Dish on vids you've ditched!

[sweetestdrain]

So, if y'all are anything like me, you have tons of vidding projects that sometimes never actually...GO anywhere. Some of these might be hiding in, say, a folder entitled "lonely vid parts" on an external drive you haven't looked at in years.* Some of them might just be the only exported avis in a project folder from which you've long since deleted all the source.** Or maybe you occasionally run across a vid draft of yours in your Downloads folder and you don't even remember starting the vid.***

...or maybe you're all of you more organized than I am. Regardless, you probably have vid projects that you've ditched for one reason or another. A lot of mine make me cringe, but sometimes there's a particular sequence of clips I love, or an idea I wish I could have pulled off, and I find myself rewatching those old drafts occasionally for nostalgia's sake.

And sometimes, like today, I feel like inflicting them on people. And I am ALWAYS interested in seeing (or hearing about) other people's abandoned vids (usually so I can whine and stamp my feet and ask WHY ABANDON THAT VID, WHY, but maybe we can be a little more chill about that here, hee). So, I thought it could be cool to have a thread where everyone can share their old vid bits, or vent about the projects that got away. What did you like about the vids? What were you trying to do? Why didn't they work? What did you HATE about them? How far did you get before you gave up?

I'll get us started! Password for all these is ditched.

Twinkle -- What started as an experiment in vidding a REALLY (painfully) slow/quiet song for Rose Tyler femslash took a wrong turn when Christopher Eccleston showed up and demanded the vid be about HIM instead... and I just gave up in favor of about three other Who vids I was working on at the time, also never to be completed. (Doctor Who, 2006-07)

The Police and the Private -- I actually still wish I could finish this vid--I freaking love Miss Parker!--but there was too much source for my attention span at the time, my editing was not up to par, and the song started feeling overly literal and fill-in-the-blanks. Basically, the only good thing about this vid was the character I was trying to vid (and her amazing legs). (The Pretender, 2006)

My Moon, My Man -- Weirdly, I really love what I have on the timeline for this, but I just wasn't feeling it at the time... and whenever I do get the urge to finish it, I remember how I deleted the project files to make space, and I immediately lost interest again. Never delete your project files! Or, if you do? Don't look back. (Amelie, 2007 -- brief nudity)

And... I have tons more, but that's a good sampling to start. (Also, jeez, I abandoned a LOT of vids in 2006. Weird.)

Now, y'all!


* True story.
** Also a true story.
*** Look, I am just not a very organized person.

[gnattery]

That Amile one would have been adorable, it's a shame the project files are gone. I can understand not wanting to start it all over again.

With most of my unfinished vids I have at least a vague feeling that I might want to go back to them someday. This is really the only one I could find to show. This idea originated from this feeling that came over me during class one day last year, and then listening to this song on the tram home. Something about the women of BSG and... something about how it connected to the role of women in real life and how it's changed. I guess? Yeah I honestly have no idea now what the vid was about or why I was making it or what the song meant or anything. I think maybe I wanted to say *everything* about the women on that show, because I loved them all. There was also a clip that I was SO SURE existed but turns out I imagined it, and I had a lot emotionally invested in using that clip. It was the strongest desire to vid something that I've ever felt, and I can remember how right the whole thing felt at the time. I should have written something down then, but I have a feeling it would still be incomprehensible now. Besides, I have enough half-baked BSG ideas. Oh well. I swear it was the best idea ever.

password: scraps

vimeo.com/32695442

[xandra]

I'm with gnattery, I still assume I'll finish them one day. I did for my ds9 vid. But there are some I just know I won't go back to because I ran out of ideas. I have a folder of abandoned vids, some are more done than others. Sadly most of these are torchwood, the show that broke my heart. It was never good but it could have been.

Anyway, I did a "I write Sins not Tragedy" vid for Rhys but ran out of what to put in when I got to the "whore" line. So a solid 35 second vid, I can't see myself trying to vid torchwood again. There are other TW vids, but this was the farthest and most interesting.

Next was one of my attempts at a wedding present vid for Charmax which was "Where is my Mind" Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes vid. This is one I actually think about finishing one day, just need to have the drive. It seemed to simple to me.

I put my snippets here: www.mediafire.com/?dxf7t9bz78hwa these are the only ones I had exported. If I find I have more I'll add them.

Then there is the ever impossible Scully/Krycek Vid. But Astarte and I will keep trying. I started one to David Usher's Blinded... I was shocked I got so far.

Also my 3 am crackpipe idea that X-Files fanfic style. Mulder knocks up both Scully and Diana. Only astarte has seen the two 15 second exports and no one else ever will.

[killabeez]

Nov 25, 2011 23:54:11 GMT -5 sweetestdrain said:

The Police and the Private -- I actually still wish I could finish this vid--I freaking love Miss Parker!--but there was too much source for my attention span at the time, my editing was not up to par, and the song started feeling overly literal and fill-in-the-blanks. Basically, the only good thing about this vid was the character I was trying to vid (and her amazing legs). (The Pretender, 2006)

sweetestdrain - I love this topic. And I almost shared my most LKBV unfinished LKBV of my heart, but then I watched your Miss Parker vid, and now I want to tear out my hair at the thought of you never finishing this. It's so great! I want the rest of it! This is really salvageable, and I hope that you will one day. *sadface*

I also feel your pain, though. That started-to-get-literal feeling is the worst. HATE that. But really, this does not feel like a vid that never wants to be finished.

