MediaSynth 4.2 - Retell me a story

I think you chose a super interesting idea that you executed really well. Even knowing the actual order of the story, I could still visualize the story that you were trying to tell. I know in your documentation you said that you didn't want to use video clips but I think they would have helped tell the story a little better because since some of the frames aren't near each other in chronological order the jumping around can be slightly disorientating. Also I think the script idea would be a good idea because I didn't realize it the first time I watched it what some of the scenes were but after reading the script and documentation and watching it again the scenes you picked started making a lot more sense. Overall, it was a really great project. The audio and visuals worked really well together and it was really beautiful to watch and a very uplifting story.

I really liked the video and thought the transitions between scenes were really seamless and flowed together really well. The message I got from the video was the feeling of friendships reaching their conclusions/splitting apart which I think is similar to what you were trying to express in your documentation. I think this feeling of it not being a romantic heartbreak is really helped by the use of children's animation which definitely focuses more on family and friendship than romantic relationships. My only suggestion would be to maybe better align the clips with the audio which would probably require a significant amount of extra time. It was only a problem during some of the scenes when the music and the visuals didn't seem to align. For example, the verse that had the Donkey and Shrek scene was loud and up beat even though nothing was really happening on screen. I think it might help to replace them walking away from each other with their actual fight scene. I think the very beginning with Stitch and the Toy Story scene matched their audio really well.

Overall, it was a great project and I think the audio and clips you chose really worked well together!

Although it is an interesting project idea, I am not sure if people standing up to their bullies is a topic that can quite be turned into a comedic moment. Really it comes down to whether or not the viewer finds the topic of violence to be humorous themselves. Since no matter what kind of music you play with the video, the viewer is still looking at people hitting each other, so there probably isn't much you can do to make them think it's funny if they don't think it is funny to begin with.

Super cool job as always. http://www.joshmillard.com/markov/calvin/ <-- markov chain calvin and hobbes

That's really cool! I don't mind the pauses at all, and I think you did a really good job of putting the words together -- it's hard with music to get clear separations and form full sentences. Awesome job!

Really interesting idea! I love how everything was edited really well together. Given a revision, I would probably involve the star character and simply make it a bit longer -- it was really fun to watch! Nice job.

I thought this project was really neat, since the theme that you created for this video fits the song really well. It's like the song is being sung from the dream's/drugs' perspective, which is certainly something I haven't thought about when listening to this song (Fantasy happens to be one of my favorite songs in general)! You did a really nice job with the editing as well, when I watched the video for the first time I didn't notice that this was your project and not an example music video!

I can see it must have taken a lot of work to find the words that you wanted, and I think you did a good job with that. It sounds pretty real, so I think you did a good job getting your narrative across. It made me want more, so a longer clip would have been nice, but I still am really impressed with what you have!

I've never seen the show before, but I think you did a great job with the video! It looks pretty official and I think it does a great job getting across your narrative. As someone who hasn't seen the show before, I can't imagine what it's about other than beating monsters to save people.

Woah, this is a really cool reinterpretation! I think focusing on lokis story was a really interesting look at the events and brought a very different tone to it. I'm a bit confused as to why the post about superman was added, but otherwise your documentation recorded your project well.

I thought the video was pretty amusing and the cuts were done well. I appreciate how everything appears to be relatively the same quality, and it does have the classic sitcom feel. For revisions, maybe you should give Hitler a little more screentime, since he's the titular character, and possibly resize all the clips to take up the same screen space? Great job, though. I would totally watch this show if it actually existed. The mood whiplash is certainly something!

Wow, really well done! Very nice photoshopping. The only thing I think could be improved on is maybe the color. Not necessarily a color scheme thing as Jonathan mentioned, but maybe just decrease the quality of some of the composite images so they match in quality, or colorize the center image of the woman with the gun. Otherwise, it's pretty much perfect.

This is a really cool idea. I agree with Everi that I didn't quite get the whole story from your song until I read the description. Also, like you said, if you had more time it might be nice to work on the song transitions. Overall, though, this is super creative and I think you chose a very interesting medium for creating a new story.

I really like your project. I'm not super familiar with the film but I still found your product very entertaining, so I think you definitely satisfied that part of your intention. I totally see how it would be difficult to find songs that fit all the key scenes in the movie. I also really liked how you used the same song for all the kiss scenes, and I think it would be cool to consider if there are any other recurring themes in the movie where the same song is applicable.

