RSMVs - Thoughts on Restoring RSMVs

So if you're reading this chances are you've read my challenge on my blog post for RSMV makers. Now let me explain my reasoning a bit...

I was driving to work earlier today listening to a CD I made for my sister as a Christmas gift. I made her like 15 mixed CDs, I picked one with some of my all-time favorite songs that I haven't listened to in a while.

One song in particular got me thinking. It was Thanks for the Memories - Fallout Boy. A spectacular song, which immediately upon hearing I'd feel the desire to make a video to. It's just one of those songs. What was the first thought that turned me away from it?

"There's already a popular video to it. Fantikerz's."

I thought a while on how it sucks that he's already done it, although I still to this day love his video for it. It means that making another video to it will result in comparison and stuff like that. Yuck.

Then I thought more on the issue about recent RSMVs, which I've almost completely lost interest in lately. At any given week I usually have 5+ new or incomplete RSMVs in my subscription box, and I "maybe" watch one of them. I wanted to figure out why it is that I don't bother watching them.

Personally I'm not a big fan of how effects are being used nowadays for one. They seem completely overdone and overwhelming for any and every song it seems, like it's either GO BIG OR GO HOME! mentality. I've never agreed to that idea. The most popular videos are so far from what the current standards are today, and people still like them. Proof to me of this was when Chaoshero uploaded her Never Take Us Alive RSMV. Simple editing compared to the trend at the time. It was well-timed flashes, good panning and cropping, and emote syncing. That was about it, and it turned out marvelously.

But that alone wasn't the reason. Though I don't like most of the editing, some I still do. The songs + editing work well together. Examples are Blow by Johnnyguttz and Don't Stop by RedNBlue.

So eventually I figured out it was the songs. Good songs with even adequate editing to me have been awesome. I remember the first RSMV I saw of Whispers in the Dark. The editing was nothing special, but I loved the video for the song. I loved Blow Me Away because I knew the song and loved it. I loved Diary of Jane because I knew the song and loved it. I loved Thanks for the Memories because I knew the song and I loved it. I loved Comatose because I knew the song and I loved it.

In MOST of my all-time favorite videos, I knew the song incredibly well before it was made, as did most of the community. And if they didn't, they still fell for the song once they heard it.

So now I realize that more than anything, song choice is still the absolute biggest factor in an RSMV, period.

Here's my example as something of a proof.

Imagine I put a poll up for two different videos I may do. The winning choice is gauranteed a video.

The choices are as follows:

1) Emery - Edge of the World
or
2) Skillet - Whispers in the Dark

Even though Edge of the World is a decent song (though I assume most won't know it), would you not predict Whispers in the Dark would win the vote by a longshot, and probably be eager to see it yourself? I mean it's an amazing song, and even the slight chance that someone might absolutely nail the video for it is worth taking that shot.

Then I got to some video makers that I personally admire, people like AncientTales or Boomertwins. I would absolutely DIE to see them do a video to a song like Thanks for the Memories by Fallout Boy. The new skill editing skills mixed with classic songs we all know and love would be AWESOME, would it not? Sure it's been done before. I DON'T CARE anymore. It'd be a great video, I would be gauranteed to watch it, and unless it's a pure copy of the other, I would probably adore it.

So I put the list up on my channel of songs with something along the lines of old videos now, with old editing standards, that I'd love to see redone in today's age. Some are ones I did. Some are ones that have millions of views. Others are incredibly popular but unfinished. ALL of them are fantastic songs that have been very successful as videos.

Will this make things more interesting and maybe refresh the community or something? Naturally it's hard to tell, since these are just my thoughts. I just know it'll definitely get me interested again, and I have a hunch that others would feel the same.

Luckybucket as of March 23, 2010

So I'm currently looking at a total level of 2228, and just under 220m total experience, with my lowest skill being Herblore at 82, followed by Prayer at 84. In total, I have 8 skills under 90, 16 at or above, with 10 level 99s, and 2 levels from my 11th.

I've been getting into RS very heavily lately, and getting tons of exp. My main goals have been getting 99 Defence via Slayer, and 99 Construction largely from the bonus exp weekend. In those two, I'm at 95 Defence (134 Combat), and 97 Construction. With Defence, I can easily get around 50-70k exp/hour, which equates to around 13-17k exp in Slayer. Not a whole lot, but good enough for now. Besides, that's all estimates. I haven't actually clocked any real gains.

Right now though, my main focus is on 99 Construction, being that I'm so close. When I first considered getting 99 was when I bought a Saradomin Godsword and was about a week from the Bonus Exp weekend. The more I thought about the weekend, the more I realized I had nothing planned, and was about to pass up a tremendous opportunity for extra EXP and saved money. So I did calculations on a few different skills, and found out that I had just enough for 99 Construction on the weekend with the exp rates they provided (underestimating for caution). So I bought 15k Mahogany Planks and 50k Teaks, costing me 74m about at the time, and saving 3m more to pay my butler.

