Post by thatyourefuse on Nov 16, 2011 19:48:16 GMT -5
Warning: this thread is going to be casually spoilery for Spooks (MI-5 in the US), including character death spoilers, at least through S7 and possibly beyond, depending on what tangents I go off on in subsequent posts. Be warned.
Also, do bear in mind that I'm a bit of a very new vidder and I formed my process by diving in and seeing what worked, so I wouldn't be surprised if this bears absolutely no resemblance to any vidding method ever used by any civilized person ever.
My current primary WiP is an Adam Carter character study set to Matthew Good Band's Hello Time Bomb, which was pretty much the second song to pop to mind when I started thinking about the possibility of vidding Spooks (I'll tell you about the first some other time; it's awesome cool, but it involves clipping ALL the footage). MGB and Spooks seem to go together unfathomably well, for some reason; I have vid bunnies for Tom, Adam, Ros, and Lucas, and the latter three are this, "Weapon," and "Indestructible." (I poked at "Born Losers" for Tom, just to round out the set and because "what doesn't kill us now just makes us better whores" is a very Tom Quinn sentiment, but it's a bit long.)
I'm not doing anything to the song, because it's a manageable length and I don't feel like there's a verse or instrumental I really won't be able to figure out what to do with.
And I started work on the vid yesterday, so there's a little chunk of the first verse viewable here.
What I Laughably Call My Process
As anyone who's talked to me for more than thirty seconds knows, I vid in WMM, which has no great advantages aside from coming free with the computer and being designed for people with no clue about video editing to come into and pick up almost immediately. I've heard rumors that it's possible to clip in WMM, but I've never been able to figure out how, so I do my clipping in Virtualdub, export as .avi, and just plonk them into the timeline in WMM, like thus:
largish screenshot of my WMM timeline
As you can see down at the bottom there, I actually have two instances of vdub open -- I'm clipping in one and tweaking brightness/contrast in the other. Of course I could do both in the same instance, but I've had vdub throw a massive pissy at me when I tried to make it filter a whole episode, and even though I was working with a bad file at the time, I do not like having massive pissys thrown in my direction.
Clipping
and adjustment.
Not a massive change, but I wanted the footage just a little bit brighter and harder-contrast than it was. (I didn't tweak anything when I was doing "Jacob Marley's Chain" -- I desaturated the opening shot and I think I added a little motion blur to one clip -- because that footage was PERFECT, but I'm kind of unduly excited by the possibilities of vdub filters.)
Unfortunately, This Is About As Organized As I Get
My outlining process is the one aspect of the whole thing that I'm actually really proud of: I use FreeMind, which is open-source mind-mapping software, and which lets me go off on wild tangents in all directions without having to make subheadings. I found it a couple weeks ago, I love it, I use it for everything now, you should too because it's great.
HUGE .png of my outline
There's not a lot on there, since I only started yesterday, but you can see the basic principle. (I have another one I'm working with for JMC, but that one looks a bit different since I started it near the end of the vidding process instead of at the beginning.)
(Those of you who've seen Spooks; yup, sorry, I am including the Ana Bakshi thing. It frustrates the hell out of me too, but the line demands it, and I need it for a couple of really cool things I'm thinking about.)
I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants vidder thus far, so I don't have a lot of specific shots in mind; generally, I have a fuzzy idea of the episode or the scene I want to use, and find the shot while scrubbing through the footage. (I also clip as I go. I think my process would be a whole lot quicker if I didn't, but I do.)
I also keep a spreadsheet, not for outlining purposes but as a log of clips used, in case WMM goes nutty on me (it's happened) or I screw something up massively:
Voila. (If you recognize any of my other tabs, please don't mock. I am a sensitive soul.)
Since I'm dealing with 41 episodes' worth of source, I've added something to this spreadsheet that I didn't have in my first one: the "pulled from" header, which is just a way of telling me where in the episode to start looking if I decide a clip is too long or too short or needs to start five frames earlier or later, and has to be recut. If I were smart I'd have exact timestamps, but I'm not.
The clip names are pretty self-explanatory -- short description, number of frames, whether they've been through any tweaks. A "2" (or "3" or I've gone up to about "8") before the number of frames just means that that's the second (third, eighth...) version of that clip I've made, usually due to starting-point issues.
It's also pretty evident that I'm WAY overusing the automatic pan/zoom for this project, but I'm actually getting to like it; it harmonizes pretty well with the camera movement within the clip, and just makes it a bit more kinetic, which I want for at least the opening of this one. It might be my second favorite of the handful of actual usable WMM effects (after the damned crossfade).
About The Actual Vid
In my head, I think of this as the Adam/deathwish vid. (I'm torn between two possible summaries: "Sex and death," and "Exhilaration." The second being a reference to that great Ros line in 7.02 -- from memory, I think it's "Adam was going to die, Harry. He knew it. It didn't frighten him, it exhilarated him."
Erm, possibly I've watched that scene too many times, for reasons that may become apparent if I ever make "Weapon.")
I could wax exegetical about most of the clips I have already, except for the last one, which was "oooh, I like this shot, let's stick it on there and see if it works," but I won't at this time. I'll just point out that yes, the first one is painfully, painfully literal for a vid of this title, but it really had to go on "I found me a reason," because, let's face it, Adam was looking for a way out ever since Fiona, and driving a car bomb away from a Remembrance Day celebration was as good an excuse for dying as he was ever going to get.
I'll also point out that I wanted the flooding Barrier to be another long clip, dammit, but of course they didn't shoot it that way, and I was lucky enough to be able to pull four sequential shots that more or less fit the line.
I'm also speeding a lot of these clips up quite a bit, because -- I may have to change this in beta if it only works for me -- but Adam is kind of the hypomania poster boy, and I want a bit of a sense of things rushing out of control, where possible, especially in the longer shots.
