There are a lot of resources out there on the technical requirements for making a fan video. These tend to cover things like how do you capture video or what editing software to use, so I figure that ground has been well tread at this point. Instead, I thought I’d take a minute to write a bit about what goes into the editing aspect of a great fan video and give you the opportunity to watch some of the best fan videos ever created.
Archive for the ‘ Film & Video ’ Category
So after not doing a fan video for years, this is the second one I’ve done for Castle in less than six months. For more on what the series “Castle” is about, I refer you to the blog post for my first Castle fan video, Oh my God.
While I knocked off that first video in less than two days, this one I’ve struggled with for several weeks. The idea to do a video came to me almost immediately after hearing Daughtry’s song, Life After You, for the first time. The lyrics of the chorus are ‘All that I’m after is a life full of laughter / As long as I’m laughing with you’ which I thought was a perfect way to describe Castle’s outlook on life and his affection for Beckett. That was actually something I realized fairly early on in the editing process–if Oh My God had been from Beckett’s point of view then Life After You was definitely Castle’s take on the relationship. I also felt that the melancholy turn the song takes between the upbeat choruses fit well with some of the darker things that have been going on this season. Castle’s investigation of the murder of Beckett’s mother and the emotional fallout from that are a major thread in the series this year and one that feels very different from the lighthearted goofiness of a typical Castle episode.
And that’s where I really began to run aground with this video.
Yesterday I saw James Cameron’s latest movie, Avatar. It was Christmas evening and the theatre was packed with people who had just spent the day unwrapping presents and and eating turkey. While part of me was excited and curious to see this movie, another part of me was dreading it to my core.
Somewhere, deep down inside of me, I knew as an animation fan what this movie would truly mean to the industry. It wouldn’t matter whether it made a gazillion dollars as Titanic had or whether it simply made back its gargantuan budget, even from the trailers I knew this was a movie that could represent the next evolution of computer graphics for Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry
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I’m a little behind on my blogging at the moment, so this video was actually completed back in October when I was stuck at home with a bad case of the flu. I spent much of my week off watching Season 1 of Castle on DVD and this lead to me editing my first fan video in a few years.
I admit that Castle has been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine for the past year or so. It could be described as a light-weight police procedural that’s a bit more character driven than something like CSI, with a healthy dollop of goofy provided by the ever-charming, Nathan Fillion in the lead roll. I also quite enjoy the character that they’ve created in Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic, as they’ve made her tough and intelligent while still keeping an underlying hint of playfulness and feminity. You know that she could drop-kick Castle any day of the week, but you know that there’s enough of a ‘girl’ underneath that police badge to know that there are some days when she is genuinely charmed by him.
This past week, actress Felicia Day and the makers of The Guild released a music video to the web entitled Do you want to date my avatar? The video kicks off the popular series’ third season on the web. To my thinking three seasons, no matter how short the length of those webisodes are, is a huge accomplishment.
For my own television viewing, I always seem to wind up watching series that are either on the cusp of cancellation or are shot down in their prime. Series like Firefly
That’s what I find so fascinating about something like The Guild.