"Just Another Day in Maldives" - please critique my video. (02:59)

Please watch and comment my holiday video from beautiful Maldives, I'm hoping to get some advices on how I can improve it. Edited of course with Final Cut Pro X. Thanks.

VIMEO LINK

Great video bro! I have the t3i and I am interested in the camera setting that you used for the beach/in the sun shots. I am new to the t3i but it is similar to the t2i and your shots look great. Thanks in advance bro. Thanks for posting. Make me want to hit the beach

Thanks, Im glad you lied it:) Yes those 2 cameras are very similar. I shot 99% of it in direct sunlight so I had to watch out, dont remember exact settings cause I changed it a lot, but generally I tried to keep my ISO at 100, aperture as hight as possible and used UV filter in some shots.

WOW man great job. Makes ya wnna go there, really well edited.

Thank you, I can only recommend it:)

Great! You are very talented so keep it up. Also, thanks for the info on the camera settings. I really enjoyed how you tied the adventure aspect of the video with the romance of your girlfriend and yourself. I saw your other video as well and really enjoyed this one the best. I am thinking of getting the GoPro Hero2 as well and now after seeing your video I may go ahead and get it. Great job all around. Blessings

Yeah I agree this one is definetly better then the video from last year. I tried to tie all aspects... adventure, romance, beautiful shots, underwater life. If you get Hero2 and you're going to dive/snorkel with it, remember to get the new diving house or flat lens, other way it's blurry underwater. Other then that it's pretty awesome:)

Critiquing is very difficult as its so subjective. Technically this looks great and the editing is top notch.

Does it capture how you felt about your holiday there? or where you hoping to make more of a 'Music Video'? If it was the later then you have succeeded. For me I felt like I was watching a bunch of edits and never got engaged with the environment or the people in it.

If you want to make great video concentrate on those two things. Even with the fast paced music like what you've chosen you can still present a little magic to your audience. Let some shots breathe, give them as much honesty as you can, and let them in on a secret or two but not all.

Well done..

You're right it's more of a music video than how it really was there. If I wanted to show how it really felt, it would be very slow paced, and it wanted it to be faster, tried to keep it short, but most people say it's too long anyway. I'm working on another version that is just for us, where I let some shots breathe. But when you upload something for people to watch, it cant be too long, cause nobody will watch it, you know how it is with attention span. I've actually reedited the vimeo version and made it shorter. But extended some glidecam shots. So have a look at it again if you want, enjoy:)

Any other thoughts, suggestions or improvements?

Disclaimer: I'm not a pro editor, YMMV.

Halfway through the change o music makes the second half quite disjointed from the first. The edits are indeed too quick, but nicely timed with the music. My main critique, however, is that there is no story in the video: as it is, it is just a series of shots to me and thus the music starts playing the lead role. Also I ended up not being able to load the last 1/4 of the movie (because my connection was terrible), and because there was no story, I did not feel the need to watch the remaining bit.

Take from this what you may, but please don't take this the wrong way!

Thank you for your input. It's true there's no story really, it's just a holiday video that shows beauty of Maldives. The last 1/4 of the video is mostly underwater.