okay but if you wanted to share some director’s commentary about the video that would be cool too!!
omg thank you v <3 i'm sorry it took me so long to answer this lmaoo. i got sidetracked but then a lovely tag by @goldturnedgray reminded me that this was in my inbox...and then i forgot again and only came back to it when i had editor's block on my next video and thought this might help me work through it. anyway, thoughts under the cut on "shy boy" for anyone interested!
(i always feel a little silly talking so much about my own videos, but if there's one thing i've learned from the editor spotlight series on the hbowar archive, it's that i LOVE to read about other editors' process/inspiration/commentary, so hopefully people enjoy reading about mine lol)
this video was originally cut down to about 2 minutes, but i ended up adding sections back in because i had more to say, or needed more space between 'sections.' i never want to include a chorus repeat just to have it there or to be able to say i cut the full song; i only want seconds in a video if they're going to help me say what i want to say. and in this case, i added back in repetitions of the "shy boy boy boy" to properly hit certain scenes, as well as repetitions of the "midas touch" lines at the end to really show the different things that shane "turns to gold:" hockey, ilya, and their relationship itself. but i did still trim the bridge and a lot of the jamming at the end of the song just because i didn't think anything else would further add to what i'd said with the rest of the video, and i thought it would slow the momentum/pacing of the video a bit. so tldr; longer than i initially planned, but for good reason!
this song has been theeee carlya rae jepsanov song to me for months now, i just was waiting until i had the time and motivation to make it. it's such a perfect look at how obsessed ilya is with shane despite (because of?) how boring and shy he is. i wanted it to truly be pure ilya pov, so there were entire chunks of the show that i just couldn't use because so much of the show stays so close to shane's perspective. i made a point to include svetlana and marleau as two people who comment on his relationship with "jane" to match lyrics etc. but we only see shane when he's with ilya or ilya is watching him on tv. i purposefully did NOT include "shy" shane moments that ilya wasn't witness to, even though i was tempted.
i like going chronological in a longer amv because it feels so narratively satisfying, but obviously i jumped around a little bit here to show parallels (ilya waiting for shane, etc.), and the sex montages of course. but i think the largely chronological order worked really well with the song. my next video that i have planned is all over the place timeline-wise, which works better for that song/message.
but even going chronological, there are still time jumps in the video, and i wanted to make it seamless to the viewer. i always want my videos to be easy to watch; obviously i want to say complex (well, sometimes lol) things, but physically watching it shouldn't be a chore. i want clips to flow together; i think that the way clips interact with each other is just as important as what clips you choose in the first place.
so for this, i really tried to connect 'sections' of the video to move the viewer smoothly between them. the best example i think is the transition from the club section to the svetlana section. ilya's at the club when 'the room spins, the earth quakes,' and then i have a mini supercut of ilya waiting on shane to match that lyric, which ends in a shot of svetlana watching as ilya reads their old texts at a different club. this works perfectly to transition into the svetlana section for the next lyric: 'my friends want to meet you.' and then i ended the svetlana section with the scene of them talking about the all-star game to make the transition to the tampa section of the video. and so on and so forth. it just makes the whole thing more cohesive (i hope)! this obviously is easiest with chronological videos, but i like to do it with videos that jump around as well using similar framing (if match cuts and match dissolves have 0 fans then i'm dead).
it didn't always work; originally i cut the second chorus (with hockey shots interspersed with sex), ending on shane lifting the cup and ilya watching, straight to the first "midas touch" refrain over the all-star game, so that the transition between those sections was hockey. but i had more i wanted to include re: shane being shy :) so i extended the final chorus to include the "shy boy boy boy"s, so the hockey ended up getting split up. best laid plans!
on the note of editing/transitions, i really tried to use movement in addition to framing/content as a way to connect scenes. i rewatched chicago recently (after i had already posted this video) and realized that they use a lot of the same editing techniques that i try to use in my videos. the entire movie is flipping between the 'reality' of the story and the 'cabaret' version of the characters editorializing it to the viewer, and to bridge the gap between the two, they often will have a cut involving a movement that starts in one space and ends in the other: a leg kick, a head turn, etc. i try to do similar stuff in my videos, and start a movement in one shot and finish it in the next, especially when transitioning between otherwise unrelated scenes. or at the very least maintain similar framing/object placement between cuts (shout out mad max: fury road) even if it means having to zoom in on a shot or two. it's a fun way to move the video along!
i've also realized musical theatre songs really inform the way i approach timing in a video, and especially how i time soundbites. i always want soundbites to sound like they're part of the song, the same way dialogue is usually integrated or "sung" in musical theatre songs. i'll time remap a clip (within reason, so it doesn't sound distorted) if it means wrestling it into beat with the song. i have a bite in my next video where i split it up and made the first half of it 125% speed and the second half 90% speed just to make it match the music. it really pays off in maintaining the rhythm and momentum of a video, i've found!
i would describe my editing style as "bouncy" a lot of the time, and i think that works reallyyy well with carly rae jepsen music, so i tried to really lean into it for this video! i don't like to exclusively cut to the beat of a song; i think if your cuts are always on every beat, it gets monotonous, the same way fic with no variation in sentence length does. but for such a fun poppy song, i still wanted to bounce! so i tried to match movements within a clip to the music (within reason; it's another thing i don't want to overuse) so that i can vary shot length while still dancing to the beat, if you will. going back to musical theatre again, i very much approach editing like choreography, apparently! this was just not a song where i ever want the video to be Still (which obviously is not always the case! half the fun is matching the vibe of your editing to the song).
okay, i've talked ENOUGH. this actually did really help me think about what i want to do for the rest of my next video, so it was a worthwhile exercise. if you've read this far, thank youuu and i love you <3
