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at a certain point you give it up
2005-03-26 13:10:21
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 0:44
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH096:
- Source rip: partial
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: partial
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 1/23+
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
I did an hour of work this morning that went two steps forward, three steps back; I screwed up one lipsynch-interlacing fix and aced another, then had a random spontaneous environment crash while I was tuning a beat-drop sequence. I'm going to be duplicating effort, but I get to sleep tomorrow and also rework all this video; it feels so good to be having a day off that I'm tempted to take it as a vaction day....even though it's the weekend and it's supposed to be like that.
I am feeling really, really good about this video so far. I'm probably going to be done the initial production at the end of next week, then spend the following week smoothing frame-by-frame on a few sequences that need it. Why couldn't ADV have put this show out as progressive?
I'm also starting to feel a little bad about taking someone else's idea, down to the song, visuals, and concept, and saying "move over little dog, a big ol' dog is comin' in", especially since it's their only work so far. Abstractly, I should be doing my own ideas, like that Morbid Angel/Hundred Stories piece that has been floating in the doldrums, but I do feel that I'm doing something worthwhile with this video, an sich and as a demonstration piece.
Azudai is a very clear example of how fansubs can hurt anime -- or more accurately, can hurt AMVs. People are used to the slightly washed look of digisubs, and they accept it without thinking when ADV publishes a show that was extensively digisubbed with such buried contrast values. I've been using Magix's highest default contrast settings, with a weak blur to keep the edges smooth, as a baseline for processing the final cuts for this video, and the difference in colors is like night and day. Unfortunately, ADV's DVDs preserve the pastel look that people saw in Triad or whoever's encodes, and they don't think to amp it up. Hopefully, if I can get this in front of a sufficient number of people, it'll start to change the way people look at this source -- or at any other. If you're not questioning your picture and trying to push it in the direction you want your video to go, you're going off track.
offtopic:
The Bubble List page is now up on the recs page. I should be gearing up for a second pass in the imminent future to pick up stuff like Black Sabbath, Pantera, Fear Factory, and Warheart's Heaven Shall Burn vid. Ofcourse, I've got to finish the current vid and get back on a more normal schedule before I can start rating -- either that or get some earbuds for use in the cleanroom.
--Kai out
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i got a high speed ticket
2005-03-25 11:50:38
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 0:31
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH096:
- Source rip: partial
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: partial
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 1/23+
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Sure, there's only ten more seconds complete on the video (settling the pace firmly at .5 mph), but this included some touchup on a weak section at the front of the video and some export and pasteover lipsynch, which I'm going to have to do more of in the 31 seconds currently complete. Once initiated, it becomes an all-destroying compulsion -- of course, only because the source looks so much better with it cleaned up. I really like how things are going so far and how much of the lipsynch I'm actually able to get "live" rather than having to synthesize it by hand. That'll come later, and it'll be a fucking nightmare.
I also had to watch some videos this morning, two that are going to be reviewed (might as well, even though only 1 was requested, when the machine is working it's damn boring out on the floor all day), and one that's going in for rec. I'm going to have to update the page -- another thing to waste time and take my attention off my munged knee.
con news:
#94 is a Drama finalist at AniBo. It's going to get its ass kicked, but oh well. I'll be in Germany and not much caring; at least it got into the finals.
Plans for the weekend include another hour or so of video work tomorrow morning, followed by another 12-hour shift in the factory, then extensive vid work Sunday morning, club returns and ganging around Boston in the afternoon, and video work all night until I stop functioning. I've got another week of swing shifts coming up, going into customer demo, and I can't afford to let my circadians reset.
--Kai out
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and the feeling is gone
2005-03-24 11:34:45
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: 0:21
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH096:
- Source rip: partial
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: partial
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 1/23+
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Started editing this morning, and despite the ridiculous source volume (600-some cuts), it's not only running fairly good, but fairly fast. I'm feeling good about how this one is going to turn out -- providedd, of course, I actually have the time to finish it. Edit pace is still about 1 minute per hour, maybe a little slower due to searching over an extremely large library of practically identical footage, and I haven't started on any of the lipsynch yet -- thank you Magix for "export as a series of still frames". However, word is that we won't have to come in this Sunday, which will allows a subtantially greater concentration of editing time than the one hour per morning that I can currently steal, maximum.