Thank you for your suggestions guys. Very helpful. I edited the video again.

I really like your video. I like loki as well! In your video he does not look funny and stupid at all as in the movie. From this point of view, I think you did a great job making loki serious and powerful. He really seems like a European Style tragic king, bearing fate and wanting revenge all the time. Also, the music is very cool and makes your video more powerful and impressive. I think I just really like your project and nothing is to be improved.

I think the whole editing is beautiful. The color and lighting of the anime is so good and moving. The whole story is integrate and I think I understand what you are doing. The video itself is very fluent and impressive. Documentation is clear. However, I think you can upload the original video to the gallery. It can show more what you did to make the effect you want. I am a little curious about what the original video is and in what way you make the anime more moving and depressed.

I like your video! Very funny twist on a serious video game. I think the only thing I would want to change is the dimension of some of the clips. You could really utilize your entire video screen space and keep consistency throughout your video. However, I understand if those clips were only that dimension and that expanding it would have decreased the quality.

I like the American Horror Story style of your video and the fear it brings with it. It was edited nicely and the theme stayed throughout the video. When I watched your video, the message I got was there's a scary possibility that is related to the upcoming presidential election. However, I didn't quite get the feeling that the election was important. If you were to do this again, maybe you could make the relationship between each candidate the clips that follow convey what the future would be if they were president.

Nice attributions :)

This was a neat idea! I wonder what characters would make it into an earth wars movie, if one was made... I guess this goes under the category of "media shift"
To say that you're detail oriented may be an understatement. The soldiers at the bottom are an excellent touch, and you placed the explosion in the bottom left just right. I may just make a print of this.

If I could do this differently... Adding may not be a good thing, since there's so much going on already. I guess you could do the color scheme thing? Red on one side, blue on the other? Although even that comes out a little in yours.

Bravo, very impressive.

This was pretty great. I haven't seen the anime, and was EXTREMELY confused, but I'll take your word for a lot of this making sense. Even the parts I didn't understand, it seemed like everyone was on top of their game and they more or less had the situation under control. I really liked your use of the in-anime transitions, but found that having them too close together broke the illusion that this was the whole story.
Consistent subtitles or more explanation of what was going on would've certainly helped me understand the project more.

Overall, great job, and I wish I knew more about the anime to full appreciate the project.

I actually almost completely agree with Rachel and her comment. Your retelling of these four songs started out as very depressing, but then transitioned into one that showed resolve so that was really neat. And I agree with both of you when you say it's not aesthetically pleasing. You're right when you say that the keys, chords, and harmonies really do need to match up. Maybe as a 'fix', you could get an acapella group to arrange this and sing it for you.

This must have been extremely hard work! It's incredibly creative and does a great job of achieving what you set out to achieve. I personally didn't think that 'my' 'the end' would be so abrupt and I really liked that. It was written very well indeed.

So I guess I would try and add accompanying pictures to each page to make the story more immersive if I had to change something, but that's mainly because I'm a picture kind of guy.

This really impacted me. I really never saw Pokemon as animal cruelty but after seeing your project I can actually see where you're coming from and its surprisingly heartbreaking. Especially watching the animal cruelty videos in conjunction with a Pokemon battle clip, one can definitely see the correlation. I think some sound during the elephant scenes could have made your video even more impactful (although it would break my heart), the silence made it a bit strange. I will probably never look at Pokemon the same way again.

I really liked this! You definitely put in a lot of work into clipping the video together. I've seen Madoka Magica before and I wasn't exactly sure how you were going to pull off the happy ending...but then I saw the Puella Magi Holy Quintet and I was pleasantly surprised (never saw that before). I think you accomplished your goal of making a happy ending, although I suppose new views could still be a bit confused about the whole concept of these magic girls (which can get confusing). I agree that consistent subtitles would have been really nice and its awesome that you even included an ending song (y). I think your project would have benefited from more explanation in the beginning as well, but I think that within this limited amount of time that you did very well.

