Horses are good company -- The Witcher

I received a gorgeous, emotional, wonderful vid for "God's Own Country", called Hounds of Love, by CroissantKatie! I am so pleased with this, it captures a lot of what I love about the film. It is perfect.

Ao3 link, https://archiveofourown.org/works/44246569

I made a vid for colls, about the show Andor, which is my obsession at the moment. My vid is called "Why We Fight" and you can find it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/44277415

Part of making this vid was allowing it to be imperfect. I had a lot of pain and anxiety in December and January, and I thought seriously about defaulting, but I did not want to, and so I ended up finishing this by the due date. To do so involved cutting down the song because the original is close to 5 minutes long. Thank you to thingswithwings for help and encouragement through that process; I've never done a vid with an edited song before, but now that I have, I am going to do it all the time and finish some of my other drafts.

Art is open to interpretation, so you can think what you like of this vid, but here is what I thought about when making it!

I listened to anti-fascist play lists on spotify to try and find a song, but many of them felt too specific. I knew I wanted to vid the prison escape and the more action-y parts of the show and this song felt right, it was more about feelings. It felt even more right as I continued to make the vid.

I did not include Luthen or Mon Mothma, because I needed to narrow the scope of the vid, and they don't have as many action scenes. It also feels like Mon hasn't stepped fully into her power yet. Her and Luthen's style of fighting is different.

At first I thought "come hell" was the horrors of war, but as I made the vid, I realized that Cassian is hell. Cassian and the other fighters featured here are hell in the sense of "give 'em hell" and righteous fury. The archers are your ranged fighters; and the infantry, they are your melee fighters.

So, we are going to give the fascists hell, and we are going to die on our own terms, with our arms unbound.

Why do we fight? It's probably different for everyone, they each have a personal reason. But connections with others is one of the reasons. The peace to be a space lesbian feeding the sheep is one of the reasons. It's the freedom to live your own life the way you want to.

Thank you to colls for the prompt, and to the Festivids mods for organizing.

New Vid by me!

Mighty Soul;
BPM (Beats per minute);
direct action is a love language.

Ao3 page

YouTube

Summary: Direct Action is a love language.

Content notes: Needles, fake blood, people in the hospital. Police Violence against protestors.

Thank you to sophinisba for looking this over for me.

Subtitles are available.

I'm having some internet issues which are interfering with video, so I have to take a break from TV watching. Which is not the worst; I have plenty of other things to do. I got up to 9.03 in Taskmaster and episode 2 of Leverage Redemption.

I'm working on a puzzle from the thrift store; it is quite challenging. It's called "The Astronomer" and it features a wizard and his big telescope in a tower.

Debbie and I went into work for books to prisoners on Monday. Today I dropped off 4 packages of books at the post office, the first ones of the year.

While at the B2P space I borrowed a book called "For Real" by Alexis Hall, and I am totally loving it. It's a kinky gay romance featuring age difference and it's really well written.

Stalled out a little on my vid project, but I managed to work on it just a little bit tonight. At this stage I'm learning a lot and having to make decisions, which is a lot of work.

Vidding is proceeding, but I have run into a couple of problems.
The main one is: My clips have audio attached and I'm not sure how to get rid of the movie audio. I'm ready to keep going with clipping other movies, but would like to sort out this problem first. I have several vid ideas and have imported media for 2 of them.

I am using DaVinci Resolve on Mac. I did watch part of a tutorial but people on YouTube tutorials tend to talk way too fast for me.

I'm committed to going slow. I've learned more about how to acquire source and I'm getting more comfortable with Resolve software. I've clipped almost all of movie #1. I searched around and found lyrics for song #1.

I've been watching and enjoying TaskMaster. My face is hurting a lot lately so it's been good to have something cheery that requires little concentration.

1. I managed to cut my song down! yay! It's now at 2:50 instead of 4:30 (thank you vid club!)

2. I fear that using Windows movie maker isn't going to work out. I mean, maybe there's a way to use it and I'm just not seeing it. I watched some montage tutorials on youtube, but they are people doing pretty short montages of video game segments. I have a full movie in there. *head scratch*

I also don't know how to remove the movie sounds.

3. As usual my main barrier is my own anxiety, frustration, fatigue, etc.

Not unrelated, my mouth hurts, and staring at screens doesn't seem to help my nerve pain.

Thuvia, Laura Shapiro, Nelle

Nelle has made 1 vid, goes to VVC, is a 14 yr vid fan
Laura has been watching and making vids since 2000. Mac vidder. made about 50 vids
Thuvia has been vid fan for 10 years, made some vids.

