vid: Signal to Noise
Aug. 22nd, 2007 09:57 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
jenavira.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
babylon5_loveThis vid has kicked my ass for a month, but it is totally, in all ways, completely worth it. And I made it for y'all, because if this fandom did not exist I would not have the motivation to do awesome things like this. <3
Signal to Noise
music by Peter Gabriel
vid by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jenavira, from an idea by m_butterfly
XVid, 68MB
sendspace | mediafire | streaming from Imeem --
you know the way that things go
when what you fight for starts to fall
and in that fuzzy picture
he writing stands out on the wall
so clearly on the wall
send out the signals deep and loud
and in this place, can you reassure me
with a touch, a smile - while the cradle's burning
all the while the world is turning to noise
oh the more that it's surrounding us
the more that it destroys
turn up the signal
wipe out the noise
send out the signals deep and loud
man i'm losing sound and sight
of all those who can tell me wrong from right
when all things beautiful and bright
sink in the night
yet there's still something in my heart
that can find a way
to make a start
to turn up the signal
wipe out the noise
m_butterfly mentioned this song to me ages ago, as the base for a vid of the bits of Crusade that didn't get filmed. A little bit of creative editing, I thought, and that might possibly work. It'd be hell, though. (Seven and a half minutes, guys.) It also works as a base for B5 in general, she mentioned, and she's right. (She tells me she still might do the Crusade vid someday, though, which I would absolutely kill to see.)
On a purely technical note, this was the most video tracks I've ever worked with in Premiere (four, omg) and I finally learned how to do transition effects. Yes, shut up, I learned on WMM and this is only I think the third vid I've done in Premiere. Also easily the longest song without editing. I forgot to deal with the interlacing when encoding video clips, and by the time I noticed I'd already incoded some 10 gig of clips and there was no way I was doing that again. (About 30 gig of clips in total went into this, or at least were ripped intending to go into this -- I bought a new hard drive halfway through because it was easier than having to clear disk space every time I sat down to vid...)
Most of the time when I vid I start with an image or series of images for a chunk of the song that I really like, and go from there, but with a song this long (and with this much source to work from; the last several vids I've done have been movies and British TV shows) I'd need something more coherent, so I tackled the theme first of all. What I like to think of as the moral of the song, the most important idea of it, is right there in the title, and the most often repeated line -- turn up the signal, wipe out the noise. "Signal" is what B5 is all about, that idea of making a light in the darkness (only transposed into an audio metaphor, which is neat). Of course, that doesn't narrow it down any. The first thought I had for "noise," though, was Clark's Earthgov. I won't deny current politics make me think of that more often than I'd like, but it's also one of my favorite plotlines in the show that I've never really worked with before.
I also had lingering in the back of my mind one of the other main themes of B5, the Third Option. Probably this was hanging about in my brain because it was the theme of Lost Tales -- there's always another way, usually one more appealing than the options you've been presented. And from "By Any Means Necessary" in the first season, to "Into the Fire" and talking the Shadows and Vorlons out of the galaxy, to Lost Tales, that third option usually involves way less blowing shit up than the other options being presented. So I tried to keep as much physical violence out of the vid as possible, and what's there is meant to be representative of what they're fighting against, not for.
I decided to base the bulk of the vid, the lyric section, on the Earthgov/Civil War plotline. Which caused me no end of grief last week when I realized that because of one wonderful image I had (putting the nuclear destruction of the Shadow city on all things beautiful and bright) I'd accidentally vidded a whole verse to the Shadow plotline instead. Oops. On the other hand, it did allow me to put back that second alyric section (around 2:45-3:32) that I'd tried to edit out of the song earlier because I couldn't think what to put in there. (I almost never vid full songs, I'm always cutting out instrumental bits. I suck at instrumental bits.) It also allowed me to get in a whole chunk of Garibaldi's plot arc as well, which is another plotline I've never worked much with myself. Last time I was really into B5, I didn't like Garibaldi all that much, for reasons now unbeknownst to me.
