mswyrr
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Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 18, 2011 15:54:01 GMT -5
title: i dream of home editor: mswyrr song: Bat for Lashes - "Daniel" summary: Sarah Walker is amazing and I love her. I love her wariness and her good heart, which awful circumstances drove into hiding, but never destroyed. This is the story of how she fell for her sweet guy totally by surprise and then spent a lot of time showing her affection mainly by doing violence to anyone who might hurt him. And stealing kisses. And touching him like he belonged to her. Guh. Spoilers: Up to Season 4. notes: a big "Thank you!" to sabaceanbabe, who is an amazing beta viewer. I was lost in a wilderness of suck and confusion before she lent me a hand. AMAZING PERSON. I used her feedback as a roadmap to remake this and hoovering the suck out became quite a straightforward matter.  streaming at vimeoDownload @ mediafire [53mb]: moar notes: The vid is based off this meta. It's all about Sarah's S1&2 dyanmic with Chuck, basically. Though I use a couple clips from later seasons, I dodge around the characterization fail and the Intersect 2.0: Now With Completely Absurd Ass Kicking. The vid really happened because Frea O'Scanlin's epic AU fic reminded me exactly how much I use to adore the pairing. I'm very glad for that: it's been a pleasure to be able to make a tribute to everything I love about the show as it wraps up this year. Because there is really so much I love. It's silly and pop culture-y! At its heart is the genderfucky relationship between a white knight!woman/damsel in distress!man, one of my favorite storykinks ever. SRSLY. I mean, she kisses him awake like he's sleeping beauty! She's attracted to him because he's very brave--not to mention verrah cute--despite it being a kind of bravery that doesn't read as traditionally masculine. It's not about kicking ass, it's about caring, wanting to connect, and being willing to sacrifice himself for others. Which, seriously, is really fuckin' brave, even though the main joke of the show is that HEY THIS GUY IS A PUSSY LOL. She tries to explain it in S1-2, but people keep shutting her down. Roan sneers "tall, dark, and caring, what a combo." She says "some women like a man who can take a back seat" and nobody seems to get that either. Not even the writers, who have made Sarah someone who's been increasingly given the role of The Girl as Chuck has been made more of a Butch Mandude. I do think they realized why someone who's committed to emotional honesty and reciprocal relationships of care with his family--bio and family of choice--would be so desirable to her, tho. Which is nice. And why this song stuck out to me. I wanted to make a vid about Sarah as the desiring subject and Chuck as her object of desire. And one of the things she desires most about him is the way he makes people family and friends, reaching out despite knowing how much people can hurt you. They both had pretty awful parents in their ways, but Chuck responded to his situation by being Super-Glue boy, KEEPING PEOPLE EMOTIONALLY TOGETHER. COME ON LET'S FEEL THE TOGETHERNESS! AND PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME. He survives by being likable. Whereas Sarah survived by being lethal. She built really strong walls and learned how to hurt people really well. Together they find home in each other. AND LOOK REALLY HOT TOGETHER. The end.
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Post by obsessive24 on Nov 18, 2011 17:17:37 GMT -5
Welcome to the pub mswyrr. Hope to see you drop by the discussion board/introduction thread sometime and say hi. I don't watch Chuck, but I thought the vid's narrative/character arc was really clear despite my lack of context knowledge. I definitely got a great sense of the character's strength and resilience and her love of Chuck, both in the dramatic aspects and in the cuter funnier aspects. I thought your clip choices worked very well in that regard, and certainly served to demonstrate your thesis about the nature of this relationship. I particularly liked how the flickering of the images corresponded to the rumble of drums at 1:27, and the overlays around 1:35. I also liked the way the pacing and motion worked at 2:30 on the music, and at 2:45. On the technical editing side, I noticed that the aspect ratio is a bit squished, so my concrit would be to maybe look into that for your next vid and see if it can be fixed. Also spotted a few stray frames, e.g at 1:07, 2:12, 2:32, 2:52, 3:01. That usually doesn't show up (well) on the timeline preview so it's just a matter of running a hawky eye over your exports. I also felt some fades to black were a bit confusing - perhaps unnecessary - in terms of narrative. e.g. 2:08 - not sure why it was there, since it was the same scene before and after the fade so it didn't seem to serve a particular narrative separation purpose, but neither could I see a particularly prominent purpose for it in terms of audio or stylistic cues. It may be just part of a pattern I haven't spotted, though. |
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Post by voodoochild on Nov 19, 2011 21:33:32 GMT -5
So glad to see you over here! I am astonished at this, Wyrr, really I am. I don't know the show well, but I have a general idea of who everyone is and what's going on and I've seen you meta about it before. You've really highlighted Sarah's strength here, the way she loves and protects Chuck. That bit with Chuck being force-fed the Intersect (?) overlaid with her touching his face is gorgeous, as are the shots of him clutching her tightly.
Brava!
