Keat - Halo Reach Montage 5

Hey everyone, hopefully we're past this weekends drama and are ready to enjoy some real halo gameplay. This is my 5th reach montage edited by DoubleAA, you should sub to this guy btw. This is an entry in the 2016 montage comp. If you have any question I'd prefer if you leave them on the video itself since I frequent youtube more often, however, I will be checking in on them here as well. In this montage I wanted to achieve variety, originality, quality, and quantity or VOQQ, which I didn't feel any of my past tages managed to do more than 2 of those at once. DoubleAA did a great job editing, and although the finishing 3 clips aren't the best, I wanted them included because they were all special to me in their own way, or we just had a mix-up and Aaron didn't get the other couple main clips I had and so they went in the credits :P

You're obviously very skilled, bud, I just wish I was able to watch more of the footage though. It was a bit over edited for my taste but there's no denying the editor did a great job of keeping that intensity throughout. It's certainly no easy feat especially considering the length of the video.

I hope you do well in the comp., man. Thanks for sharing, Keat.

P.S. I cannot unsee Papyrus when reading your name. That fuckin' font, lol.

Amazing variety for a 2016 Reach montage, I imagine it'll be in the top 3 Reach tages in the competition for sure - should be a good contender! Oh and great job on the edit too, Aaron.
I don't usually watch Reach montages, but I was actually looking forward to this. Your gameplay is disgusting.
Still amazing even on the third watch.
Thought I'd leave my comments here as well. Fantastic montage overall. Loved the editing and the clip variety was a very welcome change for Reach as well. Nicely done.
Yeah, really ambitious editing from DoubleAA, and Keat nailed his goals with the gameplay. This is a really solid entry.
sick tage keat
Haven't watched yet but I bet it's shit. Nothing can beat your m3 ;)

 Already watched it about 7-8 times. It seems to me that there wasn't a quality reach tage in years. I've been waiting for this tage so long and you didn't disappoint me. This was such an awesome video. Aaron did a fantastic job on the edit. I loved that animation with the tree and some other things like the transition at 3:05 were also pretty neat. The soundtrack featured some pretty good songs but i was missing the typical "DoubleAA-feeling" in the beginning. Then came the third song and i was dancing like a child again hahaha. That opening was so fukin funky. I have to agree a little bit with B. There were some moments where i would have preferred to watch the clip in a more rawer way (Examples: 2:18, 3:54, 4:42, 6:05). I don't think it's overedited, it's just Aaron's style. Maybe you could upload a raw version of the tage. Speaking of your gameplay: there were truly some awesome and unique clips. My favourites were the Bcreek Ns over x into spawn tac x, the ffa sticky jaro, the uncaged jaro, the prisoners tast at 9:50 (those noscopes were really hard to hit and you did it b2b WTF) and of course the fkin rico over exterm (i can't imagine how many exterms you ruined just to get this clip hahaha). The map variety was on a really high level which is hard to achieve if you think of the actual reach mm population. Overall amazing video guys. Keat, i know you were grinding a long time for these clips so congrats for finally finishing this project. I hope this isn't your last.

PS: Why does every main reach tage edited by aaron start with a hang 'em high clip? hahaha

Woah! Don't think I've enjoyed a reach montage this much since Diesel's M2.  As expected, this had some truly amazing plays. Edit was nicely executed and it flowed well with the music, and the theater work was beautiful. Great job, guys! 
The problem with a 15+ minute montage is people are going to nit pick a bit. The gameplay was very solid. But I thought if you took out the people standing still, the multiple rocket kills and the chokes/deaths at the end of the clips, this would of been something really amazing. Reach montages always seem very vanilla and get pretty stale for me. But I liked that you had a lof sticks in your multis and a few ricochet snipes to keep it interesting. But less "filler" clips would've really put this montage over the edge for me personally. Still a great montage and the editing was well done. Just trying to provide some constructive criticism for you.

The problem with a 15+ minute montage is people are going to nit pick a bit. The gameplay was very solid. But I thought if you took out the people standing still, the multiple rocket kills and the chokes/deaths at the end of the clips, this would of been something really amazing. Reach montages always seem very vanilla and get pretty stale for me. But I liked that you had a lof sticks in your multis and a few ricochet snipes to keep it interesting. But less "filler" clips would've really put this montage over the edge for me personally.

This is how I felt pretty much. Still, I watched the entire thing and enjoyed it enough.

Biggest complaint I have is the god awful intro text + particle effect, that looked straight out of 2006.