Hillary has made 1 still source vid. wondering about free programs. Windows: Cinelerra. Beccatoria has done tutorials.
iMovie is linear, free.

Thuvia: still vidding is harder b/c less visually interesting.

Aud: how easy to get legal source?
Thuvia: ripping from DVDs is easy. can do w/ freeware. DVDfab and vidcoder.
Mac the Ripper-- works before 10.7. newer don't have Rosetta Stone.
Google "remove DRM iTunes" etc. People in the community will help you: videohelp.com.
The tech keeps getting simpler.

5 things you wish you'd known?
Laura: That you can do it! Technical hurdles are surprassable. It's going to be as satisfying as you think it is.
You are going to really enjoy it. You don't have to follow the rules.
eruthros:
AMV ppl are into high quality source and high tech. that's not true. can use shitty quality, VHS, old computers.
Put an ice pack under her first vidding computer, taped the power cord.
Thuvia:
Instead of fade to black, dim to a specific color.
Play around with your program. If you hate a beta suggestion, try it, you can still throw it out later.

Nelle:
Your vid is OK! if it makes you happy, it is OK!

Laura: sometimes the hard way is the easy way, and vice versa. her ex. is drawing on paper and scanning something
in instead of rotoscoping it. ie old school animation took a day instead of 9 months of digital animation struggle.

TWW: creaky door sound example. Recorded their back door squeaking (analog) instead of digital source.
Key framing is changing something over time in the vid. Telling the program what rate to progress. Can do this with any effect, making colors change,
fonts bigger and smaller. "Your Disco Needs You" titles.
Image: building vertically. an image is 4D. build up layers.

After Effects is a compositing software; not needed for most vids.

motion is visual interest. Light changes are motion. face changes are motion.

Titles? Many programs have their own tools for titles. Laura: try to make them part of the vid, not stuck on. It's a text tool.
Text takes longer to read than you think it will. read it out loud! can also build title in any other program as a graphic file and import.
Can draw titles on paper, photograph and upload. can also outsource: Kuwdora makes titles for a few dollars. Some friends are just really good at
stuff and will do things for you.

best vids are done w/ careful consideration of clip choice, how they are juxtaposed and matched w/ the music. effects are not needed.

Thuvia thinks that premiere is easier than photoshop.

Storyboards?
Thuvia: makes an outline w/ lyrics, major time breaks, specific clips, mood. keep some notes. Now she is more comfortable and does
more direct to timeline vidding.

Thuvia: lots of different processes.
dualbunny said she just threw clips onto the timeline and it looked ok.
Laura started out doing a ton of planning. Months of work. With more practice, less planning needed.
Collaboration can necessitate more planning.
Start and end images, idea for bridge are often most important.

Aud q about exact timing. matching lyrics.
Thuvia: gets easier. you get better at it as you learn. Can look at wave form for the music. Techno and hip hop have strong beats, almost
rectangular wave forms.

Laura: be familiar and comfortable with your source.

TWW:
process. Makes small clips, about 2 sec clips of useful things in the movie. Clip library, watches this with the song on.
Grounds her in how song connects to source. Categorize the clips. Setting up folders, like "Fury face reaction shots".

Thuvia: can be easy to get caught up on individual words / lines. The argument is an entire chunk of the music, not one line.

Temptation to get too granular. Pay attn to how things build. She has an example from her vid "Hey Ho." 5 betas hated something so
she finally lost it. Laura: many vidders are lyric / world people. Avg viewer won't catch all lyrics (or even any), may watch vid once.
Vids can be matched to the music also, can be very powerful. Visceral level of music.

Me: sometimes we hear lyrics wrong - subtitles.

TWW: you can vid instrumentals!
song choice is super important.
Dessa and Vienna Teng get vidded a lot; they are complex lyrically and have big motion and changes
A capella version of pop songs; covers work well

TWW: cut songs down; take a verse out. thuvia did this for "Hey Ho" to make the climax happen elsewhere.

Cutting and adding to songs is common. Laura has made long vids. Just make sure you have enough ideas. Waveforms help with this.
If you are cutting too much song; maybe there is a better song. that's tough b/c you have to break up with the song / vid pairing.

L: The bridge is the key; say something new and different.
Tempo change or guitar solo.
in Beyonce's "Freedom", kendrick lamar raps on the bridge.

Thuvia: bridge doesn't have to be "change" in the story but should be visually different
break out into different characters, for ex. Poetic b/c can be free association of images, improvisation

TWW: vidding as an argument. song gives you the structure, can radically change your argument.

Mashups usually have a bridge.