For me, I understood the intention of the retelling, and definitely think that it is an interesting concept. When it comes to time travel, seeing something in chronological order adds an interesting factor to it. However, it was hard to see in the write up the clear outcomes of remaking this story. I felt as if I would have had to watch all of the videos to fully understand, or at least I should be familiar to the show. Definitely to someone who has seen this before, it would be an interesting retelling.

One thing you could do to improve would be to add some of your findings in your write-up so that it is clearer to those like me (who have never seen it before) the importance of this retelling and the light it may shed on the timelines.

Definitely an interesting and creative idea.

I thought the scenes chosen matched well with the audio. The emotions of the scenes were well portrayed in the song, and vice versa. I definitely see how the story was told in a different light, and what the meaning of luxury meant in the context of the movie.

One thing I would change in the future is to have some kind of sound at the final parts. I think it would have more of an impact if the song ended abruptly with Hazel closing her eyes. Otherwise, the song and video editing was very well done and smooth in transitions.

Hi, this is a great project!
I think it's ok that there are pauses; I'm in the audio lab and dealing with the sounds and trying to make them perfect is really difficult. I also like the idea and how you found a solution to the problem that you couldn't find a different song with similar lyrics. Sentences are probably easier to do, and they still tell a new story, so it was a great solution.
(Also I've seen the Cheese of truth before and I love it. I just watched it again and it made me laugh again)

This is great! (I also love this show, so I may be a little biased though).
I really liked the video. I feel like there were still funny parts, but you did a good job of making it look much more serious than it actually is. Also, the music fit the tone you were going for really well and the video and the music matched perfectly.

I thought you did a good job! The idea to use the song and rearranged clips to alter the meaning of the original movie is just great. At first I didn't actually catch the relation between the song and the edited story, but as soon as I caught that, I started laughing, a lot. However, I don't know whether it's the problem of the website or it's the problem of Premiere, while I was watching your video, it's always flashing in red lights and it's very disturbing. If you can fix that it would be great. As for the part of retell the story, I think it would be better to throw those killing scene away and add more love scene just like the last scene in the video. This way, I believe your story would be more compelling.

Super cool concept that must have taken some insane code! I like how you took inspiration from the Auto Summarize site and did something very unique. The comics you made are hilarious and definitely do a successful job of retelling a story in a way nobody ever intended. (Also I see what you're doing with the gif for your project photo. Sneaky)

Same. Cannot see the video :(

Thanks for your comment! I had a feeling the video would be blocked. I uploaded it to Daily Motion which supposedly won't block it since they don't have copyright checks. It's here if you're interested:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3d4ulw

Hahahahaha... I laughed about ages hahahahaha... I've played MGS series for a long time and it's in my favorite game list. However, I never think in the way you did and it sound super funny when I heard different characters asking about a lot of nonsense questions that has totally no relation to the original game. I just want to say you did a fabulous work. But uh... where is our Old Snake from MGS4? I miss him so much...

I think it's cool that you chose to update an older story to something more relevant. If I were to add something to your project it would be to clarify why you picked Twitter as your choice of platform. You do mention that you were inspired by Twitter fan accounts and that such accounts are very common on Twitter. Do fan accounts exist on other social media platforms? If not, is that why you chose Twitter over Facebook, for example? Or is there something else about the platform that lends itself to your project?

I like your concept of turning the tables on bullies, it's a heavy topic but putting a humorous spin on it really lightens the subject while keeping in mind the context. However, I'm not exactly sure if you are telling a different story so much as emphasizing the comedic value of it. I do like your incorporation of a rather ironic background track, "Ave Maria", since it's a pretty slow track which emphasizes the slow motion action of bullies "getting what's coming", even if I don't quite agree with that sentiment. I'm not quite sure if you reached your goal of putting a humorous spin to it though. Yes, the soundtrack was a great choice, and the slow motion at "the moment" built up to it, there is something inherent about the violence of the ensuing actions that just isn't funny. And maybe its the frustration of the bullied individual or something, but somehow it just remains as grave as the soundtrack. Which, when I think about it, might be the point. In anycase, this was well-made, though I'm not quite certain it did everything you wanted it to. Perhaps it would be funnier to just see the fails of a bully? It's not quite as comedic when the bully is beaten back as just -vengeful? satisfactory?

