EPT
Part II: Art of Protoss, Pure Beauty
Part III: SoJ-Firehand, Tribute to Space Marines
Part IV: White-Ra, Fisheye, German Racewar
All the movies can be downloaded on their review page.
Index
White-Ra 10/10
Art of Protoss 9/10
D for Draco 8.5/10
Tribute to Space Marines 8.5/10
aFF 7.5/10
German Racewar 7/10
Pure Beauty 6.5/10
AsterriX 6/10
Fisheye 4.5/10
DiE 3/10
SoJ-Firehand 3/10
Ghost Alphas 1.5/10
Introduction
I have about eight gigabytes of nothing but highlight movies on my hard drive, and as a service to the TL community, I figure I'm going to go through and review most of them, with links to download as well. I'll try and focus on foreign movies, since most Korean movies pretty much feel the same.
A couple things I look for in a movie:
Skill: This is by far the most important. Nothing else matters if the plays in the movie aren't impressive. This includes both poor play (from either player) as well as the situation. So for example: watching an ultra chew through five marines isn't interesting (like in DiE); watching five marines take down an ultra is. It's cool to watch a small Protoss force overcome the odds and storm their way out of masses of hydra; it's not that cool to see it the other way around, especially not if Z is winning only because of reinforcements.
On drops: reaver/storm drops might be interesting if they do a lot of damage, but I don't want to see it over and over again in a movie. Everyone's done them at some point, so it's rarely impressive. (A nice twist on the storm drop scene came in Enemy, where the high templar simultaneously stormed the drones and the scourge chasing the still-moving shuttle.)
Style: This is somewhat similar to skill insofar as it relates to the quality of Starcraft play. Now, not every scene has to be a Pimpest Play. (Unless it's the Pimpest Plays movie.) But successful unorthodox play earns big bonus points. Sure, endless scenes of your bone-crushing gorilla TvP macro overwhelming zealots and dragoons might speak to your skill - but it's boring. Sair/goon PvT or metal TvZ or ghosts TvP is much more interesting and impressive to watch. (Admittedly, this makes it a little biased against certain matchups, since there just aren't that many impressive things to do in say, ZvP.)
Pacing: For some reason, lately, the introductions have been getting longer and longer, frequently combined with seizure-inducing "teaser" clips that proceed to take up most of the length of the movie. There's absolutely nothing wrong with such an introduction - and when done well, it's a big plus in my book - but if you're halfway through your movie and it's still teaser clips, well, there really isn't much actual footage is there?
Technical Quality: And abuse thereof. There are generally two schools of movies - Korean and foreign. Korean movies tend to be much more plain than their foreign counterparts, since they rely on VOD's for most of their content, while foreign movies use a great deal more special effects because they draw most of their footage from replays. So it's fine to have a movie without special effects - like a Korean movie - but good special effects are certainly very cool to look at. There is no need, however, to go overboard with special effects, to the point where it's difficult to watch the scene unfold. For the most part, movies that show subtle, restrained use of special effects tend to work better than movies heavily focused on special effects (though there are exceptions - notably NeO).
Music: Starcraft movie music has suffered from a great deal of cliche - dyo pioneered it with his trademark Scandinavian power metal (a la Nightwish or Sonata Arctica), and more recently Linkin Park (especially Faint and Numb/Encore) has been ubiquitous throughout Starcraft movies, especially Korean ones. But far more important than the actual choice of songs is how well the music is synced with the movie. An unorthodox soundtrack is nice (as in Art of Protoss, where the ambient techno lends a sort of laid-back feeling to the movie), but as long as the musical selection isn't downright offensive, even the most cliche of songs will do.
Misc.: Identifying who is who in a battle is very helpful, as is identifying the tournament. Zooming in on the "[known player] has left the game." is cliche, and should be avoided unless the player really is top-level.
Bonuses: Not necessary, but a welcome addition. Examples might include humorous outros (as in Art of Protoss), a clever set-up for the movie (as in D for Draco), extra-large scenes in movies built from replays, etc.
