[CGPA] AMG SPA: Garden's Foundation - A Review

Welcome one, welcome all, to my first CGPA blog, well ever. Now with that out of the way…

We’re all aware that AMG makes YouTube videos, right? I mean, have one talk with the guy and he’s always on some “I’m editing a video.” Well, I decided to check his channel out, and let’s just say… man you have a ways to go. Don’t worry, I’m not here to put ya down, AMG, but I wouldn’t be so fast to say the others won’t… Take this blog as constructive criticism rather than an attack on your work.

So, the video I took a peek at was AMG SPA: Garden's Foundation. Supposedly, this is the first episode of the first season in this series, so I thought it’d make a good starting point. Upon reading the description, however, he’s under the assumption we all know AMG. I guess that’s okay, considering he is the mascot of the channel, however keep in mind this is supposed to be an introduction to this series. A series that, I assume, is supposed to be separate from his other ones. 

We start off the video and WOW the introduction has sound? Those curious, I looked at some of his other videos and some of them are just missing a sound, so it’s just this white text bouncing in. Take it in, folks, because this is probably the most editing prowess AMG will display. 

Speaking of editing, there’s a few things wonky about the editing in his videos. Firstly, most of the time there’s no sound effects at all, just music in the background. Not even placeholder sounds for when the characters are speaking, which is a staple in machinima style videos. The lack of sound cues loses the viewer’s engagement, which is probably why your videos average around 500 views, but have low engagement. I get that AMG is supposed to be a silent protagonist, and that can absolutely work. But the other characters need at least something…

Another quip with the editing is in multiple parts of the video, there’s a strange shadow effect on the background. I think this comes from layering two clips and trying to key out the background, but I could be wrong. The way I’d go about fixing this is cropping the video footage around the characters to be smaller. If the character were to move, I’d use keyframes, something I KNOW Vegas Pro can do, to adjust the cropping as needed. A different route you could take with this is using a different program to get your footage. I know you’re very familiar with PJ64, AMG, but it’s not 2012 anymore. Maybe try playing around in Saturn, a program I found to be much easier to use, and has built in video editing tools! 

Now, it’s time for the writing. Anyone who’s talked to AMG knows that he has a certain way of talking online, which is okay, but for some reason his grammar and spelling take a nosedive when it comes to his videos. Oftentimes I felt very lost and confused because of the way the characters say things. Take for instance this line here:

What does he mean by this? Was there an actual battle? Do these two just not like each other? What relation does this picture have to AMG? This brings us to the story, which is a bit hard to understand due to the aforementioned grammar. Apparently, AMG is sent to a school or something to collect 14 crystal leaves. The episode is supposed to be a parody of a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode I assume, considering AMG has 4 items and needs to use them to help him gather things for the garden, and in return Kirby will give him the list of the 14 crystal leaves he needs to collect. A parody of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse could work and be hilarious in the Mario machinima style, but this one just falls flat.

The jokes. Where are they? Seriously?! This is supposed to be a machinima video! The only two attempts at humor, at least that I could find, throughout the whole video were BOTH in the latter half of the video. I’m sure you could have had more if the characters were actually understandable, but COME ON. The first “joke” occurs 7 minutes into the video, where AMG is trying to get an item out of the tree. He jumps and kicks, and it makes a punch sound effect. This was an okay “joke”. It didn’t make me fall over laughing, but after sitting through the slog of exposition for 7 minutes, it’s one of the most stimulating things here. And then, there's the other joke. Something ACTUALLY FUNNY. While in Wet Dry World, Kirby gets finished explaining to AMG how to get the item, and then immediately after, AMG gets attacked by a bunch of enemies and things. That was actually kinda funny, congrats AMG. The only nitpick I have with this one was that the technical difficulties screen was too long. 

And yeah. That’s AMG SPA: Garden’s Foundation. Honestly, a very confusing mess of a video. The story is very hard to understand, the horrible grammar being the main culprit for that, and the editing is very lackluster. You’ve been making videos for 4 years now, AMG. Maybe watch some tutorials, ask your friends for help on the scripts. Seriously try to improve your craft, because stagnating on quality for another 4 years is what’s going to kill your channel.

Farrah_Day signing off.