Toy Review Show

[mightyJL]

Myself and some friends decided to do a weekly toy review show. We filmed our first episode this week and got it posted today. It did not turn out as good as we had hoped but we are learning from our mistakes and the next episode should be much better.

I'm basically looking for anyone who wants to contribute to making the show better.

If your are a customizer and want us to post your custom pics on the show and our blog, contact me either on here or the email address on our blog. We want to make a weekly custom segment.

Anyone that wants to send us pics of your toy collections feel free to do so. We will also try to get them on our show and blog.

If anyone is bored and feels like making us an original artwork banner, that would rock. None of us are artists and I really do not feel comfortable using a banner filled with copyrighted material.

That is about everything I can think of. Shoot us a message if you have any questions or want to participate.

The show is here on our blog:
http://madmartiantoys.blogspot.com

Our Youtube channel is:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MadMartianToyReview

[mightyJL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HfBoSuYH-w

Here is our youtube quickie for our 2nd episode. You can watch the entire episode on our blog. http://madmartiantoys.blogspot.com/p/show.html

[littlenicky]

Good luck with you the show... Great job! Keep at it and I am sure it will take off. You guys are off to a good start.

[mightyJL]

It has taken a lot more work than we had thought it would, but we are having a ton of fun doing it. This week we are filming part of the episode at a friends house so he can show off his collection. It is very impressive so if you only watch one episode, I would make sure you watch that one. We are still going to do a Customs segment so if anyone wants pics of their customs shown, hit me up.

[RadarToys]

In my opinion, and this is just my little opinion I do like your review but there are some minor clean up things. Talking over eachother, which I'm sure you guys tried not to, and maybe a rating scale versus a pass/no pass I guess. I liked your guys action shots of the figures. It's hard to see them on the table with all of you in the shot, so that's good. You guys have good comments and know your stuff, so that is cool. Maybe cut down on the time for this particular review. Overall pretty cool, good luck! -- And again, just my personal thoughts--

[mightyJL]

Thanks for the feedback. Any constructive criticism is really appreciated. Considering I do all of the editing I get to watch our mess ups about 6-7 times each episode. Watching it that many times I get to see what we did wrong and try to correct ourselves for the next episode. None of us have any formal training so we are kinda learning as we go along. The first episode we realized how much we talked over top of each other so we made a point to try and correct that. I think the 2nd episode is significantly better than the first in many ways. We have next to no money for a budget so we have to be creative.

I am currently focused on making the show more visually appealing. I am basically teaching myself filming and editing techniques. I learn from each episode and am diligently working to make the show better. We plan to start filming with a flip camera instead of a webcam and hope that we can save up some money to get a good quality camera. We are also doing our first on location interview this week so it will be interesting how that goes.

Basically we all love toys and plan to do this show for as long as we can. We are super excited about it and are constantly looking for ways to improve and make it more enjoyable for the viewer.

[Sly Ry]

Watched episode 2. Very good job! I really enjoyed it. I am actually a full time videographer/editor and have started my business from the ground up, so I know the challenges of trying to come up with a good product on a little budget. For using just a webcam and some stills I was pretty impressed. I could see you took some thought in your approach.

radartoys makes some pretty good points to improve your future episodes. I would suggest some minor work on the pacing and more close ups of the figures themselves. When you label it as a Quickie it should probably be shorter and to the point. I could see you possible shaving off a couple minutes in that episode. You could use your stills as a way to shorten or hide unwanted footage an none would be the wiser. Another trick you could do aside from adding stills, is to film yourself a 2nd time holding the figure while following along what you say in the review. Then add that to the final project.

For example, when Matt mentions how cool Ryu's sword is and he pulls it out of the figure, it's very hard to see. If you cut to a close up of the figure and Matt actually pulling the sword out at the
same time he mentions it, you'll give the viewer a different angle and it will seem you have more than one camera. It's more work but this is a way to make 1 camera look like 2 or 3 even.

These are just a couple ideas, man. Take what you want from it. I'm the newb here to these forums so I don't mean to sound too critical. You've got a really good concept and I enjoyed what I saw, especially as a toy collector myself. PM me if you need any prosumer camera or editing suggestions. But for what you are doing, I think the Flip will be just fine on a mini tripod along with good lighting.

Btw, You have a new subscriber. :)

[mightyJL]

Thanks!! We tried to use the flip in the first episode for close ups but had mixed results. It was a bit cumbersome and it took me hours extra of editing trying to add in all of the footage. Also, if we get within 6 inches of the camera the image blurs. On the 2nd episode and the quickie, we filmed some close ups but most of the shots did not turn out very well. I decided not to use them. I'll also admit that I was a bit lazy when it came to editing the quickie. I had just spent hours putting the full episode together and was spent when it came to making the quickie.

