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jinkyoI finished my first treat, Vintage Clothes, a few days early so I had a few days to futz around with it before the initial deadline. The plan was to submit that vid then start work on my Escapade vid, which would be due in about two weeks. But then! Escapade extended the deadline by a week which meant I had time to cut one more treat!
Last year was my first Festivids and it was a great experience for me. One of my recipients was such a joy to create for in that they wrote a great prompt, I had tremendous fun editing their vid, they seemed happy with the vid and left quick and enthusiastic feedback. Yes! I wanted another hit of that!
The first win was that my local PBS channel still had the entire Nova series online, on-demand. I think The Planets is running on a streaming service too, but I checked PBS first and stopped there. I screen recorded the 5 eps (I don't understand torrents and they seem unsafe to me). It was a double win because I got to watch the series as I recorded it.
I opted to clip this by hand because I wasn't really sure what shots I'd want, or what the video was about, or even a song. I just clipped shots that looked cool. But I really needed a song...
My first path was an ethereal female voice, Enya, Cocteau Twins, etc. The requester is very pro-female so I wanted to honor that but ethereal voice music was either of the wrong beat, too slow, or just didn't feel space-y enough. At some point, I paused auditioning music, put on one of my 'doing paid work' playlists, and started working on real work and then Toxic came on.
I was the "No! Maybe?" gif girl. Like, the lyrics don't exactly match.....but maybe they do? Space is Toxic to humans, all of these other planets are not safe for humans... Plus, dang, can you hear that beat and musical change up?! Yes, I needed to clear out a chunk of the repeated chorus, but Toxic just might work, so I took it in to edit.
An earlier draft of Toxic: https://youtu.be/HlrQhJZ7OGc
The beginning of the vid and Jupiter would be problematic for most of this edit, I'll come back to it.
Because my story was "Space is Toxic, but we love it!", I wanted to incorporate the text showing toxic atmospheres, burning or freezing temps, and vast distances from the sun. The vid itself is a travelogue from the Sun, implied at the beginning of the vid and a content touchstone as we move farther away, to Pluto and the dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt. I finished the tour too fast though, so had to add in Humans and Space Ships to finish it up.
I'd clipped some Humans initially and stuck them in their section. One human was a Russian scientist who looks vaguely like Dr. Fauci - this amused me, so he stayed in the cut. I also had a lovely Russian woman scientist with a serious face pushing serious buttons and she worked well to transition to Spaceships. Unfortunately, she got cut because at some point I remembered that all of the Humans section was just sort of placeholder footage cut to the beat. There was very little actual intent to the people chosen aside from 'make sure you showcase women scientists'. I dig women in STEM, so that was important, but even more important to me, I dig seeing the diversity of humanity in fanworks So I had to go back and find different humans. I found a great shot of Carolyn Porco (who also looks like Dr. Fauci in this clip - my amusement was at 100 by then!
So, the beginning of the vid has 2-3 different beat structures and my earlier edits just didn't work either because the clips were too short, the movement in the frame didn't link well shot to shot, and I didn't have a clear idea of how that section would go. I ended up tweaking the bit between Big Bang and Mercury all the way up until the drop-dead deadline.
Mercury - Mars, all this footage was great because we've sent probes to the surface and there was a lot! There's also a marijuana joke in this sequence (Amusement at 420!)
Ceres-Asteroid belt. I'd become one with this song at this point. Like, the song was the Solar System. This section of the song was so obviously the space between Mars and Jupiter and luckily for me, the docuseries had taken this lovely detour to a long-dead, doomed protoplanet, Ceres. Ceres also had some gorgeous imagery, and hit during a lyric about "losing my head going 'round and 'round". According to the doc, she lost her head because Jupiter moved through her sector of space and sucked up all the planet rock she would have used in order to grow into a real planet.
Jupiter was tricky because it fell on the chorus and bridge. Audibly, there was a very clear, and significantly larger space that Jupiter had to occupy in the vid. (Amusement goes to 450!). In the earliest cuts, I lingered on a shot of Jupiter slowly rotating, then I decided I wanted Jupiter to "grow" onscreen during that shot. Then I made the final leap - well dang, if the planet is going to grow, it may as well grow and fill the entire screen. I mean, you have an entire musical cue that says 'Look at Jupiter over here invading every planet's space!" (Amusement at 500!!)
I had an embarrassment of riches of Jupiter imagery. I used too many shots and had to pare back. I'd used some fantastic shots of Jupiter's gravity destroying a comet and had to pull them because I couldn't link them neatly. (Retroactive amusement, this vid got a fair number of comments about it being a horny vid, which wasn't really my intent - but I was amused because 'you should have seen the full-on Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 ejaculation sequence that I cut out of the vid!). I also had multiple beat structure options to cut on for the Jupiter segment and sort of got my beats mixed up during the moons sequence, but it's okay.
