Reflection on Simple 4th
Yea, its been about two months already since the release. It's quite surprising for me how time has passed. Or, it's just how long it had to take until I had the motivation to write up something.
Also, for those who haven't seen it yet.
I first want to thank every single person who has took a part of this collaboration video, whether you made it into the video or not.
I think it is appropriate to say that out of the Simple series, the 4th one is by far the best one I have edited. It had its tensions in the song, and the spinner line-up matched up with the flow. (From what I see).
I would like to address my reflection to this video in two parts: the editing of this video and how editing this video has changed my thoughts on editing.
1.Editing this video.
To speak very, very frankly. The components that took to make this video is 95% inspiration, and 5% time & effort to edit. I am sorry for those who have waited for the video.
The reason for the delay, was because the submission of the videos were quite different from what I have envisioned in attempting to edit this video. First, my objective for Simple 4th was simply to bring some activity into the Workshop which seem to have been stagnated in CV making. Frankly, in the English-speaking community, there aren't really any active editor who could promise a good quality video (in gaijin standards of course, not JEB).
The Collaboration video I have imagined was a simple transitioned video of spinners with some drum&bass music. Something like this video with some nice wipe or crossfade or dissolve transitions. It is a simply edited video, but it works. I also think it worked, because all the videos here were about the same length, and did not have tremendous dynamics in terms of their structure of the video. Considering intermediate spinners are still in the process of improving, having a rather lower expectation in spinning quality and edit in this style was reasonable for me.
Well turns out, many outstanding videos were submitted instead. How could I have forgot about the past people who have participated, and how they would most likely would submit as well. Also, there was quite a dynamic variety in the spinning from the submission, which would not fit with the CV I intended to edit. So the delay came from how I could manage to make a great CV that appropriate with the line-up I have recevied.
To me, this meant going back to the most time-consuming part of the editing: finding the perfect song with the line-up you have. Unlike express videos or invite-only, you can't really control who is going to submit in a open submission based collaboration video. Most editors usually manuever their editing skills to fit the videos to their song choice. However, my editing skills aren't so well to manage that. So I was left to find another song. And... it took weeks and possibly months to find the right one.
I always wanted to edit like GO_ONRONE video's where he uses many metal songs from games, it always resonated me how his song choices made penspinning appealing. So I looked into those songs from video games, and found the Xenoblade track and got into editing.
2. Thoughts on editing.
First and foremost, I have never had the thought to put any serious form of editing like making models or special effects in my videos. This is just simply my selfish-ness of not wanting to learn new skills. This thought persisted rather quite long, I guess because I thought I wanted to make videos that focused on penspinning instead of edits, and to me those special effects were a nuisance.
This thought, however, has changed since I have edited Simple 4th. How will good spinners feel if they did not have a well presented backstage? Namely, the backstage being the editing framework of the collaboration video. It was also interesting experience for me that I felt that 4:3 aspect ratio had alot of limitations in editing, and 16:9 definitely has more freedom. It is a balance I suppose, I wanted to make Simple 4th visually memorable so that viewers won't give up half-way, but at the same time I wanted the old-school rock feel that I always adored in penspinning. Conventionally speaking though, these two ideas are hard to merge, for that each idea are from different timeframes. What could have changed the end-result, would have been my editing skills; I just didn't have the creativity and skills to be flexible enough to put both ideas together. Editing can be a bridge for the video to connect multiple concepts into one, and therefore allows the editor to convery themselves what they wanted to show to the viewers.
While this made me realize the importance of good editing and effects, I do still stand that there is a limit to editing, and it shouldn't hinder the presentation of the spinners. It is a penspinning video after all. Just as I said before, it is all about balance. But everyone is deemed to make the same mistake, even repeat it. Hopefully, the editors would eventually reach to the same approach towards editing penspinning videos, that is if they continue long enough in the community.
See you then,
Tigres
