Check out my montage video

I just made this for fun, tell me what you think.

Weren't you the one who did the video with the skateboarder in the area with trees? If so, this new video is a lot better, shows substantial improvement in shot selection, progression and timing. And this time you had a pretty good eye for saving the best shots for last, starting around 1:10. Nice.

Some others may tell you to use more energetic music. Personally, I think music is a lot more fluid than A=B (eg. sports = loud Anglo-Saxon rock, party = hip-hop, etc.) and I like this piece just fine because it does contrast the fast-moving action.

My biggest note would be: How do the car shots relate to everything else? If you're trying to evoke life in L.A., you might need some more "behaviour" shots of people being, well, people. Rather than just pure motion and wide shots. Put a few friends together at a representative L.A. location (eg. Santa Monica beach, Hollywood Walk) and just grab B-roll. What about the skateboarders at the center of your piece -- how about showing them as more than just figures moving? What's behind the movements and stereotypical outfits? In this style you don't even need to use sync-sound or interviews, necessarily -- you can achieve great beauty by expressing their personality using pure visuals with music.

I might suggest using a lot fewer fades and flashes. Personally, I'd go with none at all. Anybody can put a flash between two shots and make the edit look okay. It's when you put them together with a straight cut that you can really see if they work. Overuse of transitions can make it hard to tell if you've really progressed as an editor, because dissolves make everything look "smooth" while "camera flashes" make everything staccato. So you're not actually seeing concepts like continuous/match action, Eisensteinian interaction, invisible rhythm etc.

Also, you have at least two "flash frames" (one to two frames of black between edits -- usually comes when you have "Snapping" turned off) in the video.


www.derekmok.com

This looks much better than the first skate boarding video! Get rid of the black frames- there's one before the last shot of the car in the intro, and another somewhere after the skateboarding starts.

Contrary to Derek, i like the flash cuts. The first one worked for me (the flash cut on the skateboarder chilling out before it cuts back to skating, then the scenic shots). Just don't do that too much. Also, what are you trying to get at with the flash cuts?

At 1:03, there's an isolated circular iris. It sticks out as it's the only shot with that effect. A bit of dirt at the bottom right corner of the screen at 0:29, but that could be okay.

Nice work on cutting to some scenic location shots (do you call that establishing shots?). That breaks the monotony of seeing skateboarding constantly. Are those supposed to establish skateboarding locations in LA?

Right after the intro, you could cut to the skateboarding shot a little later, so you cut between the moving car (moving screen right) and the skateboarder in the air (moving screen left). See if that works.

I like the music choice. Many would go for a more uptempo piece, but having a slower piece of music highlights the fluidity and rhythm of skateboarding.

Hmm... there seems to be something missing... You need to establish why the different sequences/location/topic and how they relate (eg between the car shots, the location cutaways and the skateboarding).

Having interviews in this one will seem cliche (like putting rock music on the soundtrack). Will be nicer if you can find a way build on the rhythm of the shots and relate it to thematic elements (eg. black and white high contrast shot on the sun, a shot of a skateboarder on the ground...). Or break it up into sections (to follow the passage of the music).