WoW Moviewatch: Ties That Bind
by Michael Gray 
Aug 30th 2011 at 12:00PM
I'd start with some tight narration and plot editing. While Romire obviously had a story in mind with Ties That Bind, it's easy to lose track of the plot point over 11 minutes. While long-form videos are certainly viable, it's usually best to maintain a very tight narrative focus in machinima. Famous pieces like Tales of the Past and Return are masterpieces for a reason; not every machinima can mimic that level of complexity or epic narration.
There were a few jokes in the video, like a brief Mortal Kombat shout-out. Stuff like that is awesome, but it felt out of place in a longer, more serious video. Visually, I think Romire's come a long, long way. But for the next piece, I'd aim for a short, simple plot to start polishing the storytelling.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
iscalio Aug 30th 2011 12:34PM
A simularity?
Crispn Aug 30th 2011 1:06PM
That plot made my head spin... kinda confusing.
J Aug 30th 2011 1:21PM
32 seconds in and I'm already irritated by the lack of punctuation and excessive spelling errors (plaugelands? adventures instead of adventurers?). The 'flow' of the story is broken up by every new caption (a little jerk in animation, and often a visual jump to the person speaking) and the captions themselves are abrupt and far too fast. So much of this could have been solved by having more than the speaker on screen at any given time, rather than bouncing back and forth between people so rapidly.
I have absolutely no idea what the anime-esque wedding had to do with anything.
Oh look, it's Gigi. This is another video where we give little shout-outs to all the popular machinima 'celebrities' in the hopes of getting noticed, isn't it?
Less than 2 and a half minutes before I had to turn it off.
Eirik Aug 30th 2011 1:30PM
I don't know how I would recognize "Gigi" in a machinima like this. All human female avatars look alike, you know... :)
Tri Aug 30th 2011 1:37PM
Gigi is a blood elf hunter using Loque (yes yes, not the only one im sure) - and first time I saw that hunter, I also thought "Hmm.. Gigi?". A bit later in the movie, it's actually CONFIRMED that it is supposed to be her :)
Romirevids Aug 30th 2011 3:47PM
I dun think thats the case at all,
Eirik Aug 30th 2011 1:28PM
The subtitles (which we had in place of spoken dialog) gave this machinima a general feeling of "dubbed asian movie", particularly in how dialog lines were broken up. A smaller font would have still been legible, so I am guessing that it was largely intentional.
One problem I had was that the machinima started with two people, then suddenly there are apparently more without warning or introduction. I found this confusing.
Some of the devices from comic books might work to help identify the speakers: changing font/color/etc based on the speaker, a dramatis personae (beginning or end), things like that.
Large portions of the machinima were made with a static viewpoint. I noticed this particularly in the fight scenes prior to the Mortal Kombat scene, so I'm guessing that the Mortal Kombat scene was as much "shout out" as "lampshade". ... or the prior scenes were foreshadowing for the Mortal Kombat scene. Either way, I was left with a "that looks like..." take before I got to the MK scene.
Ash Aug 30th 2011 2:15PM
This was...pretty terrible.
Romirevids Aug 30th 2011 3:57PM
So alright, heres the thing
I never ment to make it this long whatsoever, i went wrong a few places and a few bits and pieces.
Secondly, i dont use the famous ones for personal gains cause im not like that, i asked Gigi if she had any beats i could use and she provided a couple so i placed her in it as a cameo as my way of thanking her.
Now if i knew were i went wrong, i would of edited it the time a tad better i guess
Accipeter Aug 30th 2011 8:37PM
Spell check is your friend. Seriously, there's no excuse for spelling/grammatical errors and misuse of punctuation in a finished piece of work like this. It gives a very bad impression, similar to typos in resumes.
I know that visual artists often like to discount the importance of written language, but people really do notice if you don't use it correctly. It's like hearing an off-pitch note in a song. It puts the teeth on edge, and detracts from the power and effectiveness of the work. If you are incapable of mastering the rudiments of English, I would strongly advise you to find someone to proofread your stuff.
Accipeter Aug 30th 2011 8:38PM
TL;DR: L2English.
ash.p.liu Aug 30th 2011 9:31PM
A lot of my thoughts echo those of the posters above me. I got a bit past the wedding scene before I clicked away, so here are my thoughts on what I've seen so far:
1. You had no voice acting. That is not at all a bad thing in by itself, but it's an important point because if a video opts to skip audible language, the story or message has to be conveyed in a different form: either through the images or by written text.
Since you opted for the latter, the text MUST be presented in a manner that tells the story clearly. Rampant spelling errors are simply unacceptable when the text is the main method of conveying important dialogue. Videos can succeed with spelling errors; Nyhm, for example, had quite a few spelling errors in his videos, but they didn't detract much from the overall video quality because we were busy laughing at his rhymes and the accompanying visual jokes - the subtitles were not Nyhm's main method of getting his message to us, whereas they were for this video.
