUS 1.08 - 1.10 Well placed overlay.
MINUS 1.23 Timing was definately off.
MONEY SHOT 1.28 Timing was perfectly on and the footage used couldn't have been more perfect.
MINUS 1.47 - 1.48 While the action sync kind of worked, considering Lulu hit a lot of similar timings so well, not seeing a timing of some sort threw me off.
PLUS 2.06 Solid Timing
MINUS 2.08 - 2.16 Lyric sync seemed weaker than the previous verses. Just didnt fit as well as the majority of the syncs/timings.
PLUS 2.58 Solid Lyric Sync in the middle of an action sequence w/the lifestream reference

Plus/Minus Score - 8/10

Overall Impression

This easily is one of my all time favourites. With the hype that was AC, this video lived up to the hype of an ES created Advent Children MV. Its solid in and out. The atmosphere suits the movie pretty much perfectly. The story is played up and referenced. The editing is superb and at the end of the first view I remember how it made me feel. When A video can affect me like that, I know its good. Not many videos can do that. Generally only the older NKode videos got me like that. This is one of those videos.

Overall Impression - 5/5

FINAL SCORE - 28.5/31 - 92% - A







Now if only Square would make some remakes or follow ups to some of the other Final Fantasy Stories....*sigh*

[Lulu]

Agreed, I hate that thing, I've seen it throw timings on solid vids. I don't use it.

[TheTraveller]

Very nice Lu! I thought it was great. The freeze frame thing threw me at first, but after the first couple it was cool.

[goingcrazy20]

I use Nero ShowTime from my Nero Burning ROM 7.0 Pro, & it has never messed up timings for me before. *Shrugs*

I liked this video for the fact that it was well made for not relying so heavily on lots of over-the-top special effects. Although slightly more basic than the others' competitors, I feel that it worked for your advantage, especially with the frame by frame sequences fit the song completely. I liked how alot of your overlays were small and kept centralized in one spot to give the feeling of them being after/side-thoughts to the lyrics. Very well done.

[Lulu]

I feel that it worked for your advantage, especially with the frame by frame sequences fit the song completely. I liked how alot of your overlays were small and kept centralized in one spot to give the feeling of them being after/side-thoughts to the lyrics. Very well done.

Thanks going crazy
At times I think my editing style hurts me especially in a competition like this. Being a storyteller, 24 frames a second (jk) is not going to do my story justice. I think too, if you look at the other videos in comparison to mine....they appear to be more difficult. However, each is difficult in it's own right. Nos' viddy hits everybeat....if he misses something, you'll see it. Mine on the other hand, times to the predominent aspect of the song, so if I make that change wrong, you are going to see it.

[Casper]

WOW Sick ass video lulu. I loved it. Nice song choice and editing was on top. One thing i didnt like tho was the way you stopped the video on the certain beats, it got on my nerves thinking it was freezing, but other than that sick i lvoed it

[Zamora]

Lu, this video was great. So much is great about this... Song choice is the best of the lot by far, and your editing and storytelling is awesome as always. I can see why you heard this years ago and just thought: Advent Children. You're mattes, though they're simple spotlights, have an effect that amazed me equal to Nos's mattes in Legacy. They just work. They bind the pages of the story you're telling. But the ones in the bginning, where they have cuts to hit the beats... I dunno, that just didn't look quite right. I can't say how it could be fixed, but it just looked a bit wrong. All timings and such... do I really need to say it? Spot on. Especially those in the first few seconds, they had me in awe. Now, the stop action. That would have worked. It did work... sorta. It hit the beats, problem is it didn't have enough oomph to signify the beat properly. Maybe if you threw in some brightness/contrast tweaking to accentuate the beats, it would have worked.

Great job Lu, I've been waiting to see this video for over a year, and it was well worth the wait.