Abyss

Source Video:
YouTube | MPLD (420x264p wmv download - 28.7MB)

As seen in the blogs name, this was made for the Music Video competition for 2010.
When the forum topic was created surrounding the comp, I didn’t enter ASAP. I wanted to see who would take part, before knowing or seeing my name on the list.
The comments and posts on the topic were rather interesting to read as it developed. Before entering, some assumed I’ll be taking part anyway, and CrAiGiSh have seen what I’ve been up to during the year leading up to the comp, and knew that I was stepping up my game.

I was told that MaTth1as would also be entering the comp, and I found out that he’s quite famous for making some kick ass Call of Duty 4 Frag Videos. Slightly alarmed, I did some research and saw his latest video at the time, called ”Incognitus”.
Pretty damn nice to be honest, but one thing came to mind after watching it. Although it was clear that he has some skill, making a frag video is not really the aim for what the comp is about, so that gave me some confidence.

The story:
CrAiGiSh (MPLD Music Video 2009’s 2nd place winner) and Dassie (MPLD Music Video 2009’s 3rd place winner) also entered the comp, and I knew that I should really get a head start in making my video to hopefully win again this year. The idea I had for my video this year also required a lot of time and planning, so I starting recording gaming footage since December 2009 when I was on leave from work, to use as much time I had to play as much as I could.

I got started roughly 3-4 weeks before the competition. First I had to find a song that could work with what I had in mind, and after the 10th song choice, I found something that could work well with the sound effects I wanted to incorporate with special effects for the intro sequence. Mixing the sounds and music together got me pretty excited. I didn’t play around with it too much coz I had to get started with the intro, and could always go back and edit some more if need be.
It took me around a week and a half, to about two weeks to complete the intro sequence. I wanted to get it right before starting with the rest of the video which consisted primarily of the main video. The intro was just something I really wanted to ad to make this video unique and apart from the other two I made in the past.

Finally when the intro sequence was done, I continued in After Effects (AE) for the rest of the video. After doing about ¼ of the main video, I found that AE wasn’t best suited for this specific task, and had to do it all over in a program that would handle the load of small clips. After installing Sony Vegas 8 again, it went smooth. Sony Vegas 8 has saved my ass yet again.
I compiled all the scenes with gaming footage, rendered cinematic movies and some photos here and there, again to fit the music as best I could for rhythmic impact.

When I got my intro and main sequence done I ran into the worst problem, that got me so stressed up like I haven’t experienced since college. After doing all that work, on the last day before MPLD, I ran into rendering issues! FFS!
Just my luck! Semi on schedule, things are looking good and now I can’t render the whole thing out! I might as well bail out and forfeit the whole thing! There’s no point to it now!

Anyway… after a while of troubleshooting and getting nowhere, I remembered that CrAiGiSh was using Sony Vegas 9. OK sweet! So I thought I’ll phone him and ask if he’s also experiencing any rendering issues. Indeed he was, but he had it worse.
He couldn’t even render past 4 seconds… Luckily I could get as far as half way, but still had trouble rendering the whole thing. After some more troubleshooting, I figured out a work-around that solved my problem and notified CrAiGiSh, but unfortunately that couldn’t help him with his problem…

Finally when my render was complete and everything was done, I felt like some touch ups were needed. After playing around with a few things I decided to scrap that idea, as I was just messing things up because it was already late at night and I was too tired to do a decent job at ironing out some things that were bothering me.

Arriving at MPLD after work the next day, I felt like a celebrity. Lol Don’t ask...
Maybe it was due to the fact that I’m the defending champ and everyone knew it, or just that I was proud of my new video.
Diacide asked for my video so he could preview it. Since a lot of 2009’s entries didn’t fit the bill, Diacide decided to preview this year’s entries to leave those out that he didn’t approve of.

The comp went down smoothly. All the entries were very impressive. Competition was tough, and the votes came close yet again!

The rules:
Mostly the same as before. It had to be between 3 and 4 minutes long.
The MPLD logo had to display somewhere, along with footage and/or photos of MPLD.
Footage and/or photos of games and/or game-play had to be in the video, and of course had to have a music track.

I really thought of making it in HD, but I knew the finished rendered file size would be quite big, and decided against it. Most of us in RSA don’t have the luxury of uncapped, and we pay per MB, so in the interest of keeping it small so that most ppl can download it without sacrificing precious bandwidth that cost hard earned money, I decided against HD.

Footage:
I recorded all of my live action footage at MPLD. A lot of the in-game footage was recorded during MPLD, and I recorded random live footage of fellow gamers playing games and competitions (such as the CoD4 live footage you will see in the video – all RSA pro gamers too, I have to add).
In-game recordings were made during previous MPLD’s, but most of it was done by myself during the remainder of my December holiday.

The final scores:
This year I had more confidence in winning, but as I said the entries were all good and watching them on the wall was nail biting.
The final results were as follows:
3rd: MaTth1as
2nd: Grim64
1st: Cleric

Well done to all who entered, and I hope to see such potential in the next comp that will probably be in 2011.

Video details:
All the in-game footage was played and recorded by me. Also all the live action footage at MPLD was recorded again by myself, the editing, compositing, 3D rendered intro sequence, special effects, all me.

You probably noticed that I threw in some other music videos, anime and other series clips in there too. The reason for that is simply because most of the gamers at MPLD are series and anime fans too, and for entertainment MPLD has projectors showing music videos on one of the walls at the venue.

The song used: Sick Puppies - Tri-Polar - You’re Going Down.
I’ve had plenty of songs listed that I gathered through the last year, specifically to make this 3rd video great! After playing with 9 other songs, this one stood out the best, and knew it would work very well for what I had planed.

Programs used:
I used Sony Vegas 8 and Adobe After Effects CS3 to make this video. Some Photoshop CS3 and Corel Draw X3 was also used to create all the individual elements seen in the animated MPLD logo.
Fraps 2.9.8 was used to record the game-play footage.

______

I hope you enjoyed the MPLD Music Video of 2010.
Please feel free to share your opinions, feedback or questions below.