Vid: The Most Lamentable Comedy of Richard Smith-Jones

Apr 19, 2009 18:42

The Most Lamentable Comedy of Richard Smith-Jones [at AO3, embedded]
PG13, 20MB, 2:46
Source: Slings & Arrows (all 3 seasons, no major spoilers)
Music: Allstar by Smashmouth
Enormous huge megathanks to sdwolfpup and gnatkip who are (all)star quality betas!


Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead

Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running
Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets
You'll never know if you don't go
You'll never shine if you don't glow

[Chorus:]
Hey now you're an All Star get your game on, go play
Hey now you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold

It's a cool place and they say it gets colder
You're bundled up now but wait 'til you get older
But the meteor[*] men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture

The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The waters getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire how about yours
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored

Hey now you're an All Star get your game on, go play
Hey now you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars--

Somebody once asked could I spare some change for gas
I need to get myself away from this place
I said yep what a concept
I could use a little fuel myself
And we could all use a little change

Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running
Didn't make sense not to live for fun
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do so much to see
So what's wrong with taking the back streets
You'll never know if you don't go (go!)
You'll never shine if you don't glow

Hey now you're an All Star get your game on, go play
Hey now you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold

And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold

[*] most lyrics sites have meteor; a few have media; both make sense. Personally, I hear media.

I started this vid in freakin' AUGUST 2007. On the plus side, I had a shiny new copy of Adobe Premiere Elements. On the minus side, I had an ancient laptop and crappy rips. After several painful drafts of the first 2/3 of the vid, during which sdwolfpup bravely ignored the poor video quality and told me what sucked and what didn't in the narrative, I hit the last verse/season which was the crappiest rip of all, threw up my hands, and (temporarily) abandoned the project. This was, um, February 2008.

The vid languished on my aux hard drive. My ancient laptop broke, and I got a new, faster one. I bought the actual DVDs of S&A, sent them to my parents on loan, and...didn't get them back. I bought a second set of DVDs. I thought about the vid. But every time I contemplated the work it would be to re-rip everything from scratch and start over, I panicked.

I went to New Zealand. I came back. I wandered through some vids I had saved to my hard drive, and remembered how nifty it was to create a vid my own self. I played my 2/3-finished draft, and hey, that wasn't actually all that bad. Maybe it would be worth resurrecting. I started ripping again, and hey, that wasn't actually all that bad, either...and then I got obsessed. I started re-ripping on April 2; less than 3 weeks later, I have a finished vid.

Of course, I'd already done a lot of the groundwork. The earlier version was the first time I'd used Premiere, and I wasn't yet comfortable with all of the cool stuff it does; since then, I have made a (crappy, must redo!) vidlet and edited a couple of nonfannish videos. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted where, although I would say only about 1/2 of the original scenes are identical to the finished scenes. After all, I'd been thinking about this vid for a year and a half.

I found this post on Vidding for Dummies by talitha78 extremely useful. I also have to give a huge amount of credit to gnatkip and sdwolfpup who did an amazing job of putting their fingers on stuff I kind of knew was wrong and telling me I needed to fix it (and making suggestions as to how! yay!) and even better, telling me what they loved so I knew what I got right.

I kind of want to natter all about what I did and why, but I kind of want you to just, you know, watch and enjoy the vid and grok it on your own. So I will only mention two little things: the title is a reference to the play-within-a-play in Midsummer Night's Dream, and the font used in the credits is, serendipitously, "Poor Richard."

vid, s&a

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