Figure Skating, "Confident" [Fanvid]
Nov. 16th, 2018 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melodytreeTitle: Confident
Fandom: Figure skating (primarily singles, with a pinch of pairs and ice dance)
Song: Confident by Demi Lovato
Contains: ~half a second of quickly-flashing clips near the beginning
Embed:
Download: Here
Notes:
Vid contains program information for each clip in the subtitles (included as soft subs in the download).
More or less finished just before I left for Skate Canada 2018, where I was lucky enough to get to see some of these lovely skaters in person (Jason! Kevin! Zhenya~~~!), with some minor edits afterward.
This is meant to be a fun video about mostly singles skaters, a bit heavier on some of my favorites than on others, but some production notes:
-Almost every clip got color editing to level it out and try to make the white balance better. Some of them are still less than perfect, but I'm not very experienced with this. It looks a lot better than when I started, at least.
-It was surprisingly hard to find 1080p footage of even some of the more recent programs from popular skaters like Adam Rippon and Yuzuru Hanyu. Some of the stuff labeled as 1080p on YouTube is obviously upscaled 720p or has frame rate issues. Sometimes all I had to work with was blurry footage. I could not find better footage of Shawn Sawyer even though the program of his that I used clips from was from 2011 :( His professional programs are fun to watch, but didn't look as clippable or were dark. NBC's Olympic footage is garbage with interlacing artifacts, except the very few that they've posted to YouTube. IceNetwork doesn't exist anymore, and while NBC Gold does have footage from last year, I wasn't quite prepared to download an entire competition's worth of footage for one or two programs. Unless there's some magical high-quality archive I'm unaware of...?
-Premiere crashed a LOT making this and started developing a couple of rendering glitches at some point. Haven't had this many problems with animated footage! Might need to update to a more recent program. It also had trouble interpreting a couple of clips correctly, and seemingly random clips would refuse to play properly.
-I considered blurring the scores but ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the effort and that they weren't distracting enough.
-It was interesting to edit live-action sports footage for the first time, and while the flow is probably not 100% perfect at all points, I had a lot of fun making this video.
Some more specific notes:
0:07 - Sergejeva & Glebov made their way in because I still vaguely remembered the commentators shit-talking them for being too close in height and saying they looked 'unbalanced' >( and when I went and watched them again, I found them charming despite their low placement.
0:16 - Just pleased with how Jimmy's movements matched the music here.
0:26 - "Cause this is my game" - because while there are others who are excellent at it, nobody does a 3A quite like Yuzuru does.
0:33 - Okay, I don't think Johnny has ever really held his freak back, but a) I liked how the head movements matched the beat in the second clip b) I've actually seen this exhibition in person and really wanted to include it.
0:37 - "I make my own choice" is a reference to how Starr skated this program to a cover featuring her own voice.
0:39 - One of the first clips I dropped in. I usually find it kind of corny when the skaters obviously play to the judges, but this gesture was perfect for this program.
0:41 - "So leave the lights on" is a reference to both how Mao did excellently in her free at the Olympics after a bad short, and won Worlds that year. (I initially had the Olympic clip in here, but Worlds footage clearly showed her sweeping the ice, had a better angle later on, and didn't have the interlacing artifacts that make footage look blurry on removal.)
0:44 - "No, you can't make me behave" because Yulia fought to have her iconic program - skaters at that group don't typically get to choose their music or programs, but she really wanted to skate this program.
0:50 - "So you say I'm complicated" because Evgenia has gotten a lot of hate for getting such high scores with her sometimes-flawed technique, and lot of people don't like the miming that she used to do. I don't mind it in general, and this program is one of my favorite ones ever. I think the hopscotch thing is super cute.
0:53 - "That I must be out of my mind" I've heard a decent amount of criticism about this program because of the androgyny thing. I don't like the program itself that much, but I do like the concept of it.
0:58 - I used clips from lesser-known skaters like Emmanuel for the two "You've had me underated" parts.
1:04 - Another clip where I'm just so pleased with how it matched the music. One of the first ones that I put in. That axel entrance is so cool.
1:36 - "So you say I'm complicated" because I love Satoko, if you couldn't tell from the vid - but she does have tiny jumps. Which she is working on, along with her general health. Go, Satoko!
1:40 - "That I must be out of my mind" Cyber Swan might seem like a weird concept, at least? It's great, though.
1:50 - Wasn't sure about using such a low-quality clip at first, but I think the arm change on that jump is pleasing and elegant, so it remained. And those deep edges on the spread eagle, ooh.
2:16 - I knew I wanted a spin sequence in here and I knew I wanted it to start with Evgenia's lovely skid spiral entrance (I was so happy to see that spiral back in her program at SCI!). I squashed in as many clips as I could. Good spins are so beautiful. I wish there was a better camera angle on Nathalie's position change, but c'est la vie. (Dear camerapeople: please stop trying to be creative when it comes to filming spins. Just let the spin speak for itself.) Also featuring, among many wonderful spinners, Denise Biellmann herself (popularizer of the Biellmann spin), and later Lucinda Ruh, the woman who spun so fast that she holds the world record! ...and also gave herself micro-concussions doing them, alas. One wonders what the Swiss are doing for those spins.
3:07 - Spiral sequence!
3:21 - Man, Premiere did not like this footage or understand its frame rate. Still not sure what the problem is. Might try re-converting it if I ever use it again.
3:24 - I knew from the beginning that I wanted to end on the iconic foot-stomp.