2. Agreed with J up there - I winced at the choppy transitions in animation, but seeing as that's a software issue of some sort, I'm unable to offer any help on that front.
3. The main beef I have with the video is the plot quality. Assuming that the main point of the video is to tell a story, it has to be done in a way that is cohesive and flows naturally. Within seconds of the video opening, I am confused. Why does the girl not know why she's on a journey to WPL with the guy if she already agreed to it? Why couldn't the video just start at Light's Hope if our protagonists get just ten seconds of not-really-character-exposition before they arrive there? In fact, why couldn't we have just started at the point where Tirion sends them to the Scarlet Enclave to begin their real journey? Heck, we could have even started the video on the way to the Enclave and cut the first minute since nothing really important to the plot or characters happened there, and we would have had the same effect - and it would have gotten the plot going much more concisely.
Then the wedding flashback. What in God's name was the point of that flashback? Even the characters don't know, to the point that both of them say, "What was that for?"!
There are two reasons to have flashbacks: in comedy, flashbacks are to provide additional situations for humor, a la Family Guy. For more serious works, flashbacks are to provide insight into an overlooked part of the story that was relevant to the plot, or more commonly, to give more insight into the characters: their history, their motivations, their emotions, their personality...basically, flashbacks tell more about why they act the way they do, or how they've changed between then and now. This flashback accomplished neither: it was too out-of-left-field to be funny, and neither plot nor characters had been set up enough for a flashback to be meaningful - not to mention that the flashback itself didn't make sense (so the girl is getting wed to a night elf and someone crashes the party with bad music? And in the stormwind that was built less than a year ago when this was supposed to take place 10 years ago?what?)
There was just way too much that went wrong in the first two minutes of the video to handle. I probably sound harsh, because I am. However, I hope that you don't give up machinima, but instead continue to improve - otherwise, the effort I put to point out what you can fix would be wasted. :p I have not seen your other videos, but as Mr. Gray has stated that this was an improvement over your past work, I look forward to your next piece.
icepyro Aug 30th 2011 9:41PM
It's a little long and sure there are misspellings here and there, but that wasn't my biggest problem with it.
My problem was the animation. I mean some of the scenes could have been shot in game if it would have made things easier (there's really nobody in Shattrath or Dalaran anymore). I haven't used any of the tools or made a machinima, but surely there is some way to get a model of a portal or spell effect.
I dunno. It just felt like the fine artwork of WoW was recorded and then given to a kid with a crayon. That blood elf bleeding to death? I got it. He was stabbed and he fell. I saw it. Didn't need to drag it out and color with paint. Things like that are what bugged me.
As someone above mentioned, another issue was the static camera work. The scenery stayed the same and the models just kind of were moved around. Again that blood elf felt dragged out because he fell but didn't land swiftly. Blur, shake, something was definitely needed to make it feel more like he was falling, rather than on a stick moving in front of a backdrop.
I think everyone else addressed the subtitles better than I ever could. Really though, it might have even been better to do like the old movies and just go to black with text than it was to have subtitles that didn't fit what was going on or made the animation choppy. One animation so you know who was talking followed by what was said is better than many chopped up and poorly put together with subtitles (especially when the character either said more or less than what the animation that was supposed to match inferred).
I liked where this was going. I think it had the potential to be very touching, but a serious movie with out of place graphics and out of place jokes really took a lot of that away. It also made other scenes which were important feel out of place and the whole thing feel long (even though it really wasn't).
I don't want to sound like I hated it (I really didn't), but since criticism was asked for, those are the points that bothered me the most.
Kidsake Aug 31st 2011 2:00AM
I think you've come a long way. You're compositing is MUCH better than previous efforts.
I have to agree with others that it is a might long and could do with a tighter story and editing BUT, man, your heart has always been in the right place when you produce these creations.
Vision can exceed skill nearly all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Every tale you create is a step forward in learning.
I say bravo, good sir, keep progressing and keep Wowing us.
I look forward to your next endeavor.
RetPallyJil Aug 31st 2011 2:07AM
I liked some of the ideas, but the presentation was pretty choppy. If the font choices were intended to be kung fu-esque, then well done! If not, um ... try a different font/font color next time.
There are things to like in this video, but they really needed to be refined.
RetPallyJil Aug 31st 2011 2:10AM
Don't feel too down - it's always dangerous to ask for critiques :) Sort out the comments that came up most often, and work on them. It's the only way to improve.
damekage Aug 31st 2011 5:46PM
Yo, just thought I would put my own bit of critique out there.
Sony Vegas is a hard program I'm still learning it myself but there are a ton of handy help videos on youtube but avoid the twelve year olds lolz.
The story itself seperated from the video was compelling and interested me; however the choppy animation made it hard to focus on the story.
There are a number of us in the machinima community, and on fire mage radio who use Sony Vegas and can give you rendering tips.
Some people know more than others but if you pull from the different resources you will get a lot of help.