Ask the Vidder/Artist: maichan
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ask the Vidder: maichan |
| Interviewer: | |
| Interviewee: | maichan |
| Date(s): | February 11, 2011 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | vidding, Supernatural |
| External Links: | interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
maichan was interviewed in 2011 for Supernatural Roundtable.
Some Excerpts
I went through a period of five years after leaving school where I didn't draw AT ALL – nary a sketch, let alone any finished pieces. In 2005, I started vidding as a hobby and creative outlet for my fannish activities, but aside from one ill-advised celebrity portrait, I still wasn't drawing. Finally in 2008, I dusted the cobwebs off my art supplies to mock sketch Jensen. But it wasn't until February 2010 with the j2_everafter challenge, that I made any sort of concentrated effort to return to making traditional art.
Video: Final Cut Express for editing, Snapz Pro X for clipping, and Audacity for sound editing.Web: I mostly hand-code my HTML/CSS, but I do use Dreamweaver to help debug/test my pages more easily. I also use Flash on occasion for animation.
Art: Graphite (pencil) for drawing and Photoshop for coloring. I don’t have anything against tablets; I’m just too cheap to purchase one. I also prescribe to the belief that fancy tools and programs aren’t necessary to make amazing art.
I always start with the music/audio first as the song choice is imperative and will dictate the narrative direction of the whole piece. Even if it’s a crack vid, I still look for all the different audio clips before I ever put anything down in the timeline.Next, I’ll go through the lyrics and block out clip ideas for each section. I used to make an organized outline for this step, but nowadays I find myself just making a mental list and delving right into the clipping. I IZ LAZY VIDDER.
Finally, I load the audio and video clips into Final Cut and start editing. And for all my crackiness, I usually end up vidding in a pretty linear fashion, putting things into the timeline sequentially from beginning to end. Once the clips and basic timing are down, I go back and add effects/filters and color correction as needed.
My crackiest ideas often come from miller_thriller and bluetambereen, like the Shrine of Jared's Ass. I wouldn't call them muses since I reject half the random craziness they come to me with, but they do keep me amused.Other times I get inspired by a challenge like the title sequence in the style of Chuck. That project was a almost like a personal test to see if I had the patience and skill to do frame-by-frame animation.
And like most vidders, music plays a big part in inspiring me. Sometimes you just see a vid in your mind when you hear a piece of music.
As for your second question, Snapz Pro X is totally different from MPEGStreamclip and Quicktime because it's a motion capture software. I don't actually split up larger files, I just record the portion of the episode I want and the program converts it into a Quicktime file. This is especially useful for getting around the DRM from iTunes episodes. It also saves me the hassle of ripping my DVDs.