Renegade Folk Hero

Finished through “Friday” (approximately 16 minutes in). The good news is that it seems the further in the video I got the first time around, the better attention I paid to lip-synch which means less work for me now, but it also helps that I’ve found my editing groove again and things are moving much faster. I’m hoping this project’ll be done by mid-November, but there I go setting dates again.

Some noticeable changes to this version include some altered timing after a few lines (Ash pauses a bit after Keanu’s “fanboys, not fanmen” line, for instance), sound effects during the Kite scene, and a full remaster of the “Do You Remember Love director’s cut” scene from the R2 DVD (Finally, got to use it for something!). I also fixed an amusing continuity error. Since our dialogue scenes often feature shots from different episodes, every now and then I have to flip a shot horizontally so that the eyelines remain consistant (in other words, if a character begins a scene facing screen left, they need to keep facing screen left throughout unless we see them move). Not being the experienced editor I am now, I would often flip the shots of Jet, despite the fact that he is the most asymmetrical character design of the Bebop cast. So when we do the clock wipe from Ash sitting on the couch fully clothed to him sitting in his boxers, I was horrified to see that his prosthetic arm switches sides mid-wipe! I went back to edit the scene just before so that Keanu is now flipped, and Ash is aligned as he should be. Note to self: all dialogue scenes must be edited around where Ash is looking.

And since I love split screens so much, here’s another one.

Hey Minmay, what did the five fingers say to the face?

I’m finally back on a decent connection at home. Right now it appears I’m getting 1.5Mbps/384Kbps with my new 2Wire/SBC digital subscriber line. I’m still appalled that I have to pay $5/mo for telephone service I will not use. I don’t even have a wired telephone to plug in! At least I can do my homework at decent speeds now.

I spent the afternoon downloading all the tools I need to re-edit DVDs on my iMac. The test rip and edit looks good. Quality is high, though I haven’t tested export or burn. I guess there’s not really much left in the way of this happening. The only thing I’m not really sure about is the heavy duty compositing and roto. Ideally I’d have After Effects or Motion or something. But, as this won’t pay the bills, I can’t justify purchasing either of those, even at student rates. FCE looks promising though.

I’m back at Ask Jeeves interning during the school term. It’s nice to be able to put my hands back on the code again.
 

I think maybe I spend too much time doing nothing. At the end of the week I feel like I haven’t rested enough. It’s only wednesday and I’m yearning for the next weekend already. Sleeping on the hard wood floor at Judy’s house probably didn’t help, but I’d rather sleep on the floor with her than on the couch alone.
 

I need to clean my apartment. Dishes. Bathroom. Counter. Bleh…
 

I’m maybe getting an inkling to make KoF’69… maybe when things calm down with my car situation I’ll try and make some test clips. The car, by the way, is being replaced. I’m gonna send my Accord to Honda Heaven (seriously that’s the name of the place). I’m buying my Sister-in-law’s 97 Civic for a good price. It should be good enough to get me through school. I’ll think about a new new car when I get working.
 

I’ve been eating out way too much. And sadly I haven’t been diligent in taking pictures or writing reviews. I need time to relax and focus. Time I don’t have.

Just completed all of “Thursday”. Spent a lot more time on lip-synch than I thought I wanted to, but then I’m much more of a perfectionist now than when I first made FBBB. Ash’s “That didn’t come out right, did it?” is much funnier in synch, methinks. It’s fun to edit these characters again. It feels good to be editing something period.

I actually rerecorded some dialogue for the ASUX promo due to pops I couldn’t filter out. I’m content that I was able to match my old performance, though I did have to work a bit at “dirtying” up the audio to match the crappy microphone I used the first time. I might still have it buried in a closet somewhere, maybe I should dig it out should the need arise to rerecord something else.

Speaking of perfectionism, I decided in a fit of self-loathing to see what FBBB would look like if I were to recapture the footage from DVD rather than from the MiniDV master I’ve been using. The result is enough to make me sigh, but not enough to make me reconsider. It would be sharper and the colors more natural, but the contrast is not as night and day as ReDux was to its original. Again, I am resolved to press on, in the hope that the time I save in not having to recapture everything can be applied to getting a new project rolling.

I circled what stuck out to me the most, how the lines on Ripley’s bathrobe are blurrier in the MiniDV master, but overall, the difference is slight. At least, slight enough.