But of course, I couldn't make a B5 vid without my favorite characters (Londo and G'Kar, yay!) and an Earthgov-based vid would leave little room for aliens at all, so I decided to use the huge instrumental creschendo at the end to incorporate a bit of everything else. Which, in B5, is a lot. Sheer pragmatism had me chopping it up into themed chunks; the Minbari, the Narn and the Centauri (you can hardly separate their plotlines), the founding of the Alliance, Sleeping in Light. On reflection I think it might work better if it were less strictly divided like that, but I think it would take me another couple of weeks to shuffle it up. (And I didn't really mean for Londo and G'Kar to take over the middle of that segment there at all. Whoops.) When I first started vidding, I was sure I'd never find enough stuff to fill up seven and a half minutes; now I'm looking at it going, "Oh, I meant for there to be some more Psi Corps stuff. And some Lockley. And maybe a bit of Crusade..."
I tried not to make the timeline too linear, because I knew I couldn't end on Sleeping in Light. It's a great ending for the show, but just not upbeat enough for the ending of this particular vid. The idea for stealing the static from Deconstruction of Falling Stars hit me pretty early, and I'm glad it still worked by the time I got around to putting it in. I generally had a huge amount of fun stealing clips from unexpected places and trying to cover as much ground as possible without destroying the theme or the pacing. I'm still thrilled with the shot of Sheridan's hand covered in blood from "Z'ha'dum," the transition between clips from "Face of the Enemy" and "Intersections in Real Time," and the use of G'Kar's toast to Emperor Turhan. (Some day I'll just have to do a Narn and Centauri vid, get it all out of my system.) Anyway, I had a wonderful time making this vid, even though it did eat my brain, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.
Signal to Noise
music by Peter Gabriel
vid by
jenavira, from an idea by m_butterflyXVid, 68MB
sendspace | mediafire | streaming from Imeem --
you know the way that things go
when what you fight for starts to fall
and in that fuzzy picture
he writing stands out on the wall
so clearly on the wall
send out the signals deep and loud
and in this place, can you reassure me
with a touch, a smile - while the cradle's burning
all the while the world is turning to noise
oh the more that it's surrounding us
the more that it destroys
turn up the signal
wipe out the noise
send out the signals deep and loud
man i'm losing sound and sight
of all those who can tell me wrong from right
when all things beautiful and bright
sink in the night
yet there's still something in my heart
that can find a way
to make a start
to turn up the signal
wipe out the noise
m_butterfly mentioned this song to me ages ago, as the base for a vid of the bits of Crusade that didn't get filmed. A little bit of creative editing, I thought, and that might possibly work. It'd be hell, though. (Seven and a half minutes, guys.) It also works as a base for B5 in general, she mentioned, and she's right. (She tells me she still might do the Crusade vid someday, though, which I would absolutely kill to see.)On a purely technical note, this was the most video tracks I've ever worked with in Premiere (four, omg) and I finally learned how to do transition effects. Yes, shut up, I learned on WMM and this is only I think the third vid I've done in Premiere. Also easily the longest song without editing. I forgot to deal with the interlacing when encoding video clips, and by the time I noticed I'd already incoded some 10 gig of clips and there was no way I was doing that again. (About 30 gig of clips in total went into this, or at least were ripped intending to go into this -- I bought a new hard drive halfway through because it was easier than having to clear disk space every time I sat down to vid...)
Most of the time when I vid I start with an image or series of images for a chunk of the song that I really like, and go from there, but with a song this long (and with this much source to work from; the last several vids I've done have been movies and British TV shows) I'd need something more coherent, so I tackled the theme first of all. What I like to think of as the moral of the song, the most important idea of it, is right there in the title, and the most often repeated line -- turn up the signal, wipe out the noise. "Signal" is what B5 is all about, that idea of making a light in the darkness (only transposed into an audio metaphor, which is neat). Of course, that doesn't narrow it down any. The first thought I had for "noise," though, was Clark's Earthgov. I won't deny current politics make me think of that more often than I'd like, but it's also one of my favorite plotlines in the show that I've never really worked with before.
I also had lingering in the back of my mind one of the other main themes of B5, the Third Option. Probably this was hanging about in my brain because it was the theme of Lost Tales -- there's always another way, usually one more appealing than the options you've been presented. And from "By Any Means Necessary" in the first season, to "Into the Fire" and talking the Shadows and Vorlons out of the galaxy, to Lost Tales, that third option usually involves way less blowing shit up than the other options being presented. So I tried to keep as much physical violence out of the vid as possible, and what's there is meant to be representative of what they're fighting against, not for.