And I think that's all I have to say right now, although I'll probably be back in five minutes with an addendum.
Also, do bear in mind that I'm a bit of a very new vidder and I formed my process by diving in and seeing what worked, so I wouldn't be surprised if this bears absolutely no resemblance to any vidding method ever used by any civilized person ever.
My current primary WiP is an Adam Carter character study set to Matthew Good Band's Hello Time Bomb, which was pretty much the second song to pop to mind when I started thinking about the possibility of vidding Spooks (I'll tell you about the first some other time; it's awesome cool, but it involves clipping ALL the footage). MGB and Spooks seem to go together unfathomably well, for some reason; I have vid bunnies for Tom, Adam, Ros, and Lucas, and the latter three are this, "Weapon," and "Indestructible." (I poked at "Born Losers" for Tom, just to round out the set and because "what doesn't kill us now just makes us better whores" is a very Tom Quinn sentiment, but it's a bit long.)
I'm not doing anything to the song, because it's a manageable length and I don't feel like there's a verse or instrumental I really won't be able to figure out what to do with.
And I started work on the vid yesterday, so there's a little chunk of the first verse viewable here.
What I Laughably Call My Process
As anyone who's talked to me for more than thirty seconds knows, I vid in WMM, which has no great advantages aside from coming free with the computer and being designed for people with no clue about video editing to come into and pick up almost immediately. I've heard rumors that it's possible to clip in WMM, but I've never been able to figure out how, so I do my clipping in Virtualdub, export as .avi, and just plonk them into the timeline in WMM, like thus:
largish screenshot of my WMM timeline
As you can see down at the bottom there, I actually have two instances of vdub open -- I'm clipping in one and tweaking brightness/contrast in the other. Of course I could do both in the same instance, but I've had vdub throw a massive pissy at me when I tried to make it filter a whole episode, and even though I was working with a bad file at the time, I do not like having massive pissys thrown in my direction.
Clipping
and adjustment.
Not a massive change, but I wanted the footage just a little bit brighter and harder-contrast than it was. (I didn't tweak anything when I was doing "Jacob Marley's Chain" -- I desaturated the opening shot and I think I added a little motion blur to one clip -- because that footage was PERFECT, but I'm kind of unduly excited by the possibilities of vdub filters.)
Unfortunately, This Is About As Organized As I Get
My outlining process is the one aspect of the whole thing that I'm actually really proud of: I use FreeMind, which is open-source mind-mapping software, and which lets me go off on wild tangents in all directions without having to make subheadings. I found it a couple weeks ago, I love it, I use it for everything now, you should too because it's great.
HUGE .png of my outline
There's not a lot on there, since I only started yesterday, but you can see the basic principle. (I have another one I'm working with for JMC, but that one looks a bit different since I started it near the end of the vidding process instead of at the beginning.)
(Those of you who've seen Spooks; yup, sorry, I am including the Ana Bakshi thing. It frustrates the hell out of me too, but the line demands it, and I need it for a couple of really cool things I'm thinking about.)
I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants vidder thus far, so I don't have a lot of specific shots in mind; generally, I have a fuzzy idea of the episode or the scene I want to use, and find the shot while scrubbing through the footage. (I also clip as I go. I think my process would be a whole lot quicker if I didn't, but I do.)
I also keep a spreadsheet, not for outlining purposes but as a log of clips used, in case WMM goes nutty on me (it's happened) or I screw something up massively:
Voila. (If you recognize any of my other tabs, please don't mock. I am a sensitive soul.)
Since I'm dealing with 41 episodes' worth of source, I've added something to this spreadsheet that I didn't have in my first one: the "pulled from" header, which is just a way of telling me where in the episode to start looking if I decide a clip is too long or too short or needs to start five frames earlier or later, and has to be recut. If I were smart I'd have exact timestamps, but I'm not.
The clip names are pretty self-explanatory -- short description, number of frames, whether they've been through any tweaks. A "2" (or "3" or I've gone up to about "8") before the number of frames just means that that's the second (third, eighth...) version of that clip I've made, usually due to starting-point issues.
It's also pretty evident that I'm WAY overusing the automatic pan/zoom for this project, but I'm actually getting to like it; it harmonizes pretty well with the camera movement within the clip, and just makes it a bit more kinetic, which I want for at least the opening of this one. It might be my second favorite of the handful of actual usable WMM effects (after the damned crossfade).
About The Actual Vid
In my head, I think of this as the Adam/deathwish vid. (I'm torn between two possible summaries: "Sex and death," and "Exhilaration." The second being a reference to that great Ros line in 7.02 -- from memory, I think it's "Adam was going to die, Harry. He knew it. It didn't frighten him, it exhilarated him."
Erm, possibly I've watched that scene too many times, for reasons that may become apparent if I ever make "Weapon.")
I could wax exegetical about most of the clips I have already, except for the last one, which was "oooh, I like this shot, let's stick it on there and see if it works," but I won't at this time. I'll just point out that yes, the first one is painfully, painfully literal for a vid of this title, but it really had to go on "I found me a reason," because, let's face it, Adam was looking for a way out ever since Fiona, and driving a car bomb away from a Remembrance Day celebration was as good an excuse for dying as he was ever going to get.
I'll also point out that I wanted the flooding Barrier to be another long clip, dammit, but of course they didn't shoot it that way, and I was lucky enough to be able to pull four sequential shots that more or less fit the line.
I'm also speeding a lot of these clips up quite a bit, because -- I may have to change this in beta if it only works for me -- but Adam is kind of the hypomania poster boy, and I want a bit of a sense of things rushing out of control, where possible, especially in the longer shots.
And I think that's all I have to say right now, although I'll probably be back in five minutes with an addendum.