Criticism: Accepted

- What is the music? It’s good.
- I would fade “Omaha, Neb” out one second later than you do, but keep “Bushism” the way it is.
- When we first see the world trade center, we don’t comprehend that is what it is soon enough. I don’t get it until right before the bomb drops, because of the type of shots we see at first.
- the end (with the song) starts out well, but it needs to get more massive. This won’t be easy, but I think it needs to go from the current oil geysers and then cross-dissolve to an oil geyser being about 15 feet wide and 100 feet tall (over Bagdad), and cross dissolve again to being the size of a country and so tall it’s goes into space as we see it from outer space. That would be hard to do for a number of reasons, including because oil against a space backdrop doesn’t work since they’re both black. But money flying into space works.
Ok, and if that’s getting to be too much, I think you can get bigger than you do, but without reaching the scale of the planet itself.

Awesome, man... I'm really impressed with the improvements (though I'll always miss the original ending). I agree with Peter... now that you've introduced the cinematic/musical content, it needs to go a little farther. You have these elements in place, WTC, Baghdad, falling TV, and they're beautifully shot, but they don't really feel like they fit together at the end. Things need to reach a fever-pitch (maybe through faster cuts or some scene combining the elements) before the return to "get any sleep".

Hey -- Song is
Tiefschwarz-Warning Siren
I liked the build to it and the fact that it had someone yelling 'shake down.'

I'll have to think about the wtc stuff, as i really wanted a slow reveal (but i think I could certainly reveal things earlier than i did for you)

Also, to address some other thoughts, ive done a little location scouting:

Rig in bagdad
View image

World/space view (relative size of oil/cash can change)
View image

And finally, another route for tying things together - this would be a final scene (after the iraq stuff) that would revisit the woman with the kids in her beatdown apt with bush on the TV(possibly with a picture frame with a soldier in it)
View image

Anything else you got lemme have it:)
I think i will try these two ideas so far and get back to you guys

That band has a real assortment of music, but I found that song.
Yeah, just dive into those possibilities. If you do go back to the woman, you need to show a closeup at least once so we really know we've returned.

Hey John, nice work!
My main criticism is technical, in that (at least from what I was hearing) the audio levels are all over the place. It's generally really quiet, but also the volume changes here and there, and it's kind of distracting.

I think you did a great job on the animations for Bush and the woman, and the music was a nice touch.

Personally I like it better than the first version, I think it says a lot more this time around.

I share sentiments with Jamie on the first 'iteration' of the piece!

Great work overall, but if I stop a second and look at it as a music video (don’t shoot me!) there are still screws to be tightened especially as there obvious cues in the song that ‘demand’ to be recognized, eg. the countdown before the moment of impact.

It does feel empty in the beginning mainly because you made the decision to gate the background noise of the original source out, which is not helped by how noisy it was. I would have kept it as it is just as a nod to the original document, personally.

I know I’ve pestered you with this before, but I’m amazed at how much can be conveyed using the Machinima aesthetic. I wish I could do it at some point .. Inspiring!

I hear you both on the audio in the beginning. I think the beginning audio could use some work.

It was never my intention to take the 'context' away from the source audio, and i think i can bring it back out by just taking another pass at it - The way i filmed certain beginning parts dropped my levels pretty low and for some reason i didnt think to just lay the source audio back on top. I'll be on this.

Thanks you guys
(maya pointed out the same)

Nice job!

Some technical stuff:
The U.S. flag barely reads at that scale. I'd make it bigger so it reads from a higher bomb height.

I like the sublime blend between what look like small dust tornadoes and the oil geysers. At first it's difficult to discern what the hell they are, which creates a nice moment of ambiguity.

I agree with the audio critique so far.

The ending where George repeats "You get any sleep?" doesn't add much new. I like your idea of showing the woman again. I think a good way to drive the point home would be to dissolve to a series of other people across the country not getting any sleep either.

The end credits riff is good.

I think you should target better video quality by not using YouTube. On your site our ours, you can upload a Quicktime that uses the H264 compression and make it a bigger frame size and it will help so much.
I'll show you how to get quality as well as a reasonable download. YouTube is great if you get 20,000 hits in a day, but until then lets make our work look good.

Are there YouTube competitors that provide better quality? I'm sure there are, but I prefer posting to my own site...

I have watched this thing about a half-dozen times now and it continues to amaze me in ways that machinima rarely does. The nuance of facial expressions on Bush is uncanny -- really disturbingly spooky -- the disingenuous eyebrow knitting in particular. You have also captured a remarkable moment in this exchange between the president and an "ordinary" person and it is the understatement of the exchange -- her non-verbal response -- that gives it power. The first part of the video is pure bathos, which is a rare and underutilized rhetorical trope these days, but perfect for this exchange.

The turn to the music video segment is nicely executed and it bumps the sophistication and density of the piece up a notch -- it is exactly the kind of pleasure I want at this moment in the video. By juxtaposing a personal story of domestic economic hardship with the war, though, you ask viewers to make a big conceptual leap. The seductiveness of the music and the really elegant visuals make it easy for us to go there with you, but I keep wanting to understand the connection between the two. In the broadest sense of the overall stupidity of the Bush administration, I can imagine a vague connection, but the tagline -- "do you get any sleep" -- doesn't make the connection explicit and I'm left wondering if I'm missing something.

The two segments, individually are strong and great -- in juxtaposition they do something interesting, but it doesn't feel entirely under control to me. This is my only criticism of the piece, which I otherwise love. I think you are totally onto something here -- stylistically, it is unique and fantastic, visually it is totally compelling, the music is perfect -- conceptually, I just wish for a bit more clarity in terms of what meaning we should take away from the video -- is there a connection between these two that I am simply missing (I honestly sometimes miss things because I am very literal in my interpretations). If you were going to make a series (at least 3) of these, each of which enacted some jarring but thematically linked conceptual juxtaposition, then this would seem clearly to be a strategy -- a deliberate attempt to forge linkages between seemingly disparate elements.