I decided to base the bulk of the vid, the lyric section, on the Earthgov/Civil War plotline. Which caused me no end of grief last week when I realized that because of one wonderful image I had (putting the nuclear destruction of the Shadow city on all things beautiful and bright) I'd accidentally vidded a whole verse to the Shadow plotline instead. Oops. On the other hand, it did allow me to put back that second alyric section (around 2:45-3:32) that I'd tried to edit out of the song earlier because I couldn't think what to put in there. (I almost never vid full songs, I'm always cutting out instrumental bits. I suck at instrumental bits.) It also allowed me to get in a whole chunk of Garibaldi's plot arc as well, which is another plotline I've never worked much with myself. Last time I was really into B5, I didn't like Garibaldi all that much, for reasons now unbeknownst to me.
But of course, I couldn't make a B5 vid without my favorite characters (Londo and G'Kar, yay!) and an Earthgov-based vid would leave little room for aliens at all, so I decided to use the huge instrumental creschendo at the end to incorporate a bit of everything else. Which, in B5, is a lot. Sheer pragmatism had me chopping it up into themed chunks; the Minbari, the Narn and the Centauri (you can hardly separate their plotlines), the founding of the Alliance, Sleeping in Light. On reflection I think it might work better if it were less strictly divided like that, but I think it would take me another couple of weeks to shuffle it up. (And I didn't really mean for Londo and G'Kar to take over the middle of that segment there at all. Whoops.) When I first started vidding, I was sure I'd never find enough stuff to fill up seven and a half minutes; now I'm looking at it going, "Oh, I meant for there to be some more Psi Corps stuff. And some Lockley. And maybe a bit of Crusade..."
I tried not to make the timeline too linear, because I knew I couldn't end on Sleeping in Light. It's a great ending for the show, but just not upbeat enough for the ending of this particular vid. The idea for stealing the static from Deconstruction of Falling Stars hit me pretty early, and I'm glad it still worked by the time I got around to putting it in. I generally had a huge amount of fun stealing clips from unexpected places and trying to cover as much ground as possible without destroying the theme or the pacing. I'm still thrilled with the shot of Sheridan's hand covered in blood from "Z'ha'dum," the transition between clips from "Face of the Enemy" and "Intersections in Real Time," and the use of G'Kar's toast to Emperor Turhan. (Some day I'll just have to do a Narn and Centauri vid, get it all out of my system.) Anyway, I had a wonderful time making this vid, even though it did eat my brain, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-08-22 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-08-22 04:43 pm (UTC)You've pulled the emotions from me. Excellent excellent work.
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Date: 2007-08-22 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-08-22 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 08:36 pm (UTC)Can you put it onto YouTube? I'd love to favourite it!!! :)
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Date: 2007-08-23 01:26 am (UTC)I've been considering YouTube, and I think I have the same issue most other vidders have, it's just too huge and occasionally stuff seeps into the mainstream in ways you don't want it to. Not that that's likely to happen here, but I'd rather not. It will definitely live on IMeem, though; there's a bookmarkable page on that website.
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Date: 2007-08-22 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-08-23 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 12:31 am (UTC):::thumbs up:::
I hope you'll share any other B5 vid inspirations!
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Date: 2007-08-23 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-23 12:22 pm (UTC):::B5 vid happy dance:::
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Date: 2007-08-28 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 12:38 am (UTC)I do still want to do that Crusade-only concept; if anything I think it's even more ambitious than I originally did, but I still think it can be done, especially with JMS releasing new canon. This might just be further evidence of my insanity, though.
(Sorry about being so behind with this--moving and all.)
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Date: 2007-08-30 12:40 am (UTC)Like I said, it was 40 gig of clips to vid the whole song, but in the end I actually had to scrap the edited version of the song and do the whole thing. It was hard, but oh man, that crescendo. When it gives me goosebumps even after I've been vidding it... it's all the music and the source, I swear.
And after doing this, oh my god doing it Crusade-only would be ten times as hard, but it would also be ten times as awesome, so it'd be completely worth it.
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Date: 2007-11-24 08:01 pm (UTC)Could you perhaps put a downloadable version online again? The two links have expired. i really would like to have that in my vid collection.
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Date: 2007-11-28 06:36 pm (UTC)Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! The problem with long vids is that there's usually not enough source to go 'round, I've had that problem with other vids, but with this one, well... :D