Agree with everything said.UrinStein wrote:I must say I find all these "best videos" so far rather... meh.
While I can see why you like those videos, I always wonder what those "fragmovies" are actually about.
I must say those people have great creativity and editing skills and it's cool to watch those things in action too. But all the wub-wub, all the fast forwarding (or even skipping ahead) and the glitch effects just take away from the gameplay. What's a frag worth when I only see what happened half a second before and then the actual hit is in slow-mo? I get no real feel for anything that's happening on screen.
If someone were to ask me for a video introducing them to Shootmania, the one by killaProD would be a very good choice. It shows some cool action, it's got style, different modes, all that jazz. But as a Shootmania player? Pleaaaase... don't tease me killa, just show me the god damn rocket hit.
That's why I like caspa's fragmovie so much. He had the balls to just put some really really nice Elite rounds together with no editing at all. It's so much more impressing to actually see him play. The people that made the videos you guys posted, they could probably take a replay of an Elite map 3 bots vs 3 bots and make it look cool. That's impressive from a video making standpoint for sure, but that's not the point for me in a skill based, competitive game like SM is.
I don't mean to say that I don't like editing in fragmovies at all. But if you're gonna make a fragmovie, I would expect you to use your editing skills to improve on the frags and not destroy them.
Here's a Royal-Fragmovie by Egophargus, which is probably even better than caspa's.That video almost speaks with you, to help you enjoy the frags.
Here are two examples of what I mean:
5:24: The slow-mo and the music effect tell you: "Here, look at that.", then it goes on normally showing you the hit in first person, and then again from another angle.
4:05: Here it shows you how he shoots the nucleus and then the slow-mo kicks in and says: "Wait right there! First the nuc hits and theeen...", he double taps the other guy in real time again.
The video helps you understand the context of the frags, as some of them get a bit unclear from first person. That's something that isn't so much necessary in Elite replays, as everything that happens, happens in real time, and always involves the attacker, in whose view we are wathing most of the time anyway. Therefore a video like caspa's doesn't require editing.
But in my opinion a lot of Elite "fragmovies" have the habit of taking away all context to any frag that they wanna "show". Dignity is a good example. It just cuts directly to the millisecond before the shot and you only see people vanish all the time. I like the style of the Dignity video, the custom health bar, the custom kill feed and those other little touches. I just dont see how this video is supposed to be a frag movie, when there's almost no untouched gameplay, making the replay feel all alien.
I write in the SM media section, "The Real Shootmania" has more editing than fragging in it, and though it is entertaining, theres way too much edit ruining it, not every rail hit need a close up action replay!
Ego, Caspa and kryw's movies have the "raw" play of the game in them.
Caspa and kryw's frag movies are great because they take time to show the positioning moves he did to expose the players and get the frag, not just the rail hit itself. Good anticipation / positioning moves are just as impressive as great aim if you know something about Elite.
Interesting enough, me and Ego were talking about this on steam not so long ago, about how "raw" frag movies are better, and how far too many SM frag movies use too much editing which ruins the frags.