We are once again going to try some different editing and filming techniques for this episode. I also need to take many more pics for close up use. We are going to film the close ups in post production and I plan to get more thorough and detailed shots.

Thanks for the support.

[Sly Ry]

:bored: Had a moment during work to twiddle my thumbs since I was importing footage. Figured I'd mess around with a quick 10 sec opener to your show for kicks. Used a stock photo for the martian so you'll see a watermark on it. This was just for fun anyway. :D


http://vimeo.com/16044878

[mightyJL]

:bored: Had a moment during work to twiddle my thumbs since I was importing footage. Figured I'd mess around with a quick 10 sec opener to your show for kicks. Used a stock photo for the martian so you'll see a watermark on it. This was just for fun anyway. :D


http://vimeo.com/16044878

Whoah that is freaking sweet

[Sly Ry]

Hehe. Thanks man. I was actually testing out a plugin for that "TV on/off" effect before purchasing it for my editing software. Looks like it turned out pretty clean so I picked it up. It will be useful for a future project I'm working on.

I don't know if you can use this clip but you're welcome to have it if you want. Only thing is I'd need a replacement for that alien or purchase the license to use it for video. I think it's about 10-15 bucks. I know you mentioned you guys aren't much of artists (and frankly I'm not either) but if you check out some of those stock photo sites like istockphoto.com or shutterstock.com you might find an illustration to use, not only for your videos but for your website/blog as well. For those stock photo sites, you buy credits and use it to purchase the clips/illustrations/videos you may need. The martian I used was pretty cool but not really a "mad" martian. Don't know if that really matters. You may find something more to your tastes.

But yeah, that clip is yours if you want it. I can replace that alien with whatever.

[mightyJL]

We would love to use it. I was thinking that it would male a great outro just after the credits. As far as the character goes, I would like to use something original that we can use for all of our logos. I've talked to most of my artist friends but most of them are lazy and unreliable. I'll talk to them again and see if I can get someone to make me something

[Sly Ry]

Np. Whenever you want it. It's just sitting in my online test bin. Shouldn't take long to replace it with a different logo and put it back up online. From there you can download it and do what you want. Just make sure the logo is high quality. If it's something I have to stretch out it will be pixelated.

[songokou626]

Nice work guys keep the great show coming! Great improvement with episode two!

[mightyJL]

Episode 3 is on Blip.TV

http://blip.tv/file/4284811/

[mightyJL]

Here are our quickie episodes on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Mi_KlF4ro


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4jOHAdZErQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfbBGneras

You can watch the entire episode on madmartiantoys.blogspot.com

[Sly Ry]

Really cool episode man. I watched the long version. Your friend has an awesome collection and the pics of the figs were great as well. The questions you guys asked were really informative.

Keep it up!

Btw, went to Kmart to search for those DCU figs and no go. But I did notice a $7 tag for em. Hopefully they'll be put out this week, unless someone got to them before me and cleaned house...

[mightyJL]

Really cool episode man. I watched the long version. Your friend has an awesome collection and the pics of the figs were great as well. The questions you guys asked were really informative.

Keep it up!

Btw, went to Kmart to search for those DCU figs and no go. But I did notice a $7 tag for em. Hopefully they'll be put out this week, unless someone got to them before me and cleaned house...

Yea thanks. He does have a crazy collection. We were floored when we saw it.

Our Kmart doesn't have them out yet either. It wouldn't surprise me if K-mart drops the ball on this.

[Sly Ry]

I hear ya about Kmart. I don't know about your store but the 2 near me has some lazy workers. However, you guys are right about finding some good figures there....when they put them out. Supposedly there's a shipment of stuff tomorrow so I'll make another stop.

I want to grab that Raven and Sinestro Batman before the resellers grab em.

[mightyJL]

yea i'm sure sharks will be circling every Kmart in the country this week

[mightyJL]

Enjoy our Halloween episode!!

http://blip.tv/file/4320300

[mightyJL]

Here is our fifth episode
http://blip.tv/file/4342034

and here is our quickie


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSz-Hod_SNQ

[mightyJL]

Episode 6
http://madmartiantoys.blogspot.com/2010/11/episode-6-whos-bad.html

and our quickie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzeHcn-NbQ4

[mightyJL]

Here is our most recent episode called 'The Cheapie Awards'
http://atomicmartians.blogspot.com/2010/12/atomic-martians-toy-reviews-episode-9.html

Also here is our 3 part Green Lantern Classics Wave 1 Review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ANhRsJtIrc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KURxQxmTUIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XfyHd94mkY