The best Hong Kong action French period romantic monster movie evah!

[gwyn]

Even though I'm very disgusted with the whole vid sharing thing right now, I've posted a new vid. Yes, that's a big L painted on my forehead.

Fraternité
Fandom: Brotherhood of the Wolf
Song: Blue Lily Red Lotus
Artist: Susheela Raman
File: QT Divx avi, 23.6MB
I recommend VLC media player (there's a link at my site) as always -- makes this look much better.

I can't say that anyone who hasn't seen the movie will be able to get much out of this, but then, I never know. I thought people who hadn't seen Deadwood wouldn't be able to parse Come to Jesus, but apparently I was wrong. So.


In the "because I am stupid" department. Last night when I was making the web encoded version of this, I realized that I'm about thisfar from committing seppuku over this encoding thing. Everyone else I see around me gets these flawless encodes that have no pixelization to speak of, and yet I cannot seem to achieve that. I suppose I should just be happy that I have a way to get a large window file up at a reasonable DL size, but I want these flawless encodes, too. The instructions at astolat's LJ that everyone mentions are for Windows, and I'm a Macolyte. I keep fiddling with things, trying programs, to no avail. These Divx avis are the only thing I know how to make, but they pixelate in strange places for no discernible reason. I don't have a lot of the fancyass programs many vidders do, either. I've literally begged people for their processes to get a better encode, but... they never respond. I find this really discouraging. For the most part this file looks good, I think, but.. it could be a lot better.

Anyway. The one thing I did manage to figure out last night after months of frustration was that somewhere along the line, in DLing all these encoding programs, my settings for the QT player had been pretty much bunged, and that was why they were reading my avi files so poorly. Here I roll my eyes at the people who email me and whine about how their computer won't let them watch my vids (I always say, if you're on a Windows computer, please go into your WMP defaults and uncheck "make WMP your default player" and like magic, it works!), and here I didn't even think to go back and check if my default settings had been bunged up. Yup. So I reset them, looking for the one that mentions avis, and sure enough, it plays the files less herky jerky than it has been recently. You know that thing about how if you give a bunch of monkeys typewriters? Yeah.

So, the dumbass finally at least figured that out. The good news is that I can now check the encodes in QT without wanting to cry, so I can make sure everything's copacetic in both QT and VLC. The bad news is, they still look like shit in the regular QT player -- seems utterly unable to handle a slow pan and certain other types of shots, and it's way, way mushy. But at least the superfast cuts in this don't disappear completely now in the QT player.

But. On with the void!

Comments

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is incredible. I loved that movie, but only saw it one time in the theater, and had forgotten so much about it -- but this vid brought it all back. I was watching, fascinated by the hypnotic music, the hypnotic images... and I started remembering more and more about the film... and then the music got faster, and my heart started to beat faster, and then it got faster again, and I forgot to breathe, and just stared. That last sequence is like, straight to the hind-brain, and made all the hair on my arms stand up. The two shots at 3:18, the howl that goes into... what is that a shot of? A melon smashing on a statue? Or is it something more grim than a melon? *g* I can't remember that from the movie. Anyway, those two clips, the motion from one to the other sent a chill right down my spine. That juxtaposition is one of those images, like some of the edits from The Ring, that just fucks with your head, you know what I'm trying to say? Anyway, it is way cool.

Also? That music kicks ass.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. I am especially glad you liked the music, as I know that voices/singing like that can really set people off, so I'm glad that it works for people. I feel really lucky to have stumbled on her music; a part of me wonders what she is saying, but a part of me doesn't want to know for fear it will ruin how I see it as a kind of artistic backdrop for the movie.

The stuff flung on the statue is punkins! That's the scene I always refer to as the pumpkin-hunt; the marquis (little crush-boy that he is, so in love with Fronsac), Fronsac, and Mani are all "testing" out their weapons of choice on poor unsuspecting pumpkins before they hunt. It cracks me up because the pumpkins blow up in such spectacular fashion, way more than a real pumpkin would, and one of them even pours liquified pumpkin innards out of a round hole -- I guess we're supposed to believe the pistols are that powerful. It's emblematic of what I love in that movie -- it's so OTT and yet... somehow, not at the same time. That pumpkin that gets splatted on the statue just seemed very visually arresting -- it's Mani's tomahawk throw, I believe. Right after he flips his hair back. ;-)

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

I have a great fondness for OTT. *g* (says the girl currently immersed in Xena)

Thanks for reminding me about what's going on with the punkins. Obviously, I need to watch this movie again!