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Here’s a special thread for the specialness.
After the barely coherent attempt at Pacific Rim I took a run at Wolverine, but this time prepped up with a bunch of notes to make sure I hit the points I wanted to hit without tangenting like a motherfucker. You’re 90210% correct Rob, it’s really damn hard to be concise when you’re driving. So I cut about 8-9 minutes of recording into this, but it still feels too long, so I’m doing another cut to try and get it under 4:00. Fuck knows how to do this properly but there’s only one way to find out, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YIf26KYSbc
I still haven’t found an easy way to download high quality trailers but this one is about half from a 640×360 German or Italian trailer (it’s all Greek to me) and half from a Revision 3 “First Look” 720p video podcast.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
Nice format sir. I pretty much agree with you on most of your points about the movie… though I’d slide it’s overall scores down to 7 and 5 for the respective parts of the movie as you broke it up. I didn’t hate it, and I was starting to enjoy it, and then I didn’t. However, I had a problem with one of the other things in the movie that you didn’t touch on it at all (Jean), as it kept coming up and just felt forced in. And that only really happens after bringing it up a lot, only to have it’s only functional purpose support the very weak third act.
That said, I didn’t feel like this was long. Movies just take a bit if you want to get through them, and I think the 3 min format is always going to feel abrupt and incomplete. I think you’ll likely end up between 4-6 minutes with this format, if you really get to say what you want to say, but keep it tight. There may be exceptions, but I doubt it’s enough to move the needle in terms of average runtime. And I don’t think that’s a problem either.
Your cuts weren’t as jarring this time, maybe it’s because there were more complete thoughts before a cut. I think your last test had some moments where you cut together two shorter segments to complete a train of thought and it was a bit weird. It’s not so bad when you cut quickly for effect (joke support for example), just this time it felt more like you were saving us the tangents and staying on the subject by use of editing.
I demand you do more of these.
Oh and one point I have to call you on; the sidekick is not even kind of cute. She’s peculiar looking and she reminds me of the weird looking girl from the old PlayStation commercials. But I do think she did a solid job for the level of depth the movie requires, and I felt like she played well with Huge Ack-man. I was really impressed at her fighting, it looked pretty good on camera.
Yeah, I’m curious to see what Rob can do with the format but keeping it under 4:00 is pretty tough. I made this edit and I think it mostly works but it’s only about 85% what I think it could/should be. I went too hard and over-cut on some of the pauses and the rhythm ends up a little toooooooooo choppy in places because I got tunnel vision towards getting under that “4:xx” at the end of my timeline. I probably should just have cut one of the points, maybe the one about powers-less Wolverine being portrayed too superhumanly, instead of going so hard on cutting out pauses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnuCxNFKlb8
Or maybe I just need to get over the idea that people are more likely to click on shorter videos and so these need to be shorter to build an audience. I’m thinking something between 4:10 and 4:40 might be the sweet spot between getting enough substance into the thing and not presenting a number which is going to turn a bunch of prospectives off from even giving it a shot.
As for the attractiveness, or not, of Rila Fukushima, I say HA! I’d expect nothing less from you Captain. I even had a tangent where I yammered on about how I find a lot of peculiar looking girls like her more attractive than “cookie-cutter”, “mathematically” pretty girls and tried to come up with a way to pre-emptively defend my taste like in the Pacific Rim vid, but my imperfect brain failed me and it went nowhere. I think the “Japanese Aubrey Plaza” line fits pretty well, but then I know you’re filled with firey hate for April on Parks and Rec anyway so there was no way I could win.
The Jean stuff was neither here nor there for me either. I was going to comment on it and other points, especially how crappy the Silver Samurai looked and the way the movie has about thirty seven examples of characters falling unconscious and waking up someplace else, but in service of keeping it tight I dropped a bunch of things.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
Fuck. I just had one of those moments that I lost like 8 min of work on my reply. Fuckity fuck.
I’m not going to spend any time on Aubrey Blahza, especially since we all know I stand on the side of rightousness when it comes to an objective view of the women forced on us all.
