the sun and the moon and the stars

In the ongoing list of Things I Want To Make But Probably Never Will: I have thought on-and-off that Raise Your Weapon by deadmau5 would make a fantastic Natasha fanvid, but it's never felt. quite. right. Well, the other day I heard a live version of it, from deadmau5's Creamfields 2019 set, and it's pretty much perfect; the live vocals are sparser and... realer, somehow, despite being a lot less perfect. I just have no vidding mojo these days, that's all, so it'll just have to sit on the list of Fanvids I'd Love To Make Someday and I can pretend one day I'm going to do it.

(Along with Seeya for a Jupiter Ascending vid, Puscifer's The Humbling River for Ziva David, and A Perfect Circle's cover of Fiddle and the Drum for John Crichton. Those three really are the fanvids of my heart.)

Two nights of work and I actually have thirty-eight seconds of timeline that I'm mostly happy with.

*\o/*

(Dear non-vidders, yes, this is actually a victory. :))

Yay! Awesome fanvid idea! Woo!

...now I have to wait for source material. Boo.

(Also, buying all the source material on iTunes is going to cost me about a hundred and fifty bucks. Maybe I should refrain and just wrangle with DVD-ripping instead. :/)

Anybody got up-to-date tips for DVD ripping (for vidding with legit DVDs I own, not for piracy, ie HQ viddable output required) on a Mac? It's been ages since I dealt with that.

So I ordered one of the new iMacs, lovely machines that they are. Unfortunately they're not shipping yet so I've been sitting on my hands frustrated since December. It'll be glorious though; my current work machine is a six-year-old Mac Pro and there's something just Not Right about it - it's pretty much ready for the glue factory, and as a result I'm getting very little done because it's just so offputting. It'll be nice to have a fast, fast, fast machine in its place.

Which of course means that my brain is bombarding me with vid ideas left right and centre, right when I don't have a vidding-capable computer. The list is getting longer and longer, so this computer better get here soon before the list gets unmanageable (if it isn't already).

In other news, I saw Jack Reacher last night with the boyfriend. I have a general principle of boycotting all Tom Cruise movies because I don't want my money lining the pockets of the Church of Scientology, but Chris really wanted to see it so I figured I could compromise.

Other than spoilery commentary, all I can really say is "Man, Tom Cruise was trying really hard to channel Leroy Jethro Gibbs, wasn't he?"

I really, really want someone to vid Tony Stark to Lapdance by N.E.R.D. so I don't have to. Come on, surely someone's already done it, right? It's just made for Tony.

So, back to working on my current vidding project, and it's not going well. That is, it's stalled around the point where it always stalls: I've got 20-30 seconds of finished-ish clip sequence, and I'm looking at the rest of the song going "...now what?" Other vidders make it look so eeeeeasy, saying what they want to say with their vids and having intelligent narratives and actually making *art* beyond a frenetic three minute string of quasi-related clips.

I think I need an expert to hold my hand and tell me what to do, but I'm beginning to suspect that - much though I love vidding, and though I'm overflowing with ideas for vids - I'm not actually cut out for it.

(It doesn't help that I'm learning a new program, either, although technical proficiency will come with practice and it's not where I'm having the obstacle anyway.)

I am VIDDING, you guys. This is tremendously exciting. I have missed it so. *hugs Final Cut*

Of course, it's 7am and I have guests due today and work to do this afternoon and I totally have to sleep - somebody make me go to bed.


**

In other news, James McAvoy apparently ships Charles/Erik, which fills me with nearly as much :D :D :D as his suggestions for RPF pairing names.

Apple has just announced Final Cut Pro X, available in June-ish. Reviewers who've had access to it suggest that it's the best thing since sliced awesome.

Best thing about it, IMO, is the fact that it's going to be three hundred bucks. That's pretty amazing for a top-flight video package, and I will definitely be acquiring a legit copy.

Vidding mojo, that is, insofar as I had any to begin with. I'm actually feeling inspired to vid again, which is very welcome after the creative blank spot of the last year.

Of course, I can't actually get started yet, since I haven't yet installed the new HDDs sitting on my bookcase, nor upgraded my OS, and there's seriously no point even getting started until that's done.

And I'm not sure what to tackle first. The vid of my heart is a Farscape vid I've been wanting to do for ages, but it's hugely intimidating - it'll require shitloads of source, and I'm reaaaally bad at keeping all the source straight in my head if I'm vidding from anything longer than a movie or a few TV episodes. Plus it's kind of a serious vid, and has A Thesis and I don't want to get that wrong. Urf.

...also, I'm, in general, fairly underconfident about vidding, because ... hmm, how to put it: I'm not practised at narrative creativity, in the way that vids require (other than "whee look at the shiny" vids, which are awesome). I'm not a very practised storyteller, and I'm not experienced at building the narrative (of a vid, in this case) to say anything coherent.

I wish there were "Vidding For Dummies" resources; everything I've seen focuses on the technical help, which is awesome and appreciated, but not where my big obstacle is.

(So, yeah, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, they would be super duper welcome.)

Also, is #vidding still active? I retreated during my I Am Crap At Everything phase last year, and last time I checked it out a couple of months ago, pre-Yuletide, it was empty.

--

The above might sound like I'm whining. I'm actually not; I'm hugely happy to have the creative urge back again, it's a rare thing with me. I'm just not sure what to do with it now I have it back. :)

I don't know how I missed it before, but on thefourthvine's rec I just watched heresluck's incredible Star Trek vid, The Test.

It's an incredible vid, and I recommend it unreservedly; on a technical level it's absolutely masterful, and on a story level it's one of the clearest, most narrative vids I've seen. (Which may, actually, be why I like it so very much.)

