Vid Meta - Why, Gravity

[permetaform]

::SNOGS LJ::

meanwhile...vid meme! Well, of a sort. It's in the same style as my previous ponderings of my other vids here...

What I learned from making 'Why'

What I knew from the moment I heard this song.
1) Crap, this song has no climax.
2) This shit needs to be trimmed (+6:00 of angsty boy wailing)
3) Centering this around Shattered and Asylum, and DAMN this is gonna HURT
4) Crap. I need to learn how to vid.
5) Lex pov.


Biggest initial mistakes about the vid
1) That I only needed to trim a bit of the end of the song - sisabet pointed out the middle was dragging...which it was and the easiest way to fix this is to trim the music if your clips aren't showing anything

2) That I needed Victoria - no, I really didn't, I really really didn't. This was a vid about Lex's faith in Clark, Clark leaving him, and what's left? Lionel. I didn't need Victoria at all.


Best things I've learned through this vid
1) To watch for color - I didn't realize this until I read through some vid meta trying to figure out why the vid wasn't working. I didn't have a coherent story until I added in the color theory and started choosing clips based on color too...

2) Editing your song is a very good thing - The issue here is, "What are you trying to do?" If you're making a tribute to the SONG, then I can see why you might hesitate in cutting it. However, if you are attempting to tell a specific story or to prove a specific point --if the song is too long in one place and suffocating the goal of the vid-- why are you letting it? Control your song, control your story.

3) I needed to get Premiere - sisabet mentioned it to me, kept on pimping the program, 'cause I edited this in WMM. Are we glad that she did? YES. Non-linear editing!!! DUUUUUDE.

4) Match shots are COOL -They just ARE. =D


Hardest Things About The Vid
1) Learning to vid.
2) Getting past vid-hate and vidding funk for the first time.
3) Letting go of being faithful to the song and being more fearless in editing it shorter.


What I learned from making 'Gravity'

What I knew from the moment I heard this song.
1) Jack POV, serious vid
2) "lift me back up to the sun" clip
3) the hanging clip
4) the death of barbossa sequence
5) I'm gonna kill myself and/or be in tears for most of the making of this
6) It was going to use a green-blue, blue, and yellow color palette


Biggest initial mistakes about the vid
1) That I could use some Jack clips as-is - lierdumoa pointed out that certain Jack clips at natural speed was just too funny for a serious vid, and encouraged me to play with speed to affect emotional resonance

2) That it was a Jack Sparrow character vid - this is **not** a Jack Sparrow vid, it's a Jack Sparrow-in-relation-to-my-corner-of-the-fandom vid, (ie. a why-PotC-owns-my-soul vid). Jack Sparrow, as a character, should not be divorced from the comedy; however, my aim here was to use Jack as a medium to express a specific endpoint of emotion (the uplifting, freeing emotion I felt at the end of the movie). To get to that endpoint I had to take Jack through the push-pull of his emotional arc...and cut out most of the comedy. Poor Jack, ::pets:: in the end I used and abused him like a puppet...WOE.

3) That it was going to be narratively straightforward - yeah RIGHT. ::snickers in hindsight:: This was only barely a narrative vid, it's a lyrical vid and I was going for emotional gutpunch. This was not a conscious realization at the time of vidding and I only realized this after a thorough narrative beta via morgandawn, when I realized, "Oh, duh, of course it sometimes makes no narrative sense, I'm NOT vidding narrative!"

4) That I might need to cut the song - Refer above to 'Why's musing on song cutting; this vid was partly a tribute to the song itself, and the only section that ended up being trimmed was the bridge, which was twice as long before I edited it.


Best things I've learned through this vid
1) How to mask red - This came in handy making my Saiyuki vid

2) How to control emotion through speed - it seems obvious on hindsight but it just never occured to me that I might need to use it here until lierdumoa poked me and went, "Dude, it's too funny!"

3) GLOWY! - use of various forms of glows, gaussian blur, lens flare, and transtitions to make things shiny

4) Match shots of objects are cool too! -They SO ARE. =D

5) Sometimes you just need to let go of a vid - sisabet and sockpuppett finally pried the vid away 'cause I was starting to color through the paper. Sometimes you really *can't* be happy with a vid, but it's still *done*.


Hardest Things About The Vid
1) Not going insane; this vid was basically my heart and brain and soul turned inside out and pressed into digital form. I was going *nuts*. Talk to lierdumoa if you don't believe me.
2) Letting go of the vid.
3) Trimming the song down to 5 min.
4) Making Jack Sparrow un-funny. (or less so)
5) Figuring out wtf was going on with the narrative (conclusion: the vid is not narrative driven anyways)
6) Not hating the vid; refer to #1. I've come to terms with the vid-hate, but I still like this vid the least out of the previous four.