gwyn | There's gold in them thar hills! Eureka!

Thanks to the help of

laurashapiro, I managed to get a workable large-window, manageable file size, Divx avi file of my new vid, and finally, after many cranky emails with the annoying new web hosts, get this vid uploaded. I may still tweak some settings and try for a less jerky QT file, or maybe even give 3ivx a try at a future date and see if that will improve image quality, but overall, outside of some stuttering on the action scenes, I'm pleased with how this turned out and especially pleased to be able to make it available in a more viewable format. It's not perfect, especially in movement scenes, but different players may help that. In the long run it was only 6 more MB than a smaller window, so I didn't make the smaller size available, because at that point, it doesn't seem that much worse to just DL the extra.

Anyways. The vid is called Loaded Gun, the song is by Hednoize, and the fandom is of course The Fast and the Furious. I know no one is interested, but I will post later about my thoughts while making it and the process, more for my own amusement than anyone else's, I'm sure. The DL is 29.1MB, and this one is MILES better in VLC than viewing in a regular QuickTime window, so follow the links on the vid page and grab VLC media player if you haven't already. VLC really brings out the vibrant colors, smooths the jerky action scenes, and pixelates the fast edits way less. I don't normally attach lyrics, but there is a link there for some if you need them -- whoever transcribed lyrics and has passed them around the Net was, IMO, utterly demented and hearing impaired, so I've provided them here since I don't want people to get mistaken ideas about what the vid is saying.

If you have any troubles DLing, please let me know. I had to use a different method (mutters darkly about the new web hosts) this time so I'm not sure how well everything uploaded. As always, feedback of any kind is welcome.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm just breathless, Gwyneth. How wonderful it is! I love the way you wove the fast-car-splody-action with the contextual storytelling bits -- not knowing the film, I couldn't follow the story very closely, but I appreciated what you were doing with the vid's structure, giving emotional wait to all the pretty-shiny-fast stuff.

That motion blur effect as the cars take off -- that was you, right? (:

The thing I liked best was the way you used color. I love how the first verse is all acid green and feisty, like that green car, and it's green green green until the bridge, and then things get emotionally dark and the color changes to red. Blood, damage. And then in the final section, it's both red and green, alternating in some places. I thought it might have also been your intention to associate each color with a character, one being green and the other red, but I wasn't 100% sure on that. Even if not, it's a fantastic device, because it makes me really pay attention to the song and the way you're using its tonal shifts.

Really cool stuff. I'm so glad you got it posted!

And that would be "emotional weight", not "emotional wait". My brain does occasionally work...

Oh, thank you! Car-splody-action is going in my dictionary forever... that is just hilarious. As good as Destina's "frosty dead nun eyes." Yeah, it's definitely more contextual than a previous vid i did in this fandom, but I figured more than anything it would be for an audience that's either already into the movie, or one who, like you, enjoys vids qua vids. I like that circle contains both. ;-)

I did do the stop motion blur -- I kept feeling like i was obligated to do something effects wise, but it never worked elsewhere except those dragging scenes. It's weird how quickly I got this mentality of "must do effects" after all these years of never having them, so never thinking of them. But this was a good chance for me to remember that I don't really always need them. I am so grateful that you noticed the colors -- it's hard because the movie has definite divisions, and if you don't follow the timeline of the film, they get jumbled; the director may not be a genius in terms of story, but he is incredibly gifted with cinematography, and he uses color and lighting and set backdrops to create and emphasize character unbelievably well. In some ways, it was like a gift to me, to be able to build that palette, and I am thrilled that you noticed. (But of course, because you're an artist!)

I know what you mean about effects. When I came on the scene, most of the old school vidders were saying "OMG, worst. stuff. ever," but now that people are getting a handle on how and when (and when not!) to use them, the community is warming up to the idea.

Yay, I got it right about the colors! You did great stuff there. I hope other people gasp and point delightedly, as I did.

Thanks for saying I'm an artist. I'm aglow.

There's gold in them thar hills! Eureka!

Shiny!

Re: Shiny!

Re: Shiny!

Re: Shiny!