Saturn was a fun edit and highly amusing. Saturn has drip! It is a sexy looking planet with its rings and diamond rain. I had to dig through the footage to find a good full planet-with-rings shot instead of the 'Saturn turned on its axis' ring shot the show kept using. I finally found my scientifically incorrect but much more aesthetically pleasing shot, pumped up the coloring, and swapped it in.
Uranus, in the earlier cuts got short shrift. The show didn't have much to say about the planet. Thanks to Jupiter, Uranus is like, super frozen. I was sad that I only had 1 shot of it in the vid, but aurally, I didn't have much room for Uranus. On one of my last days of editing, I went back through the footage to find anything visually interesting for this one-shot. Eventually, I found a very slow sunrise/ring reveal model and when I sped it up by 800%, the shot worked.
Now, my favorite sequence and favorite edit of this vid. Neptune is a beautiful blue planet and has this dark storm spot. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper belt and a bunch of small planets and Voyager is headed that way. Voyager with its golden album of Earth Sounds. The circle-match sequence makes me very happy.
But then! we're getting into serious no man's land with Voyager's grainy black and white imaging of these rocky little moons and such. My most satisfying edit of the vid is a tiny cut from Voyager's images to a quick CG shot of an asteroid crossing the sun's path (and the sun is so very far away).
Much like the Humans section was originally place holder footage that mostly worked, so was the Spaceships section. After sorting out Jupiter, Humans, and Uranus, I had time to fiddle with Spaceships. The lyrics here are 'I think I'm ready', which I'm interpreting as humans, we're ready to take on toxic space so this section really needed some narrative guidance: ship launches, breaches the atmosphere, past some planets, a short detour for humans to flex just how ready we are by landing Viking without a hitch ….Uh, then a line that I had no idea how to logically fill so it became more 'humans landing shit competently everywhere! with parachutes! (because I needed that parachute shot in order to bridge to the orbiting satellite shot), then my sweet little Mars Rovers and a weird little 'ding' that I don't know if it's from the actual song or some audio artifact on my end, but that ding worked perfectly as a cue for the end titles.
I did not intend to type up so much about this vid, but I had an absolute blast with every facet of making this. I'm also really proud of the technical editing that went into it. I freakin' love this vid!
[Fanvid] Toxic
No Warnings Apply
Last year was my first Festivids and it was a great experience for me. One of my recipients was such a joy to create for in that they wrote a great prompt, I had tremendous fun editing their vid, they seemed happy with the vid and left quick and enthusiastic feedback. Yes! I wanted another hit of that!
The first win was that my local PBS channel still had the entire Nova series online, on-demand. I think The Planets is running on a streaming service too, but I checked PBS first and stopped there. I screen recorded the 5 eps (I don't understand torrents and they seem unsafe to me). It was a double win because I got to watch the series as I recorded it.
I opted to clip this by hand because I wasn't really sure what shots I'd want, or what the video was about, or even a song. I just clipped shots that looked cool. But I really needed a song...
My first path was an ethereal female voice, Enya, Cocteau Twins, etc. The requester is very pro-female so I wanted to honor that but ethereal voice music was either of the wrong beat, too slow, or just didn't feel space-y enough. At some point, I paused auditioning music, put on one of my 'doing paid work' playlists, and started working on real work and then Toxic came on.
I was the "No! Maybe?" gif girl. Like, the lyrics don't exactly match.....but maybe they do? Space is Toxic to humans, all of these other planets are not safe for humans... Plus, dang, can you hear that beat and musical change up?! Yes, I needed to clear out a chunk of the repeated chorus, but Toxic just might work, so I took it in to edit.
An earlier draft of Toxic: https://youtu.be/HlrQhJZ7OGc
The beginning of the vid and Jupiter would be problematic for most of this edit, I'll come back to it.
Because my story was "Space is Toxic, but we love it!", I wanted to incorporate the text showing toxic atmospheres, burning or freezing temps, and vast distances from the sun. The vid itself is a travelogue from the Sun, implied at the beginning of the vid and a content touchstone as we move farther away, to Pluto and the dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt. I finished the tour too fast though, so had to add in Humans and Space Ships to finish it up.
