If you’ve ever wanted to tell Phil Collins to “shut the hell up”, this is not the wedding video for you to edit. Fortunately, I’ll groove to some smooth Phil, and I grew up on MoTown, so I enjoyed myself here. With plenty of coffee and an empty room, I was allowed to plug in the earbuds and rock out to “You Can’t Hurry Love” over and over and over…. and over again. Though the song is classic goodtimes bubble gum, it certainly didn’t make it easy to cut a wedding video to. You see, with the beat of the song so fast, it’s important to keep the shots moving. And frankly, Leah did WAY too much to make her wedding elegant and classy. Mr. Collins’ cover feels like summer with a lot of jump, jive, and wailing. And the real challenge, the song is a full 2 minutes and 56 seconds!
What I got from Leah and Daniel? Over 25 minutes of some of the best shots Ashley and I have caught on tape. I’m talking, love, smiles, watery eyes, mirror shots, fall flowers and candle light, and a teary groom. And if only the GL2 would have had a faster AutoFocus, the BEST shot EVER captured from our weddings: Ashley shot over the shoulder of Leah waiting outside the chapel, and slowly zoomed to the doors where a small enough crack just wide enough to view Daniel was there. He was twitching with anticipation to see his bride – but the wood grain on the door just seemed to be more interesting to the iris and thus Daniel is kept to a blurry blob between the crevice (that doesn’t sound right).
Anyway, with a plethora of loving awesome captured on our tapes, I knew it was going to be hard. We won’t get into specifics on just how hard or what kind of timeframe that might constitute *eyeroll* Since it’s 80’s pop, and this was the main highlight, there is way too much happening in the sound to allow you to throw together quick clips into the timeline as I can with the “flick-a-flick-a-cloonk-clunk” sounds of a modern upbeat song I often get by Jack Johnson or John Mare. Those acoustic guitars are raw, and light, and so the highlight is allowed more freedom, you can drop a shot in pretty much anywhere and it just works (see Jae and Dustin’s wedding). This song has layers and layers and begs for the same from the visuals. Even Phil Collins himself couldn’t deny the audile phenomena when he shot the music video (see “You Can’t Hurry Love” on YouTube.com). I mean THERE ARE THREE PHIL COLLINS ON STAGE AT ONCE!!!!
Anyway, armed with coffee, time, an empty farm cabin with plenty of space (okay, not plenty of space – my parents were kind enough to allow me to highjack a room in their house to edit and spread my piles of laundry out – so not empty either) a surprisingly ergonomic workspace (seated on the bed, the monitor on an ironing board, and pillows under my elbows – it’s so comfortable it’s weird (see video from phone)) and a little bit of hope, I set out on a real artistic journey. First, I had to buy some time, even with layering the visuals, I had WAY too much to work with. So I got to cut up Phil Collins’ song – and this is where the “wanting to tell Phil to shut up” part comes in. I wanted him to go on and on and on and I’m glad I did or I would not have survived. So I had to find places where I could extend the song. Thanks to the Beatles, songs don’t have much of a build up, they tend to jump right in to the awesome. So that’s usually where I find a place to extend the song – since I don’t want to spoil the chorus too soon. It works nicely and helps me build up to something. It also buys time for any lead ins and/or titles.
Update: About two hours of work bought me about 30 extra seconds – yikes!
No comments:
Post a Comment