Scratch - Starbuck Vid

[krickets]

Title: Scratch
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Sam, Lee, & heavy Leoben)
Summary (Notes): Starbuck just wants to forget, but she can't. Season 3 character study. Beta watched by mistojen. Spoilers through 3x17.)
Song & Artist: Little House by The Fray
Length & Size: 2:28 minutes & 37.52 MBs
Watch it: DL @ everydamnthing

Little House by The Fray
She doesn't look, she doesn't see
Opens up for nobody
Figures out, she figures out
Narrow line, she can't decide
Everything short of suicide
Never hurts, nearly works

Something is scratching
Its way out
Something you want
To forget about

A part of you that'll never show
You're the only one that'll ever know
Take it back when it all began
Take your time, would you understand
What it's all about?
What it's all about?

Something is scratching
Its way out
Something you want
To forget about

No one expects
You to get up
All on your own with
No one around

Best POV, Round 9 @ Driver Picks the Music

Comments

[angelene.livejournal.com]

Great mix, great 'camera-work', great colouring, great everything. Really... wow.

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Well I appreciate you watching and commenting. Thank you so much!

[scully1121.livejournal.com]

wow one of the best starbuck vid !!
i always love your coloring and layer you add. great clips with fit exactly with the music, great job !

[savepureness.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this, dear. I took the liberty to d/l it for later, as I've got no time now, being up for school, and quite late already. But I'll be back at you with my comments later today :) At first sight, the lyrics you've chosen are wonderful, and perfectly fitting the character!

[jellyfrog.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that was intense!!! Our girl is so tortured in season 3, poor thing. I love how you use textures in your vids. It gives such a distinctive feel to each one. This was absolutely gorgeous! I'm sure I'll be watching it over and over. :)

[gigglemonster.livejournal.com]

*dies*
KC! OMG!
Dude that was crazy awesome!
This is definitely my favorite vid of yours to date, it's just completely perfect!
First of all, coloring/texture/song/character - alllllll perfecto!
I love those first shots of the vipers, they work so well there, they looks so just like graceful flying through the sky and they work perfectly with the piano there.
I loooove the part at like :28 seconds, when he pushes her off the chair right on the beat and then the song starts getting all intense! Awesome!
And at :38 seconds beat use! Kara/Lee! so much squee!
And at :48 seconds more amazing beat use! And little kara, oh that part, with her slamming the door ahhh gives me chills everytime, but then with perfect kc editing, it's just double that!
Alright, I was gonna go through and pick out my favorite parts, but I keep having to pause every two seconds. I already know ahead of time this next part, because umm Leoban! :D
And the beat use at like 1:00, with her stabbing him! DUDE! You are like beat use queen with this vid and I'm lovin it!
I dont' know why, but the lyrics "all on your own with no one" at the part where she's giving Kasey back to her mom just really jump out at me. Because it's almost like when she believed Kasey really was her daughter, she almost had her as a way to make herself keep going, like she really wasn't all alone in that house by herself, she had what she thought was her daughter with her, but then she turned out not to me and! Gah! So sad, and I just love that part in the vid!
Everything about the ending is spectacular, the beat use, the paint scene! I love how it ends right on the explosion.
Alright, I'm sorry dude this is like even more novel-like than most of my comments are, I just couldn't help myself.
I love this vid!
I love you!
I miss you! I'm going to email you right now - just as soon as I watch this a couple more times!

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm glad you think so. :D And thanks for watching and commenting!

[crickets.livejournal.com]

I thought so too. I'm excited to know what you think once you've watched the vid! :D

[crickets.livejournal.com]

She really really is so tortured. Ah, I love her. And thanks for watching and commenting hon. The textures, I'm SLIGHTLY addicted to them, haha. Glad you like!

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Hahaa, well you know I can forgive you for such a long-ass response because you weren't there on MSN with me to watch every three seconds as the vid progessed. LOL. Which I'm sure is tons of fun for you! Haha.

I was so happy to get this done you have no idea. Well, no I'm sure you do. Because I was so bummed after totally failing on my cylon vid. I think I just couldn't wrap my brain around the song or couldn't cut it the way I wanted or something. That plus I totally got off track before I ever even started. Maybe MAYBE I'll finish that one someday. But as it stands I'm just happy to have another vid under my belt after failing so miserably. It makes it seem not quite so bad.

You know what's funny I don't even recall starting this vid or why or how it came up I just remember that I was making it.