Above: the new cut is a bit erratic when it comes to a bunch of the pauses you cut down. It doesn’t not work, but it’s distracting, and feels like editing for the wrong reasons (runtime). Take out what’s not needed, not what’s natural. You made the wrong choices if you wanted to just make it shorter. Try combining the bits about the movie’s unfortunate split, move the secondary character stuff in front of it and I think you’d find some stuff you don’t have to have in there, and you could keep some of your pauses.
Oh, and less movie footage when you aren’t actually saying anything. And leave your funny text up longer if you are going to go through the trouble to put it up there.
Now, the subject of 4 minutes. Do you have any data to support this “sweet spot”, or is just a number you arrived at based on the popularity of Weird Korean commercial compilations, prank videos, and videos of animals doing human things on top of things that aren’t humans? You can’t compare an interest video’s runtime to the runtime of a passing interest video -unless the runtime is part of the format. So unless your idea is to have Rob do a show called “Rob’s 4 Min Or So Movie Reviews That Are Actually In The Neighborhood Of 4-ish Minutes Unlike Those Other Asshole Movie Review Videos”, then I’d say a Rob review show would just be a bit longer.
With regards to these very short runtimes, the content should not try to fit the runtime, unless it’s the point of the format. 1-min reviews, 3-word reviews: these format the content of the review. In the case of a Rob review, the request is that we get a Rob-styled review, that is short enough to become watchable by the average interneteer. Id say that will vary by movie. In the case of something like your example, sure shorter times are likely to be a reasonable target. But the types of movies we like to hear Rob talk about, he either needs more runway to gush about, or he has a rant that is going to take more than 20 seconds to complete. I say get a few reviews together, say everything you want to say, cut them, and let the formatting take shape.
In the case of this example video you covered quite a bit. I think the first thing is delivery format. Talk through some movies, and get a feel for what your review formula is for certain types of movies. You can use that to not only craft an actual runtime, but you will create talking points for “meh” type movies that will allow you to maintain a format.
That’s not what I said originally, it’s far shorter and less detailed. But I already stopped thinking about this because I’m simple and easily distracted.
Yeah, I think if and when I do these, there will just have to be a full thing as well as an easily-digestible-for-the-short-attention-span folks, because usually there’s just too much good stuff that I put out there because I’m a fucking genius.
Okay, take out the fucking genius stuff, but seriously, it’s all going to be about trial-and-error. Bryan knows what the fuck he’s talking about when it comes to editing – and that’s going to be my biggest challenge, I think. But I do know a thing or two about editing, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
Again, though, I just need a fucking good movie to talk about. Maybe The World’s End?
Shit, I forgot to comment on your video, there, Booch to the Nooch. I feel like you started out trying to show me an example, but in all seriousness, you do have presence, and you seem to be pretty good at this stuff. I almost feel bad even trying to do something in this arena because you are doing so well with it, and I wouldn’t want to compete with you there, especially since it was your idea to begin with. Am I talking in circles? Rob’s Road Reviews could be shortened to R^3 or “r cubed”, and the volume of a sphere is 4/3*pi*r^3. Coincidence?
Try combining the bits about the movie’s unfortunate split, move the secondary character stuff in front of it … Roger that. Just took a run at it and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for the pesky way I’d started that sentence, so that the “also” is un-choppable without having the cadence way fucked up.
Oh, and less movie footage when you aren’t actually saying anything. And leave your funny text up longer if you are going to go through the trouble to put it up there. You mean the footage at the end, right? If so, check. I also cut the jokey text at the end. I adjusted the position and I think the length of the disclaimer about my understanding of Japanese culture. To me it’s often funnier if that kind of text is too short to read on the run, so you have to go back and pause, like a half-Easter egg, but I don’t know if I’m good enough to really pull it off right.
Now, the subject of 4 minutes. Do you have any data to support this “sweet spot”? Even though I’m a man of science I have no verifiable evidence whatsoever. The short run-time thing is something I noticed first in myself, and then heard seconded and thirded by others. It happened even this week with that vid you posted for that new combined trailer for Gravity. It’s clearly something I’m interested in. It’s clearly something I want to watch and intend to watch. But because it’s over 5:00 I keep putting it off. Because I’m simple and easily distracted.
I’ve seen and heard enough people say they won’t even click on a vid if it’s over 2:30 or 3:00 or 4:00 to know it’s a thing, and it seems logical to me that people think of their time as precious, so they’ll feel less inclined to make the “commitment” to watch something longer, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I can’t claim to be sure, proper real deal data-wise, how much of a thing it is.