Wow, that was pretty intense. I admit that I didn't really know what was going on at the beginning because the first clip of the elephants didn't have sound, but once the Pokemon clips got going, I understood the correlation (also with the Animal Cruelty title and all). Great concept, definitely compelling. I think a way to better convey the idea might have been to put the videos side by side so that the relation is even clearer. You could probably have timed the elephants running at each other as when Ash / the other dude tell their Pokemons to attack each other. Great job!

#beautiful i cry everytime

I really liked how you used the Japanese version so that you could use the fake subtitles. Since I do understand Japanese, I was kinda confused at the beginning, but then everything fit together. The narrative was beautiful. I agree with Roger though about the presentation. I was expecting a lot more of Pikachu actually running. The plot and narrative was stitched together pretty well, but I think the actually footage could have been done a lot smoother with fading, etc. When you played the extra music, you probably could have removed the sound from the other clip so that they didn't clash. I had a good laugh though!

It is an interesting story. The way you use subtitles to distort the original meaning is fun, and it really creates a humorous story. I really like the eating part. The background music and pikachu's action works perfectly! But I would expect the running part to be longer and show pikachu, but not only the street which is kind of boring. You can cut scenes from more episodes showing how pikachu trained. That may create a better effect. Anyway great job

I find your idea to be very interesting, using Scream tropes to tell the story of Hotline Bling (though I have never seen either) sounds to me like it would be pretty interesting to see and hear with a dichotomy. My one issue, which is a very large issue, is that Youtube has blocked your video because of the copyrighted content and I cannot access your video from drive -it's giving me an error message. I will say that your idea is interesting, but have you thought of maybe cutting the music along with the video? I don't know if you did that, since I can't actually access it, but that might be an interesting way to mix and match your story.

Telling a story with rearranged song lyrics is a cool idea! However at some points your story is a bit hard to follow. Reading your description of the plot helps, but, like you said, adding visuals to help convey the plot would be helpful. For example, I don't understand the "tag, you're it" part. Was this when the boyfriend starts attacking her for what she did?

I should probably mention that I can't see the video, because it seems to be blocked. Hope you get that figured out in time.

Came for the Metal Gear. Stayed for the memes. Loved the project. Though I've never actually played the games, it really showed the formulaic nature of some of the games dialog.

Hello!

I've never played Gemini Rue before, so I don't think I can comment much on the actual content of the video (which is a shame). I think providing more context in the documentation (such as the location) would've vastly improved the viewer experience. The editing however was quite well done, and I was really impressed that you went through the effort to find the necessary text boxes to tell your narrative. I would still try to smooth out the frames that you captured and spliced into the video, since I could visibly tell from the borders that it didn't quite fit (and the desk light under the text box was a bit distracting since it kept blinking on and off).

I don't have a twitter and have very limited experience with it, so I'm sure not how helpful my comments will be. I thought the story and medium you used to reinterpret it were perfect; to use a social media site to depict a story about the interconnectivity of man and machine was genius. Because I'm not really sure how Twitter works, I can't say how effective the project was though.

Hello!

I actually laughed out loud during some parts of the video, but primarily because the transitions were rather abrupt and the whole composition seemed really random, which I don't think was your intended outcome. I think if you were trying to create an action narrative, it would make the whole work more coherent if you incorporated more fluid transitions by adjusting the lighting/applying filters and established a central conflict/pacing.

So, I think that you achieved your goal of making a funny video; after watching several clips I was amused at how unrelated they seemed. I don't, however, think this formed a coherent story. The first clips with the ambulance and the uniform wearing people looking upward to see Trinity jump out of a window at least had connectable actions leading into one another, but from that point on the video just seemed very random. The problem for me was, seeing those first two clips link together I assumed the video was going to have a semi-coherent story. If you were to do this again, I think you should pick one side or the other; either makes the video very random with no flow between the clips, or try to make at least a somewhat coherent story with the clips.

You should play Metal Gear :D There's so much humor in the series that really helps to make its characters and worlds seem human and empathetic.

Though I don't quite understand the context of the song, I do think you did a good job in editing footage to create your own narrative. The changing the tone of the video to match the change in the music was a good stylistic choice, and it really helped highlight the point you were trying to get across. I didn't quite understand the point of the whole first minute of the video, so if I were to improve it I'd try to establish a stronger narrative with that section. Overall though, your creative outcome did a good job in remixing several different clips into your own narrative.

