|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 21, 2011 20:31:00 GMT -5
Okay, I suck for not being working on the Adam vid right now. I suck, suck, suck. Be known that I WILL be doing as soon as I get these source issues resolved (I think I can finally get all the relevant eps in the same size and frame rate, alleluia!) and that this one bit me hard despite my still being in the process of catching up on the source at all. It really, really is all voodoochild's fault. Anyway, hereinafter be spoilers for Boardwalk Empire through the S2 finale. Yes. THOSE spoilers. Having to do with THOSE bits. If you don't know what I'm talking about and you have any interest at all in watching the show, I would suggest you reach for your handy backspace button now. If you do know what I'm talking about and it gives you the Ick, go thou and do likewise. At any rate, I am going to begin by sharing the inspirational process for this vid, because it is possibly the most back-asswards piece of creative genius I have ever committed and that's saying something. As I recall, it went something like this: - (Last year) Watch Boardwalk Empire. Be reasonably diverted, with special reference to the massive inappropriateness of Jimmy and Gillian Darmody (being that I am a sucker for fictional incest and they are both hot like hot things).
- Go most of this year without it crossing my mind once.
- Think vaguely, several times, that I ought to catch up on the new season.
- Witness voodoochild's absolute love affair with same new season. With special reference to the MASSIVE inappropriateness of Jimmy and Gillian Darmody. Resolve yet again to catch up at some point.
- Get flailed at over the fact that they went there, homg. Resolve to catch up immediately upon school letting out.
- Think absent-mindedly while riding bus that that would be a nifty thing to vid, if there turned out to be enough footage.
- Go song trawling; I had a reasonable sense of the tone, so this isn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds.
- Come up with nothing. (This was the frontrunner for a while, but it was a bit long, I wasn't really happy with it, and it didn't sound much like the source to me.)
- Give up. Resolve to work on it some other time, when I actually knew what I was doing. Click ahead to the next track.
- Fall over.
- Bounce the song off Drea. Watch HER fall over.
- Watch the scene in question as part of an episode feature on the HBO website. Commit embarrassing public flailing and squeaking.
- Finish out the school term and the second draft of "Jacob Marley's Chain." Somehow.
- Download the first two episodes of Season One.
- Start a new Premiere project.
- Start cutting.
- Start actually getting caught up.
-
- Profit!
Which is not necessarily a creative process I'd wish on anybody else. Nevertheless. It doesn't seem to not be working? At any rate. Actual content to follow once I've got a bit more on the timeline. |
|
|
|
Post by voodoochild on Dec 21, 2011 20:37:17 GMT -5
STILL NOT SORRY. NOPE. NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.
(Ohhh, just wait until you get to Esther Randolph. And Margaret's religious awakening. And the babygangsters - you understand that they are my very favorites and I just want to revel in their excellent fashion sense. And ooh, I am curious as to how you will interpret Gillian's S2 arc and certain events.)
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 22, 2011 1:25:00 GMT -5
Day 1Honestly, there is next to no actual process going on in this thing; I feel like I ought to be logging it under "It Just Happens," because I swear to fuck: I'm channeling this thing. Or somewhat along those lines. It decided it was going to be made, and it's making itself remarkably simple. (There's comparatively little on the timeline right now, but only because I'm still catching up on the actual canon. I have a feeling it's going to fly once I do.) Draft stream (pw: Gillian) (I am so less than thrilled with the video quality I'm getting on this; time to start tinkering again. I think I might even know what the issue is.) TimelineSo it's skeletal in the extreme right now, but you can sort of see where I'm starting to get my head around things (and fill in the really obvious parts). I'm basically pleased to quite pleased with it as a first day's work.
|
|
|
|
Post by fabella on Dec 22, 2011 8:05:38 GMT -5
I'm not at all familiar with the show outside of what I've seen in vids, but I really like the shot at 1:55 for "jesus of the moon" with the guy tilted with fabric half draped over him. That definitely brings to the forefront of my brain phases of the moon. Have you thought of ways of working that into your vid (phases of the moon ---> phases of the character ---> waxing and waning? With the repetition in the song it would be a clever way of developing a narrative. Good start!
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 22, 2011 17:19:30 GMT -5
Oh, now THERE is a thought. I shall be bearing it in mind!
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 23, 2011 1:48:13 GMT -5
Day 2Less concrete progress than I'd rather been hoping, as I sat down late and spent quite a bit of time trying to improve the video quality and you would be surprised (or possibly you wouldn't) at how much oomph one doesn't have when one's finished converting four .avis into Lagarith and then recutting everything already on the timeline. However, I do think it looks a bit better (not brilliant-amazing, but a reasonable percentage of the original file quality, particularly in the better-lit scenes) and I got the -- er, if I say money shot you'd be licensed to kill me -- down. Which is always nice. And it is starting to shape up. Draft stream (pw: Gillian) TimelineAnd I have got to start posting these updates before two in the morning, because I know I have things to say about this but they are so not coming to mind. Dammit.
