Sat Mar 08, 2014 10:01 pm
Ghassan,
Thanks for sharing! Let me first say that it was a pleasure to see these Arabic-language videos. Living in the USA, it's not something I see everyday.
You asked for a response, and so I will offer mine. In the first video, I was interested to see how the visual narrative would play out. Since I don't understand Arabic, I'm 100% dependent on the visual imagery (and the music that underlies the story and the visuals). From that vantage point, I felt that the cuts between the story and the band did not have a visual rhythm, meaning that the cuts to the desert did not seem to conform to what I was expecting in terms of visual "beats". I think that if the desert scenes had just a little more time, and more completely established something I could lock on to, I could imagine the story even without the words.
In the second video, I liked the color contrast of the two environments--the blue where the man lives and the red where the woman dances. But I also somehow felt that the grading of the two scenes were too independent, one from another. Both grades looked very good, but they looked unintentionally different. The blue-green windows in the dance environment looked like they *might* relate to the blue environment of the man. The red Jack of Hearts (why the Jack, not the Queen?) related to the dancer's red environment, but the red of the heart suit and the red of the tiles didn't quite connect. Similarly, there's a red rose on the wall in the man's blue environment, but it is "blued-out" instead of highlighting the red. Again, without any language skills, I can only rely on my eyes and the music to tell me what's happening.
I watched both videos in 1440p on my 27" LED Cinema Screen. At that resolution, and at my normal sitting distance, the closeups felt way too close-up. And the cuts seemed way too fast. There's a *huge* amount of visual information in this HD format, and quick cuts leave me disoriented. When I watch on a much smaller window, they don't bother me at all, because my eyes can lock on to a small target and watch it change. But when the format is large--immersive--those quick cuts are too quick.
I think that with video, we are starting to get into the territory that audio has had to deal with for a long time, which is to figure out how to master for a super-wide range of playback systems, from headphones to car stereos to home stereos to hi-fi systems. Audio engineers make sure that bass energy is controlled so that something that sounds good on headphones doesn't blow a woofer on a hi-fi system, etc. I think that as we enter the world beyond 1080p, we need to give consideration to how the eye works across both really large screens close up (like video monitors) and more distant screens.
Anyway, thanks for posting.
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