A Good Man: The Making Of
Malcolm Merlyn - A Good Man
BloodRavens collaboration
by Bloodsong
Music Video by the BloodRavens!
So how do you do a collaborative music video? Well, there are groups that do Multi-User Videos, wherein everyone in a project gets a cut of the song, they do a video to it, then send all the cuts back to an orchestrator who re-assembles them into a whole video.
Well, but... that's not us. :X
The first thing we do is post the lyrics on Google Docs, in a shared document. Then we each have our own colour to add things (Bloodsong = red, Empress = blue). And comments on the side.
I have Sony Vegas, so I put the clips together with the music. Of course, GETTING the clips is probably the longest and most tedious part of the whole process. Worse, I have clips in 3 differnet locations on my hard drives (and thumb drive), and some of the clips are the same. Plus, they have different naming conventions.
So 3-13-Mcdoesthething comes before A1-2-Oldoesthething in my media bins, for example. Not helpful.
I also use multiple tracks, at least three. And I put different clips, and/or different timings of the same clips, stacked on top of each other, so I can watch the variations. This time, I got to render out variations and post them to an unlisted playlist of WIPs, so Empress could vote on them. (Or, to be honest, make decisions for me, because I can NEVER decide!)
The segment with the most variations was probably "I want to be a free man; but I feel like a slave."
At first, I was going to try one of the clips of him trying to convince Thea to run away from Starling City to avoid Ra's al Ghul finding them. Because that represents him being controlled (enslaved) by another person.
Then Empress said UGH on that idea. Because visually speaking, they don't make sense for that. Sure, WE know what the scene means, but not everybody else has all of Malcolm's lines memorized. :X
So, wisely, we started messing with scenes of Malcolm actually in chains. He's... actually more of a 'prisoner' than a 'slave' in them, but... okay. They look good!
First i was just Nyssa capturing him, and then the Assassins taking him to the helicopter. Then there were variations on them bringing him before Ra's. I couldn't decide, so I took two and put them both in. The one with Ra's poking him went with the beat, so.... that's what happened there!
[If you're really interested, you can view some of the WIPs and variations here.]
I didn't know what was going to go on, exactly, in the choruses. So I threw some fights in there, sorta randomly. They went well, with the kick-butt metal and the kick-butt action, but the whole video went through a phase where I totally hated it. Kicking butt wasn't what I wanted. Well, not all that I wanted.
I wanted a dichotomy going on, of Malcolm being a good man (hugging Tommy, comforting Thea, winning his award) versus Malcolm being a badass (whacking Tommy, whacking Thea, and generally slaughtering people). It just wasn't there.
In fact, the poster-child scene I wanted, Malcolm protecting Thea at the train station, wasn't in there at all! That was the perfect dichotomy. Being a good man by kicking butt to protect his daughter.
I basically had to tear down all the chorus footage and start over. Well, with some leftovers. It turned out that blowing up UNIDAC and blowing up Brick wen't very well to the start of the choruses. I also had a sequence of Malcolm saving Tommy from the Triad, and that faded out pefectly on the question "Is there any good left in me?"
Bit by bit, I found Malcolm being 'good' to people that he otherwise beats up. I had a nice handshake with Oliver (from season 1, which looks pretty goofy, but Empress told me to try the one from season 3, which looks SOOO much better!), then some beating up Oliver in season 1. But not violent enough, so what the heck, I took some of the more violent beaty-uppy bits of the fight and added them in. Viola! More violent and on the beat! Plus, by mixing them up, they aren't the same-old reused scenes you're familiar with.
Another trouble spot... what was I going to do after the solo, in the sort of lull that went into a long crescendo of the ending choruses? No Idea. For most of the time I was working on the video, I had no idea!
Should the earthquake hit? Oops, that ended up before then. Should it build up to KO-ing Oliver at the end of the office fight? Oh, that fit nicely after the earthquake and leading up to the crescendo, but... um... THEN what?
Finally, I just decided I should use some of the snippets that we had wanted to use, but didn't get to. Stuff like Malcolm shot by Deadshot, Tommy and Malcolm hugging, that sort of thing. Oh, and Malcolm protecting Felicity.
I started sticking them in there, and I noticed there was a beat to the crescendo. I thought I should put the Tommy hospital huggy/kissy bit at the end, to segue into the earthquake where Tommy dies. But... that didn't work.
Instead, I started playing around with some fights that got cut out, like the huge 'rescue Oliver and escape from Nanda Parbat' fight. Oh, and the "Malcolm sees purple smoke" bit. Threw them together and BOOM! Crescendoing fangasm sequence!
"Sometimes I even amaze myself." --Han Solo
"YES! I am JUST THAT GOOD!" --Bloodsong
I do have to say I'm sorry to Empress, because so many of her ideas didn't get put in here. She really wanted the season 4 yelling between Malcolm and Thea. And hand slicing. Lots of hand slicing. And screaming... :X
But I CAN thank her so much for...
- Figuring out the right order to put "I want to be faithful; but I know that I'm not."
- Cluing me in on the season 3 handshake.
- Identifying the 'Tommy's birthday party, in the hall, ticket-slapping' scene as the one for the "Fill this hole I have inside" clip.
- Straightening me out and making me fix the first version of the Tommy/Malcolm phone call that goes in the middle-beat break. Originally, I had Malcolm vs Moira in there, but it sorta wasn't making sense with the rest of the video. Then the first version of the phone call I tried was even worse.
- Deciding that yes, the funeral scene DOES go on "I can't make myself believe."
- Vetoing the 'baby Thea sticking her tongue out at him' story clip for "Lift me back into the light." It just wasn't clear enough if you didn't know the scene. Again.