The funny thing is the effect it had on me, though. I consider myself very much as part of fandom -- I read voraciously, I think Deep Meta Thoughts (although I don't post nearly as often as I should) and I'm thoroughly polyfannish. But my fic output is very low, and part of the reason why is an inferiority complex, and part of it is the feeling that all the stories have been told already. (Which is, tangentially, why I love Yuletide and write for it every year; because in the small fandoms, there are plenty of stories left to tell.)

My vid output is also low, but that's mostly due to procrastination; for some reason, I have plenty of ideas for vids, and the fact that lots of other people vid in my fandoms doesn't put me off in the same way it does with fic writing. And although I still have a terrible inferiority complex regarding my vidding work (and possibly with good reason) -- when I look at a good vid, my instinctive feeling is "I can do that too one day", and I don't get that with fic. And I really don't know why.

And the weird thing is that I should like writing more than vidding, in the sense that I am a fairly 'explicit' person; I like things to be spelled out, and I very often miss vague inferences. Writing allows you to do that, whereas vidding is almost entirely about the vague inferences; vidding makes you interpret what you see and decide for yourself, because the vidder (usually) can't explicitly tell you the point they're trying to make, given the constraints of source footage. It is surprising to me that I like vidding and vid-watching so much, under the circumstances.

(This is why I suspect I'm not a very good vidder; because I'm not particularly good at putting together a narrative using inference and implication. I'm hoping I get better at it, with practice.)

I've been blocked on my current vid-in-progress for ages - I open up FCP and stare blankly at the screen and move clips around pointlessly, and make exactly zero progress - so finally today I threw up my hands in despair, put that project aside, and started something fresh. And I love it, and I have ideas, and I'm having fun and eager to work on it...

...and I have a laundry list of stuff I have to do and no time to vid!

***

In other news, I've started sampling some new shows. First off the block: Psych. After the pilot, I say winner!

So, I've just finished Festivids, which was an interesting experience. Yuletide - and being more involved in the Yuletide community - meant that I left the majority of the work on my vid until after New Year's. Which was a tactical error, albeit - knowing me - an entirely predictable one.

I was matched to my recipient on the Galaxy Quest fandom, which amuses me, as Galaxy Quest is something of a fannish text itself. The recipient asked for 'Don't Stop' by Fleetwood Mac as the song, but didn't give any further details, prompts, or ideas - and didn't post a Dear Vidder letter, either, at least not that I could find.

( thoughts about vid creation and process and stuff )

I don't know whether I succeeded with the vid in its current form, although I'm happier with it than I expected to be. Looking back, I can see a few things I'd do differently now. I learnt a lot while making this vid, particularly in terms of storytelling and story construction, and I hope it worked for other people.

I finished my Festivids vid! Despite procrastination, lack of inspiration, and (for the last few days) a worsening case of conjunctivitis that's left me unable to see the screen for many hours a day, I got that sucker done. Thirty hours before deadline, too, and I am a lot happier with it than I expected. :)

Now to get the draft uploaded, and then sit somewhere with a wet cloth over my eyes for a few hours. The exciting life I lead...

Like Yuletide, Festivids is having a nominations phase before its signups. I spent a while thinking today about what I wanted to nominate - although vids are my primary fanworks these days, I find inspiration harder to come by, so I wanted to be sure I was nominating only sources that I'd be really happy to either receive, or vid for.

My noms list, finally, looks like this:

Appleseed (movie/anime)
Fifth Element (movie)
Galaxy Quest (movie)
Tomb Raider (movie)
Ocean's Eleven series (movie)
Pirates of the Caribbean series (movie)
Wall-E (movie)

I was amazed by the fact that there were no TV series in the list - but I think the series for which I have good source are pretty mainstream, and nothing really leapt out at me from the stuff I have on the computer.

I have just had the most ridiculous Trek vid idea. It makes me cackle to imagine. I'm not sure if I can pull it off, but I'm damn sure I'm going to try. :)

Hard on the heels of finishing my last vid, I hit upon an idea for another - so I set to, and was struck by a dilemma. I really want to migrate to a more advanced video editing program, either Premiere or Final Cut Pro, largely because the fine-detail editing options of iMovie are a bit lacking. (Plus although I haven't found myself wanting to use effects yet, I suspect my vids would be better if I had the option.)

Unfortunately, I have already imported the entirety of Leverage into iMovie, ready for vidding from. Picking up a new software package would necessitate re-clipping the entire series and importing again, and the clipping progress is quite frankly sucky and tedious. Urgh.

So I kind of feel tied to iMovie for Leverage vids, and all the work to set myself up in one of the other packages just is not appealing. At all.

Hmph.

As if I needed more things to go on my list of "Projects I Don't Have Time For", a Reboot Spock vid idea (set to this song) leaped into my brain fully-formed. Which, you know, great. I've already got three Star Trek vid ideas half-done or bubbling in my mind, and I can't complete any of them because of the truly awful source quality. And hey, if three, why not four?

Groan.

I would enjoy vidding a lot more if I didn't have to split the source into 278395789235 clips first. It's probably bad form to just import the whole sodding source in one file, but I'm so tempted.

I have been staring at iMovie for coming up on six hours now. Thank god the vid is nearly done - about 75% of the way through and I've done most of the fiddly bits.

I think.

Of course, what would I know? This is my first-ever vid, so it may turn out to be... um, terrible. But whatever! As long as I learn and improve, right? Right?

(It's a Leverage vid. I haven't actually seen any Leverage vids yet - are they around? Where should I be looking for them?)

Okay, time for bed - yes, it's nearly 11am, but I've been up all night! - so I can be awake for tonight's Ulduar raid, and then I can stay up and get this sucker finished.