stuff used:
- iBook G4
- panasonic gs180 3ccd minidv camera
- my ass planted in the passenger seat of a car
- final cut pro 4.5 hd
- 2 separate video clips (both shot the same night)
- 1 audio track (unauthorized use of "mea bloanasir" by sigur ros)
- 6+ hours of editing to make the finished 2:15 piece (sigh)

the footage:
i shot all the footage in this video on one night while driving with a friend. we were just killing time between dinner and meeting other friends.

the primary footage was just me filming out the passenger side window as we were driving. i ended up shooting about 45 minutes of b-roll footage that i had no immediate use for at that time, but i figured would be good to have in my personal stock footage library. the footage is completely straightforward and i don't think it needs any explanation. needless to say, my friend and i were talking during the entire drive, and while a great deal of our conversation *is* funny, i removed the audio track entirely.

the secondary footage, seen in the form of the "dancing lights/colors," is actually blown-up, rotated, skewed, slowed-down footage of headlights, taillights, and street lights. the "dancing lights/colors" happened because as i was filming the oncoming traffic, we hit a pothole, which made my arm bounce, and the taillights of the car in front of us, streaked across the lcd screen. i liked the effect (oooooh, shiny! oooooh, streaky!) so i started intentionally shaking the camera around (gently) while filming headlights, taillights, and street lights. i did this for about 3 minutes to get a lot of different colors and lights.

editing:
i was originally planning to use some of the video mashed up with some of the audio taken out of context, and some public domain video from the prelinger archives, but then i heard the song "mea bloanasir" by sigur ros, and that changed everything.

i consider myself to be an editor primarily, but that's when i have a clear idea of what i want to do, not to mention the footage to support that vision. this was not exactly the case with "beginning farewell" because i didn't know what kind of piece i wanted to make. i started with the primary footage of my filming the street from the passenger seat, and then... i stared at the empty timeline in final cut pro for about 45 minutes.

i wanted to experiment with overlaying footage over completely different footage, so i started with the primary footage, and initially added a second video track that ultimately didn't work. i scrapped it, and used the secondary footage of the lights. the original version used the lights exactly as i shot them, but it didn't work visually. the lights were too small and moved far too fast, but they did look good blended with the primary footage.

eventually, i chopped the video of the lights into short 10 second segments and randomly scaled them much larger, and in spots, rotated them, skewed them and slowed their playback speed down to 7-15% of the speed of the original footage.

mo edits/footage, mo problems:
the biggest problem i had in the editing process was the rendering. since the video is actually composed of 2 separate video tracks that are linked to one another via the blending modes of both video tracks, every single change, no matter how small it was, required re-rendering everything, which took a mighty long time. considering the video had no real prep work, storyboard, or plan, i constantly changed everything throughout the entire editing process. the entire editing process for this 2:15 video took over 6 hours. the majority of that time was spent rendering over and over and over again. any syncing between the overlay footage (the lights) and the music is a complete coincidence. if i'd intentionally tried to sync the lights with the music, the editing time would have increased exponentially.

the text was added later, after i realized that the video alone didn't seem all that interesting to watch for 2 minutes. i didn't even think about the text all that much, but i wanted to keep it simple. the music was really the reason for the text that was added. i like sigur ros, but i tend to think of their music as more than a little melancholy. this track seemed oddly hopeful, and so did my reflecting on leaving chicago at the time, so the text added became a look back at the 6 years i'd spent residing in chicago in very short form. it's a very short story told in 2 minutes.

the whole process took so long, that i didn't even think i liked the video at all. so, i after i tweaked all the text and the timing of when it appears, i declared it done, exported it to quicktime, and put it up. i was sure i didn't think the finished video was good, but i didn't think it was completely awful. it wasn't until i started showing it to other people that my opinion changed. everyone i showed it to, loved it. i finally removed myself from myself, and could see it as a not bad piece of video ;)

when i was able to look at the video more objectively, i realized that while it's a short story of 6 years told in 2 minutes, it's also an intro to what could be a larger piece, or a series of pieces. perhaps someday i'll get around to actually making those other parts of the story.

just so you know, "beginning farewell" it looks much better viewed in full screen mode (quicktime pro and miro player work well for that).