… the types of movies we like to hear Rob talk about, he either needs more runway to gush about, or he has a rant that is going to take more than 20 seconds to complete. True enough. That was my thinking behind the suggestion that he make a long-form review and a short-form one. The short-form to be the “front door” so to speak, or maybe even look at it as a kind of trailer of the full review, and the long-form one so the Rob Michaels style the world will eventually come to love doesn’t get cramped. Maybe it’s trying to have the cake and eat it, but maybe, hopefully, it’s having the best of both worlds.
I think the first thing is delivery format. Copy that, format is really going to be a key. At least it is for me. The Wolverine one came out much better than the Pacific Rim one because for Pacific Rim I pretty much just rambled, whereas for Wolverine I decided on a format (Intro, What’s the story, What’s good, What’s not so good, Summary) before I started it. I’m sure it’ll be tweaked here and there, but I’m pretty sure going with some version of the three act structure has to be a solid a base to launch from. It just HAS TO.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
I actually almost didn’t make the comment about the text at the end, BECAUSE I figured the length of the text’s appearance may have been part of the joke (like credits that fly by). It does work sometimes, but YouTube’s player sucks the life out of jokes like that because it’s not “did you catch that, lemme go back” it’s “fucking pause you stupid mother fucker, I said PAUSE”.
And on runtime… I posted a 2 min-ish video for you sir.
Yeah, I think if and when I do these, there will just have to be a full thing as well as an easily-digestible-for-the-short-attention-span folks, because usually there’s just too much good stuff that I put out there because I’m a fucking genius. Fuckin’ A right!
Again, though, I just need a fucking good movie to talk about. Maybe The World’s End? Or a bad one? I can listen to you pour liquid fury all over Transformers for 2:20 or 12:20. I mean, it’s still the testing phase so why not talk about older movies you love or loathe. I could also listen to you pour liquid jizm all over The Dark Knight for 2:20 or 12:20.
Man, is it just me or did it suddenly get kind of warm in here?
… you seem to be pretty good at this stuff. For me it feels like I’m polishing a turd. I mean, if this wasn’t edited at all or I tried to do it without notes it would be unwatch/listenable. I’m nowhere near as good as you and Bryan at talking off the cuff for extended periods of time and have never really spent any time recording myself to get used to being natural in front of a mic. I listen back to these things and think it’s a miracle I make any sense at all to Americans with my dopey speech impediment-like accent, and that’s even though I’m trying to speak super-clearly.
So if these work in any way at all it’s down to the polish, not the raw material. If I can hide behind edits and movie footage I’m ok. If I couldn’t it wouldn’t be worth even uploading.
I almost feel bad even trying to do something in this arena because you are doing so well with it, and I wouldn’t want to compete with you there, especially since it was your idea to begin with. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck off, driving and recording yourself yapping about movies is YOUR arena. This would never have occured to me if it wasn’t for a combination of listening to you do this stuff and seeing the dashcam vid you and Bryan made. I haven’t invented anything you guys don’t already do, I just thought this might be a way for you to tweak it to take a shot at your goal of being a more pro-level movie reviewer without doing a bunch of writing. I think you have everything you need, you just need to put in some hard yards to make it happen.
Think of it this way. Jon Jones was already a good fighter with all the tools to be great before Greg Jackson took a look and pointed him towards glory. I’m Greg Jackson shouting at you from the corner. No go smash a motherfucker.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
Here’s the new edit with The Captain’s recommendations worked in where I could. I think it works best of the three.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nby5pRPkP8
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
@Version3 50955 wrote:
And on runtime… I posted a 2 min-ish video for you sir.
Oh yeah, to be clear, like I’ve said before I’m sure, I’d watch a 2 hour vid of you guys, but the rest of the world isn’t yet aware of your maginifence.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
Here’s the third edit of the The Wolverine review, aiming for a halfway point between the other two vids right in my “sweet zone” of 4:10 to 4:40 and incorporating The Captain’s advice where possible. I think it’s the best of the three. I think, against all odds, actual stuff is being learned.
- Women sense my power and they seek the life essence.
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