(no subject)

[thatyourefuse]

I'm working on my first full-length vid and I've just come hard up against a narrative issue.

I scrapped my first version of my first draft yesterday after a friend pointed out (correctly) that the POV was incredibly unclear and I was trying to get across too much information without actually explaining the significance or context of any of it. I've put together a new intro, which I think does establish my POV character much more clearly, but the problem is that now a significant amount of the information I want to convey is stuff that she's being deliberately shut off from for much of the duration, and I am hanging up badly on the question of how to include it without losing the thread.

(It doesn't exactly help that this is in a fandom literally next to no one has ever heard of, and which has a lot of plot. I don't know what came over me. I blame the song, and Hermione Norris.)

Does anyone have any ideas about how I can resolve this, or recs for vids that deal with similar POV issues?

This is my first version and this is the new intro, if anyone's interested.

Thank you so, so much.

(cross-posted to vidding @ lj, and I'm not sure how to tag this.)

Comments

[thingswithwings]

Hey there! I haven't dealt with a lot of tricky POV vids, so you should take my comments with a grain of salt, but I had a look at the two versions and would be happy to help if I can.

I think there are a few techniques you could try, and you're already using one of them - shifting to black and white for the opening shot. You could make that shot of your POV character longer, perhaps, hold it for a few seconds before the song begins, to really give a sense that this is about her. That might free you to ease up a little more on the POV-establishing later.

As for the plot stuff that's being hidden from you POV character . . . could you do something visual to them similar to making them B&W, to distinguish them from the rest of the footage? You could:

1) shift the colour or texture - make it grainy or sepia or crackly-lined like an old tv screen

2) put a literal frame around it to make it look like a tv screen your character is watching, or a framed photograph she's looking at and reflecting on

3) alternate speeds; you cut pretty quickly, and I like very much what you're doing with the beat, but you could consider having one kind of footage be shorter and one kind be longer (ie, shots of you POV character reacting to things/doing things holding for two beats apiece, while the things going on behind her back happen for one beat apiece). Then you could alternate between your POV character and the other characters/events.

4) use overlays and crossfades in some way -you could overlay a closeup shot of your POV character with the plot-stuff, so we keep her face in frame as the other stuff happens, or you could make the shots of your POV character solid and non-overlaid while the shots of the plot-stuff are overlaid/crossfaded into each other to make them look ghostly or half-seen. This is also a good way to save time in a vid if you're trying to convey a lot of images/information in a short period of time!

5) use split-screens; this is a little more jarring for some viewers, and a lot less gentle than overlays, but you could do a split-screen with your POV character on one side and plotstuff on the other, or with her at the centre and the plotstuff surrounding her.

I realise some of that requires some technical know-how and it's your first vid! But that's what I could think of to do. If you're using Final Cut, I can explain how to do any of those things; unfortunately I don't think I can help as much with other software.

Good luck, anyway! It looks like a fascinating vid, and I can tell already that you've got great instincts for how to use the music and the lyrics and recurring images.

Oh! One other suggestion - in the second draft, I still couldn't tell what the broken thing on the floor was, and you kept cutting back to it like it was super-significant, but I felt frustrated because I didn't even know what kind of thing it was and so couldn't guess at the significance (unlike the poetry book or the tattoo, where I could guess). So you might want to make it clearer what that thing is before it breaks?

Good luck with it! <3

[thatyourefuse]

Unfortunately, I am dealing with Windows Movie Maker, so my effects toolbox is a little limited. (I can do some stuff in VirtualDub, but not too much, and I'm sort of wary of going overboard on the effects while I feel like I'm still working at getting the basics down.) I could try filtering some of it to black-and-white, but I feel like that could be visually distracting, since as I have it laid out in my head it's sort of switching back and forth a lot between things she's involved in and things she's not.

The timing suggestion is interesting, though, and I may have to play with that. And I must admit it's kind of a relief to hear I'm coming down anywhere NEAR the beat, considering I've been doing this a: by ear and b: about a week, and I do not trust my own instincts at aaaaalllll. But I was already having thoughts about switching up the clip rhythm a little, to keep it from feeling metronomic (which I think is a problem in the first version of the intro, especially), so that might be worth exploring.

(The broken thing is this, seen here in glued-back-together state, which gets some play as a visual metaphor for Things Falling Apart [or possibly This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Peter, which is, uh, really true]; I was reaching for a bit of symbolism and, uh, possibly not catching it?)