Lost Video Island

[SuperKC]

Another question for vidders. Is there a method to your madness?

How do you work when you're making a video? Do you pick a song first, or a theme? Do you know ahead of time what clips you're going ot use for what parts of the song? Do you work as you go along or plan it all out ahead of time? Do you work from beginning to end? Or the end to the beginning. As in, do you know how you want the video to end before you know how you want it to begin? Does it depend on the song how you worK? Do you not HAVE a method?

Just thought it'd be another interesting post.

[JakeNRoland]

Intitially I picked a song first. That was when I made my Jack video. Then I picked what I felt were suitable Jack clips that somewhat matched the theme or idea of the song. Once I have all my clips I start arranging and playing and seeing what works and what doesn't.

After my Jack video I started to do ideas first, and then song choice. I thought it would be cool for all my videos to have a similiar style or feel. I also liked the idea of doing character driven videos, similar to the way the episodes work. Also, none of my videos thus far use any flashback material, I like to try and keep it on the island. That said, all my videos have the song titles that look like the Lost logo at the beginning, my credit done the same way at the end with an audio clip from whatever character I've picked, and then the character's name matched up the same way they do the Lost logo at the end of the show. Then the middle simply depends upon the song.

Once I had a "format" I would then scope out songs that I liked and try and think of who they might work for. Lately the songs I want to vid to aren't exactly fitting to just one character, so I'm likely going to be abandoning my old format.

If it's a contest or challenge or whatever, then naturally you think of the rules first, then brainstorm ideas of what you could to still fit within the rules, and yet hopefully stand out from the other entries. This is also proving to be a challenge.

But I've rambled on long enough. I'm very new to this vidding thing. We should let the masters enlighten us.
_________________


No, I'm Laura's twin. And Hobbes is my Jedi Padawan. The force is strong in that one. You guys rock!!

[Hobbes]

Yet another good question

I THINK I try to find as many really good songs as I can, just ones people recommend to me that I love, or something I've heard over the radio.
Then when I've thought of some original idea to portray a character or something, I look through my song choices and try to find one that fits well. If I can't find one, I let that idea sit a bit until I do.
If I find a match, then I usually open up a bit of notepad and type out what stanza should be what if I have any big ideas, or I need some way to organize the song so I have neough time for everything (i.e. Staring at the Sun) If not that, then I just do this in my head
The rest: all instinct as I go along (beginning to end). Trial and error for effects. Overriding my previous ideas in the notepad if I get a good one (usually don't end up using those notes anyway) and just feel the video. Sometime's I've gotta save it a couple times just to see how it's going, but you know the rest probably...
Worst part = the final touches after the material is done, such as resizing >.<
I also like to save the full-sized copy on my hard drive for my own playback, before I reduce a copy to that excruciating 10MB >.<

[LAURA4LAD]

I sit indian style on my front porch and meditate for minutes, hours-sometimes days. After the cops have been called and I am awoken from said trance, I do a interprative dance to the music of jewel. After reading some of her poetry I take a 20 minute mud bath and reflect on John Keat's masterpiece "Ode to a Grecian Urn." By this time I'm wiped and take a power nap that Bill Clinton taught me to do when I was interning for him. Oh Bill, what a gentleman.
.
.
.
.I'm sorry I forgot what the question was. -Laura
_________________

Jake's Twin

[Hobbes]

LOL "Jewel"

[BA5763]

[Ringwench]

[Cliodna]

I wait for a song, and then I just sort of wing it. I might know some parts ahead of time, but I don't outline it or anything. Not that I probably shouldn't.
_________________
I want to make videos like Charmax and LAURA4LAD when I grow up.

Avatar by so_i_let_go

[Charmax]

Like Ringwench I am these days completely incapable of listening to any music without mentally vidding it. I have songs on my hard drive which I split in to different folders for each character/fandom etc. I usually gather songs quite a while in advance and quite often have a choice of at least 3 songs per character. I think I am helping myself by doing this but it's usually more difficult because it makes it harder to settle on a project. It leads to many false starts.

Other methods -
I always get a copy of the lyrics and map out a rough story board. It used to be that I would start with the opening credit and work through to the end credit, getting everything right as I went along. Lately though I have tended too leave a part that isn't working, move on then come back to it.
_________________
~~Charmax~~

[Enchirito]

Like Charmax, music comes first for me and I have so many songs picked out that I can never hope to vid all of them. So if I get time to do one, I pick one and go at it. I don't storyboard, but I usually pick out clips for the opening and the ending first, then the important lyrics/music cues, then I fill in the remaining gaps. IT's cool to see so many differnt methods - great idea for a thread SuperKC.
_________________

[Hobbes]

KC should be our writer she always has such great ideas for threads LOL

[MoreLight]

Good question.

Interesting to see how everyone assembles their vids. Unless there is a stated challenge or contest with "rules" I tend to listen to my music library and when a song comes up that just screams a particular character to me I start collecting clips. I've only done 1 for Lost so far... well 2 if you count my entry for the Intro but I've done a lot for another fandom and this is how I work.

Occassionally while watching episodes a particular scene reminds me of a song also and I start from there.
_________________

My lost music vids

[SuperKC]

I'm probably the most inexperienced person to answer this, but since I'm the one who asked the question in the first place, I might as well.

I'm only in the middle of video #2 for me. The first one I did for the contest and I pretty much did it all in one day. Just kind of picked the song and since there weren't too many obvious musical cues, just picked clips that had the same kind of "tone" as the music. Kind of an eerie sort of lullaby type feel. Then from there I tried to play on the subtleties of the music - but most of it is just a blur. I was in the first video zone and can't remember much of it.

The one I'm working on now, I picked the song first and designed my idea around that. I've had some characters that I thought would be good for a video for that particular song and so I just started cutting. I made lots of lists and eliminated some - focusing on some characters instead of them all. I wrote important lyrics down and listed ideas for good clips to play at those parts and then I just started working. Still not finished yet - so for me, it's all just touch and go. That's part of the reason why I was wondering how you guys work. It seems that some of you have very structured methods and others just kind of wing it. Good to see there's a variety, actually.

I'm still really uncomfortable in using effects though. Maybe, if I decide to do this more often, I'll look into getting the full version of Ulead's Video Studio or possibly another program.

By the way, Super KC is a she.

[MoreLight]

I'm not sure if this is interesting or not but here it is:

This is a vid I did from the Farscape fandom that was a "wing it"

http://www.avenuepotter.com/~MoreLight/Media/ProwlerBeauty.zip

This is a vid from the same fandom that was very scripted:

http://www.avenuepotter.com/morelight/FarscapeDown.wmv

From one misunderstood nick to another hiya MoreLight (he) waves to SuperKC (she).

[Enchirito]

Enchirito=he. Man, I need to find a way to upgrade these boards to phpBB 2.0.13. It has a gender setting in your profile.
_________________