What's with all these videos lately? My hard drive is full of all this random footage from car rides, bike rides, animals, scenic panoramas, and secret shots of people talking or eating. I've been collecting them for years, always with the idea of putting them into music videos, but through college I never really had the time. Finally, though, I've come to a place with free time in abundance, and can splice some of these scraps into watchability. Putting music to the moments and setting them side by side with each other seems to bring a sort of magic quality to ordinary life. It's like seeing my life in a movie, realizing how precious and exciting it all is.
After making almost 10 different ones, it's getting to be a pretty simple process. If the videos are all from one event and in the same folder, it only takes about 2 hours to come out with something satisfactory, and another 45 to save and upload it. Other times it can take up to 5 if I have to spend a lot of time hunting down files in my bajillion folders, editing the music, or restarting after unsaved crashes (fiiinally starting to learn my lesson there).
Overall, though, it's a pretty easy formula. I either start with a song idea or a group of videos, then search for the other to accompany it. Open up Windows Movie Maker and drag-drop the files I wanna use. Start right off by plopping the music into the Audio Bar, then play around with putting in the videos, muting them from the get-go. With this you just have to start from the beginning and work forward, making sure each part is exactly how it should be before adding in the next. Otherwise it will mess up all the timing to go back and change things. The best part of basing it around music means that there are obvious places to cut to the next clip without making it seem like a jumbled mess. I make liberal use of the fades and Speed Ups, and try to make sure there is some kind of movement in each part. Rewatch from the beginning a few times throughout the process, play around with transitions, add credits at end, and wala!
I don't presume to say I'm any pro at amateur music videos, but it is a fun little hobby. Perhaps if I were better at talking behind the camera like Nic or Mom, you'd get some real sound and commentary. As it is, though, I hope you enjoy my little projects! :)
Here is my latest one from the Tsushima Festival in Kagawa. More info in the dropdown under the video.
A couple weeks ago I set out on a two day trip to Nagoya! The last time I'd been there was over the Spring Break trip in April. That time we didn't explore the city at all, but just stayed overnight at a hotspring place. When I went back, though, I did get to revisit the same Yoshinoya that we ate at 4 months ago, one drizzly spring morning. It was just as crowded as ever, and equally hard to find within the maze of that underground shopping mall.
Seats about 30, no joke.
This time I met a friend from the U of M who's been studying abroad there all year. I caught him just 2 weeks before he flies back to MN! So he showed me around the city. We went to the Higashiyama Zoo, where they had elephants, speckled deer, bears, penguins, and all those good zoo-y animals. It was kind of sad to see many of the small, undecorated cages that the animals were in. But what can you expect from only a $5 entrance fee?
Everyone was just beat from the heat. If animals were to sweat, they'd all need a giant sweat-towel to roll around in every few minutes. I could've gone for one too. Throughout the time in Nagoya, the weather hovered around 100 and the humidity barely below that (or so it felt). I must have employed a good many vending machine operators in efforts to stay hydrated. I also scandalized poor Huckさん at all the restaurants in my demands for frequent water refills.
"Do I really have to be in the picture?"
After the zoo we walked around Sakae, a fancy shopping area, mainly window shopping. One of my goals was to try some Meibutsu, or regional food famous from Nagoya. For this I tried エビ天, or Fried Shrimp with a delicious horseradish dipping sauce. The next day I went for Anko (red bean) toast, and had a so-so conbini sandwich with the famous Misokatsu (breaded pork with miso sauce).
Really diggin' this. Needs whipped cream on top, though.
Headed back to my hostel pretty early and chatted with everyone there in the common room. It had some really creative paintings all over, and cozy bunkbeds in the dorm.
The next day we tromped through more outdoor malls in search of the elusive ankotoasto, then went to an aquarium on the Port. The dolphin show was really stunning. Although everything there made me all the more desperate to go swimming, at least they splashed us a good deal when they swam by.
The dolphins were extra genki after meeting me.
That evening we train-ed out to Gifu, a nearby city, for their famous fireworks show. It started around 7:30 and didn't finish til 9, with 30,000 fireworks squeezed in between. It felt like an iconic Japanese summer to sit out on the grassy riverbank surrounded by people in yukata eating festival food as the lights exploded overhead. When they finished, the entire city seemed to move like a wave in the direction of the train station.
I made it back just in time to catch my 11pm bus back to Tokushima. Believe it or not, there were very few people traveling back to the countryside on a Saturday night, so I got 2 seats to myself and managed a good 6 hours of sleep. It may have just been my exhaustion from a day well spent, but I like to think it was due to my polished skill of finding sleeping positions on public transport. Those daily commutes and Greyhound rides back in the states weren't for nothing!
Anyway, despite the heat, it was a good time. Here's a music video of the trip, starting with the busride there.
I may not be faintingly homesick, but I sure do miss home. Especially after going through old videos and seeing the faces of some of these awesome people.
