Original Flava Coverfight - Video Edition

[owl]

I think tweaking the mastering settings and re-exporting fixed my mp3, so here it is again.

Evermind_miscellaneous owl_broken heart syndrome_reexport2.mp3

(3.24 MiB) Downloaded 49 times

miscellaneous owl covering Evermind's "Broken Heart Syndrome"

[Jerkatorium]

Here's the video for Hanky Code's cover of The Sugary Goo Inside by Pigfarmer Jr:



And here's the mp3:

The Sugary Goo Inside (Pigfarmer Jr cover).mp3

(2.42 MiB) Downloaded 45 times

[crumpart]

Here’s my Hot Pink Halo MP3 for Niveous’ Art Bomb.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PoZNta ... p=drivesdk

[crumpart]

So, I’m watching again today so I can read all the live chat I missed out on, and on second watch I’m even more impressed that Geech managed to take a song I made entirely (bar the vocals) from APPLE LOOPS because I was tired and headachy and didn’t have it in me to play instruments right then, and somehow made that into a cool guitar part and played the whole thing in one take. Thank you! I should watch the video again so I can learn how to play my own song.

***

Re: video production/editing.

One facet of what I do for a job is making art tutorials for youtube, so making this wasn’t a big stretch for me. It was a lot of art making to do all at once, and the main difficulty was keeping the camera in the same place and the light fairly even (I don’t have a professional lighting setup currently). The footage was shot over two days, so I taped some marks for myself the floor, my etching press and tripod so that I could move things around when needed and put them back in exactly the same spot.

I have a Canon 80D camera that I use for shooting, and I keep it on all manual settings. The lens is a 24mm EF/S, which gives me a wide enough shot and it’s fairly good in low light. We’ve had this camera for years, and I use it because it’s what I have. There are a lot of good cameras around these days that will shoot video extraordinarily well. Gizo’s video was shot on an iPhone camera, and it looks great because he put it in a spot where natural light from the window was behind it. I did a little colour correction on his video (upped the blacks, adjusted the warmth and gave it a subtle vignette), but the source video was good enough quality that it really didn’t need much. Basically, get a camera that’s half decent, put it in good light and think about your framing, and you’re most of the way there.

But back to my video. Two days of shooting. That’s a lot, I know, but a) I’m a nerd about this stuff and b) I can justify the time because I plan on making it into a longer video for my YouTube channel talking about the art techniques. Before I started shooting I had to figure out the logistics of the different printmaking techniques: what inks I’d need to use, which techniques would flip the image, how many iterations I’d need to have for the image to print without mirroring the final stage. The woodcut would have been the longest section to film, except I kept fucking up the kitchen lithography bit (printing off the aluminium) because it was my first time doing it and it turns out my particular roll of foil needed some proper degreasing (hence the bit where you see me cleaning a piece of foil with soy sauce! Yay science!) before I could get the chemistry to work properly. I’ve done a lot of stone lithography before, but that’s not a thing you can do in a home studio, and it turns out people who love lithography are resourceful. That ended up taking me four tries to print (twice figuring out cleaning and ratios of vinegar and maple syrup to use for etching the foil, and the third fuckup happened when I tore the foil with a too dry mascara wand – hot tip for anyone into lithography; old makeup mascara and lipstick are great for drawing onto stones and plates). My camera battery also carked it at that point, and I managed to lose some of the footage from the print that actually worked, so had to fake it a little with some of the extra footage in that section.

As far as the editing is concerned, that took me less time than I thought it would. I use Premiere Pro, and I set up a new sequence for each of the printing methods and did a basic edit in those where I did some simple lighting correction (I’m in Ireland approaching winter and I don’t have good photography lights...), then cut out flubs and big stretches of time where nothing was happening. I then nested all of those sequences into a new sequence. It was about 3 hours long before I adjusted the speed/duration for each clip, and I got it down to a rough cut of about 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

Then I made the song.

Now, Niv’s original clocked in at 2:55. I somehow needed to figure out how I could add a minute and a half without making it feel like I arbitrarily added a minute and a half. I sat down with Logic’s Arrangement track and used an online song length calculator to figure out how many extra bars I’d need, then shuffled them around until I had a structure that I hoped would work. It was still a bit shorter than I wanted, so I slowed it down by 10bpm, et voila. For a song I reverse engineered to be longer for purely practical reasons, I’m pretty happy that I ended up with something that I feel justifies the length. Thanks, artistic restraints!

So, once the song was done, I went back into Premiere and adjusted the timing of each clip again so that changes in technique lined up with changes in the track, and then I added a final veneer of colour grading from Premiere’s “Creative” Colour section and some subtle film noise to bring everything together a bit more.

Now, this stuff is pretty straightforward and easy to do in professional editing software like Premiere, but some of the free tools that a lot of people use can throw up frustrating problems. The more entry level programs tend to make assumptions and try to do more thinking for you, and they don’t always get it right. Giz was having a particular problem with iMovie where his audio track was going slowly out of sync to the video and there wasn’t an obvious way in the program to fix it. We think that the audio rate (44khz) from Logic wasn’t matching up with the video rate in iMovie (48khz), but luckily we live in the future so he sent me the parts and Premiere dealt with it in about two seconds. So yeah, keep in mind that free video options have far more limitations but try not to let them throw you. Lots of people make good video stuff using them, and they’re definitely the best place to start.