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 23, 2011 20:05:55 GMT -5
Day 3This vid now contains explicit violence as well as explicit (and disturbing-in-context) sexuality.Draft stream (pw: Gillian) TimelineNow that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a day's work. (And a most of last night's work, too: the upside to really soul-shattering insomnia.) This vid honestly continues to scare me with how easily it's coming together -- a couple of clips in there are pretty much placeholders, but overall I think it's a strong draft thus far. I am reassuringly nervous about the subsequent verses, but you can sort of see the ideas starting to crystallize, and my ambition here is not to overthink anything. (I think being not overly familiar with the source is actually helping -- I'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants and throwing things at the timeline as I find them, rather than trying to intellectualize, and it's rather liberating.) And there are some gorgeous accidents in there -- the tarot cards, which are for Drea, and also I pretty much died right there in Starbucks when I put down Jimmy's knife trick -- that I don't know would have gotten in if I'd been thinking it out from the beginning. Because I kind of can't not intellectualize a little, though, at this point I specifically want to thank fabella for her comment above -- thinking of Jimmy and Gillian's relationship as being in some sense tidal or eclipse-like, a kind of irresistible gravitational waxing and waning, is turning out to be really helping me get a rhythm here. There's a lot of close-reading I could do with the lyrics, in places (religious iconography, mother goddesses, the way they frame Gillian onstage, the fact that I am going to clip the FUCK out of her in her moon-goddess costume -- which I did not know about when I chose the song -- when I get there, the total delicious blasphemy of putting the fucking over "a Jesus of the moon, a Jesus of the planets and the stars" -- and there's a Bertolucci film about mother-son incest called La Luna, which I sadly have not seen but intend to) but, you know what, that strikes me as being more or less post-production work. So I shan't. None of that was on my mind when I chose the song, anyway; that one was straight from the lizardbrain. (The rule of thumb seems to be that if I'm thinking about whether or not a song is going to work, it's not going to work; this one hit me in the back of the skull, and so did "Jacob Marley's Chain," and so did "Hello Time Bomb.") The one thing I am less than thrilled with is still the image quality; I'm pretty sure I'm getting the best I can out of the source files, but they're pretty damn ropey in spots. One day I shall remaster this with shiny new DVD source and everything will be HD and nothing will hurt, but for the meantime I think tomorrow or later tonight I'm going to try giving it a little tweak in vdub before I recompress -- maybe playing with Levels might give it some contrast and help hide some of that pixelation in the dark areas, although there's such a range of lighting in this thing already that I don't know how it's going to turn out. Also, how gorgeous are these two, seriously? VERY GORGEOUS.
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 24, 2011 21:32:25 GMT -5
Day 4Draft stream (pw: Gillian) TimelineNot as productive as yesterday; my not being caught up is starting to catch up with me. However, I am starting to sort of feel my way backwards into the second verse, which is yay, and I have accomplished officially my favorite cut in the whole thing (it's at 1:48), so not exactly wasted. I also tried a brightness-contrast tweak in vdub before compressing (brightness -5, contrast 150, for my own reference) and think it improved about 80% of the clips, although I'm not sure about a few of the others; I wanted to try applying it universally, though, before I resorted to adjusting the whole thing clip by clip in Premiere. Also, having watched some relevant bits of 2.04, Jesus, all the Emmys for Gretchen Mol. She has legitimately been blowing me away.
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 25, 2011 23:39:15 GMT -5
Day 5Draft stream (pw: Gillian) TimelineAnother slow day. Today was mostly about absorbing source and replacing various clips with various other clips, which involved the nasty realization that Drea had been right all along and Verse Two was about the Commodore. Which is made of yuck, because he is replacing someone who I don't want to reach straight through the screen and rip their throat out with my fingernails, but these things happen. I still don't have a coherent sense of what the hell the second verse is actually about, and I'm totally blanking on the third (I have this vague notion that it's going to be about Pearl and Angela, but I don't know how I'm going to tie that back to Gillian) but ah, well. I suppose we'll get there eventually.
|
|
|
|
Post by voodoochild on Dec 26, 2011 15:11:33 GMT -5
Sorry about that. But at the same time, it could also reference back to Nucky, like I think you'd wanted. Continuing Nucky as the weatherman, using the clips of the tarot scene to refer back to the cards in the beginning. I do love the repeated shot of Gillian telling Jimmy about the King Neptune pageant and how Nucky pimped her out.
You know, I was thinking that Pearl and Angela would be a natural fit for the third verse, but I didn't know if you'd want to stray too far from Gillian. Using his sleeping around as the parallel to "can't blame anyone for saying hello", then cutting back to his closeness with Gillian could work narratively - reinforcing that while Jimmy may stray (even into marriage), it always comes back to Gillian. Also, just a suggestion, but maybe moving the clip of Angela getting shot to "one must depart" and putting an actual shot of the dog tags around Tommy's neck would work?
STILL THE MOST GORGEOUSLY FUCKED-UP THING EVER. STILL ENVY YOUR SONG CHOICE.
|
|
|
|
Post by thatyourefuse on Dec 28, 2011 15:41:20 GMT -5
Day 6Draft stream (pw: Gillian) This update is terribly belated; that export actually dates from Monday. I am on a tiny bit of a creative downswing and haven't been doing much of any use lately, which makes me the saddest panda. Nothing much to report; I'm still not sure what the second verse is about, and I'm trying to do something in the second chorus that I'm really not sure is coming across. Still progressing at about one clip per day. 
|
|
