Vidding: A Year in Review (2008)

[abby82]

Vids I made this year

January
February
March
April

May
I Will Follow You into The Dark (Forever Knight, series finale "Last Knight")

June
Do I Look Good in This? The Lois Lane edition (Smallville, Lois Lane)

July
The Rockafella Skank (Forever Knight, Don Schanke celebration vid)

August
September
October

November
The Rainbow Connection (The X-Files, Samantha abduction arc)

December
Almost Lover (Forever Knight, Tracy/Vachon)
What You Are (Forever Knight, Janette/Nick)

Total vids: 6 vids in three fandoms

 

I first thought about vidding roughly a year ago. However it wasn't until March 2008 that I managed to get my act together. There was never any doubt in my mind that my first vid would be in the Forever Knight fandom. I went back and forth on which character but I knew what I wanted to do was a fun vid. To quote myself, "The goal was to make a Forever Knight fan smile." Along the way I came across a remix of a Fatboy Slim song and it just screamed Schanke to me.

So with song and character in mind I researched. I looked at the numerous vidding communities but this post by talitha78 , a vidder I great admire, was by far the most helpful. Some stuff didn't apply to my case or I couldn't make it work for me but the most important aspects came through extremely clear. I had my 1T external hard drive for storage, I downloaded the necessary software, and I ripped my DVDs. I was ready to begin clipping and boy did I clip and boy did it take up a lot of space. Wow! I also got somewhat ahead of myself. I wasn't even done clipping before I started laying clips onto the Premiere Elements timeline. That wasn't a bad thing though because I seriously laughed out loud. It amused me greatly. Sure it was a random hodgepodge of Schanke clips but they were fun. From that moment I trucked along nicely enough. I finished my clipping and began to focus solely on the vid. I had a daunting amount of clips to play with and an editing software that I was still very much learning.

Then I got sidetracked. May marked the 12th anniversary since Forever Knight's demise. Around livejournal I saw several posts noting the time from fans who were around for some or most of the show's original run. At the same time I was saddened that on forkni-l, the fandom's main artery, it appeared that the event was going to pass without much mention. I began thinking of my own way to mark the event. I had Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You into the Dark" in my music collection and it occurred to me how fitting it was for the Forever Knight series finale. It was then that I decided to set my Schanke vid aside and focus on my FK commemoration vid. The source was only that episode so I figured I could put something together before the end of May. I did and on May 24th it became my first official vid.

I was momentarily distracted again by a Lois Lane vid for "Lois Love Week" but in July, my Schanke vid, the first vid I ever attempted finally made its appearance. It's far from perfect. It's too long for one but I did achieve my primary goal, to make Forever Knight fans smile.


On with the meme...

My favorite
 "The Rainbow Connection". I made this vid for juniperphoenix  for the Fandom Free For All based on her song request and the theme. When I revisit pretty much all of my vids there are places where I cringe and while that is true with this vid I love that it was fairly sucessful in execution. I also love that I was able to vid X-Files. There are nine seasons and now two feature films of source material but by picking out a particular theme in the show I was able to play in the sandbox of perhaps my favorite show of all time.

Not so favorite
 "I Will Follow You into the Dark". I don't hate this vid. I have a lot of emotional attachment to this vid but what makes it a disappointment for me are some questionable transitions during the second verse and the nonsensical sequence of clips during the Nick and Natalie portion. Although I love the opening clips. I think of it as a little love letter to the locations, both set and real, of Toronto and the world of Forever Knight.

Most successful
"I Will Follow You into the Dark" would be my most successful in terms of comments. "Almost Lover" would be my most successful in it doing exactly what I wanted it to do. I have pretty much only one quibble where a clip wouldn't align with a lyric but that's pretty much it.

Video most underappreciated
"Almost Lover" because of the subject matter. Tracy and Vachon are season 3 characters that were brought in to replace two very much loved characters. They have their followers but they aren't many so not too many eyeballs for this one. That's fine. Forever Knight is a sleepy fandom. I don't really expect any of my FK vids got get many hits.

Most fun to make
"The Rockafella Skank" and "Do I Look Good in this? The Lois Lane edition". Both Schanke and Lois are loads of fun. Both vids made me laugh out loud multiple times. John Kapelos and Erica Durance really shine in comedic moments and I get a kick out of the fact that the two of them were in the same failed pilot called 111 Gramercy Park back in 2003.

Hardest video to make
"The Rockafella Skank" because of the amount of clips I did. It was a bit overwhelming at times. Plus it's obvious that this vid is too darn long and I was unable to shorten the song more than I already had. That left floundering to find pertinent stuff to put. That's really obvious in the later half of the vid.

What I've learned
How ever short you think the clip is it's never short enough. Brevity is important and just because the scene in question is charming or funny, or poignant does not mean it has to be in the vid in its entirety.

Things to work on
What I learned about brevity in the actual vid also applies to my respository of clips. I'll sometimes clip up to 2 or 3 minutes worth of any particular scene and it's really taking up a lot of space on my hard drive. I need to revisit and reclip those scenes by keeping only the stuff that could potentially end up a vid and remove the talky bits. I need to learn more about my editing software--Premiere Elements. There are plenty of options in the software that I haven't even touched. And lastly I want to get more creative with my editing and transitions. I sort of tried it with "What You Are". Nothing fancy of course but baby steps like incorporating jump cuts and playing with the opacity of the clips.

Vid projects
I've actually got a long list of songs and fandoms (mostly Forever Knight) to use in potential vids. That's not to say that I'm going to get around to all of them but some do have priority and actually appear possible. Next up I'm planning a Nick and Natalie friendship vid in the Forever Knight fandom in addition to a Nick Knight and his quest for mortality/character study. I actually want to do a Nick and his Caddy vid to "Cars" but to a Fear Factory cover not the original Gary Numan. A while back I starting clipping the Nick Knight movie with Rick Springfield for a fun comparison vid with the Forever Knight series opener. I recently heard a Nine Inch Nails song that could work for a Divia centric vid but I'm not sure if there's enough source material for it. I'd love to do a Forever Knight edition of "Do I Look Good in this?"  I also want to do a Lana vid in the Smallville fandom. I received Smallville season 7 for Christmas.