So, how to get started in video, The Recap:
1. Have an idea, the simpler, the better
2. Make sure you have a decent light source
3. A tripod is your friend
4. Always keep a roll of low tack painter’s masking tape in your house
5. Think about the framing of your shots
6. Don’t let editing software discourage you (too much)
7. Fuck yeah printmaking

[jb]

Here is the video of my cover of "Major Arcana" by miscellaneous owl:


The source video is from episode 1 of "The Return of Chandu" with Bela Lugosi. I chopped it up to match the music, and tell a little story.

You can watch the full episode here: https://archive.org/details/the_return_ ... _chapter_1

[Geech]

Here's my version of Hot Pink Halo's How It Comes Apart.



And the mp3 --

Geech Sorensen - How It Comes Apart (by Hot Pink Halo).mp3

(7.86 MiB) Downloaded 47 times

[Caravan Ray]

My video of Phlebia's "Mythical Creature"
(with the spelling error in the opening titles corrected


I sent mp3 to Ken. Are they being uploaded anywhere? (If not and you want a copy SleepySD - just give me email address to send to)

[Caravan Ray]

Re: video production/editing.

One facet of what I do for a job is making art tutorials for youtube, so making this wasn’t a big stretch for me.

Thanks for that. My girlfriend's daughter is a very talented artist and print maker
(she did the artwork for my "A Family Affair single):




I will show your video to her - I often thought she could do something interesting in that space. Are your tutorials on youtube easily found?

[crumpart]

Re: video production/editing.

One facet of what I do for a job is making art tutorials for youtube, so making this wasn’t a big stretch for me.

Thanks for that. My girlfriend's daughter is a very talented artist and print maker
(she did the artwork for my "A Family Affair single):




I will show your video to her - I often thought she could do something interesting in that space. Are your tutorials on youtube easily found?

Oh, awesome! Where does she print? There are some great open studios in QLD and I can give you some names of people to reach out to if you ever want.

When you’re in Cairns, check out a gallery called Northsite Contemporary Arts (used to be called Kickarts). It’s super great and has a fantastic printmaking collection.

YouTube channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/SpinesAndSplines

[Caravan Ray]

Oh, awesome! Where does she print? There are some great open studios in QLD and I can give you some names of people to reach out to if you ever want.

When you’re in Cairns, check out a gallery called Northsite Contemporary Arts (used to be called Kickarts). It’s super great and has a fantastic printmaking collection.

YouTube channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/SpinesAndSplines

Ill pass it on.

A lot of her stuff is here:
https://www.instagram.com/catiedavis.art/?hl=en
https://www.glartent.com/AU/Brisbane/52 ... -Davis-Art

[fluffy]

YouTube channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/SpinesAndSplines

That name is entirely too clever. I love it.

[gizo]

I don't have a Tube account to upload my video to. But, I did have this lovely desktop background when I was working on the song:

- artwork by David Lanham

[fluffy]

That's adorable.

Also weren't you chatting on the livestream? If so you have a youtube account. But if the version you uploaded to dropbox is what you'd want to post then it can be hosted on the songfight account, anyway.

[gizo]

I guess I do have one then - I don't think I've ever uploaded though. For an IT person, I sure act like a luddite a LOT.

Happy for the uploaded version to go into SongFight land, if anyone wants to watch it again

[fluffy]

When you're on youtube you should have a button like this in the upper-right corner:

Screen Shot 2020-11-23 at 5.22.39 PM.png (3.65 KiB) Viewed 1099 times

Click it and select "Upload Video."

congratulations, you're a youtuber

[gizo]

Hey look - I'm supposed to be preparing to handover a project, but instead I'm learning!.

Thanks, fluffy - for your help, and for this lovely song to cover.

[gizo]

Oh, and for anyone interested - the guitar is a Maton Apollo 505, which we hacked around a little to make it left-handed.

Maton says there were 313 made, and I've played 2 of them. This one left the factory the day my brother was born.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/323555554463467018/

[fluffy]

Ah, it's set as "content for kids" which means it can't be put on the Song Fight channel.

[gizo]

So much learning for one day - I've un-kidded it now

[fluffy]

Awesome. Added to the playlist!

[Caravan Ray]

Oh, and for anyone interested - the guitar is a Maton Apollo 505, which we hacked around a little to make it left-handed.

Maton says there were 313 made, and I've played 2 of them. This one left the factory the day my brother was born.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/323555554463467018/

Is that the same as the one Murray the Red Wiggle plays?

[Caravan Ray]

Oh, and for anyone interested - the guitar is a Maton Apollo 505, which we hacked around a little to make it left-handed.

Maton says there were 313 made, and I've played 2 of them. This one left the factory the day my brother was born.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/323555554463467018/

Is that the same as the one Murray the Red Wiggle plays?

no, my mistake - a quick look at the Wigglepedia shows that Murray has a Maton Mastersound MS500
https://wiggles.fandom.com/wiki/Maton_Mastersound_MS500