I thought the video was fantastic. I couldn't agree more with everyone's thoughts on videos being cinematic and purposeful, because without at least ONE of those two things they are often disgustingly boring to watch. The camera work and angles and such were great. However you wanted criticism and I know I always enjoy well thought out constructive criticism on my own work, so I'm going to watch through it and type up some comments as i go.
-start-
The fact that the music changes at 10 seconds from the E2 productions intro to the actual video's intro messes the flow up a little bit. Especially since it's such a contrast to go from the (Linkin Park?) in the E2 intro to the beautiful cello music in the video itself. It's a very strange and unnatural transition.
You've already expressed your concern with the titles, which I think could have been solved by simply making them larger and using a cleaner font. It looks like the font has all kinds of crazy artifacts around it to "spice it up" so to speak which really end up making it harder to read.
Someone else already made a comment about the intro being too long and drawn out...I think if you look purely at the timing of it you might say it is but the cinematography and scenery and everything is very nice to look at so I didn't feel like it was long at all. I didn't for a second think to myself "alright, start already." However, that might be due to the fact that I had already read Allan's comment and was looking at it not so much as a card moves video but an artful short film involving cards. So I was concentrating on the shots instead of waiting for the moves.
As far as movies go I can be a real cliche hater, and throwing cards at the camera has really become one of those, but because you added the nice twirl and it was an interesting angle and you weren't being all serious and d+M'y about it, it worked.
I like the fact that you included the barbed wire in a bunch of shots...especially because it contrasts a LOT with the pretty green field and makes for a very interesting visual.
I LOVE the shot of the cut at 1:36...I'm always a sucker for nice moving camera and it follows the flow of the cut around VERY nicely.
1:52 is another VERY abrupt change in music...for a few reasons. Again because of the contrast in style, it goes from rock vocals and crunchy guitar to nice piano. Also because it fades out very rapidly in the middle of a line, and also because if you're not looking at the timeline for the video you don't expect it to be almost over at that point, so it doesn't feel like you're changing the music for the ending. I very much understand and agree with you wanting to use different music for your ending, but i think it would have worked better if you had chosen a different place to fade out the first song, or changed them at a place that was more evidently the end. Because there's a few more moves after it, it just feels like a very random cut, almost like you changed your mind while you were editing or something.
I like the use of the fence again at the end and the credits, as well as the repeated shot of your hand. The spinning sky is also cool, but it stops kind of abruptly. I think it would be in your best interests to fade to like two seconds of black and THEN end the video. The way it is right now it ends with a half faded out sky, which makes me feel like I was either cheated out of some more video, or you didn't finish editing it completely. It just feels like a sloppy way to end a very well made video.
-end-
That was longer than I expected, but I hope that it will be helpful for your future projects and filmmaking endeavors. I'm glad to see some other people making artistic and well done card-related videos. GREAT job overall
I'm excited to see more from you