...Unlike my LKBV of shame, which I've never been ashamed enough to actually delete. All I really need to say is that the song is called "Jamie" and it's about James T. Kirk.

[legoline]

@sweetestrain: Awww, I love the Rose vid and the Amelie one; such a shame you'll never finish them.

Here's one of mine: That Man (password: scraps ). Early this year when the first videos from the Hobbit set showed up I had a moment of, "Oh, so this is the Richard Armitage my flist has been going bonkers about for years? I think I like him!"

When my friend, the biggest Armitage fan in the universe, found out, she immediately took it upon herself to send me pictures, links to videos and tv shows, articles--you name it. As a thank you I decided to make a "Tribute to Richard Armitage" vid, but I never really finished it. I sent her this first draft and she liked it, but I never got past that version. The whole thing felt too uninspired to me. I think the editing would have to be much cooler to make it interesting and more fun to watch. I keep meaning to get back it to it but I never do (Just in case: there are spoilers for Spooks, Robin Hood, Moving On, Miss Marie Lloyd, Strike Back and Vicar of Dibley in the video)

I also have a feeling I'll push my GoT vids to "scraps" eventually. I keep poking at it but somehow...*sigh*

[thedothatgirl]

I can only recall one project that I abandoned. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

A whedonverse Relationship vid to Peter Gabriel's 'Book of Love' . I think I got as far as 10 seconds and then gave up. I didn't even keep the project file or the draft render - but I do know it was in my WMM days. So pre Jan 2009.

I still love the song so it hangs around the shortlist folder hoping one day I'll be in the mood to tackle it afresh.

[elipie]

This thread is a great idea! I have an obscene amount of abandoned vids, but most of them didn't even get past the clipping stage, so I don't really have much to show. When I first started vidding, I started making a Jack Harkness/everybody vid to Teenage Dream for my girlfriend at the time, but we broke up a few weeks later and I lost my mojo to finish it. It's been sitting on my harddrive for a year, but the bits that I do have aren't very good anyway, so I'll probably just scrap it or completely start over if I ever decide it's something worth coming back to.

[obsessive24]

I have a folder entitled Vid Rejects which has about 10 vids in it. Some of these I still plan to come back to (and some in the past did manage to come back from the dead - my Riley vid this year, for example), but some of them are just no longer feasible.

I uploaded a few which have enough clips for decent viewing. The rest are just like three clips amidst a sea of black space.

Pierrot the Clown (password: pierrot) - Dexter, Brian and Lila. From 2007/08, I think. The idea was sound back when there were only two seasons, and there were some very neat parallels between Brian and Lila and the notions of fire vs blood, but I did the first two verses and sort of found myself already running out of footage (and ideas), and as the seasons piled up, it doesn't have the same resonance as it did back then.

Haunted (passoword: azumi) - Azumi 1 and 2 movies. From 2009? There's a chunk of vid in the start, then another chunk from 2:30, those being the bits that I could see in my head. And once I did those I realised I didn't have enough clips to do the rest of the vid. ;D

Like O, Like H (password: atonement) - Atonement, Briony POV. From 2009? Can't remember why I stopped; I think at the time it didn't feel like it was coming together properly and didn't look right, but looking at it now, it still seems promising, so I might try again at some point.

Push It (password: lilah) - Angel, Lilah character. From mid-2010. It wasn't coming together as quickly as I wanted, and I desperately needed to clear up HD space for something else, so I decided to delete it. But the intention was always to come back to at some point. It's just a pain in the ass trying to relocate all the external source.

Virgin (password: vorenus) - Rome, Vorenus/Antony. This one is infuriating because it's been cramming up my HD since August, and I just haven't been able to do anything with it. I'm this close to pulling the trigger and just deleting it, but for some reason I'm not doing it.

[astarte]

xandra: Your download link just keeps loading - It's the personal link, you'll get, when you log into your account. I don't see the old folder option anymore in the new site design, so you'll have to link them individually.

I'm loving this thread, really interesting to see these unfinished vids. I'll probably upload two of mine later.

[sisabet]

I have so many vids I could share. Really, it got to the point that I vidded my unfinished vids when Eunice and I co-modded the "I Suck" panel at VVC a few years ago.



Of the abandoned vids on my laptop I have two I can share right away:

sisavids.com/YMT_AbandonedVid.avi -- Pushing Daisies, Chuck/Ned

I started this vid waaay back when I was first learning Premiere CS3 so there are some aspect ratio issues I didn't yet understand how to handle (When I used Premiere 6.5, I never messed with project settings and I just corrected everything in post. In CS3, it is reaaaaallly important to get it right from the start which is why I had to recut all of Bad Romance and cried and cried and cried way back when). So I loved PD, but then Bad Romance ate my brain and I never went back to this vid and I had vidded most of the parts I liked and there was the pesky resizing/AR stuff I still had to correct but that still doesn't mean I don't really believe in the vid-concept. I am just really lazy.

