1994: Video store employee Kevin Smith releases a credit card-funded, black & white film called Clerks.
2000: After the success of the film clerks and its follow-ups, Smith creates a cartoon series based on the two leads of the film, Dante and Randal. ABC picks up the series and airs…two episodes. Those and the four unaired episodes are later released in a collection called Clerks Uncensored.
2005: As my first attempt at making a fanvid, I decide that the Clerks cartoon should be paired with Talking Head’s “Once in a Lifetime.” Why? Because at one point in the show, bored as usual with his convience store job, Dante sighs, “Same as it ever was.” A vid was born.
Unfortunately, after I finished the vid, I discovered horrible flickering / stuttering in the final render. I’d been working with MPEG files for the source, so I converted them all to AVI for smoother editing and got the same result. I knew it had to be an interlacing issue, but no matter what I did — even converting the clips to progressive scan — nothing seemed to help. So, I shelved the project and gave up on vidding altogether.
Just kidding.
After finishing another vid, Light into Darko, I decided to re-open the Clerks vid and see what I could do. Eventually, I ended up going through each source clip, exporting them to image sequences, checking each and every frame in Paint Shop Pro, and cleaning up the in-between frames that were causing the stuttering. Not the easiest solution, I’m sure, but first one I could think of that actually worked. Anyhow, now in 2006 it’s done. I’m hoping that, should I try editing using an animated source, it won’t have these same issues. If so…anyone know an easier fix?
At any rate, here’s Clerktime. Enjoy.
Shameless plug and promotion:
Buy the Clerks cartoon