A rather odd week it seems. Several independent things all together just making it odd. Or maybe it is settling into balance #4life by remembering to look up and see what else is going on and other creation possibilities not necessarily tied to No. 6 or tales of fairies.
Video – a time for definite skill building.
I am starting to enjoy watching the Prisoner episodes – but in no way am I putting it together or carrying story lines from one episode to another. I was not diligent in watching them in order or making sure I finished one before the next either. I did find some episodes uploaded that are in 15 min segments. That has helped in watching. Don’t ask me why – maybe the shrink on the couch can tell me – but watching 4 – 15 minute episodes seems doable when I can’t commit to one 50 min clip. Same amount of time – but different. But it did seem that I am wearing down and becoming okay with being a resident. I think finding the tele-porter and getting back to Bovine might be necessary to stay free.
Which leads to trying to do a video without an idea. I did look through the assignment bank and probably should have stuck to a more direct route. I ended up combing several different strands of assignments and it became one project instead of several smaller ones.
What did inspire me was the music by Iron Maiden. I really like the song and the guitar sequences. It lead me to listening to more of the band’s music this week. During their height of fame I was a country girl listening to Steve Earle, Alan Jackson, the Judds and others. I seemed to miss the heavy metal era.
- The project started with the song. I wanted to expand past the assignment of just creating a music video. So I used Mac Downloader and captured the song from YouTube.
- I imported into Audacity
- Found dialog clips from the Prisoner series at Http://www.moviesoundclips.com and imported them into layers in Audacity
- I loved @iamTalkyTina ‘s interpretive reading of the opening dialog of the series and downloaded it from the prisoner106 archive.
- I then worked on the sound file to blend with the music and somewhat tell a story (of a story I can’t figure out)
- Sound complete
Then it was time to move to video. I want to get back to FinalCutPro because of the ability to really put your own stamp on it. As discussed in the visual week in creating book covers – wanting to start from scratch not edit.
I assembled my “bins” and imported into sequences – all the first organizing for FCP was set. As I started finding the razor blade for cutting etc came back quickly. THEN IT HIT ME! UGH! Rendering is necessary when working in FCP Every time something is added or moved. So using several different clips turned into a 40 minute rendering wait with the first clip. I had no patience for it on that day.
I kept it in the background, but opened iMovie.
- Choose NO theme
- imported into library clips, GIFS, stills and audio.
The next wall – iMoive accepted the GIFS, but creates them as a still image of one. To use the GIFs as video or animated, I would need to covert them all from GIF to video in another program and then re-import. If someone knows the secret to making GIFs run in iMovie please let me know!
I wasn’t really sure which GIFs would actually fit where I might be going with the audio (remember – I said writing and storyboarding first is a lesson learned!) so spending a good chunk of time on converting hit the floor real fast.
I focused on using the clips I found, some stills I had – and now realize I had more that I could have/should have used. It was becoming the project that just needed to get done. Too much invested to leave it unfinished, but not quite compelling enough to turn into losing track of time into wee hours of the night without realizing.
iMovie was working for the most part. As with making art – lots of futzing. moving things and lining things up that most viewers will never even realize. I went back in and added Ken Burns effects to change some focus in hopes it wouldn’t be as noticiable that the video was not the dialog you were hearing. Towards the end I did clip the video and No. 6 seems to have a little tic or jerk as he says he is still himself – I actually liked that and had it repeated a few times as part of the story – so yes it was intended.
Towards the completion it still needed more since I didn’t have much original art included- so I added title segments in some portions to focus on the dialog. It was like an aha – titles don’t just have to be at the beginning- and I didn’t have to go into a photo editor and make stills with text. The one slip was not having the Village font available in iMovie- and by this time I just could not think of figuring out how to get it installed and available to the program. Not for fear of doing a font install – but the uncertainty of iMovie in the way it saves automatically. After so many hours to get to this point I didn’t want it all to be lost of messed up and have to re-establish it all again. So yes – took the easy way out on this one.
So – still need to work on video skills and more practice to get comfortable and to use features that make sense. I will take this for the units this week.
I am glad I finished it and am okay with the result. I did learn while working on it. I am ready to do video again – but with a story that I may have more internalized.
