Just let me lie here on the tile

Answers to questions from the vid commentary meme. More questions or requests for commentary welcome!

ahary asked: How do you get an idea, how do you choose a song and what goes first - song or visuals or idea or what?


With the vids I've made so far, it's always started with a song. Sometimes I do have a vid idea that doesn't have a song attached to it, but then I'm not able to find a song. (For example, I'd love to do a vid about Hercules as an immortal, contrasting his life in the modern world with life in Ancient Greece. But I don't have a song, so it's just sitting there. And I want to do a Nebula vid, but I don't have the right song for it yet, and the song will tell me what the vid will be.)

In the case of the latest vid, I knew I wanted to do a Twanky vid, but that was all. When falzalot gave me the fantastic, over the top Jennifer Saunders version of Holding Out For A Hero, I knew I could make a vid with it, and that Twanky was the 'I' in the song, and that it would be about Hercules as her hero. The song has a lot of variety, which I like, because it's more fun to vid to, and it has a brassy, camp, outrageous feel that I thought matched very well with Twanky. Also, it has choruses! I am a total sucker for choruses, and since Twanky has a (dancing girl) chorus of her own, I wanted to use it.

I think that's how I choose a song. I have to love the song (because I'm going to be listening to it over and over and over), it has to be interesting enough to vid, so preferably not just the same three words or guitar chords over and over, and it has to have the right feel for the show, and for the kind of vid I want to do.

I'm not really someone who plans vids in advance, much. I listen to the song on repeat, I note down the lyrics, and I try to get a feel of what I could do with them and maybe make some notes. I admire people who can plan everything out ahead, but I haven't done it yet. I don't have a terrific visual memory, so I don't know which clips can go where until I've actually found them and tried them out on the timeline. With the Twanky vid, I didn't even make notes, I just started throwing clips around. Oh, and edited the song. That was probably the hardest part of making the vid, getting the song down from 3:56 to 2:43 without losing the interesting bits or making it sound too choppy. I don't know anything about music editing, and in fact edited this song in Premiere. I just hope it doesn't show too much. There's one cut near the end that I'm still not happy with, which I secretly tried to camouflage by putting bagpipe-guy there, so that viewers would unconsciously connect the off note to the bagpipes and not to a cut in the song. *g*

Also from ahary: What are your favorite moments in the new Twanky vid?


Hee. Oh dear. I have to say, I am incredibly fond of Twanky, even more so after making this vid. I love her to bits. (One of the betas kept calling her him. I protested. Twanky is ALL WOMAN.) And it kills me that there were many good bits I couldn't use in the vid (as aka_arduinna said, it's not every fandom where you can complain that you have too many drag queen shots to use), but of the ones that I *did* use, I love the scene at the bar from 00:38 the most. How she's standing there all forlorn, circling her shot glass with a fingertip and making that yearning face. Oh, Twanky.

Another favorite moment is where she throws herself into Hercules' arms and starts fanning herself (just after 'sweep me off my feet') and Hercules' reaction, which is just priceless.

I also love, love, love the grapes shot, even though it was a pain to edit, just because it's so cracktastic. There are so MANY grapes, and just what are they suggesting? Okay, they're not even suggesting, they're pretty much saying that Hercules has to hold the contents of an entire fruit bowl in front of him to protect his modesty.

And lastly, I about killed myself laughing when I saw the women running down the hill after Hercules, because one of them is holding her jiggling breasts up with her arm as she runs. (It's at 1:15.) I put that in as a little present to myself and tried to make her breasts move to the music. (If you wanted proof that vidders are insane, you have it right there.)

And finally, where did this clip with her as Mary Poppins, where she floating on an umbrella, come from?

Heh. That's from the third Twanky episode, Greece Is Burning, in season Five. Screencaps for it are here.

I think I'd better split this up and answer more questions in another post, so this is part one. :-)