Made of Plastic

Worth1000 is a fun place to visit and also to participate in. They hold contests every day for photo manipulations, photography, writing, and animation / multimedia. Other than the coporate contests, the only prize is “points” which you can use to enter more contests, but winning is also a bit of an ego boost. I must admit, I thought it was pretty cool when I got first place once — and that was just in one of their Training Ground competition, which are essentially for beginners. (Have to start somewhere.) [Continued]

Got another awesome fanvid to recommend… It’s an oldy, actually, looks like it was posted about a year and a half ago. But I’m pretty new to this, so it’s no surprise I’ve not seen it before. It matches Faith No More’s song “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” to footage from a Korean film, Old Boy. [Continued]

It was an innocent enough pop reference, one that’s been made in many circles for, oh, probably about 30 years or so. My friend didn’t realize the fanvid idea it would plant in my a-bit-off-kilter mind, though one appeared quickly, and I told her so. I sat on the idea for a little while — much longer than I’d thought, it seems, when I now check my archive of e-mails and see it’s been four months?? — until just a couple days ago. It’s a long film from which to pull footage, you see. And a rather short song. And while I didn’t even realize myself, a short song with very few lyrics from which to write a “script” for the video.

Ah. A challenge. [Continued]

Wish I’d found this tutorial when I was tearing my hair out over my Clerktime vid. The interlacing issues discussed are exactly what I was fighting. Bookmarked and, probably, soon to be printed for memorization.

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/videoget.html

Is this place in danger of turning into a “vid rec” site? I hope not. (No ‘ffense to vid rec sites.) Just the same, I was taking a break from working on one of my own vids (Honest.) and came across one for Staind’s song “It’s Been A While” using footage of From Hell. I don’t have any Staind in my CD collection, but I probably should.

Anyhow, the vid is pretty awe inspiring. Great matching between the tone, mood changes, and lyrics of the song to scenes from the film. Also, consistent storytelling throughout. Trying not to give things away, that’s why I’m so vague. Also, I’m not that good at writing reviews. Suffice to say, I think the vidder really nailed it.

Links at the vidder’s March 4 2006 LJ entry:
http://deadzone2000.livejournal.com

As noted there and at the YouTube page, there is some blood, guts, etc in the vid (just as in the movie). Just so you know.

Oh, and the Greenday / Oasis / Benny & Joon vid is pretty awesome, too.

While I contemplate some potential projects, here is a fanvid recommendation. I came across this a few weeks ago, but forgot to bookmark the site. Took some searching around before I found it again.

http://www.freewebs.com/wiccanslyr/main.html

Update: And now that page appears to be gone, but the vid can be seen here at the vidder’s Youtube page.

From the vidder’s description:

The neural striping does tend to fragment their own reality matrix. This vid features the broken, Alliance tampered, weapony River. This contains clips from The Series, The Movie and the Tams Sessions.

It’s a Firefly / Serenity vid cut to “Zombie” by The Cranberries, and it’s really well done, in my opinion.

To celebrate my achievement of finally getting my fanvid Clerktime online, I just started producing some Clerks cartoon wallpapers. Just uploaded the first batch, but I’m sure I’ll do more shortly. They’re kind of fun, as I can take pieces from different screencaps of the show and integrate them into completely new “scenes.” It’s a little more seamless than if I were doing that with a live action show / movie.

Steven Wilson is probably the most prolific musician you’ve never heard of. He fronts the British rock band Porcupine Tree (whom you’ve probably also never heard of) and writes pretty much all of their music. He also takes part in at least three or four side projects (that I know of). He sings, writes lyrics, plays guitar, writes music, mixes and produces, maintains his own website, and closely oversees just about every project he has any involvement on.

And, in his sparetime (where he gets that, I don’t know) he apparently does music for commericials. According to, at least, the title of one of the songs from his CD, Unreleased Electronic Music Volume One, which I believe is a collection of tracks he wrote over a number of years.

I don’t know the origin of the track “Telegraph Commercial 1996,” but I was inspired while listening to it one day to write down its “lyrics.” And then to put those “lyrics” on a Sony Vegas timeline. And off and on over the next week or so, I put together an animation. And I called it… Telegraph 1996.

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. [Continued]

Marillion fans can be a bit overzealous. I know — I’m one of them. The band doesn’t get a whole lot of press nor promotional support from whichever label they’re on at the time, so the fans often take matters into their own hands.

For this reason, and for kicks as well, I made a short animation in 2004 to promote their new (at the time) album, Marbles. I started off with one of the wallpapers they have for download on their website. I chopped it up into distinct parts in Paint Shop Pro and arranged / animated them in Sony Vegas. The music in the clip is “Marbles I”, the first of four similarly themed tracks on the album. (Not to say there are only four tracks on the album.) I’d thought about doing animations for the other three tracks, but never got around to it. [Continued]