On Your M-Arc - Video reviews

Welcome to my newest project: On Your M-Arc - Video reviews. I am always accepting requests, and always looking for feedback. Check the "coming soon" at the bottom of this thread to see how long of a wait there will be. I estimate 2-3 weeks per video.

You are free to request an "On Your M-Arc" video review which is a 5-10 minute audio review backed by video clips recorded from your arc and background music chosen to hopefully fit with the theme of the arc somehow.

You can also ask for a trailer for your arc which is about a 1 minute teaser for the arc based on the actual arc, the backstory, or even just the feel of the arc. I may decline the trailer for my own reasons.



AE Trailers

Signal: Noise #341194 by @The Cheshire Cat

Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City #351727 by @Tubbius

Small Fears #12885 by @Wall of Knight

Rise of the Blood Countess #3705 by @Elizabeth Bathory

A Hero in Need... Is a Friend Indeed! #375018 by @Wrong Number

Drakule vs. the Werewolf Bikers from Hell #340316 by @LaserJesus

Against the Wickerwork Khan #346904 by @Clave Dark 5

Fear and Loathing in Striga #350522 by @FredrikSvanberg

Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596 by @Wrong Number

Talos Vice #338380 by @PW

On Your M-Arc

On Your M-Arc #15 - The Howard Zaine Trilogy Author's Cut with special guest @Evangel

On Your M-Arc #14 - Fear Incarnate #522392 by @Solas

On Your M-Arc #13 - Kill or Cure #459581 Author's Cut with special guest @Samuraiko

On Your M-Arc #12 - Do It Yourself Doom Army Project #410418 Author's Cut with special guest @Twoflower

On Your M-Arc #11 - Crafter's Cafe #487283 Author's Cut with special guest @Backfire

On Your M-Arc #10: Small Fears #12285 by @Wall of Knight

On Your M-Arc #9: Operation Oedipus: Glory of Our Empire #372767 by @Arkhon von Evilsatan

On Your M-Arc #8: Storming Citadel #379488 by @MrCaptainMan

On Your M-Arc Q & A #1

On Your M-Arc #7: The Rise and Demise or Otherwise of Tekna Logik #402506 by @Coolio

On Your M-Arc #6: The Rogue Vahzilok #405340 by @Lone Superpower

On Your M-Arc #5: Fear and Loathing in Striga #350522 by @FredrikSvanberg

On Your M-Arc #4: Cole In Your Stocking #474611 by @Venture

On Your M-Arc #3: Talos Vice #338380 by @PW

On Your M-Arc #2: City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon #18775 by @Tubbius

On Your M-Arc #1: A Clone of Your Own? #453091 by @Bubbawheat

Whack a Mole #2711 by @Bubbawheat - a pre-On Your M-Arc video.

Coming Soon

Trailers - 2011 Player's Choice winners (4), Zamuel's Dhahabu series, Fear Incarnate

On Your M-Arc: Author's Cut - Wrong Number

More Q & A: Submit questions here

Thanks for watching!

Looks Cool, Bubba. *thumbsup*

I like the concept! When I get time, I'll check this out. Are you taking requests?

Oh, you are!

It's that time of year. . . that time for me to plug my Christmas arc again! Check out "City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon," arc 18775, if you like. It's 3 missions long, and you have to rescue a guy who claims he's Santa Claus from a vengeful Outcast and his minion, a Troll.

Offering up your arc before checking out the vids first? Very brave.

Very! Have at it!

It's like this: the arc is languishing in 4-star Heck. If you trash it in the review, it's probably not going to change opinions about it too much in terms of getting plays. If you love it or like it, then it might just put the arc back on the 5-star map.

I'm willing to take that gamble.

And here you go! I haven't recorded the audio review for it yet, but here's the playthrough of the arc. Hope to have the On Your M-Arc review of it up within the next couple days hopefully.

On Your M-Arc #2: City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon is now live! Check it out, leave a comment to tell me what you think, and submit your own arc to use for the next episode!

"The Christmas We Get" (#356477) is technically five acts, but two of those are very short. "Why We Fight" (#253990) is four, but the first one can be stealthed or cherry-picked from the air.

My others are five acts and fairly involved, except for "Psychophage", which is four acts and meant to kill you and/or irritate you enough to quit.

Hey Bubbawheat! It's nice to see that another reviewer has created a video review thread, especially considering how the last one went...

Anyway, I've watched both of your audio commentary reviews, and it seems you're off to a strong start in this project! But I'm sure you're looking for more in-depth feedback than that, so I'll list what I thought were the positives first:

- First of all, I'm glad that the resolution of the videos are high enough that the viewers can read all of the text in the arc. After viewing many CoH videos which were little more than a sea of pixels with music edited in, this was a welcome surprise.

- Speaking of editing, I like many of the "technical" aspects of the two reviews I watched. The segways from one scene to the next were smooth and felt natural, rather than the sudden, jagged jump-cuts I've seen in many other similar videos. I also found the "Benny Hill" scene in the first review to be well done.

- Finally, I liked the use of emotes your characters displayed throughout the two reviews, which I think will provide a nice "extra touch" to this project.

