Another creation from moi.. I'm not going to paste in the embed version from youtube here, but rather link to it. If you choose to watch it, click the link, click the (HD) button, then click the button just to the right of it to watch in full screen.
Youtube has done a decent job with the quality of the videos, but they reduce the frame rate quite a bit, so horizontal pans seem to skip a lot. It's the price paid for streaming near-DVD quality video. Sometimes the video doesn't load faster than it plays, so it might be good not to hit play right away and let it pre-load some of it. I can provide a link to the original video if somebody wants it. Come to think of it, I don't think it starts loading until you hit play, so you might want to hit play and then pause and let it load for a while.
The video has a tremendous amount of alteration from the original source video.. velocity changes, different types of transitions, and I noticed the director used a lot of fixed camera views, where the camera doesn't move at all.. which makes an interesting effect where you can carve out a small piece and join the two ends in a blended transition. I used that in quite a few places.. some where it worked really cool, and one place where I kind of messed it up and don't feel like fixing it. I also did it in a couple places with a moving camera, and it's a cool effect when it matches the music beat. There's also a piece in there where the clip moves forward and then moves backwards back to where it started. It's part of keeping the theme of the video.
I like to have a theme in a video, and try to capture a bit of the tone of the original film. In this case, it's the disconnected despair of middle age, and the way it can affect families. I loved the original film, and it's message of redemption at the end. I thought about including the closing narration, but it just was too much of a shock with the movie's soundtrack contrasting with the Steve Wilson song.
I think creating these videos is kind of like editing an original movie, just on a much smaller scale. You have to wade through the entire film with the music in mind and pick out clips that not only fit the theme, but also fit the pace and mood of the music. Then, piece it all together so it has a flow. It's pain-staking. For a music video, one of the dangers is cutting each scene on the downbeat of the song. There is definitely a lot of that, but it starts to get weird if it's done too much. Invariably, I scramble for something to fill in a couple seconds between more significant events, and it's the same in this video. There's a part where the main character stands in an open door talking to one of the kids. It's filler, but I liked the balance and colors of the clip. It also conveys that theme of disconnect between the "adult" and the "kid". It's also weird if the actors are speaking during a scene, because you can't hear what they're saying.. obviously. It's very difficult to use just imagery instead of silent dialog. I couldn't avoid it in a couple places in this video, but I don't think it's too out of place.
Anyway.. the Steve Wilson album is quite good. It's very moody and soundtrack-ish. I think I'm going to do another video with it using Dark City.
I'm also going to start hosting my videos on Vimeo. Youtube is having problems with Warner Music Group, and WMG has banned all their content, so my Opeth Watershed videos were banned. I don't think I'll have that issue of Vimeo. Youtube has also blocked all music videos to the UK. Apparently they were unable to negotiate a new royalty agreement with the music publishers in the UK. I think videos like the ones I create are "fair use", and Youtube shouldn't need an agreement anyway.. but it's stupid that the publishers are being such jackasses about the whole thing. Like I've said before, they need to just go away and let the musicians deal directly with their audience.
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I've watched the completed video quite a few times now. It really is beautiful. I really enjoy making them.
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