Thanks for the feedback. You know I was starting to feel that those "the deck in action" sequences were a little dull. I want to either get comfortable enough I can talk coherently while idly doing card moves.... or possibly the voice over option. It would be a lot easier to add my voice in after the fact, and cut down on the overall length as you mentioned. Only thing I worry about there is it might sound weird.... like the narration is really connected with what is happening. Might feel less "live"-ish.... if that makes any sense.
I do value keeping the reviews short too. I have been trying to edit them down to be as brief as possible... but I think there is room to improve.
As far as the rating scale, I'm not sure what i want to do with that. I was kinda just using a general 1-10 scale like you might use to rate a movie after seeing it. Just something casual and not too scientific... more of like an overall feel thing. The thought has occurred to me that perhaps I should completely avoid a rating, so I just say whether I like it or not. And people can make up their own minds. What to do....
My thoughts:
You can make a voice-over for the cardistry section that's tied to the actions occurring on the screen. Talk about the fine borders when you've filmed yourself doing a fan, talk about the suppleness of the stock while springing the cards, etc. You could then remove those from elsewhere in the video, shortening the length by a good degree. The voiceover part doesn't have to be "live" if it's connected to the on-screen action - no one would know anyway since they can't see your mouth!
If you want to continue with a point-based ratings system, give a breakdown of some kind. Make the points either additive or averaged. Additive would be assigning point values to each aspect of the deck and seeing how many points the deck scores; i.e., two points each for stock and finish, three points for design, two for the tuck box and one for "je ne sais quoi" - the "essense" or "wow factor" of the deck and the emotions it evokes, etc. So if you were rating a pack of Mavericks, you might give it zero for stock, zero for finish, one for design, one for tuck box and zero for "wow factor", resulting in an abysmal score of two out of ten.
Doing the points based on an average means every aspect is scored to the same scale, in this case a ten-point scale, and then the values are averaged for the final score. You might rate something like a pack of Bicycle Standards as a six for stock, seven for finish, five for design, four for tuck box and one for "wow factor". Average them together and the overall score would be four-point-six.
Alternately, as you were considering, you can remove the "scientific" aspect of scoring and simply provide comments on what you think of the different aspects, putting it into descriptive terms rather than numbers - but your vocabulary should be up to the task if you don't want to sound like a broken record. "Oh, the finish is great, the shuffling is great, the stock is great - it's all great, man!" Doesn't sound terribly intelligent, does it? But if instead you said something like "The finish is exceptional for a smooth-surfaced deck and has wonderful slip between cards and glide on tables, while the shuffles are a little off, perhaps owing to the rough edges of the die cuts not having been smoothed, and the stock has a unique combination of flexibility and strength that makes the deck a fantastic overall choice for all applications." That sounds a lot more like someone who's got more than two brain cells to rub together for warmth, right?
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