Vid meta for Somewhere I Belong
Because kazbaby essentially asked over at Terra Firma.
I first had the idea that I'd use "Somewhere I Belong" (SIB) when I had this on the same CD where I burned VAST's "All I Found Was You". Since all I don't have a reliable way of playing my iPod in the car, I tend to burn music that I'm currently vidding so that I can listen to the song on repeat and visualize clips while I'm commuting. It's a waste of a blank CD not to burn more music, so I always fill them up with other songs. Plus, I only have burned CDs in my car so I don't have to worry purchased ones getting stolen. Anyway, I hadn't heard the song in awhile, so I thought I'd put it in the mix. (I think the last time I heard the song was for the biceps track of a BodyPump class...)
After finishing up the VAST vid, I took that song off repeat and listened to the rest of the CD. When I got to SIB, I thought it'd be perfect for S3 angsty Doctor. I've wanted to do an S3 angsty Doctor vid for a long time, but never really followed through with one before.
When I found time to play in Vegas, I took the scene from "Voyage of the Damned" and started with the titles sequence. I had no real direction at this point other than the fact that the Doctor looks damn hot in this otherwise silly scene, and it seemed perfect for this vid. I played with all sorts of color settings and filters before I finally settled on plain black and white with some contrast. Earlier on, I had some film grain added which I thought was quite reminiscent of humansrsuperior's "Feeling Good". Even the font I used is the same! I had her blessing to keep it, so it's all good. ;) Anyway, I used these same black and white settings except on the S2 black and white clips. I added a jittery film effect to the font clips only which I thought went nicely with the music. For the flashes, I cut a piece of the same clip, stretched it out, and added it to a screen track. This is a technique I learned from jagwriter78's "What I've Done". (Seeing a theme here? I like to think of it as stealing borrowing from the best. ^_^)
The transition to the next portion of "Family of Blood" clips is just a keyframed stretch and blur. For the FOB clips, I really liked the simplicity of just crossfading into a zoomed portion of the same clip. Those FOB scenes are powerful enough without doing anything too fancy with them. And after "All I Found Was You", I felt a huge need to slow down with vidding. LOL
Oh, by the way, keyframes are something I learned from Brent Barrett's awesome ULead tutorial on beat effects. The techniques for using keyframes transfers quite nicely to Vegas. :D
Then we get into where things got tricky. For the pick up in the music, I knew I wanted to go into color, but I wanted some cool way to transition into that. Flash transitions? Done that. Zoom transitions? Done that. Nothing in Vegas really appealed to me so I pulled up my trusty first program, ULead VS 10 Plus. I really like the set of mask transitions which I had used last for "Black Market". To do these ULead transitions scattered throughout the vid, I would render the two clips in Vegas, put them in ULead, slap the transitions in, render that, and put it back into Vegas. I think timing these clips just right was the trickiest part of the whole vid.
Once I got to the color bits, I asked myself "Now what?" The "Runaway Bride" clips have plenty enough action going on to match the music, but I was looking to do something I hadn't really done before in a vid. Okay, I've done moving split screens with "Shiny Happy People", but they're rather rough around the edges. I wanted to do something a bit more like 24-style split screens which I'd actually seen in other vids. I liked the thought of having something like Donna's reaction paired with the destruction of the Racnoss, followed by Ten looking over it all. And I kind of went with that idea throughout the vid whereever I thought two clips would work better than one. Anyway, to do the "splits", I used the pan/crop feature along with masks, and I keyframed like crazy to move these things around. To keep things from getting too repetitive, I liked going back to regular old single screens timed to the music. I'm also rather fond of not using too many different types of effects in a single vid. That's I didn't do too many real overlays in this vid. I was trying to keep the look of this particular vid clean and cohesive.