I liked the idea of the piece, since mixing the somber narration "The Raven" with the slapstick song Yakety Sax definitely changed the experience of listening to the piece. At the start I thought the music was a bit quite, but I began to appreciate it more as the music went to its more franctic parts, while the narration remained slow and deadpan. Some moments in the piece that I thought were really good were during the pauses in the narration, so to improve the piece, perhaps you could edit the narration so those points are more prominent. Overally, excellent idea, but the execution could have been improved with some slight adjustments.

There's a bunch of great fight scenes, and now that I think about it, yeah, that fight scene was absolutely beautiful. Also I did admittedly watch all 6 episodes at 3am last night, so I probably shouldn't have done that because I was kinda falling asleep towards the last few episodes (where that fight happened). :( Darn, a missed opportunity.

I thought your animation was very entertaining to watch. I've never played Undertale, but I can tell their personalities from the video. Because I have to give something as a revision, there were a few frames that went by too quickly, so I didn't get to see what it was (at the "talk to boys" @~1:10 part), but overall it was a great project and I enjoyed watching it :)

I thought your project was very interesting. The lyrics especially sounded like the person who lost everything is lost and depressed but resolves to get everything back and fix his/her mistakes. I agree that the song is not aesthetically pleasing, but I think as a piece it is interesting. I think the instruments overshadow the vocals, so when I hear the song, I'm not focusing on the lyrics, which is the focal point of the piece. I think you could try taking out all of the instruments all together, use more gradual changes, or just keep it the same/similar throughout.

I really liked how you used fake sub-titles to spin the narrative in your own way. Since the subtitles really didn't fit in with the context, it made the video a lot more humorous, changing a presumably dramatic scene into funny mini-narrative. Something that you could improve on was the running scene. Having just the first person perspectives was kind of boring to look at as opposed to actually seeing pikachu run. In addition, the constantly changing pieces of audio was somewhat distracting and hurt the work on the whole. Overall though, the intention and the how you decided to go about it was good, and some improvements to the presentation could have greatly enhanced the end product.

Awwwwww this is too cute! I love your idea so much! It s so creative. (I actually watched the video over and over again.) Your documentation is also very detailed.

Ahh, hilarious! I haven't actually played MGS, though I've watched plenty of videos on it. There were some golden moments in there, I especially liked the part about being in the box. I think you nailed the effect down pretty well, I had a good laugh. Also, hiimdaisy comics ftw.

I really like your project, how you retell the end story of a game. It's a bit confusing just watching the video, but after reading you documentation I understand what you are trying to convey. You've blended the frames really well. Fantastic project!

I saw that this project was on One Punch Man so of course I had to check it out. Cool video! And I had a good time watching the Harry Potter video too, haha. I guess my comments are more or less like Roger's... although you said you were going to make OPM seem like a serious show, there were still a bunch of silly moments in the video that kinda broke the tone. I was also surprised you didn't use some of the cooler and serious-looking scenes like that fight with Genos (which was a beautifully animated scene that would've matched the epic-ness of the music, I think). Otherwise, cool stuff!

I really like how you took the clips and made arranged them in a way that portrayed the show as "epic". The music went really nicely with the clips chosen, and the seamless format that you used meshed well with the story you were trying to tell. That said, some of the clips (like punching the guy in the crouch) kind of stood out with respect to the other clips and somewhat broke the epic tone you were trying to convey, but I understand why you decided to include it. Overall though, the video was excellently put together and definitely gave me a different impression of the show.

I didn't find it bothersome if the clips didn't match up exactly. Quite the contrary, rather. I think you worked together the visual clips and the audio quite well. I was impressed by the timely editing after the first ten seconds and the third stanza, among other places. The use of silence in the last section was impactful.

I did notice small editing hiccups at around the 57th, 66th, and 113th seconds, although how much they can be buffered out seems to rely on the technology available. Those bits would be the first thing I'd suggest to fix if this project were revised.

Your project isn't next to mine so I'm not being forced to comment on it, but that was really good. I didn't read your writeup until I actually watched the video but I completely understood what you were going for. The light playful mood for the first verse accompanied by the 'fantasies', and then when the drop hit she came back to her dark reality which was shown by the dark clips. Very cool.