this old hybrid
This Old Hybrid 29MB Quicktime File
This Old Hybrid 18MB Mpeg4 File
This Old Hybrid 4MB Mpeg4 File (but doesnt end in mp4)
This Old Hybrid 3MB 160x120 for really small people Quicktime File
My first love of video editing was editing to music. To me an audio piece can make or break a good trailer. Even still, if you got a crappy piece of music, say back when I worked at ADV we often had nada to work with, a good edit could always be achieved by tagging it to the beat of the music.
Alot of times when I'm working on personal projects I have a song in mind already, I just need some video, or vice versa, I have some video.. now I cant do anything without the music. In April of this year the gang, Bob, Todd, Troy, Clint... ya know the thursday night gang gathered together to take on the challenge of installing a new radio in Bob's 2001 Honda Insight. Now I know what this meant, we were all to show and bask in the glory of Troy's knowledge. Troy is the worker, the do guy, the guy that figures it out. Bob is the researcher, doer etc, the one that poses the challenge, researches it, provides the object to modify and finds the answer, Todd is the overseer, he's the head the coach, Clint is the facilicator, he's the guy that when you GeeperXK511B, odds are he's got it somewhere, or hell lets just go get it. Of course we'd be no where without our ladies and so special thanks to Traci for enduring her MBA, she will tell us great stories, and Lynn for bringing cheer to the set of... This Old Hybrid. Naturally I'm just the camera man really. My first goal was just to record the event and make something out of it later. It seemed like a great place to jump into car guts video, though without a script really, I hadn't really planned anything out. But then again I didn't want to get to close. Lets see how it unfolds I think is where I was headed.
Shooting the video proved challenging as well. I really need a stready cam, but later in the video as you can see I managed to get by. Shooting the video on a Sony miniDV camera gave me great quality and the perfect place to test my new pinhole camera which worked really well at the end of a mop handle Clint provided for me. It was the perfect up close get in there and see cam, something I could of never of done with my guding the camera alone. This gave me some great footage, stuff I didnt really expect to see, under the car, inside the engine, following todds hands around, going behind the dash, thru the wiring areas.. and grabbing a cool low to the ground effect look. During the shoot I managed to grab some vocal camera bits, I interviewed Todd in a "whats happening here sorta way" thinking at the time what would work well for a trailer concept. I really didnt want to make a 30min episode and without really talking to the gang first and planning it out by shots etc, and god forbid attempting to organize conversation.. well that wasnt going to happen. So by thinking about what verbal pieces i would use, I snagged them whenever they came to mind.
In the end I shot about 5x60min video tapes. Thats alot of footage to crank down into a 5min music video. It is but it isn't. Just cause you ahve 5 hrs doesnt mean its all usable to its fullest extent. Next up came deciding on what the concept would be. This Old Hybrid or Monster Garage, or Hybrid Garage, or This Old Monster, I dunno.. what was I going to do. I opted for the music video because after seeing the footage I decided ok what do I want to do, do I want to educate? I cant do that, do I want to remember? yes I can do that, lets remember. Find and center on clips and effect styles that can help us remember these two days. The bennyhill speed up video effect came together by accident when i started playing with motion speeds on the avid. Actually first thing that happened was picking a song, I got the song a fast groovy mexican fesita track that to me suited what we accomplished, a shit load of work in a short span of time. Next I played with multiple motion effects and pieced together the bult of the edit. When a song slows down its telling me something, it says 'insert dialogue here" so I did. I found the bits i recorded earlier and crafted together something I think actually works pretty well. I stopped the video when I had to streess a visual piece and then sped it up again to get it all moving.
The cored edit was done by June, and then i ran into some glitches. The avid started crashing alot and i didnt know why. Sure i had a hacked copy at home, that could of been it, I should get the real deal, this hacked 3.5 copy on XP was awesome, color correction and real exporting abilities were very nice, but the every 15min crashes were killing my spirit. I walked away.
Well technically I didnt walk away soley for that reason..... the other thing that was bugging me was the lack of titles.. i had a good 5-15 seconds where some titles would have to be displayed and i couldnt think, all i got was a blank slate. I dropped avid work for after effects work and started scouring the net for honda insight pics, snagged some of bobs with his help and found some good sites with info he gave me. After effects needed more.. and the learning curve kept kicking me as well.
Come August and wander into the Avid again and see my incomplete work. I should finish that I say to myself. I decide on flash for titles and crank out something, fast, anything. Problem was the titling for This Old Hybrid just didnt look right. I watched some anime that night and it came to me, I need a crazy half japanese, half english title.. thats perfect.. why? I dunno why, I just liked it.. it fit. After I got that piece in the rest came together and now you have it. its Done.