Talk about going a while between posts...

It's been about 2 months exactly, hasn't it?

Well, I have excuses!

Since December, I have forayed into the bizarre depths of nerddom and attended my first con! And in doing so, I have acquired EMPLOYMENT! YES! I am now a title card artist for these fine fellows: 3 Fat Guys

I've been slowly catching up on old title cards, doing new title cards, and am now working on their DVD art. That'd be why my video production has gone down somewhat remarkably. But I come to you tonight with something new anyway!



This is, of course, me singing both parts.

It annoys me how messily the vocal tracks are matched up. You see, I AM actually a passably capable audio editor, when I have ample time and equipment. For this video, I quite obviously did not. Due to reasons I would rather not get into, the harmony vocals had to be recorded in the creepy basement bathroom, which meant I had a lot of reasons to do it in as few takes as possible, and none of those takes were done listening to my own melody vocals, but rather both tracks were done singing along to a teaching vocal track on the karaoke version of the song. While theoretically this should have worked pretty well, I apparently devited from the teaching vocals enough in my first recording that my harmony doesn't match up perfectly all the time. Also, I sort of failed to figure out how to chop up the vocal track and scootch it half a second forwards of backwards in iMovie. Blah.

So... not so great quality, but then, I did do this ENTIRELY for myself, so to speak. You see... I have no idea whether this video has any potential audience at all. I recorded the song because of a childhood superstition revolving around it, and I matched it to photos of deer and snow and deer in the snow because I love winter. That's all. I just... love winter. And deer are a powerful symbol to me, both in general and symbols of winter.

Basically, it's a video I made to show what I think is most beautiful about my favourite season, the time when I truly feel ALIVE. I know a lot of my friends and family are summer people, but this is my time of year, and so I made this to show why I love it. That's all.

Happy Solstice, everyone!

And now... the production staff!

Believe it or not, this is not a one-person operation. Anymore. I have enough people involved in enough of my video-making process that I can call them my production team now, and we're all cool with that.

So here's a video introduction to them, as well as to my two main characters who I play on-camera. There's no rhyme or reason to the organization of this video, it's just clips of my main staff that I had and stuck them together with some still shots and commentary.

It's like... part weird documentary, part home movies montage, part music video... But hey, the real point is... this is a look into what it's like makin' movies with Ven, and a brief introduction to some of the people who help me do it. Not all of their work has been featured here yet... in fact, my resident composer, Thursday, was just recruited about 48 hours ago... and some of them ended up unfortunately being sort of UNDER-represented... particularly Mouse, who has been my camera assistant, editor, inspiration, and overall support since the beginning... but whether you've seen their work or not, they've all contributed in some major way and will continue to do s in the future.

Yes, even the 3-year-old.

There are a few other people who aren't part of my production team but are still worthy of mention. I'm going to try to do a second video to give them some recognition, too. I have no idea how soon this will end up happening, but it's on my list of things to try.

"The Impossible Dream"

I have far too much fun doing these.



Here we revisit the Somaturge in singing form. Fun fact: I actually recorded myself in full costume singing this song all the way through THREE TIMES thinking I would stick clips in between the art... but I have so damn much art saved, it was totally unnecessary and would have sort of defeated the point of the video.

I think I've decided to call these fan art things "DeviantArtists' Alley." Because I am completely shameless in my willingness to rip off more popular video makers' series titles. *cough* *http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/aalley*

Anyway, this is me singing as the Somaturge. Because I love doing his voice. This was more challenging than I'd thought it would be -- if for no other reason than because I am singing at the lowest end of my range that I can sing in and still be doing this voice. In fact it took me several takes to get it right because it's really difficult to make this character sound loud, much less belt a note and hold it. I think I managed, though. :3

New Microphone Get! ~ Fan Art Fan Video here!

audio-technica AT2020 USB microphone.

And then I discovered Broadway Karaoke tracks.

And then history was made.

Yes, this is me singing. The only alteration done to this track was some kind of filter I apparently unintentionally had on while recording. It made my voice all echoy. It sounded good, so I kept it, and claim the bragging rights of having done this in one take.

And for my next act...

I had planned that my next review would be the super-spectacular Vegas spectacle EFX.

My plans for that review are quite epic, but I've decided to postpone it while the newest member of Team Somaturgy works out the kinks in her magic wand. Which is to say... I have a special effects person! We're spending a few hours every evening together now working together on some basic practice stuff so I can get a feel for what kind of effects I can realistically write into my script and expect the two of us to be able to edit it sometime before next Easter.

One of these days, very soon, I really ought to post an intro to my whole production team. Yes.

Anyhow, EFX is being postponed and instead my second review will be on Brent Spiner's Dreamland.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I still can't figure out how to use film clips I haven't filmed myself and I want to play with trains. *cough*

And before anyone says "Dreamland wasn't ever intended to be performed onstage! It's not a showtunes album!" ...it's a Broadway performer using songs as a vehicle to tell a story. It is therefor a musical. Also this is my show and I reserve the right to define "showtunes" however I dang well please. ;)

Helter & Skelter's Bubblegum Boogiedown Showtunes Show Episode 1: GOYA

2 weekends of filming (largely because I am busy and prone to disorganization during the week, and have only REALLY late nights to use to film anything)... 10 hours of editing... 20 minutes of finished film...

This... is episode 1.

Click To Play

I do apologize for the abysmal sound quality that persists for most of the first 2/3 of my bits in the boiler room. I had no idea the camera mic was picking up that weird background noise (which I couldn't even hear), and I couldn't speak louder than I was because literally about 15 feet to my right, albeit on the other side of a wall, was a sleeping 3-year-old.

...yeah, there are a number of technical problems with this video. I do see a lot of them and consider them learning experiences which I will probably have figured out how to fix by the next episode. But hey, if you want to point out what I did wrong, please do. I don't see EVERYTHING. ;)


Coming soon:
~Episode 2... subject undetermined as of yet
~An interview with Helter and Skelter, conducted by her loveliness Mouse La Jabraille
~Skelter Goes Grocery Shopping (if any of this footage turns out to be usable, I haven't had a chance to even look yet)