I transitioned back into black and white, which I thought made sense to use for the slower parts of the music. To make things just a bit different for the S2 clips, I used the "Black and White Crunch" filter from a special filter add-on. Once the lyrics started, I thought to do a bit more paralleling with S2 clips, but I wasn't quite sure how to do that. Originally, I was going to time to each word individually, but it looked rather messy. (I think this was one of those thoughts that seemed great in the car, but failed in practice.) Then I thought maybe I'd try that flicker effect I've seen so many times before but never found a place to use it. It seemed to work pretty well, I think. For those who're wondering, the flicker effect is really just intercut single frames, and I faded the secondary clip so that the main clip looked more prominent on the next beat. The hardest part of doing this was finding two clips that would work well enough together yet still have some sort of lyrical matching come across. The flash "transitions" aren't transitions at all, but are actually a lot like what I did with the title sequence, only I didn't stretch out the overlay. As for clip choice, I just tried to put in clips that somewhat matched the music lyrically. I wasn't too worried about doing things chronologically except that I knew I wanted the climax of the vid to have the Doctor face off with the Master. :D
For the clips that go with both "fault is my own" lines, those were 50% black and white just because I wanted some color for those really gorgeous shots of Ten. :D
The use of the Daleks from "Parting of the Ways" and the planet explosion from "End of the World" to signify the Time War has been done many times before, but I still really like that combination of clips. It's just a matter of finding different ways to put 'em together. Oh, and that shot at 1:12 took a LOT of time. It's a PotW clip on top of a sun clip from "42". :)
Since I was doing the whole Time War thing, I kept going with the Daleks theme by using the angstiest clips of Ten from the S3 Daleks episodes. After this point, let me just say I chose clips to match what the music and lyrics were telling me to do. :)
A few more key time points:
1:34-1:36: This was a great excuse to use the split screens so I could have side-by-side shots of Ten looking hot. >:-)
2:23-2:51: Ahhhh, the dreaded bridge. I really was the least sure about this part, so I thought I'd go back to the Doctor vs. Daleks theme for the whole bridge. I had to have some way of sticking in what I thought was the biggest reason for the Doctor's angst fest in S3, and that of course was losing Rose. There's really very little straightforward lyrical matching here. I cut clips mostly to match rhythm of the music.
2:51-2:54: This string of quick clips allowed me to have at least ONE clip from every episode in S3. LOL
3:13-3:15: Another great excuse to use the split screen effect: side-by-side shots of Ten and the Master. >:-)
3:35 to the end: From the beginning, I had knew I wanted to end on clips on VotD instead of the end of S3. This seemed to work well enough. Throughout making this vid, I was reminded of the line from VotD where the Doctor tells Astrid about losing his home and then finding the Earth. The Doctor's sort of found a surrogate home in the Earth, and I think it's the closest to where he feels he "belongs".
Well, even though I think I wrote a lot, I hope this has been illuminating enough. I'm always happy to answer questions when asked. :)
I first had the idea that I'd use "Somewhere I Belong" (SIB) when I had this on the same CD where I burned VAST's "All I Found Was You". Since all I don't have a reliable way of playing my iPod in the car, I tend to burn music that I'm currently vidding so that I can listen to the song on repeat and visualize clips while I'm commuting. It's a waste of a blank CD not to burn more music, so I always fill them up with other songs. Plus, I only have burned CDs in my car so I don't have to worry purchased ones getting stolen. Anyway, I hadn't heard the song in awhile, so I thought I'd put it in the mix. (I think the last time I heard the song was for the biceps track of a BodyPump class...)
After finishing up the VAST vid, I took that song off repeat and listened to the rest of the CD. When I got to SIB, I thought it'd be perfect for S3 angsty Doctor. I've wanted to do an S3 angsty Doctor vid for a long time, but never really followed through with one before.
When I found time to play in Vegas, I took the scene from "Voyage of the Damned" and started with the titles sequence. I had no real direction at this point other than the fact that the Doctor looks damn hot in this otherwise silly scene, and it seemed perfect for this vid. I played with all sorts of color settings and filters before I finally settled on plain black and white with some contrast. Earlier on, I had some film grain added which I thought was quite reminiscent of humansrsuperior's "Feeling Good". Even the font I used is the same! I had her blessing to keep it, so it's all good. ;) Anyway, I used these same black and white settings except on the S2 black and white clips. I added a jittery film effect to the font clips only which I thought went nicely with the music. For the flashes, I cut a piece of the same clip, stretched it out, and added it to a screen track. This is a technique I learned from jagwriter78's "What I've Done". (Seeing a theme here? I like to think of it as stealing borrowing from the best. ^_^)
The transition to the next portion of "Family of Blood" clips is just a keyframed stretch and blur. For the FOB clips, I really liked the simplicity of just crossfading into a zoomed portion of the same clip. Those FOB scenes are powerful enough without doing anything too fancy with them. And after "All I Found Was You", I felt a huge need to slow down with vidding. LOL
Oh, by the way, keyframes are something I learned from Brent Barrett's awesome ULead tutorial on beat effects. The techniques for using keyframes transfers quite nicely to Vegas. :D
Then we get into where things got tricky. For the pick up in the music, I knew I wanted to go into color, but I wanted some cool way to transition into that. Flash transitions? Done that. Zoom transitions? Done that. Nothing in Vegas really appealed to me so I pulled up my trusty first program, ULead VS 10 Plus. I really like the set of mask transitions which I had used last for "Black Market". To do these ULead transitions scattered throughout the vid, I would render the two clips in Vegas, put them in ULead, slap the transitions in, render that, and put it back into Vegas. I think timing these clips just right was the trickiest part of the whole vid.