I also have to review a few videos in there, move my office to the third floor (for stupid reasons), and return what I took out last week to club. I'll personally be very glad when the machine is bolted up to ship, and I can finally take some vacation. Right now, being out for whatever reason is just not an option; if I get sick again, I'll probably be dragging my carcass in regardless of how I feel.
--Kai out
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forced entry into this life
2005-03-23 11:55:12
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: complete
- Clipping: complete
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH096:
- Source rip: partial
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: partial
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 1/23+
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
#95 is set up and ready to go, which will probably mean editing doesn't start before tomorrow morning. This is because of work: I've been moved to a noon-to-midnight shift doing support and recovery documentation, which will have negative consequences for a lot of things. However, I probably will get weekends off now -- if I have to do weekends in addition to twelve-hour swing shifts, I'm going to start billing actual hours worked instead of my normal 40, and that's going to get bloody.
offtopic:
Some kid shot up his school on a reservation in Minnesota, and already the pundits are trying to blame heavy metal and violent video games for making him into a homicidal Nazi. It's the same killer-kids/"society has failed them" crap that was dragged out after Columbine, and it doesn't look like there's any hope that there will be an honest look taken at the situation.
Every time this happens, they drag out the bloody artwork and morbid writings that the mainstream considers sick, and a wardrobe full of black T-shirts, a rack of CDs with threatening names and imagery, and point to it as signs of a murderer-in-training. They don't point out the thousands if not *millions* of kids who similarly reject mainstream values and culture, but grow up to be well-adjusted adults who never kill anybody. People criminalize metal and then are shocked, shocked, when metalheads become criminals.
I grew up as a similar kind of person, wholeheartedly rejecting the weak structures of mainstream thinking and popular culture, but I never murdered anyone because I *had* metal, and *had* a scene as a support system. If I was the only kid who listened to devil music in a real small town, I wouldn't be writing this right now, I'd probably be in for felonious assault or between sentences. But society refuses to see its own emptiness, and in too many cases treats those who try to fill that void with something of their own creation as a problem to be treated. A metalhead alone is a violent, pessimistic person with little regard for society or other human beings. A metal scene, together, is a joyous celebration of the rock'n'roll spirit and a collaborative, communal culture that gives people something true, real, to belong to and people who will unconditionally accept them. If you box a thrasher up and make him stew in a social straightjacket, you make a ticking timebomb; if there's a show every other weekend, all that energy and rage gets bled off in three hours of headbanging and slamming around in the pit.
The social workers and preachers can rant and the politicians can thunder all they want, but the only way out of this mess is to radically change society -- by realizing that *metalheads are not automatically bad people*. Change only this, and the kilings will probably stop.
--Kai out
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and some are escaping
2005-03-22 09:35:46
SH095:
- Source rip: complete
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: complete
- Storyboard/planning: timed
- Clipping: 15/26
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
SH096:
- Source rip: partial
- Music: complete
- Precleaning: partial
- Storyboard/planning: none
- Clipping: 1/23+
- Edit: none
- Postproc: none
- Export: none
Four more eps cut between last night and this morning, and a clearer picture is starting to emerge on #96 as well. I could finish clipping before the end of the week, and then throw a significant chunk of time on the weekend at editing, but that's reckoning without working Saturday, which always seems to be the case. It's like I'm back in school, working such long hours, but I'm getting paid rather than paying for the privilege.
I was thinking about writing some stuff up on doing certain effects in Magix for the AMV wiki, but as I was working on that (also last night), it became extremely evident that I was going to have to first write an article on the three effects consoles in Magix and their proper operation. I'm still working on that. I could do about five or six edits immediately, but they'd all link to the same incomplete stub; probably not worthwhile.
The bubble list is forthcoming -- I just need a lunch break when I'm not putting my tax return and paycheck in the bank to work it all over to HTML. About 70 videos, probably more once everything is squared away. I should also be reviewing videos from bands that didn't make the filter the last time around, but I'm already going all out on work and #95 -- the time to do so is conspicuously absent.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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