Revised vid and documentary rec

[icepixie]

Some time ago, thuviaptarth recommended a documentary about film editing (The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing) in a post about background knowledge for vidding. I finally got around to watching it this week and found it tremendously helpful for putting words to what I'm intuitively thinking when I vid, as well as for pointing out certain other aspects I hadn't considered, particularly about editing for emotional effect. One day I'll write up some further thoughts on it (this day will likely be after graduation), but for now I just wanted to recommend it to anyone who's interested in vid-making or vid-watching.

Watching that documentary also inspired me to spend a couple hours revising one of my Fred and Ginger vids (A Love that Won't Sit Still). I fixed some pervasive (though subtle) timing issues in the first two thirds that had been bugging me for the past six weeks or so, and I swapped out two clips for better ones. I'm not sure how noticeable the changes are to people not living in my head--I'm going to guess "not at all"--so I wouldn't suggest running over to watch it again, but the new version is streaming and downloadable at the link above if you're so inclined.

In RL news, there's a 90% chance that my 20-30-minute presentation on 2/18 is going to be moved to 2/23, to which I can only say, "HOORAY."

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oh. That. Documentary! It dragged in parts (yeah, I know) but it taught me so much, as a viewer. It helped me understand why vids take so long, not from a technical standpoint (although that, too) but because there's all sorts of careful thinking and planning going on. Sometimes that thinking & planning is totally non-conscious and may feel like intuition, but any road it takes time.

[icepixie]

I really need to watch it again, because I remember so little of it now; the last few months of grad school pretty much crowded everything from earlier this year out of my mind. It did make me start paying more attention to editing in TV shows and movies, definitely.

I find that my planning tends to go on before I start the actual vidding process, and once I get into iMovie, it's mostly by instinct. I make myself an Excel file with the lyrics and musical beats of the song on it, then write out what clips I think might go where. Once I get all my source gathered together and start putting it on the timeline, it becomes a matter of matching movement to beats, watching the characters' eye movements, and the other things in the documentary that I remember thinking "Ah, yes!" about but can't recall now. :D