I think you're exaggerating the rockets thing, there were more extermination medals in the montage than rocket kills and I doubt you find another montage that can say that. Other than that I don't think song 2 or song 3 had filler clips outside the last few of song 3 but I mention that in the original post, song 1 was started before I gave him a list of clips to cut and a bunch of those clips he had already edited so I wasn't gonna tell him to scrap. And since I'm a defensive bitxh, a lot of the standstills were just people one second off spawning, only 8 true standstills in the montage out of 300 kills which isn't too bad I don't think if I were to compare it to other tages(or maybe it is idk), I count all these things cuz I'm a loser :P Otherwise thanks, I know it's way easier to find flaws in a 17 minute montage than a 4 minute montage and by no means is this  a perfect tage. I just want to provide some clarity to the clips, I may release an unedited version at some point but for now I respect Aaron's edit and think people should watch it that way.

Would comment on YouTube but I feel this video deserves more feedback than what YouTube comments normally provide and I'm more inclined to give long write-ups on here instead. Sorry Keat.

Anyway, it's very hard for me to appreciate Reach videos nowadays since I feel that most videos have the same type of clips in them. You've always been an exception though, Keat. I think you've been one of the more dedicated Reach montagers in terms of variety since M3. But, even though I think the gameplay's caliber was consistently high and had great variety in maps, I felt a lot could have been left out. I just think there was a little too much filler and not too many clips were distinguishable from others (I'll go over why I might feel this way a little later in my post). But I'm sure the video's length and the gameplay included were all for personal reasons. I think my favorite clip was the double stick Killtastrophe on Powerhouse, but that might change upon another rewatch.

In terms of editing, I actually agree with B SiK here. I preferred DoubleAA's previous big Reach production over this one.  My main problem was there wasn't enough variation of pace or ideas to keep this very interesting to me. Even though this video spans over 15 minutes, I can really only distinctly remember a few clips because the cuts and time remapping felt like they overwhelmed the footage to where I felt the clips just seemed like footage to quickly go through rather than appreciate. I'm not saying I couldn't see the gameplay, but it was edited in a way to where most of it didn't feel too memorable which is a problem for video of this length. I think if some clips were more focused over others, I might not have felt there was so much filler and could have remembered distinctly high points of the video. Not to say I didn't enjoy the editing, my gripes about how the clips were edited unfortunately outweighed what I liked about the rest of the editing, which really isn't too much after watching most of Aaron's previous work. The editing and soundtrack just seemed too comfortable of what Aaron's been doing since his M4. I really was hoping this would be the video where he'd go out of his style a little more with different song choices instead of showcasing what he knows within his upbeat style. I do agree it's admirable that he managed to maintain a consistent level of intensity throughout this video given the level of ambition and video runtime. You definitely have a pretty solid flow, Aaron.

Anyway, hopefully nobody involved takes this post the wrong way, take it into as much consideration as you want. The highest quality montages deserve the largest amount of input and hopefully my post is only helpful. I definitely think Aaron is one of the best active editors in the community right now and would really like to see what he's capable of by taking more risks. Very respectable effort altogether. Thanks for the shout out by the way, Keat. 

Yea I don't know if you're still in the hfh chat or read it, but I've been saying since about 1/4 of the way into the editing phase that I wish I could start over and cut about 15 clips. the heh ov ex, the boardwalk ov ex, zealot ov ex, etc. I think this tage would have been best if it was just 2 songs but there was no way I could tell Aaron to just re-do everything.
That's why I said filler in quotes, they're still good clips. But I feel anything over 10 minutes has some fat that can be trimmed. There's a lot of people who won't even open a video when they see the time duration a lot of the time. So combining that with reach you're already eliminating viewers from the get go. At least around here were Reach isn't sought after. Again, I'm just trying to provide some feedback.

Yea I don't really care if certain people don't watch the montage based off of opinions on the game, they would have disliked it anyways if their beliefs are that strong. Of course, I would have cut 15 clips, I can actually provide my personal rankings for the clips too if you'd like but basically most of the clips that would have been cut were song 1 but weren't cuz they were already in  by the time I thought about cutting. After rating every clip on a scale of 1-10, song 1's average clip ranked 7, songs 2 and 3 were both about 7.7/7.8. Personally, if I started from scratch the 1st song would be cut and just the best 35ish clips would be used instead of the 50 that were but ofc I wasn't going to stop the editing process, I wouldn't want my editor mad at me and possibly have to find a new editor especially in this barren editing economy :P Plus I've always liked Aaron's style over most others, I don't see the problem with the editing, I can still understand the gameplay in most montages even if there are flashes and cuts. I much prefer it this way to a montage that's mostly clips and music and an hour of syncing.