When I logged in for the weekend, I quickly realized the exp rates were different, and because of that, it threw off my plans. I still went from level 85 to around 94 or 95 in the weekend, getting near 6m exp, and getting 99 from the miscalculations is only an extra 10m or so, which I can live with. I used up all my Mahogany Planks first to get the most gain and have been using Teaks for Teak Wardrobes since. People have told me that I should go with Oak Doors and such, however I clocked 300k/hr doing those from prior tests, while I can get around 412k/hr doing teaks, and from when I bought them, the exp/gp ratio between Oaks and Planks were basically identical. So I'd rather get it a bit faster with Teaks.

Now although it is fast exp, that hour of training is pure hell. It's nonstop clicking, and even when I recorded 412k/hr, it was actually 30 mins of training doubled, since I couldn't stand doing an hour straight at the time. So although I'm only about 2m from 99 (5 hours at my rate), it'll take me a while since the training thus far has drained my focus and willpower lol.

Afterwards, I'm looking at Range a bit. I know 99 via chins would cost me around 30-40m, but with that I could also gain a bit of Defence exp (if there's the option, if not it's still good exp). Again from prior tests, I get around 200-250k exp/hr, which isn't bad, but not incredible either. I'd rather do Woodcutting (which is a bit closer and doesn't cost a dime, with 85k/hr speed), but the last couple days I've been looking at RSMVs again, and realized that the Range emote would be a great tool to have at my disposal for some clips.

While on the topic of videos, I'm still about halfway through my current one. I've put it off to focus on skilling for a bit, and after a couple capes, I want to try to finish it up considering I've been getting "R.I.P. Lucky" comments, and people talking about how all the old RSMV makers have quit, while I haven't.

One thing that's turned me away from vids for a while has been looking for the perfect song of sorts, and knowing the perfect emotes to go with it. But after watching a few recently and closely thinking about it, I realized... The emotes hardly matter lol. I watched a whole RSMV where no emote went with the line, yet I loved the video because I liked the song and the video flowed with it nicely; and because of that, I'm starting to care less about making a RSMV that people will call the best ever, and more about simply creating one that I know is fun and people will enjoy, even if they don't enjoy it more than some other.

I watched a recent vid for Crawling in the Dark, and I realized how much I still like the song, and remembered my prior short for it, and thought about how much I've learned since then. So.... although I'm far from certain on any commitments towards it, I am considering doing an RSMV to it.

The only downfall to any thoughts on RSMVs is that currently my graphics card is bust, and my monitor won't display with it in. So I need to work out that problem first. Afterwards I need to sort out all my current video files and brainstorm for a new vid.

Well, I think I've typed enough for one entry. There's a lot of things on my mind which I may post about later. For now though, that's what I'm up to.

Oh, on a final note, I rejoined the clan I was with years ago, before I started making videos: The Clueless Adventurers. It's a skilling clan and all levels are allowed, so long as they can fulfill the activity requirements. If anyone is interested in joining, Google "The Clueless Adventurers", go to the first link, go to the boards, enter the Recruitment section, and read how to apply and what requirements there are for activity. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Lastly, if you have any good, 'original' song suggestions that are in the 'ROCK' genre, please let me know. Looking for some new stuff.

Luckybucket as of February 6, 2010

http://runetracker.org/track-luckybucket,0,2

Above is a link to my skill gains in the past month. You can check my profile on there at any time to see what I'm up to.

So recently I've been hitting a few different skills, switching on and off basically just focusing on gaining quick levels. I've been very jealous and somewhat frustrated that all my friends are now passing my total level, which I've always had a lot of pride in, so I'm trying to catch back up to them and put some distance between us again.

So basically my plan to accomplishing that is going for another minimum level goal: First 85, then 90. Currently I have the follow skills and levels for that goal:

86 Mining
82 Smithing
82 Fishing
84 Farming
81 Summoning
88 Slayer
81 Herblore
86 Agility
83 Prayer
85 Construction

So it's still quite a ways from either of the goals, since most of my skills under 90 are also under 85, plus a lot of the skills are either really slow (Fishing, Mining, Slayer) or really expensive (Herblore, Construction, Prayer). I don't have a real plan to go about getting 85+ or 90+, and instead am just going to switch between them as I please to avoid boredom. For the expensive skills, I'm going to craft Natures via Graahks, which is about 1m profit per hour, and I already have 50k Pure Ess saved for when I need it. I've used about 20m so far on Construction and Farming, so I don't have a whole lot left to spend, but I'm using what I can to get levels quickly.

