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| Some thoughts on movie-making... | |
| Posted By: Louis Wu <halo@bungie.org> | Date: 6/11/02 5:38 a.m. |
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We got a new movie from Halo-Wannabe recently, and I thought I'd use it to make some points about Halo movie-making. I didn't talk to H-W about this - so if you have a problem with what I say, gripe to me, not him. In my opinion, this has many features which recommend it as a Halo fan clip; I'm not saying it's the best movie I've ever seen, or that everyone should try to copy it - I'm saying that if we use it as an example of what can be done RIGHT, more good (fun) halo clips might be forthcoming. For starters, it's not huge, but image quality is pretty good. H-W didn't have the tools to create a Sorenson3 movie, so he wrote ahead of time, and asked what format would be best to submit his movie as so that we could compress it for him. In my opinion, this is a much better idea than using something really inappropriate for web video (like, say, Indeo 4 or 5), and ending up with a bloated, nastily-artifacted film. (The movie he sent in was a 35 mb MPEG - easily worked with, and with minimal initial compression. Sorenson3 did a great job of bringing it down to 6 megs, while still being watchable.) [side note: as discussed in this thread recently, we (the HBO staff) are of the belief that the Sorenson3 codec (available only for QuickTime 5) provides the best tradeoff between small size, high image quality, and cross-platform compatibility. There are options that work better on specific platforms (PC users seem to prefer .wmv files far more, although even on a PC, I'm unhappy with the inability to step through a movie frame by frame with WMP...), but QT5 is by far the best choice on a mac, and (for those willing to look beyond WMP) works fine on a PC, as well.] Back to what can be learned from flyingcar.mov... It picks a theme, and sticks with it. Focus is A Good Thing. Amazingly enough, given the content and the choice of music... there is actually coordination between the action and the music. This movie proves to me like almost no other that with a bit of work, you can synch ANY action to ANY music. ;) It's a minor thing, maybe... but it adds greatly (imo, of course) to the overall enjoyment of the clip. It's long enough to justify the download, but not long enough to bore you. This is important. A recent film showed 6+ minutes of jeeps crashing into one another - and while some of the rolls were truly impressive, after 6 minutes, you're numb. Far better to keep your audience interested, leave them wanting just a little more. (Cut it TOO short, though - like, say, Otizz' sniper shootout vid (I'm not picking on Otizz; I think the editing in that one was quite good, it was just not really enough content for a clip) - and you leave the audience wondering what they downloaded it for.) Lastly, it takes a heavily-filmed subject (warthog jumping) and gives it a new spin; it has a hook. Hooks are good. Again - I'm not trying to paint this movie as the best-of-class, or anything groundbreaking... it's just a well-made little flick which came along at the perfect time to point out some of the things I consider important in a successful Halo clip. I could have used any number of existing films as examples (starting with Aaron Suhr's 'The People That You Love', imo the first really well-made vid out there, and moving through any of a dozen or two films since then) - 'The Flying Car' just happened to be here, now. Hope this helps future movie makers! | |
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