I've nothing to do at work today, so i grabed a pen and paper and counted the rocket kills/exterms (which makes me a loser too): There were 35 rocket kills and 32 exterms if i counted right. Oh and i don't mind AFKs/standstills generally but you faced some in pivotal moments. Examples:

6:06 guy for the ovk exterm is definitely not playing. that is a nogo for a decent mlg clip imo
7:13 a damnation 1bomb tast exterm sounds dope to me, but not with troc and jaro beeing afk.
8:52 even my grandmother could've stuck that guy for the ovk xterm

I also don't bother if someone cuts the initial kills of a clip out. But there were several clips where i asked myself: what happened to the first kills and why did he cut them out? more afks? For me that is an important factor of the coolnes of a clip - especially when you are gonna see a ovk exterm. 1 kill makes a quarter of the clip.  6:48 is a good example. I don't care that you got a triple exterm here cause i don't know what you've done to get first two exterms. Maybe rocket kills? Maybe sick snipes? I can't tell you. All i know is that the overkill shot was nice. I hope you understand my thoughts. It's still a dope tage.

I've completely nerded out on montaged like this before as well. What if you count the number of rocket shots instead? lots of them were more than 1 kill, so there probably are more exterms in this than rockets fired.

You counted wrong then. There are 36 exterms, should have been more but 2 of the main clips got put in credits and had 3 exterms and the powerhouse tast was supposed to be credits and that had 4 rocket kills, all though in the 1 clip you refered to after the stick over exterm there was a single kill exterm that was cut so it would be 35, tbh I wouldn't have included that clip id it was just an ov ex and it wasn't meant to be included at all since it was on my list of cuts that never happened, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUpzC667SKA 

The MLG ov ex on sanc was on a guy who literally was alive for less than a second off spawn and played the entire game, people not moving off spawn immediately is not uncommon and I don't see why people get up in arms on those when those players also wouldn't have moved if I would have just killed them 0.01 seconds off spawn. Not all players are totally committed to playing as sweaty as they can every game. Other MLG montagers have also told me that I should use this clip and I value their judgement on it seeing how I've played <100 mlg games this year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0jAQ22gNO4 

Please explain to me how the troc was afk in the tast triple exterm and for the matter, again the jaro was alive about a second off spawn and was playing before and after the clip. You can actually see both the troc and jaro getting killed for the double and triple in the clip and then spawning. Really don't understand the nitpicking of that so much. I see people hitting multi team exterms on narrows all the time or even that one legendary pit naire from kampy where someone didn't immediately move off spawn but they never get criticized for that because people understand the difference between AFKs and fresh spawns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y2H0GThMwk For the record though I did include the jaro in this clip under the 8 standstills that I counted because his standstill was too long for my taste as well.

Editing wise there is a lot to with flow and time constraints that have to deal with cutting out less important kills. There was 1 clip where a rocket kill was taken out, 1 where a standard pistol kill was taken out, 1 where 2 snipe headshots were taken out and in all cases those kills meant almost nothing to the clip. This is a montage, which means to take the best highlights of one's playing time and cut them together to show the best things. If this were a hiding montage or a trickshot montage of course I should be showing all the stuff but that's for legitimacy sake, this montage was meant to show off the best kills, not water it down with standard kills. None of the kills that were taken out were afk though. Trust me, I've seen all my clips and counted these things far more than anyone else, I know what I'm talking about.

I appreciate the thoughts, but I don't care for nitpicking on a 17 minute montage. I can go on most big tages and point out at least 10 standstills and lesser clips, it's really not hard to do, but I don't because the big picture of the montage is more important that any individual kill that may have brought it down.There are 8 clips in the montage that are almost entirely unique or incredibly rare, no one has hit a real 360 exterm or rico extrm on reach before, and I haven't seen almost any comments about those but instead about length and some individual clips that would be main clips in 90% of montages but are considered "filler" here.  This isn't meant to sound egoistic, I don't consider myself to be even in the top 10 most talented montagers, but this has irked me a bit. There's 300ish kills in the montage, don't worry about 5 of them not being 360s or ricochets or lightning snipes and enjoy the ones that are good, no clip is perfect.