As for 99s, I have a few thoughts on them. First, there's 99 Defence. I want to get it so I have all the melee skills at 99, and only have Range, Prayer and Summoning left. Then there's Range, which like the previous would be 1 step closer to having all the combat skills done. It's about 30-35m with Red Chinchompas, but for it's speed I find it very worthwhile. Aside from those two, I've been toying with the idea of 99 Woodcutting, as well as 99 Smithing. Now from my previous calculations with things like Steel Plates, or Even Iron Plates, 99 Smithing is crazy expensive. However, I forced myself to stop only considering the fast methods, and did a price calculation via Gold Smelting. It came out to around 60m for all the ores, and 40m if I sold all the bars afterwards. The experience rate is around 50-60k/hr. Now, considering how rare and respected Smithing is to see, that's a very very good deal. It's also a fantastic AFK skill, allowing me to do my homework while training. So although I'm not 100% motivated to get 99 Smithing, I am heavily considering it.

To rap things up, I have a few more analysis's to post, including Smithing and Herblore. I also want to update my Freewebs site again, considering it's been so long, and I might be able to upload my Excel files there, so that it's not just 1 per blog entry, and can be accessed easier. Because of my semi-OCD nature though, I'd have to update the entire thing as well, meaning new text art, banner, etc etc. =( And I'm rather crunched for the time to do all that, so it's only a slight possibility.

That's about it for this skill update. Thanks for reading.

Skill Update #2

Almost forgot about these entries. I guess now would be a good time to give a run down on what I've been up to.

On New Years Day, I got myself 99 Hitpoints, which honestly just took a few days at Soul Wars to get the remaining 800k experience or so.

When considering my next 99, I took a look at Magic, knowing that the cost for 99 was relatively low, and with Plank Make, it wouldn't take long to get. My calculations showed that it'd be around 26m net loss from 90 to 99, so I bought as many logs and runes as I could, and started at it.

It took approximately 9 to 10 days from 90 to 99 with Plank Make, and I managed to get 5.3m experience during one week, and 1.1m in a day during that time. Nomad's Requiem was a nice little boost, with the 490k Magic experience I got from the zeal, as well as the 450k reward from Blood Runs Deep.

It was somewhat difficult to time how fast Plank Make was due to distractions, considering you have to click and cast the spell on each log, much like alching. However, I ended up logging my experience gains over a 10 minute interval, 20 minute, 30 minute, and 1 hour, and with those measurements, each one gave a solid estimate of around 160k experience per hour with Plank Make. With the current cost of supplies, it's a net loss of 242gp per cast, and considering it yields 90 experience per cast, it's approximately 2.69gp/exp. Very good method for 99, considering it's much faster than alching, and even though alching is cheaper in supplies (depending on what you alch), the time saved through Plank Make allows you to use your ideal money making method to earn that lost wealth back.

After getting 99 Magic, I spent an entire day finishing all the quests I had left, which was 10 in total. Here they are:

The Chosen Commander
The Curse of Arrav
Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf
Fur 'n' Seek
Hunt for Red Raktuber
Missing My Mummy
Myths of the White Lands
The Tale of the Muspah
The Temple at Senntisten
Within the Light

My favorite ones were The Chosen Commander, Curse of Arrav, and The Temple at Senntisten. Chosen Commander had a great storyline and cutscenes, Curse of Arrav had a very cool base infiltration (which I might use in RSMVs later on), and The Temple at Senntisten gave more info. on Zaros, as well as giving me some sweet Curses, which are the newer set of prayers focused on offense instead of defense.

Since then, I've been freelancing a bit, testing out a few different skills and training methods. I've tried World 84 Living Rock Caverns for mining, which is around 40-50k exp/hr, and an okay profit. It's still boring though. I've also tried the Gnome Agility Course using Summer Pies, which is also around 40-50k exp/hour. I'm almost 85, where I wouldn't have to use the pies anymore to complete the course. I've also been Runecrafting a bit to get some money back from Magic, trying to test the differences between crafting through the Abyss with a Lurker and using a Graahk. My final conclusion is that Graahks OWN Lurkers, although I initially thought otherwise. I've gotten a lot faster at banking recently. My previous best at Graahks was 4.4k nats during one summon, and when I managed 3.7k with a Lurker, the nats/minute was actually higher with the Lurker. However, when I tried Graahks, I managed to set a new record at 5.1k nats in one hour, therefore disproving my initial belief that Lurkers were better.'

As for my plans, I'm currently shooting for 85 Agility, and am around 40k experience away as I write this. Afterwords I'll probably head back to Runecrafting and try to get a bit more money. I'm looking towards getting 99 Range with Chinchompas, since it'd be so fast, and knock out 1 more combat skill. Otherwise, I might do some Power Slaying to raise my Defence level, which is a petty 89. I'm trying to catch up to a few friends in my total level, considering I've been passed due to my absence from Runescape as of late, and I'm taking any fast levels I can get my hands on. So as for what I'll end up deciding on, I have no idea, but my best guess will be 99 Range, though I'm still hesitant on losing 31m+ from it.