During the chaos of 2020, I have been thinking a lot about automation for remote video production. Last year I took 5441 video clips on my cell phone. I want to evaluate the process of editing my own video manually, to create something short and beautiful.
So, how was I going to select, trim and order these clips into a montage along with a song? I am interested in this as multiple levels. I want to provide a service for people to make better videos, especially ones that are collected from a bunch of different people. So its important that I understand the “pain” or reviewing, sorting, organizing and editing from large collections of non-professional video.
First, I chose a song that has some meaning to our trip. Resistire, originally sung by Duo Dinamico in 1988 is like a Spanish version of I Will Survive. In 2020 a modern variant of the song became the unofficial Anthem for Spain to resist the coronavirus, and was often played on the loudspeakers thorough the small village we lived near. While it can be interpreted as literally surviving the virus, it is also about a community surviving the challenges of a pandemic: isolation, a loss of control, fear and depression. Personally, our little family got “stuck” in the mountains of Southern Spain, far from the rest of our family. It was both difficult and beautiful at the same time. The four of us spent a lot of time together, I fell that the opportunity I had to be with my daughters in nature was actually a stark contrast from many of our friends: trapped in small apartments with limited light. To me, this song, and this video, is about overcoming solitude in a pandemic.
The following lyrics from the song:
“Cuando pierda todas las partidas
Cuando duerma con la soledad
Cuando se me cierren las salidas
Y la noche no me deje en paz
Resistiré, erguido frente a todo
Me volveré de hierro para endurecer la piel
Y aunque los vientos de la vida soplen fuerte
Soy como el junco que se dobla,
Pero siempre sigue en pie
Resistiré, para seguir viviendo
Soportaré los golpes y jamás me rendiré
Y aunque los sueños se me rompan en pedazos
Resistiré, resistiré”
Translates to:
“When I lose all the games
When I sleep with loneliness
When the exits are closed to me
And the night does not leave me alone
I will stand tall in front of it all
I will turn to iron to harden my skin
And though the winds of life blow strong
I am like the reed that bends,
But it always stands
I will resist, to continue living
I’ll take the blows and never give up
And even if my dreams break into pieces
I will resist, I will resist”
The song itself provides structure in 3 parts. A 19 second intro, then 41 seconds of song, and closing with a 10 second instrumental. Thats 1 minute and ten seconds that I want to map to my story. Basically the intro is about isolation, the middle is about finding your way, and the end is about coming together. But how did I get there? I was a searching between whats possible in the footage, and whats present in the music. It’s at the intersection between “finding the story in the media” and “imposing the idea from the song.”
“mapping the content types to the narrative structure was the most impactful aesthetic choice I made”
After wading through all the footage and select 533 files, I still had 47 minutes of video. I needed 70 seconds. Which ones should I use? At first I thought I might evaluate “all of it” and consider “all” the various uses. This all-to-all analysis is shockingly slow to do by yourself and it does not feel like it adds much value to trim and evaluate how you might use each video clip, if its not that high quality. It certainly helps to films clips having in mind the downstream production process. So my first pass was to select the top 30% again and remove the remaining 70%. I couldn’t get around watching everything. Or at least a representative sample of every clip. The process of choosing / finding the video clips was the most time consuming and least rewarding part. When I was selecting, I was also classifying the included videos into types. What were they about? I noticed about nine main groups. This allowed me to reason what “belonged” in the story at a more abstract level. I was not asking “should I include this one clip?” (which looks amazing, but makes my narrative less coherent). I was asking, which collection of types of video best fit the structure of [isolation –> resistance –> triumph]. Looking at it that way helped me focus. It let me kill my darlings – all those moments that I like, but that simply don’t belong in this sequence.
So I found good media about landscapes, nature and human connection. With an undercurrent of spirituality. It really helped me to commit by knowing what the other “viable categories of good media” where an option, but that I was choosing to omit. Notably, there was a lot of rollerblading, and eating, and human interaction that did not fit the aesthetic narrative I was going for. It was easier to let go of the alternative, when I knew what they were. So in the end, mapping the content types to the narrative structure was the most impactful aesthetic choice I made. I like to think of it as the big picture of directing a music video. It’s where the concept lives.
From there, things fell into place pretty quickly. I had 2 minutes of candidate media. I continued to trim off fat, and create tighter relationships with the music. Once I had a rough cut, it was very satisfying to watch and listen to it. It was not quite complete, but I finally had the opportunity to experience what I had made. To experience what it made me feel, and to lean into those emotions with my future creative decisions.
I enjoyed making the video. But I wish it could have been more efficient. The initial selection process had to be done well, but I did’t feel like I had to do it. I think thats the role of the assistant editor. Also, categorizing and labeling all the shots in the video for me; it would be great if software did that part. The moment of pairing the content types to the the story structure … I like that part, it puts me in control. That felt like being the director. And choosing the song, I like that too. These are simple creative choices, with satisfying creative effect.
Reflecting on this process, I didn’t need 5000 clips to make this video. Its more that I needed 100 clips with sufficient focus. I look forward to bringing the satisfying parts of this creative experience to a wider audience.
