Looking for feedback on a trailer

[Geckos]

We have recently completed a trailer for Jacob's Island.
I would like to get some honest feedback on what you feel was successful/unsuccessful about it.
It is 2 minutes and 29 seconds long.

Thank you in advance! _____ Jacob's Island Trailer ______

[Boomsickle]

If i was going to be anal about it, i would say the mic sounds muffled. The pace is slow. At 1:45 he uses the word "Imagined" but the subtitles use "Expected" and all images should be panned. Environments need polishing.

The premise sounds interesting. The art looks good and over all makes me want to know how she's the only one who survived and all that.

Those are my honest opinions after watching it for the first time and ounce. Hope it helps and good luck~ Looking forward to the kickstarter page.

[myapple]

I quite like the trailer visually, but the voice really threw me off. I couldn't take the narrator seriously until about 4/5 way through the video. It seemed like he was trying just a tad too hard to push the 'epic voice' sort of thing. Also, I feel the script is either too complicated or he's reading it too fast and not enunciating enough (and the mic quality doesn't help a lot either); some of the sentences don't seem natural. For example, at the beginning the part about the humans having not walked their earth for a thousand years makes sense... but then immediately after the bit with the "aforementioned humans" is very odd. Something like 'what became of the humans has remained a mystery' would flow much better, imo. Other parts like 'they were buy a fragment of our mythology' and 'I am now an archmage and my students have made a discovery' also don't seem to flow the way that speech should.
I get that maybe the script was meant to sound kind of otherworldly, but still.

I'm assuming you aren't finished yet and that the art work is going to get cleaned up a bit, so I won't comment on that... I did really love the progression of the pieces though. Despite the odd narration, the pictures served the purpose of telling the story quite well (I got a little chill with the first picture of Kenna!).

[arachni42]

Yeah, as others mentioned, most of the artwork is rough around the edges. I love the palettes, though! The movement and blending of the images together is also well-done.

The narrator is using a *very* overdramatic; at the beginning he sounds downright sarcastic. By the end, he's lost some steam, but that works in his favor because his voice sounds slightly more serious. It's hard to understand what's being said because of the quality of the recording -- it doesn't seem to do well with those higher frequencies that you need to hear consonants well. Another contributing factor is that the narrator often starts off a line strongly, but by the end of the line gets too quite. Some dynamics are certainly desired, but in this case it's more of an unevenness. Too much contrast between volumes. The narrator should do what he can to enunciate those consonants.

Question: is this the introduction to the story, or a trailer to get people interested? For a trailer, the pace is okay at first, but around "their decline" is starts to lull. If it's the introduction, it makes sense to give the historical background as a narrative... but as a trailer, I begin to wonder, "Ok, they were great and then something happened, but why do I care? What is the story?" Some bits aren't relevant for a trailer, like how long it took for another race to appear. Some are, like leaving the magic, but that gets lost in the shuffle because when it's mentioned, we don't know how it's relevant yet. It picks up again when the narrator/gargoyle starts talking about his student. At that point I became interested again, because it felt like we were getting to the meat of the premise.

The speech itself probably could be written in a little less info-dumpy manner, but I think just fixing the muddled sound and the pacing will go a long way. Good luck!

[Geckos]

Awesome. I will go back into the video and try to pick up the pace, polish the images more and try out a different voice. Thank you all for your feedback!

[Endorphin]

Agree with the voice thing.
Hmm... You could also try overlaying some stuff (other art or moving textures, but maybe I just made too many AMVs in my life) so that it seems more interesting to look at, since while the art is pretty, it gets boring just staring at it slowly zooming.
Alternately you could make some animations (blowing hair, moving clouds, these things) so that it seems less like a diashow where somebody speaks but an actual movie/trailer.

But it looks really nice so far, good work. :>

- En.

[Geckos]

Agree with the voice thing.
Hmm... You could also try overlaying some stuff (other art or moving textures, but maybe I just made too many AMVs in my life) so that it seems more interesting to look at, since while the art is pretty, it gets boring just staring at it slowly zooming.
Alternately you could make some animations (blowing hair, moving clouds, these things) so that it seems less like a diashow where somebody speaks but an actual movie/trailer.

But it looks really nice so far, good work. :>

- En.

If I was better with movie making I would try to put more movement in there. May try the hair thing. Thanks for your feedback!