I'd clipped some Humans initially and stuck them in their section. One human was a Russian scientist who looks vaguely like Dr. Fauci - this amused me, so he stayed in the cut. I also had a lovely Russian woman scientist with a serious face pushing serious buttons and she worked well to transition to Spaceships. Unfortunately, she got cut because at some point I remembered that all of the Humans section was just sort of placeholder footage cut to the beat. There was very little actual intent to the people chosen aside from 'make sure you showcase women scientists'. I dig women in STEM, so that was important, but even more important to me, I dig seeing the diversity of humanity in fanworks So I had to go back and find different humans. I found a great shot of Carolyn Porco (who also looks like Dr. Fauci in this clip - my amusement was at 100 by then!
So, the beginning of the vid has 2-3 different beat structures and my earlier edits just didn't work either because the clips were too short, the movement in the frame didn't link well shot to shot, and I didn't have a clear idea of how that section would go. I ended up tweaking the bit between Big Bang and Mercury all the way up until the drop-dead deadline.
Mercury - Mars, all this footage was great because we've sent probes to the surface and there was a lot! There's also a marijuana joke in this sequence (Amusement at 420!)
Ceres-Asteroid belt. I'd become one with this song at this point. Like, the song was the Solar System. This section of the song was so obviously the space between Mars and Jupiter and luckily for me, the docuseries had taken this lovely detour to a long-dead, doomed protoplanet, Ceres. Ceres also had some gorgeous imagery, and hit during a lyric about "losing my head going 'round and 'round". According to the doc, she lost her head because Jupiter moved through her sector of space and sucked up all the planet rock she would have used in order to grow into a real planet.
Jupiter was tricky because it fell on the chorus and bridge. Audibly, there was a very clear, and significantly larger space that Jupiter had to occupy in the vid. (Amusement goes to 450!). In the earliest cuts, I lingered on a shot of Jupiter slowly rotating, then I decided I wanted Jupiter to "grow" onscreen during that shot. Then I made the final leap - well dang, if the planet is going to grow, it may as well grow and fill the entire screen. I mean, you have an entire musical cue that says 'Look at Jupiter over here invading every planet's space!" (Amusement at 500!!)
I had an embarrassment of riches of Jupiter imagery. I used too many shots and had to pare back. I'd used some fantastic shots of Jupiter's gravity destroying a comet and had to pull them because I couldn't link them neatly. (Retroactive amusement, this vid got a fair number of comments about it being a horny vid, which wasn't really my intent - but I was amused because 'you should have seen the full-on Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 ejaculation sequence that I cut out of the vid!). I also had multiple beat structure options to cut on for the Jupiter segment and sort of got my beats mixed up during the moons sequence, but it's okay.
Saturn was a fun edit and highly amusing. Saturn has drip! It is a sexy looking planet with its rings and diamond rain. I had to dig through the footage to find a good full planet-with-rings shot instead of the 'Saturn turned on its axis' ring shot the show kept using. I finally found my scientifically incorrect but much more aesthetically pleasing shot, pumped up the coloring, and swapped it in.
Uranus, in the earlier cuts got short shrift. The show didn't have much to say about the planet. Thanks to Jupiter, Uranus is like, super frozen. I was sad that I only had 1 shot of it in the vid, but aurally, I didn't have much room for Uranus. On one of my last days of editing, I went back through the footage to find anything visually interesting for this one-shot. Eventually, I found a very slow sunrise/ring reveal model and when I sped it up by 800%, the shot worked.
Now, my favorite sequence and favorite edit of this vid. Neptune is a beautiful blue planet and has this dark storm spot. Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper belt and a bunch of small planets and Voyager is headed that way. Voyager with its golden album of Earth Sounds. The circle-match sequence makes me very happy.
But then! we're getting into serious no man's land with Voyager's grainy black and white imaging of these rocky little moons and such. My most satisfying edit of the vid is a tiny cut from Voyager's images to a quick CG shot of an asteroid crossing the sun's path (and the sun is so very far away).
Much like the Humans section was originally place holder footage that mostly worked, so was the Spaceships section. After sorting out Jupiter, Humans, and Uranus, I had time to fiddle with Spaceships. The lyrics here are 'I think I'm ready', which I'm interpreting as humans, we're ready to take on toxic space so this section really needed some narrative guidance: ship launches, breaches the atmosphere, past some planets, a short detour for humans to flex just how ready we are by landing Viking without a hitch ….Uh, then a line that I had no idea how to logically fill so it became more 'humans landing shit competently everywhere! with parachutes! (because I needed that parachute shot in order to bridge to the orbiting satellite shot), then my sweet little Mars Rovers and a weird little 'ding' that I don't know if it's from the actual song or some audio artifact on my end, but that ding worked perfectly as a cue for the end titles.
I did not intend to type up so much about this vid, but I had an absolute blast with every facet of making this. I'm also really proud of the technical editing that went into it. I freakin' love this vid!
[Fanvid] Toxic
No Warnings Apply
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29019369