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Post by legoline on Nov 20, 2011 3:29:49 GMT -5
I was about 30 seconds in when I realised I should probably give "Chuck" a try after all. I stopped watching then to not get spoilelered too much, so can't give any proper feedback. Sorry  (On the other hand my friends have been trying to get me watch "Chuck" for years, so congrats to achieving that with 30 seconds of vid!) |
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mswyrr
New to the Pub
Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 20, 2011 5:13:51 GMT -5
Thank you so much for the excellent feedback, obsessive24! And thank you for putting this place together; it's fantastic. I'll definitely be dropping by the introduction thread ASAP. re: the aspect ratio thing. I digged around a bit and realized that the aspect ratio of the uncompressed file Premiere exported was fine. It was only after I compressed the file through VirtualDub that it got squished a bit. [comparison image: bottom image is the Premiere export, top image is after it was compressed in VirtualDub] I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. And how to fix it! Stray frame spotting! Thank you! Once I figure out how to do a version with the aspect ratio fixed, I'll make sure that I correct those as well before re-uploading. The odd fades to black are really just a product of this being my first vid -- I'll tweak those as well. voodoochild: squeeeeee!! Reading your comment made me so happy! ((chair dance)) I'm really glad that you liked it.  legoline, I hope you enjoy the show! It's so fantastic to hear that my vid inspired you to give it a shot. It has its failings, but S1 & 2 are some SRS GOOD TV [edit: for values of "good" that are mostly about it being fun and containing Sarah/the relationship storykinks  ] imho. |
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Post by legoline on Nov 20, 2011 5:17:00 GMT -5
@mswyrr I know this is probably the obvious question but did you try the resizing filter with Virtual Dub? I know that when I started out vidding my vid had the wrong aspect/ratio as well simply because VD compressed it wrong and I didn't know I could adjust the size manually.
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mswyrr
New to the Pub
Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 20, 2011 5:22:37 GMT -5
@ mswyrr I know this is probably the obvious question but did you try the resizing filter with Virtual Dub? I know that when I started out vidding my vid had the wrong aspect/ratio as well simply because VD compressed it wrong and I didn't know I could adjust the size manually. ((flail)) THANK YOU! I did not know that. Trying it right now. |
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Post by legoline on Nov 20, 2011 5:30:39 GMT -5
YAY! Let me know if it works! |
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mswyrr
New to the Pub
Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 20, 2011 5:38:17 GMT -5
YAY! Let me know if it works! I went in and made sure that the size of the original exported avi file (720x480) was the size VirtualDub would use, and yet the aspect ratio remains sad and squishy. Hmm. Then I tried specifying 16:9 aspect ratio, and it threw up an error. |
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Post by legoline on Nov 20, 2011 6:07:23 GMT -5
Okay. So it's actual movieesque widescreen?
Try to go to the filter and use 720x406 instead of 720x480, then where it says "nearest neighbour" I always choose Lanczos3.
Generally the two sizes I work with are either 720x576 or 720x406 ... maybe that helps?
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Post by obsessive24 on Nov 20, 2011 6:20:58 GMT -5
Or maybe try AutoGK? It basically encodes everything via Vdub for you without you needing to do anything manual and technical. |
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mswyrr
New to the Pub
Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 20, 2011 6:21:01 GMT -5
Okay. So it's actual movieesque widescreen? Try to go to the filter and use 720x406 instead of 720x480, then where it says "nearest neighbour" I always choose Lanczos3. Generally the two sizes I work with are either 720x576 or 720x406 ... maybe that helps? 720x406 worked! *\o/* I was getting my numbers from the file info for the Premiere export, and apparently they were leading me astray. Thank you again so much for helping me here. I'd been reading stuff and trying different things for so long I'd begun to lose hope. Now I can do some tweaking and replace the current links with the SHINY AND NON-SQUISHED version. |
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Post by legoline on Nov 20, 2011 6:28:07 GMT -5
Yaaaay! \0/ I'm so glad I could help! ;D I'd been reading stuff and trying different things for so long I'd begun to lose hope. Oh, trust me, I know exactly how that feels. I don't even want to think of the number of hours I've spent reading up on how to convert files, or getting the aspect/ratio in Virtual Dub right and all this other tech stuff I have no clue about, only to fail again and again, so I'm very, very glad I could help with this Or maybe try AutoGK? It basically encodes everything via Vdub for you without you needing to do anything manual and technical. Not the OP but oooh, that sounds shiny. I'll look it up |
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Post by tearfuleye on Nov 20, 2011 16:58:13 GMT -5
oh sarah. oh chuck .... *draws hearts*
i hope you also like a comment without much feedback at all ;) because i don't really have anything say right now. but this was really really lovely! and i think i need to finally start with the 5th season now *nods*
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mswyrr
New to the Pub
Posts: 19
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Post by mswyrr on Nov 21, 2011 6:24:18 GMT -5
oh sarah. oh chuck .... *draws hearts* i hope you also like a comment without much feedback at all ;) because i don't really have anything say right now. but this was really really lovely! and i think i need to finally start with the 5th season now *nods* omg, are you kidding? I LOVE this comment. My interior monologue while vidding was mainly "oh sarah. oh chuck!" with a dash of "ILU BOTH SO MUCH. KISS NAO PLZ" thrown in. ;) So I'm happy to know it got you into a similar mental space! :D @obsessive24 AutoGK sounds great! Looking into it now. TY! |
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] imho. 