However, I do have some suggestions which I think might help your reviews a bit. As always, these are only suggestions, so feel free to take or leave whatever you want from them; it's your project!

- First of all, while I think your reviews begin fairly well (though I wonder why you didn't display the AE information at the start of the second arc like you did at the start of the first?), they tend to end kind of abruptly. While your second review did have some "final thoughts" (of sorts) at the end, it still felt kind of rushed (to me, at least). Perhaps it might be worth adding a minute or two at the end of the arc to get your overall impression of the arc? Though, it might be a bit boring if your character just stood around in the AE building during the ending commentary... maybe play some clips of the arc to help accentuate your points? For example, if you felt that an arc had a boss which was too difficult for the level range, show your character fighting/dying to the boss as you discuss it; or, if you felt like an arc had hard-to-find objectives in a large outdoor map, show a sped-up video of your character searching everywhere for said objectives.

- Also, it might be interesting if you spent some time in your reviews focusing on any custom characters or custom groups which appear. While you haven't reviewed an arc with a custom group in this project yet, my suggestion also applies to custom enemies / allies. Something as simple as showing the enemy description on the screen for several seconds would be fine, but getting your opinion on well-done (or poorly done) characters or groups would go a long way towards helping the creator of the arc, and making your reviews feel more detailed.

In any case, I look forward to more of your video reviews; it's certainly a nice change of pace from the usual text reviews we have in this section of the forum! If you need more arcs to review, I could probably suggest some of mine. While I would like to see you do a video review of "The Icari", you've already reviewed it, and it's longer than the 3-arc limitation you've placed in this thread.

However, my "Galactic Protectorate" arcs are always open to feedback, and they all fit the criteria for this arc! If you want to run all of them, or just one, I'd definitely appreciate being involved in this project. They're designed for Level 40-50 characters (All Alignments; the arcs are all labeled "Neutral"), though I would suggest turning down the difficulty from what you've been running in your reviews thusfar, as all of the enemy groups who appear in the arcs can be quite challenging. Also, while the arcs are meant to be more or less standalone, there is an overarching plot, which would probably be best understood if you played them in numerical order (however many you decide to run).

Good luck with your project, Bubbawheat!

Like the video clips you went with; they do indeed sum up the major objectives in the missions. It'll be interesting to see what audio you record to go with it.

With apologies to Venture and Mirror Man (thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate it), I picked my next subject because I'm excited to do it, and that's what's important. Here's a hint:

And the newest On Your M-Arc is live! Talos Vice. One thing I'd like to hear about for the comments: Should I remove the mission dialogs from the commentary version of the videos? Well, at least shorten them down to just a few seconds to get a feeling for how much text and what kind of format they're in? And of course I would leave them full length on the "playthrough"s for those that might want to actually read through the mission text on the video.

Anyway, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BjSpk71R1k

I liked it quite a bit, though obviously I'm totally biased. I especially liked the opening montage with the title card and Miami Vice theme. The poses and animations your character did while exploring the missions were quite fun, too. Regarding your specific question, I suspect you could trim down the presentation of the mission briefings in your video run-through, just giving the gist of each mission in voice-over, as you've been doing.

I'd love to see one of these for Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society or A Hero in Need...is a Friend Indeed!, but it's a lot to ask doing a 5 mission arc especially since they are both holding at 5 stars. If you get no other people wanting you to do their arcs and feel like doing one of these, great, otherwise I will defer to someone that is more in need of advertising.


WN

Very cool....and very nice voice!

I really like the idea of a promo. The first idea that pops in my mind is a newsreel style promo for Golden Age Secrets of the Paragon Society.


WN

I like it! It sounds like an interesting challenge, and totally doable with the tools I have, I think. Wonder if I should make an attempt at a newsreel guy voice or not...

Ok, I did a quick test video, let me know what things you like and anything you don't. Biggest question: do you prefer sepia or black and white? Included both, plus a quick intro to set the mood. Made my character look like a young Firecracker Kid for a quick bit of intro for the trailer. I think I'm shooting for around 2-3 mins or so.

Golden Age Secret Test Footage (video deleted)

Awesome, both look better than I thought they would though the second (black and white) clip looks more 1940's so it's imo the better of the two. The Sepia looks too old.
It looks pretty great.

WN

Updated test footage(video deleted). The stuff we shot today, all put together with black and white and titles.

Review as request for your TALOS VICE opening:

1) Turn off the HUD - I think you can assign it via keymapping, so especially during scenery or non-combat shots, turn it off so it's not in the way. (That's the number one killer for me.)
2) Zoom in a bit more - it's a natural inclination to film at the same distance you normally play at, but it makes the view much smaller. Not so much a problem when you're filming scenery, but characters you need to get a bit closer to.
3) You're good at varying the camera angles, which is great - again, zoom in to take advantage of that. Practice swinging the camera around during combat (like whaling on hellions in the Atlas Park parking lot) so it gets to be a bit more natural and smoother as you do it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society trailer is live. Now time to pick one of Venture's arcs for the next actual "On Your M-Arc".