Good and short or bad and long
Nov. 5th, 2004 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI feel like I'm finally ready to make a vid again. I really didn't feel much like vidding at all after getting back from Vividcon, and while I'm not exactly jumping with enthusiasm (the only thing that makes me feel enthusiastic is a Wonderfalls vid to Fountains of Wayne that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feochadn and movies_michelle and I are talking about doing, but we have to wait till Feb. for the DVDs), at least I feel like I could probably focus on it. It was a tossup between an Angel vid and doing another Fast and the Furious vid for Hednoize's Loaded Gun, but then I figured it might be easiest to make a La Femme Nikita vid for the next Club Vivid dance vid show to Sneaker Pimps' 6 Underground. Plus,I just made a F&F vid, and with a two-hour movie as my only source, I'm not sure I want to bump up against that so quickly and risk doing the same thing over and over. Not that they will put a slow sexy-dance number on the program (there were none this year, so I'm not sure if people think of that as dance music even with sampled De La Soul hip-hop beats), but at least it's a goal. But...
There's always a but. I can't decide how to make it -- LFN had five seasons of stuff, and only two of them have come out on DVD. (Well, one, really, but I was one of the folks who got my hands on the second season discs before they pulled them off the shelf.) The quality of the off-air tapes I have varies from decent to bad after S2, when my cable turned wonky on USA network. So switching from DVDs to tapes just looks terrible. I made Atom Bomb from all tapes, and there are parts that look pretty good once they're dumped into a DV file, but more parts that don't look so good. But if I use only the DVDs, then I'm stuck with just S1 and 2, and there's some great stuff in later seasons, especially S4, that would work so well with the lyrics to 6 Underground. I could do it with only 1&2, but it's so limiting (though certainly easier to capture than five seasons of tapes!) and means a lot of creative thinking, which I feel too enervated about in terms of vidding.
And in the long run, how it looks might not matter, really -- I mean, half the room left the dance floor when Atom Bomb came on this year! So I don't think many people will be looking at it, and there's not much of a market for LFN vids in general, anyway. Maybe that makes the most sense, to use the tapes, since it isn't a big audience. But then I think, wow, shiny DVD source. Puuuurdy... Ack. I learned during this digitizing project that even older, really uglified vids still look okay once you get them in DV and clean them up a bit (which I'm limited in being able to do, since I only have iMovie). They still show signs of VCR-ness and tape stretch and meltdown, but it can be done.
This is my trauma. Almost everyone I know has access to digital, shiny, pretty source. Almost everything I want to vid lately, from Miami Vice to Mag 7 to LFN, is still stuck with tape source, sometimes second or third gen tape source. In some cases, like Vice or LFN, we'll have one or two seasons available on disc, but it could be years and years before we'll have enough to make a good season-spanning vid. I hate this. Knowing how snobby people are about source quality, too, doesn't help -- I can hear the sneery comments about how it might be a nice vid, but it looks terrible, or something like that... And then there's this Snow Patrol song that screams Now and Again... talk about second-gen source!
What to do, what to do? Giving up vidding at all sounds like a great option. I think I'll just curl up with my fleece blanket and hibernate.
feochadn and movies_michelle and I are talking about doing, but we have to wait till Feb. for the DVDs), at least I feel like I could probably focus on it. It was a tossup between an Angel vid and doing another Fast and the Furious vid for Hednoize's Loaded Gun, but then I figured it might be easiest to make a La Femme Nikita vid for the next Club Vivid dance vid show to Sneaker Pimps' 6 Underground. Plus,I just made a F&F vid, and with a two-hour movie as my only source, I'm not sure I want to bump up against that so quickly and risk doing the same thing over and over. Not that they will put a slow sexy-dance number on the program (there were none this year, so I'm not sure if people think of that as dance music even with sampled De La Soul hip-hop beats), but at least it's a goal. But...There's always a but. I can't decide how to make it -- LFN had five seasons of stuff, and only two of them have come out on DVD. (Well, one, really, but I was one of the folks who got my hands on the second season discs before they pulled them off the shelf.) The quality of the off-air tapes I have varies from decent to bad after S2, when my cable turned wonky on USA network. So switching from DVDs to tapes just looks terrible. I made Atom Bomb from all tapes, and there are parts that look pretty good once they're dumped into a DV file, but more parts that don't look so good. But if I use only the DVDs, then I'm stuck with just S1 and 2, and there's some great stuff in later seasons, especially S4, that would work so well with the lyrics to 6 Underground. I could do it with only 1&2, but it's so limiting (though certainly easier to capture than five seasons of tapes!) and means a lot of creative thinking, which I feel too enervated about in terms of vidding.
And in the long run, how it looks might not matter, really -- I mean, half the room left the dance floor when Atom Bomb came on this year! So I don't think many people will be looking at it, and there's not much of a market for LFN vids in general, anyway. Maybe that makes the most sense, to use the tapes, since it isn't a big audience. But then I think, wow, shiny DVD source. Puuuurdy... Ack. I learned during this digitizing project that even older, really uglified vids still look okay once you get them in DV and clean them up a bit (which I'm limited in being able to do, since I only have iMovie). They still show signs of VCR-ness and tape stretch and meltdown, but it can be done.
This is my trauma. Almost everyone I know has access to digital, shiny, pretty source. Almost everything I want to vid lately, from Miami Vice to Mag 7 to LFN, is still stuck with tape source, sometimes second or third gen tape source. In some cases, like Vice or LFN, we'll have one or two seasons available on disc, but it could be years and years before we'll have enough to make a good season-spanning vid. I hate this. Knowing how snobby people are about source quality, too, doesn't help -- I can hear the sneery comments about how it might be a nice vid, but it looks terrible, or something like that... And then there's this Snow Patrol song that screams Now and Again... talk about second-gen source!
What to do, what to do? Giving up vidding at all sounds like a great option. I think I'll just curl up with my fleece blanket and hibernate.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-05 10:25 am (UTC)If it's any consolation, I felt the same way after VVC. I expected to walk away enthused, but instead it squelched my desire to make or even watch vids. I think I'm finally coming out of my funk because I think I finally found a fandom for a song I've wanted to vid for 16 years.
Almost everything I want to vid lately, from Miami Vice to Mag 7 to LFN, is still stuck with tape source
*sigh* Yeah, mine is Rescue Me. I don't have the equipment to burn DVDs or VCDs of current shows, so they get dumped to VHS (S-VHS tapes are still too expensive), as usual. And VHS source looks noisy and *ugly*. Bleh.
Giving up vidding at all sounds like a great option.
I've been seriously contemplating it, myself. I make so few, anyway, and they're not online, so it wouldn't really matter.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-05 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-05 11:56 am (UTC)I don't know LFN at all, so I can't speak to your seasons/source dilemma, but I say make the dance vid. For what that's worth.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-05 02:00 pm (UTC)