Once I got to the color bits, I asked myself "Now what?" The "Runaway Bride" clips have plenty enough action going on to match the music, but I was looking to do something I hadn't really done before in a vid. Okay, I've done moving split screens with "Shiny Happy People", but they're rather rough around the edges. I wanted to do something a bit more like 24-style split screens which I'd actually seen in other vids. I liked the thought of having something like Donna's reaction paired with the destruction of the Racnoss, followed by Ten looking over it all. And I kind of went with that idea throughout the vid whereever I thought two clips would work better than one. Anyway, to do the "splits", I used the pan/crop feature along with masks, and I keyframed like crazy to move these things around. To keep things from getting too repetitive, I liked going back to regular old single screens timed to the music. I'm also rather fond of not using too many different types of effects in a single vid. That's I didn't do too many real overlays in this vid. I was trying to keep the look of this particular vid clean and cohesive.
I transitioned back into black and white, which I thought made sense to use for the slower parts of the music. To make things just a bit different for the S2 clips, I used the "Black and White Crunch" filter from a special filter add-on. Once the lyrics started, I thought to do a bit more paralleling with S2 clips, but I wasn't quite sure how to do that. Originally, I was going to time to each word individually, but it looked rather messy. (I think this was one of those thoughts that seemed great in the car, but failed in practice.) Then I thought maybe I'd try that flicker effect I've seen so many times before but never found a place to use it. It seemed to work pretty well, I think. For those who're wondering, the flicker effect is really just intercut single frames, and I faded the secondary clip so that the main clip looked more prominent on the next beat. The hardest part of doing this was finding two clips that would work well enough together yet still have some sort of lyrical matching come across. The flash "transitions" aren't transitions at all, but are actually a lot like what I did with the title sequence, only I didn't stretch out the overlay. As for clip choice, I just tried to put in clips that somewhat matched the music lyrically. I wasn't too worried about doing things chronologically except that I knew I wanted the climax of the vid to have the Doctor face off with the Master. :D
For the clips that go with both "fault is my own" lines, those were 50% black and white just because I wanted some color for those really gorgeous shots of Ten. :D
The use of the Daleks from "Parting of the Ways" and the planet explosion from "End of the World" to signify the Time War has been done many times before, but I still really like that combination of clips. It's just a matter of finding different ways to put 'em together. Oh, and that shot at 1:12 took a LOT of time. It's a PotW clip on top of a sun clip from "42". :)
Since I was doing the whole Time War thing, I kept going with the Daleks theme by using the angstiest clips of Ten from the S3 Daleks episodes. After this point, let me just say I chose clips to match what the music and lyrics were telling me to do. :)
A few more key time points:
1:34-1:36: This was a great excuse to use the split screens so I could have side-by-side shots of Ten looking hot. >:-)
2:23-2:51: Ahhhh, the dreaded bridge. I really was the least sure about this part, so I thought I'd go back to the Doctor vs. Daleks theme for the whole bridge. I had to have some way of sticking in what I thought was the biggest reason for the Doctor's angst fest in S3, and that of course was losing Rose. There's really very little straightforward lyrical matching here. I cut clips mostly to match rhythm of the music.
2:51-2:54: This string of quick clips allowed me to have at least ONE clip from every episode in S3. LOL
3:13-3:15: Another great excuse to use the split screen effect: side-by-side shots of Ten and the Master. >:-)
3:35 to the end: From the beginning, I had knew I wanted to end on clips on VotD instead of the end of S3. This seemed to work well enough. Throughout making this vid, I was reminded of the line from VotD where the Doctor tells Astrid about losing his home and then finding the Earth. The Doctor's sort of found a surrogate home in the Earth, and I think it's the closest to where he feels he "belongs".
Well, even though I think I wrote a lot, I hope this has been illuminating enough. I'm always happy to answer questions when asked. :)