Dust In The Wind

Here's my new video, Dust In The Wind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mT5q7VqXo

Comments are welcome

It's great Natascha. The filming is beautiful and the editing is terrific - it feels like there is always something happening, without it being all randomly swoopy! It's also amazingly clear for something uploaded to youtube - may I ask what you used?

Thanks a lot

I use Fraps without sound, for recording, then virtualdub to reduce the 30 frames per sec to 15 and for rough cut and save it as avi/xvid. For f/x, music, sound and editing i use Videostudio 10.

Huh! Thanks Natascha, I will have to try that. I thought it looked crisper than some of even your recent stuff, like the so funny Christmas before and after, but on looking at that one again I am thinking maybe it is just that the lighting in that video is softer and rosier? All very enjoyable in any case.

Excellent.. you can always tell if a movie is any good, if you are left wanting more at the end... and I did
It had great pace and some good angles. Nice timing with the music as well.

I don't know what Editing programme you use but... I use Sony Vegas... for the long overlay shots, a useful technique you can explore that would mean the viewer can focus equally on each overlaid scene, is...
Apply a Glow effect, turn Glow to 0, but use the snoot mask and arrange it over the focal part of the scene, apply feathering and position of the snoot (useful for following movement with a scene). Now apply a Chroma Keying mask, but use the dropper seclector to take the colour of the snoot mask. Reduce its settings so it doesn't completely take out all of the snoot covered areas, but blends them into the back layer scene, applying its own levels of feathering and blending. Playing with both effects to change perspective, so you can emphasise each layer at different times along the timeline.
You can use this same method to create insets within a scene, like a dream bubble or thought..

Nice work...the bus shots looked great and I liked how you got the cymbal shot right on at 2:33.
...my only caveat is the use of a pretty well known song to base your youtube video on, although you didnt use the original artist so maybe its ok....not sure if that could be deemed a copyright violation or not in that case...and the only reason I mention this Natascha is because I personally have had the audio disabled on 4 of my SL youtube videos, 2 others removed altogether, and advertising applied to 2 more....for music copyright violations....not totally unexpected I suppose, but still frustrating none the less...so I guess what I'm saying is that we have to be careful in the use of popular, possibly copyrighted, songs in our SL videos that are to be uploaded to youtube.

Yep, Robertt, Youtube is going overboard on copyright infringments. A good thread on this here:
http://www.machinimafordummies.com/articles/2009/01/28/youtube-taking-down-machinima-using-copyrighted-music#comments and other posts on that site.

Natascha, nice video, thanks and pleasant to watch.

A couple of technical suggestions. Why do you Frap at 30 then cut down to 15fps? Why not just capture at 15, or leave it at 30?

A common mistake that I see in a lot of SL videos is not using the rule of thirds. It's mostly because the camera is focussed on the head and therefore the head usually ends up centre screen. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

Try to smooth out your pan shots. You can do this by smoothing the mouse and transition times in the config, use a space controller, or an Xbox contoller.

Don't overdo the standard follow cam. If you think about real movies, how often do you see a camera fixed behind someones head and following them about?

Just a few comments, seeing as you asked, and cos I like your video

Thankies for the comments

The copyright...yes. But in Germany YT and GEMA, a performance rights organization, have a deal, so that germans can use the whole GEMA repertoire.

For DUST IN THE WIND read this:

https://mgonline.gema.de/werke/searchArea.do;jsessionid=0a020c1830d735bfb079bcad4f14bb4f8bfff516288f.e38LchuRc30NbO0LbN8PbhmNc3v0n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe

The third link

And this press release about the deal (sorry, it's in german)

http://www.gema.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressemitteilung/browse/12/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=668&tx_ttnews[backPid]=73&cHash=43f42b5a47

So i think i'm on the safe side

Technics....yeah i've heard about the rule of the thirds, something like the golden ratio
Oh, and i don't cut down all scenes to 15 frames, cause with 30 frames i have more options for instance, slowmotion. A spacenavigator is a really good idea

@Triz: The curse of christmas was a quick and easy act on impulse and i cant remember what i've used, sorry.

and sry for my poor English