hazelk: (Default)
hazelk ([personal profile] hazelk) wrote2007-12-30 09:42 pm
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Year-end vid meme thing

I made three vids this year, which I thought was the same number as last (yay consistency) until counting revealed five posted in 2006. Slow and unsteady but at least the source diversity is getting more diverse. No Jossverse, one BSG and two movies all in FCE, which I’d only just started to learn in 2006.


Safe from Harm was the BSG vid. Whereas with earlier vids I’d usually had at least one sequence of images in mind before beginning to clip, for all three of the ones made this year I also had an idea for an overall look or mood. For Safe I wanted something dreamlike and ephemeral, a wind blowing through it, a civilisation blown away. Initially the idea was very literal, to use the pages of the peace treaty as some kind of background texture and I did end up using images of bits of paper as a repeated motif to represent Laura Roslin, the politician. As the vid grew, however, the wind effect became more of a motion thing, exploiting all the zooms and funky camerawork from the show and learning to use the type of internal motion that comes not from the central character moving but from the blocking around her/him/it, negative movement like negative space.

Quantum Theory was the Children of Men vid I entered for the vividcon challenge show (wish I could have been there except that with the Challenge/Auction show coming at the end I’d have probably spent the whole con in a state of fear and self-loathing). In calmer circumstances I was happy with how the vid turned out and got some really nice feedback on it. Vidding emotion is hard but this was a movie that I felt very strongly about and I think that feeling came across in the vid even if the song did most of the work.

Rock Steady was a Gilda vid that I made to get back into the swing of things after the whole vividcon-entering experience and was just great fun. One of the things I like best about vidding is getting my characters to dance around on the screen. With most types of source that means manipulating fight or sex scenes, being able to play with actual dance footage was a real bonus.


Plans for next year include a very serious, very political BSG vid, a perfectly silly Heroes one, new kinds of music, less sloppy audio-editing and trying to figure out how masks work.