Figure skaters are great.
Fandom: Figure skating (primarily singles, with a pinch of pairs and ice dance)
Song: Confident by Demi Lovato
Contains: ~half a second of quickly-flashing clips near the beginning
Embed:
Download: Here
Notes:
Vid contains program information for each clip in the subtitles (included as soft subs in the download).
More or less finished just before I left for Skate Canada 2018, where I was lucky enough to get to see some of these lovely skaters in person (Jason! Kevin! Zhenya~~~!), with some minor edits afterward.
This is meant to be a fun video about mostly singles skaters, a bit heavier on some of my favorites than on others, but some production notes:
-Almost every clip got color editing to level it out and try to make the white balance better. Some of them are still less than perfect, but I'm not very experienced with this. It looks a lot better than when I started, at least.
-It was surprisingly hard to find 1080p footage of even some of the more recent programs from popular skaters like Adam Rippon and Yuzuru Hanyu. Some of the stuff labeled as 1080p on YouTube is obviously upscaled 720p or has frame rate issues. Sometimes all I had to work with was blurry footage. I could not find better footage of Shawn Sawyer even though the program of his that I used clips from was from 2011 :( His professional programs are fun to watch, but didn't look as clippable or were dark. NBC's Olympic footage is garbage with interlacing artifacts, except the very few that they've posted to YouTube. IceNetwork doesn't exist anymore, and while NBC Gold does have footage from last year, I wasn't quite prepared to download an entire competition's worth of footage for one or two programs. Unless there's some magical high-quality archive I'm unaware of...?
-Premiere crashed a LOT making this and started developing a couple of rendering glitches at some point. Haven't had this many problems with animated footage! Might need to update to a more recent program. It also had trouble interpreting a couple of clips correctly, and seemingly random clips would refuse to play properly.
-I considered blurring the scores but ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the effort and that they weren't distracting enough.
-It was interesting to edit live-action sports footage for the first time, and while the flow is probably not 100% perfect at all points, I had a lot of fun making this video.
Some more specific notes:
0:07 - Sergejeva & Glebov made their way in because I still vaguely remembered the commentators shit-talking them for being too close in height and saying they looked 'unbalanced' >( and when I went and watched them again, I found them charming despite their low placement.
0:16 - Just pleased with how Jimmy's movements matched the music here.
0:26 - "Cause this is my game" - because while there are others who are excellent at it, nobody does a 3A quite like Yuzuru does.
0:33 - Okay, I don't think Johnny has ever really held his freak back, but a) I liked how the head movements matched the beat in the second clip b) I've actually seen this exhibition in person and really wanted to include it.
0:37 - "I make my own choice" is a reference to how Starr skated this program to a cover featuring her own voice.
0:39 - One of the first clips I dropped in. I usually find it kind of corny when the skaters obviously play to the judges, but this gesture was perfect for this program.
0:41 - "So leave the lights on" is a reference to both how Mao did excellently in her free at the Olympics after a bad short, and won Worlds that year. (I initially had the Olympic clip in here, but Worlds footage clearly showed her sweeping the ice, had a better angle later on, and didn't have the interlacing artifacts that make footage look blurry on removal.)
0:44 - "No, you can't make me behave" because Yulia fought to have her iconic program - skaters at that group don't typically get to choose their music or programs, but she really wanted to skate this program.
0:50 - "So you say I'm complicated" because Evgenia has gotten a lot of hate for getting such high scores with her sometimes-flawed technique, and lot of people don't like the miming that she used to do. I don't mind it in general, and this program is one of my favorite ones ever. I think the hopscotch thing is super cute.
0:53 - "That I must be out of my mind" I've heard a decent amount of criticism about this program because of the androgyny thing. I don't like the program itself that much, but I do like the concept of it.
0:58 - I used clips from lesser-known skaters like Emmanuel for the two "You've had me underated" parts.
1:04 - Another clip where I'm just so pleased with how it matched the music. One of the first ones that I put in. That axel entrance is so cool.
1:36 - "So you say I'm complicated" because I love Satoko, if you couldn't tell from the vid - but she does have tiny jumps. Which she is working on, along with her general health. Go, Satoko!
1:40 - "That I must be out of my mind" Cyber Swan might seem like a weird concept, at least? It's great, though.
1:50 - Wasn't sure about using such a low-quality clip at first, but I think the arm change on that jump is pleasing and elegant, so it remained. And those deep edges on the spread eagle, ooh.
2:16 - I knew I wanted a spin sequence in here and I knew I wanted it to start with Evgenia's lovely skid spiral entrance (I was so happy to see that spiral back in her program at SCI!). I squashed in as many clips as I could. Good spins are so beautiful. I wish there was a better camera angle on Nathalie's position change, but c'est la vie. (Dear camerapeople: please stop trying to be creative when it comes to filming spins. Just let the spin speak for itself.) Also featuring, among many wonderful spinners, Denise Biellmann herself (popularizer of the Biellmann spin), and later Lucinda Ruh, the woman who spun so fast that she holds the world record! ...and also gave herself micro-concussions doing them, alas. One wonders what the Swiss are doing for those spins.
3:07 - Spiral sequence!
3:21 - Man, Premiere did not like this footage or understand its frame rate. Still not sure what the problem is. Might try re-converting it if I ever use it again.
3:24 - I knew from the beginning that I wanted to end on the iconic foot-stomp.
Figure skaters are great.