Yeah, I agree. People are being a bit too harsh on these clips. In the MLG clip, the guy had pretty much no time to move before you killed him for the over. In general, people seem to be just looking for things to dislike rather than just enjoying the montage for what it has to offer, which tends to happen quite often on this forum (even I do it sometimes). I have a bad habit of being really harsh towards H4/5 montages just because I don't like the game lol. Don't worry about it too much. When the only things you're receiving criticism for are nitpicky things, such as "Oh this one guy was standing still a second after respawning", it just shows that there's not much wrong with the video. 

Also, for the record, I would've used that MLG exterm without a thought. It was really clean and the triple was pretty sick.

Haven't watched a montage this long in years,  for Keat I will sit through it

What have I started here? You guys are reading into too much of what I said initially. For me personally, I like hearing constructive criticism in general in anything I'm doing. When people tell you how great you are or whatever. You never get better, so I was just trying to help you out because no one was providing you with constructive feedback. That's it, carry on.
haha no worries. I appreciate the constructive criticism but imo there was very little I could have done to make this much better outside of just being better at the game and hitting naires and such. I put months of work into finding ricochet opportunities and ruining easy multi exterms going for unique clips as well as trying to get variety in my gameplay so that people don't see it like Element's Final that was essentially pinnacle ffa done right, variety being very hard to do at this point in the game's life cycle. I remember one game in particular I had a 1 shot in front of me for an easy over exterm and I go for a ricochet off the wall instead and end up missing and dying. What then happened is that 2 guys spawned like they did in the tast triple exterm on damnation clip and it could have been huge had I just took the easy way out. Again, thanks for the feedback, I do appreciate every bit of attention the montage gets, but everything that could be done to get the gameplay just right was done or should've but circumstances led to certain clips not getting cut.

Ok, than i counted wrong. It doesn't bother me, that there were some rocket kills. They are part of every halo game.  My prisoners main clip is also beginning with 4 rocket kills too so fuck it.  Like i said, i was just bored at work yesterday and counted them. And like fatal said you should take it as a compliment that i found only 2-3 clips out of 40+ that i didn't like 100%. This is nitpicking at its best haha. That is my bad habit, im working on it. I believe it when you say that those guys weren't afk. In the edited version you can't see the troc moving so thats why i thought he were afk. Oh and that sanc xterm was indeed legit too. The raw clip leaves no doubts that you got the overkill guy pretty fast, thanks for the upload. Again sorry for nitpicking so much.

PS: Perfect clips do exist :P http://bit.ly/1UqmdjX
 

Thanks man, and no worries. That clip is indeed sexy, but it wasn't a naire so not perfect :P

I think most people have voiced my same critiques about the montage.

Wasn't a huge fan of people standing around, its just not something fun to watch. That said had I been in those situations I probably would have saved the clip and used it. Your GP is leagues beyond my own though, so take it how you will.
Editing is more of an opinion thing, but I didn't really get a lot of chance to appreciate the gameplay. Seeing noscope after noscope, headshot after headshot in fast intensity is cool for moments, but gets old quick. Seeing a little more to a clip can make you appreciate it in different ways.
Length is also more of opinion thing, but I don't have the attention span to sit through most montages over 10 minutes.

That said don't think that I dislike this montage in anyway. I think its a great montage
It has a ton of variety in maps, which is just something you don't see a ton of anymore. That alone is a pretty big plus.
Love seeing some trick shots, stickies, pistol/DMR, tons of great no scopes for high multikills and lots of exterms.
This kind of goes in with seeing the variety of clips, but it is really good GP.
Editing is still really solid. Some of the effects are questionable, but for the most part it has great transitions, great consistency, and hits the feeling of each song.
 

Thank you, I tried very hard to make this montage more than just anniversary gameplay and to have as many maps as I could. On the editing, I chose Aaron because I enjoy the style of montages he makes, they're always more fun and ambitious which I prefer to pretty much everything else. Personally I couldn't be happier with the edit because it was the songs I wanted and done in a style I enjoy. I know not everyone will share my opinion of it, but for what is my likely last reach montage and possibly last halo montage I wanted to have something that down the road I would enjoy whereas most of my past montages I don't really watch much anymore because the music/gameplay just doesn't interest me anymore.
Cool.

Although Ive seen many Reach montages with those clips, it was still very enjoyable. The editing was slick. 

Man...MAN I wish I could pull those clips off. I am saving for my next Halo montage, but I guess I always set my standards wayy to high lol. I should relax on them and get clips I think are cool. That, and have more confidence in my skills, something I always have said I lack.

That psychedelic acid trip intro man! Awesome gameplay. Truly. Really cool edit. I love the tree at the beginning of the second half.