I would be interested in hearing your comments. Why? For what reason? Grazie
Are you serious??? This is how people learn. I have posted many projects on various sites and requested input. For the most part those comments have helped me improve my video editing skills a great deal. Other times they just serve to affirm that the video is enjoyable to watch. We should be doing much more of this rather than talking about how much better Windows is than a Mac.

Are you serious???

Yes. And I'm also in agreement with your sentiments about learning.

Grazie

The vision is good although one dissolve between a zoom out and a zoom in was a worry, even worse that the framing was different.

The music was great.

The narration left a lot to be desired. Recorded very nicely but the lady spoke too fast and her diction made it difficult to understand her. That compounded a big problem for me. I didn't get to see what she was talking about. Or maybe I did, kind of hard to know as I don't know Venice at all. And I kept getting lost as to what she was talking about with the use of local terms, I don't remember the word, something that defined the various districts of Venice. If I'd been there or knew about Venice it wouldn't have fazed me but then I probably wouldn't be the target audience. I do appreciate that I was only watching excepts so some of my comments maybe off the mark.

I know this isn't meant to be a typical travelogue but a map with graphics would have been a big help, one canal looks like another canal, one street is much the same as another unless you have a sense of where you are in a rambling city like Venice.

Bob.

" would be interested in hearing your comments.

Why? For what reason?" ;-) verses reading them, Grazie? ;-)

Grazie:

First, I am curious what other think about what I have done, and secondly I like learning from other people, so I am interested in hearing what other people would have done different.

OK, solely on the basis that this is your work, these are my comments & opinions.

Crucial lack of linking visual content with dialogue at some the most relevant times.

Far too many zooms <> pans, without reason, purpose or providing additionality.

Talking about "Hidden Venice" but no hidden stuff show at time of saying so?

Nice historical stuff with far too little dialogue. What's going on? Why am I looking at old footage?

How about some sounds of the place? Sounds of water and motor boats and cries of Italians? What IS the relevance of the music?

Like to have seen shots working together: Shots of water bound craft from shore then CUT to being on board. Just one of those sequences would have been good?

Here is a park? Oh is THIS the park? Drab . . . . no interest for me.

Dense population? Where is it? I see an almost empty square?

. . and yet even more empty zooms.

Look, you got some real nice footage. Great! I would go back and re-edit.

You have a fade through to an almost similar shot. Why? Doesn't do anything for me.

You got some really bouncy music - was it the Vivaldi Seasons? - anyway, just some link with cuts on beats would have been good.

So:

* Re-think relevance of dialogue with shots

* Amount of Pans & Zooms need to be rethought.

* Cut-through similar shots that don't add anything.

* Cut to beat

* Missing dialogue for old footage

* Sounds of the place? Please?

Grazie

> The vision is good although one dissolve between a zoom out and a zoom in was a worry, even worse that the framing was different.

Can you tell me the time where you noticed this ?

> The narration left a lot to be desired.

Well to me, it sounded good, but I have to say that english isn't a native language in our country (Luxembourg), so we maybe used to these sort of dictions. Which country are you from ? Also if you have any suggestions about good (and not too expensive) english narrators, please tell me.

> a map with graphics would have been a big help

In the full version, (which is about 50 minutes long) there are maps with graphics, but as the youtube version was only to hear comments here about it, there are only small extracts, and the maps have been left out).

Thanks for your comments
Bye,
David Arendt

Grazie:

Thanks for your comments

I would be interested also in hearing your point concerning narration. Concerning the speaking itself, do you have the same opinion as farss ?

Bye,
David Arendt

"Can you tell me the time where you noticed this ?"

At 39 seconds.

"Which country are you from ?"

Australia. OK, I'm listening to this on pretty crappy el cheapo PC speakers, not studio monitors. I'll bet most of your target audience won't either. Maybe you were using a noise gate on her voice that was cutting off the ends of phrases, maybe it's the way she was speaking.
But here's the thing. You might get away with it except the vision was forcing me to listen and to be really frank it was painfull to watch it to the end. Simple examples:

She starts to talk about a church that got struck by lighting. Where's the church, what was she saying,?, confusion. If the narration introduces a new subject the vision has to clearly show what's being talked about but instead the vision is all over the place. My brain is trying to follow the vision and make out what's being said at the same time. Let the shot linger on the new subject matter long enough for it to sink in, at least as long as the introductory sentence. Maybe, maybe go for different angles of the subject IF it's really, really clear it's the same building which in Venice would be tricky.

Another time the narration is talking about bridges, no shot(s) of bridges,huh? Oh hang on, there's maybe one over there in this shot...oops, too late that shots gone.

In other words when you have narration the images should serve to illustrate what's being said and they don't, They have to clearly illustrate it too, not room for confussion. I think the technical term is the "establishing shot". When you don't have narration then you can have your montage but the images need to link togther. Instead I was left feeling like I was Lost In Venice, which rather put me off the place.