Divine intervention by the gods of kobol?

(Or extreme Dayln-deprivation?)

[canadiangirl-86.livejournal.com]

That was SO excellent!

And I'm also laughing my ass off right now because I've been listening to this track for the last 3 weeks and wrote up this long page of set up for a vid I wanted to make. It was all in my head. Ha! Oh, wow. I had some of the same aspects that you've got here in mind but with a little bit of a different approach (using Zak, Sam, and Lee as the focus with Socrata/Leoben in the background). If I ever get around to making it now, I hope you know I'm not ripping you off! *G*

Seriously, though, this was really cool. I like the brush effect you've got over the entire video. You chose some wonderful images to fit with the song's lyrics and the way you melded the different mandalas was way cool.

Thanks for sharing!

[twolefts.livejournal.com]

Oooooh love this! I love how you put the textures over your vids it works really well for BSG because it gives it this gritty real feeling. The ending was especially awesome I love how it abrubtly ends with her viper exploding. Awesome! :D

[crickets.livejournal.com]

It's not surprising because the song really does fit her so incredibly well. Thank you so much for watching and commenting. I'm really glad you liked it. And the part with the mandalas is something I'd kind of had in my head for a while, merging the images. So I'm glad that worked well! :D

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much I'm slightly addicted to the textures haha. I'm glad you liked the ending especially that was definitely the section I agonized over most.

[messyjessie58.livejournal.com]

wow this was excellent, its a keeper!

[boom-queen.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was great. Fabulous timing/pacing thru the whole thing. I particularly enjoyed the jumpcuts on her kid self in the cockpit, and the badass climax of memories/actions/events towards the end of the song worked perfectly with the music.

*sighs* Damn I love me some angsty Kara.

[twofordinner.livejournal.com]

This was awesome! One of the best Starbuck vids ever that really shows her character. Please continue to wow us with your talent for this stuff! ;)

[oregonblondie.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is wonderful! Beautiful treatment and editing and song choice. It's a total work of art. ^^

[williwawz.livejournal.com]

What a beautifully crafted vid! I love the false color effects and the aged film technique-wery well done. Then moving onto the editing-the choice of cuts and scenes worked perfectly with the well chosen lyrics and the melody of the song. This is now one of my favorite Kara vids! I hope you make more BSG stuff (I love the Fray).

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

This rocks! Your zooms and jump cuts in particular really popped for me! :D

[ladydetective.livejournal.com]

This video is completely amazing, and even though I've never followed this show, some great messages and themes were easily conveyed to even an uneducated viewer, not to mention that it was just really pretty, and nice to watch.

I have a few quick questions about your video (which you of course don't have to answer, I'm just curious) - what program do you use, how did you color your video like that, and how did you apply the texture?

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Well I'm glad you think so! ;) Thanks for watching and commenting!

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes yes. Angsty Kara rocks. It's what makes her her. That climax gave me some trouble so I'm really happy that you liked it, so thanks for mentioning that. Makes all the work worth it! Thanks for commenting I really appreciate it!

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, thank you so much for the kind words. Perhaps I've inspired you to watch the show? Hahaha.

And of course I'll answer your questions. I use Sony Vegas 6.0. I use a variety of coloring techniques on my vids. I suppose that comes from my background in making graphics. Anyway, for the following vid the main track had 8 (yeah, eight) layers of coloring.

01. Color Curves
02. Another Layer of Color Curves
03. Saturation Adjust (upped just slightly)
04. Color Balance
05. Color Correct
06. Color Correct Secondary
07. Black and White (desaturated a little bit)
08. Brightness & Contrast (upped the contrast slightly)

Then also, on some of the individual clips they were a bit too dark/contrasty, so I added an extra layer on the clip itself of Contrast/Brightness where I lightened it a bit or lowered the contrast or a combination of both, whatever looked best for that particular clip.

I've written a tutorial here: http://lostvideo.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=11978
About how to use some of the coloring features in Vegas, including curves. It's not an inclusive explanation of curves, but it does give an example of some curves layers so as to try to provide a starting point to understanding them.

Re: The texture. I added a top video layer and just dragged and dropped the layer like you would a video clip, stretched it over the entire project. Then I set the track to multiply (I believe, it all depends on the texture itself, screen, overlay, etc. all work) and set the crop to stretch.

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Oh well thank you so much! I very much intend to!