And now for something completely different -- while You Might Think is cute and has its moments and probably deserves to exist and I should finish it --- I did finish this next vid and it was killed, swiftly and surely, in the beta process.

sisavids.com/angryboy_abandoned2004.avi -- The X-Files; Mulder/Scully... of a sort.

So, yeah this vid was abandoned back in 2004 for very solid reasons. We agreed in beta that this vid had issues (beyond the obviousness difference in downloaded S8 source versus previous seasons-- that would have been an eventual fix along with shoring up the various aspect ratios) and that the issues were NOT fixable.

My beta, renenet, blamed the issues on poor song choice. I, however; drank the Cree Summer Koolaid waaaaay back in the day and decided it can't be her -- the vid sucks because I really have issues with Mulder. In fact, I maybe kinda fucking hate him. A lot. And I basically used this vid to say "Stay Dead, Mulder." A lot.

So, I learned I can't vid a character I feel irrationally negatively about. I can irrationally love a character and that is fine for a vid -- but irrational hate doesn't work for my process.

[thatyourefuse]

Oh, wow, that Lilah vid is made of -- WOW.

And I have not ditched any of these, really, I've just... temporarily back-burnered them due to various issues.

Between the Bars, Ashes to Ashes, S3 footage -- I love this one, I love it like very creepy pie, but I haven't got a handle on the rhythm yet and I'm not sure the footage exists to do what I want with the POV reveal. (If you've seen S3: yes, it is who you suspect it is.)

Passive, Skins, S2 footage -- this should be the easiest thing in the world, since it's basically dealing with a single episode, but I ran out of oomph. Also, the cutting is a wreck. I really like what I'm planning for the second verse, though.

Strange, Wire in the Blood -- MY BABY. Oh, man, this vid. I love the concept of this vid more than words can say. Just it's a five-minute song, I have every intention of using all of it, and I haven't exactly seen all the relevant footage yet.

Weapon, Spooks, S5 footage -- I love this idea. I love it so much. And I am the kind of completely blocked on it that means I'm going about it so wrong that I can't even see right from where I am. Nevertheless: Rosalind Sarah Myers, normal people do not actually look at their close relatives like that, God help us.

And then there was the Effy vid I started and decided I'd been thinking about completely wrong, but sadly I scrapped all of it including the test export. Alas.

[barkley]

I have so, so, so many (that I swear I am going to get back to!) The first one is a Supernatural one I was doing last year, and I ditched it because it was murky as all get out. And rewatching it now, months later, even I can't figure out what it was about. I had to go back and read my emails. So, uhm, yeah, this one will take a lot of work before it will ever see the day. Work I'm just not invested in. So it can see this thread instead!

Rise - Eddie Vedder - Really, just pretend you see it's all about Sam and Castiel doing their Rise thing and who Dean trusts and who Dean can forgive. And totally ignore the "I am going to place this clip here because it's pretty dammit, who cares what it makes the viewers think."

And then there's the Never Ending Math Equation because at sometime between starting this vid and ditching this vid I went from loving Sun Kil Moon to not being able to stand his whiny voice anymore. So I quit.
Never Ending Math Equation - Sun Kil Moon (Numb3rs)

[xandra]

Thanks astarte, fixed.

[nos]

I adore this idea. I also love the Lilah vid. (Maybe because I love Lilah, and love the song, so it's a win win).

Sadly, almost all of my unfinished vids are when I was a baby vidder with an unhealthy obsession with Spike. (It's more healthy now that I can temper it against an obsession with Doctor Who). Out of the 13 vids in my 'unfinished' folder, only five of them are not focused on Spike Oh and I didn't count three of them, cause they are all false starts for the same video that has been vexing me for years.

I will share, however, two of my more recent unfinished.

Guitar Hero by Amanda Palmer. Cause I needed to make this video to Spike. The entire vid was built around the bare bones of the sequence to the lyrics "Stratocaster strapped to your back. It's a semi-automatic like dads." Cause I am insane.

www.bloodypoetry.org/videos/guitarhero.wmv

Rabbit Heart by Florence and the Machine. Everyone keeps making these romance vids to this song. Cause they aren't understanding who Midas was I guess. This was first attempt at a 'The Doctor is kinda a dick' video. I might have ditched cause Rose kinda annoys me now.

www.bloodypoetry.org/videos/RabbitHeart.wmv

[obsessive24]

thatyourefuse - Ahhh I love Passive! Keep doing that one! I actually once won an auction vid and asked the vidder to make a Sketch POV vid for me, and got a great first-minute draft, but then the vidder flaked and was never heard from again.

nos - people make romance vids to Rabbit Heart? Weird. I am yet another person who's vidded it, and got like two comments on the vid, although I still like the vid so I put it down to audience song overload, heh.