I've done some foreign language DVDs. Quotes for professional multilingual VO people were around $1,000 per hour. That's from a top shelf broadcaster with studio and engineer. You'd certainly get someone pretty good for half that. In my case it wasn't my money and I wasn't going to futz around to save the tight wad client a dime, as this is your own project adjust those figures of course.


Sorry to be so harsh, I recall some of your earlier work and you've got a great eye for the shot. Putting great shots together to make a great work is another art. Perhaps as this is a commercial venture find someone who knows how to do it and pay them.

Perhaps my best advice is to take a week or two off from this project. Get a few mates over and sit down and watch it with them, that's when you can see for yourself where you're going wrong. I suspect you've worked too long and hard on this to really see it clearly.

Bob.

Watched this with my coffee this morning. Lots of pretty shots. I don't disagree with farss and grumpy er grazie :) Felt a little disjointed in places, like you wrote the script but didn't give the shooter the shot list. Perhaps write the script to what shots you have or take another trip to secure the needed shots. I had a hard time understanding the V/O in places and also think it needs debreathed. Also at the begining of the video it tells us what this video is suppose to be, something like not your ordinary travel video,, I believe if you have to tell us that, well. Anyway you got great footage , with a few tweaks here and there I hope it is a big hit
good luck

I'm feeling really nice today even though there is a full moon. I didn't fall asleep watching yours as I do all of the "PRO" documentaries.

JJK

A common practice for me, I watched your clip at first with my speakers turned off. From the visual elements I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at, no sense of the story of Venice unfolding. Shots jump from waterways to bridges to streets with and without people, etc., but there's no visual through-line. There was little that is informative about the sequence of shots, no storytelling.

There's no rule that says you have to go from a wide shot ("cover shot," "establishing shot") to a medium or close up shot, but you deviate at your own peril. In your piece I'm often left wondering why I'm looking at a particular architectural detail: I've never seen it's surroundings; it has no anchor. An example would be the closeup shots of the rooftops with domes.

The piece begins to make some sense when accompanied by the narration but, as others have noted, the narration is often not in sync with the visuals, again leaving me confused.

As I understand the work, the overall idea is VENICE, which is then broken down into little Venices -- districts, -- each district being a different part of the city. I would find it helpful if there was a common thread of organization, visual and textual: e.g., "Venice, Islands in the Sea," so that each subset of the city -- each section -- was structured along similar lines; its relationship to the city as a whole, its relationship to the waterways surrounding it, and its features as an island mass. This would allow me to understand the difference in canals (some are wide, some narrow and crowded), the difference in buildings, street scenes, etc.

Finally, and nit picking I admit, I find the use of zooms very annoying. In my aesthetic, film and video record things moving in front of the camera. To have the camera moving is great for special emphasis -- e.g., a boom or trucking shot -- but Ken Burns not withstanding, when using stills I'd prefer a cut from the wide shot of an image to a close up of part of the image rather than continually zoom in and out.
And cutting from zoom to zoom, unless the two shots are carefully composed to match, is really off-putting!

I hope these thoughts are of some value to you.

Jack

David,

I know it's difficult posting work and finding that everyone doesn't see it as the same great piece that you do. I have to tell you that I agree with the others here. It's as if the narration is telling a completely different story than the video. The narration seems to have some logic to it but the video is all over the place; there doesn't appear to be any purpose. It's as if you put together a bunch of video/slides, added narration and music and called it good.

There are a lot of nice shots in here. If you would like to improve this project then I would suggest using the narration for the basis for your project. Then match the pictures to what is being said. If you do not have something that matches then either find something or cut that part of the narration out. I would personally avoid having music play through the entire video. Ambiant sounds in the background during some of the narration, especially the water, would be very nice. Best of luck to you.

To everyone:

Many thanks for the responses and suggestions. They were really valuable for me and I will see how I can apply them to the final project.

Here I will clarify one 2 things:

Maybe I was not clear enough in my first posting. This video are just 10 minutes of scenes cut out from a 50 minutes project in order to hear your comments, so some of the comments do not apply. Also there was a particular way this project was created. In fact there have never been plans to create this project, but we are real fans of venice, and 1-2 time per year there. We always shoot video using the FX1 as souvenir. Only one year afterwards, we decided to use this footage and create this project. So until now, we never shot video there with the purpose to create some project out of it, but we tried to use what we have.

So how will I proceed:

First of all, I will think will pay for having the english text spoken by a professional narrator, as even people with no knowledge about shooting video and editing all had one thing in common, they didn't like how the lady was talking.

For the rest, I will see which of your comments I can apply the to final project. And will apply them.

I think I will leave the video 24 more hours on youtube, and than I will delete it from there and post a new one once changes are done.

Thanks again
Bye,
David Arendt

Am I the only one who thinks this thread is a colossal waste of ones and zeros?