Roll with it

The memorial video was tough to do.. I've said it before on another entry on a different blog.. This was tough.. I really liked doing it but unlike a graduation, this was a good bye forever thing.. And so when I was asked to do it I started working on the music first.. The pictures was the easy part, there were other people in charge of that.. I got home and started to work on the pictures that I got via email.. Some of the pictures would show as sideways and for everything I tries to get them all rightways up.. There was a shitload of frustration getting them to agree with what I wanted them to do.. So after trying several things I loaded the pictures on to Picasa program and lo and behold they were all rightside up.. But they showed the same way on Faststone viewer so.. The only way to try it would be to burn a disc and cross the fingers that they would burn the way I wanted them to... Thankfully they did.. Now the music.. I was crosswise with ideas as Saturday night would see me find 75 or so songs that I thought might work and others I hadn't heard in a while so I listened to just because..

Then as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning and I had the video ready to be done.. The music was still not there.. I had tried many things from Neal Schon solo work and Craig Chaquico as well.. I then settled on Pink Floyd TBS9 and TBS14 as a way to just try a sound track.. Anything.. Then as the video was completed I set the process of getting the video to set up as 1080p.. That took a ton of rsources and the computer locked up.. Well shit.. I give up.. Went to bed at a little after 2 Sunday morning...  What is going to happen??   The next morning I awake to  a message From Freda that stated just use Cannon..  Alrighty then.. Something to work from..  So the first song would be Cannon, and it really seems to fit with the video as the pictures go by..

Cannon was a great choice for songs but I had found a few of my own favorites including Black Garden View, by Christoph Franke  originally from Tangerine Dream, this song was one from his Pacific Coast Highway solo album..  It is a very emotional track on it's own.. And as I set the track to this video it really brought out the emotion in me...

Track three on the original video is Cannon and it works quite well.. But after a few days I thought what If I try a different song in that section so... I tried this song, originally the song was placed on a video I did after I found some pictures I had never seen before or didn't pay attention when I did view them.. My Back Pages/Goin' Back  as done by Michael Stanley on one of those acoustic  shows, they didn't ask him to do it but.. He did it anyway..

Track four remains Amy's Lullaby as recorded by Mars Lasar... Well almost as recorded by him.. I edited the song to fit, the very first part I found wasn't needed so I cut to where the winding up of the music box and then went from there.. Every time I heard this song before this project I would be fairly emotional.. This was just really what I think I saw..

Then there is this idea.. The first part of the video with a different song on there.. In this case the song is Blue Sky Song by the Gathering Field.. I was torn between using this, the original version, and the Michael Stanley version.. Seeing as how I already had him with the second song I decided to try the original .. Had I done the video with Blue Sky Song as the starter I would have run well too long.. So the original idea was the best and is really my favorite version, this was just a way to try another idea.. The running order of the pictures seemed the best as well...  

In editing the pictures really aside from getting them all to be upright, I tried to doctor them a little, using the Fast stone picture viewer and a little bit of Paint dot Net... I was just after trying to lighten the pictures up a little.. There is one of Emmy that she is at the park and the place she was in made her very orange so using the curves I took that colour not be as prevalent.. Tried to get the dark shadow areas to be less so.. Just general touch ups..

When the video was done I had to have someone watch it so I could relax a little.. I am never thinking the video is even remotely very good.. I needed someone to give the thumbs up.. Freda took the time out of the busy getting things together and looked at it.. She said it was great.. And kept it.. Thankfully she kept it because I was likely going to tweak it a bit here and there.. Actually I was quite relieved she kept it, I figured it was done.. And done that Sunday morning so.. Two days ahead of schedule.. I could see me on Tuesday morning working on it to get to perfection.. There is no such thing as perfection for me.. I say I throw these videos together and really they are.. Tweaking will just make me go nuts.. Perfection is unattainable.. Even with this second idea video.. If you  compare the two videos and especially with the opening track of Blue Sky Song, it is way longer than Cannon.. The third song being My Back Pages/Goin back was too short, and... You know sometimes things just work out, the first time.. Roll with it..

Badge Henry