UM SO I MADE A VID

[intrikate88]

So I've been meaning to learn Sony Vegas for awhile, ever since I made two Doctor Who fanvids with Windows Movie Maker a few years ago and then got Windows 7 and the new WMM is unrecognizable. It was hardly a precise tool to start out with, so I figured actually figuring out how the hell to put clips and music on a timeline (when even that much can't be figured out, SERIOUS usability issue) or remove a thirty-minute intermission from an old movie so it actually fits on a DVD was absolutely not worth it. Thanks to hollywoodgrrl, who is a master vidder and pointed me in the direction of how to get started with the Vegas software, I got around to making clips from "Skin Deep" last night since I figured a vid based on one episode worth of clips would be the easiest way to start. Took me about five hours to get clips, figure out what I was doing (though not where my transitions are... must find those), and make a vid out of the last third of a song. 

So here you go. "If I Should Fall", Belle/Rumpelstiltskin, set to Rosi Golan and William Fitzsimmon's "Hazy". All about how as the two of them find each other, they are finding who they really are as well.

Comments

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I knooooow.



KILLS ME EVERY TIME.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Awesome job my friend. YOu captured it really well and gosh what the heck is going on in Storybrook?

BTW, DUH for me. I did not realize that Jane Epenson was so involved in the show. She's done both of the Gold/Rumpelstiltskin episodes and that seriously creepy one involving the dolls/Jiminy Cricket.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm pleased it came together so well.

The Storybrooke power balance is amazing. I just can't wait to see what happens to Belle- because clearly a few lies have been told. And yeah, Jane Espenson is very involved, and I think her episodes have been amazing. If you want to see a seriously chilling comparison of scenes, check out this post, the earlier scene has so much more meaning now. (http://aoibhean-n.tumblr.com/post/17779100143/rumpelstiltskins-retribution)

[lady_songsmith]

I have not yet watched the show! (I will get to it!) But this is beautiful, very well done!

I am also playing with Vegas, after my vidding program of choice (PowerDirector) mysteriously stopped working and their tech support's only solution so far only seems to be "well, uninstall it, update your drivers, and reinstall" ad infinitum. Argh. I downloaded about 6 demos and Vegas is the one that I've liked best, so now I'm trying to learn it. Mostly it's file/clip management - the timeline and so forth is the same as what I'm used to. Anyway, if you want to trade tips/frustrations, drop me a line.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And you need to get on watching OUaT immediately. Full of strong women having adventures!

I have to reinstall Vegas today because there's a little problem with the transitions plugins never being installed, so THAT's a pain in my arse, but oh well. Overall I'm pleased with the program, though I'm looking forward to figuring out more intricate things I can do with it, this vid was pretty much a drag-and-drop with little tweaking and a blur and color hue thrown over it all to make it look cohesive.

hollywoodgrrl gave me these tips (http://libyanfood.blogspot.com/2010/08/mubatan.html) when I asked so I've been working off that. See if it helps. I like VirtualDub so far for making clips, it's pretty quick and precise.

[lady_songsmith]

That link is delicious but not much help for vidding. :P

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Hahaha OOOPS. I have food on the mind and I want to eat a fuckload of those right now. Try this instead, lol (http://hollywoodgrrl.tumblr.com/post/15306222287/intrikate88-replied-to-your-photo-and-so-it).

[lady_songsmith]

Oh, I'm clipping right in Vegas, so I don't need the separate VirtualDub. It's a bit tricky to get used to, because PD used a process of clip extraction I really liked and was automated, whereas Vegas is a bit time-consuming to mark out the sections I want, but I think once I get the media marked properly it'll actually be faster and more powerful.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Whooo, reinstalled Vegas and now I have transitions plugins installed. Score.

I don't actually know how to clip in Vegas? When I was using Movie Maker it just automatically divided up the video file into however many clips I wanted, which I really liked, even if it didn't always split them where I wanted and then merge them back together cleanly. I wish Vegas would do the same thing.

I want to figure out how to REALLY fine-tune my clipping, because eventually for faster-paced songs I'm going to want to do some cross-cutting with less than a second for shots flipping back and forth, so that will require marking sections on a frame by frame basis, I guess. As far as I can figure out. Sometimes VirtualDub will do frame by frame, sometimes it won't, so that's weird.

[lady_songsmith]

It's pretty straightforward: you highlight what you want in the Trimmer and either save it as a new clip or pull it to the timeline. I find the highlighting a little twitchy, though, so what I prefer to do is put in markers that act as snap-to points for the section I want to pull out.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see how that works. Although it just makes subclips, it doesn't necessarily split the clip... which is good if you're clipping from a whole episode/movie, less so if you want to split up into little pieces a clip you've already made. Or maybe not. Time will tell.

[lady_songsmith]

Well, you can either take multiple bits from the clip, or you CAN use a split tool. But I haven't played with that one yet. I think you can only put one cut point in per split, so if you want to make 5 pieces you'd have to do 4 cuts.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll have to play around wtih it a bit to see what works best.

And then actually remember to USE all the knowledge of good editing that I picked up in my Film Studies classes. It's all very well and good to drop nice clips on relevant parts of the song, but a couple classes on film theory means I do actually know how to consciously edit well.

[lady_songsmith]

one up on me, then. everything I know about good vidding comes from watching vids and going "that was good. why was that good?" oh, and one tip I read in a tutorial YEARS ago which has proved to be priceless for timing transitions right: never cut between visual clips exactly ON the beat. They'll look like they come before the beat when you play it back. Always offset a fraction of a second late.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Oh does it? THAT is a good thing to know, because I know with this one the timing of Rumpelstiltskin's grin and then holding the teacup did not line up exactly as it was supposed to and I was really annoyed to see that after it rendered.

[lady_songsmith]

It has to do with our perception. You wouldn't think speed of sound/light would matter at a distance of, what, a foot? two? But apparently we perceive & process visual information faster than aural, so if the cut is lined up exactly, time-stamp-wise, it will look early.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Well. You learn something new every day.

For some of the things I learned in film theory classes, they won't necessarily be directly applicable to making fanvids, but they do help when thinking about choosing clips to put together and what effects you can have in the viewer's mind.

Eisenstein's Montage Theory (http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/montage/montage-1.html)

A good summary of continuity editing, but I really wish they'd have more on shot/reverse shot (http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/htmfiles/editing.htm).

Right. There's a really good quote from either Hitchcock or Eisenstein (I'm almost certain) that I can't find anywhere, but it basically boils down to a three-shot method. I believe it was Hitchcock, because he wanted his actors to act as little as possible so he could generate emotion using editing and directing. But the gist of the quote is that in the first scenario, you see a man at a window, smiling. Second shot, you see children in the street playing. Third shot, same image of man in window smiling. We think, aw, he's a nice man who appreciates children playing and all that. Edit it a bit differently, and you have the same man smiling at the window. Second shot, a long shot through a window of a woman undressing in her apartment. Third shot, the smiling man in the window. This time, we think he's a pervert spying on his neighbor. The shots are the same, but because of montage editing, we get a completely different impression. Which I think is a technique that is definitely good to keep in mind as a tool when editing fanvids, because there are certainly ways to make characters look benevolent or ominous, depending on what is cut away to in the middle.