(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I've been experimenting with the Linux video editing suite KDenlive recently, because I can and because I've become fascinated with the way fanvidding offers a new vocabulary for having conversations about a media source text. My initial experiments are clumsy and not very attractive and ought never see the light of day, but I'm enjoying myself and enjoying the power video editing offers me to put my own narratives into the text, to sort out feelings.

Things I have done:

-Done a West Wing rewatch and assembled a bunch of CJ stuff into a vid to Dessa's song "Dutch", constructing a story about the difficulty of building relationships when your job is more important, but at the same time having fun with Allison Janney's glorious sense of movement. Also an excuse to rewatch The Jackal again and again. If you haven't seen CJ do The Jackal, you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be played.

-Created for myself the X-Men First Class vid to Remedy's "Never Again", a vid which will never see the light of day not only because it's got ugly source and inexpert editing, but because the emotions the video is about are ones that I am at once comfortable with and ashamed of, but still necessary emotions. Sketching Erik as the Jew who says never again and then does something about it is a problematic reading of the text that I personally needed to work through.


Hopefully with practice I'll get better and maybe then I'll be willing to share some of this work with other people.

In work I'm willing to share with other people news, I'm writing a Trekfic that's almost ready to post. I think probably another round or two with betas and that's coming up. I set out to see if I could write a fic entirely in technobabble. I succeeded.

Comments

[kindness_says]

jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackal.

<3

[seekingferret]

I'm legitimately trying to learn how to vid, how to tell a story and how to juxtapose images and how to transition and how to use music to complement or supplement or compromise the images... but whenever I didn't have any image, I just threw in more of CJ doing the Jackal.

[thaurfea]

:D

[sanguinity]

:: but whenever I didn't have any image, I just threw in more of CJ doing the Jackal. ::

And how could one possibly object to that? :-)

[sanguinity]

How have you been setting about learning? I'm pre-emptively intimidated by the learning curve.

[seekingferret]

There have been abortive attempts in the past thwarted by the learning curve of the particular tool. Kdenlive's interface isn't always ideal- sometimes I wish I could do things that I can't- but it's simple, easy to understand, and meshes well with my brain. I've read the manual some, read tutorials and watched tutorial videos. And now I'm mostly just futzing around. There is some technical ability involved, which is just going to be easier with practice, but the hard part, the part that requires real learning, is figuring out what I want it to look like. And that's all about the art, and developing a sense of style and movement.