Commentary on “In The Hall of the Mountain King” (Needful Things vid)

I know you probably have to be a big name vidder, like here’s luck to really necessitate a commentary, but I was pretty pleased with the Needful Things vid, so I thought maybe a commentary might be in order, especially since I get a fair amount of emails about vidding – very few about my vids, but plenty asking for technical help. This sort of implies that my vids don’t really speak to anyone on an emotional level, but every so often someone will think “Wow, that was cool, wonder how she did that”, which is still odd, since I rarely use special effects (Pump Up The Volume aside).

So, on to the commentary.

First of all, music. I trimmed the song a fair amount, the full song was over five minutes, and while there was plenty of source material to use, I thought I’d probably be repeating myself, and would tire a viewer with a sea of faces all reacting to seeing the object of their desire (in this fandom, literally an object, not a person) offered to them, or the “pranking” of other Castle Rock residents.

I thought the final two minutes would suffice. I chose the music because it starts slow and friendly but gets aggressive, and trimming it to two minutes gave enough of each.

I initially started the vid with a sweep-over of Castle Rock, and the approach of Leland Gaunt in his car. This didn’t work for a number of reasons; first of all, you cannot actually see into the car, and therefore get no personal link; secondly, the clips are actually quite boring, no matter how you cut them; and thirdly, the music is tentative to begin with. Gaunt is in no way hesitant in his approach to the town.

It’s the residents that are wary of approaching him, and there lay the key. Nettie’s scattered personality matched the music perfectly (which is probably why it’s used in her pranking scene in the movie itself). I knew I wanted Nettie and Brian to feature quite heavily in the vid, since they are my favourite characters, and it was only when I actually sat down with all the clips I noticed how the shots mirrored each other.

So, I stole an idea from here’s luck: intercut the scenes as closely as you can (as seen in the fantastic fight scene in “Come On” and also in “Superstar”). Only, I couldn’t get it right, so I cheated and used cross-fades between them. The shot of Nettie crossing the road had to be slowed down, I wanted to see her approach the shop, but she was striding quite briskly. It took me a lot longer than it should have to understand why that intro seemed so clunky. Eventually, I realised Nettie was causing the problem, she was moving too fast for both the music and the rest of the clips, once I slowed her down, the intro smoothed out nicely.

It’s actually only this second I’ve realised that Nettie walks across the road before peering through the window. Pretend I have a reason for that.

For awhile the scene were Nettie reaches out to touch the ornament, then pulls her hand back, and where Brian reaches for the baseball card, then pulls away, were intercut (find a vidding guru, steal everything from her), but it just never worked. Most probably because, while the scenes do mirror each other nicely, the shot of Brian is from the waist up, whereas Nettie’s is a close-up. The overall look of both clips were just too different.

After Brian and Nettie have been won over, the music becomes more definite, so at this point I stopped the cross-fades (which worked when the music was lighter) and showed a quick cross-section of residents, all eyeing up their Needful Things. The shot of Buster looking at the Winning Ticket game was something I really wanted in there, the light was so pretty, so I sped it up to 170% so the shot wouldn’t drag.

Something I love about vidding this movie was the amount of non-verbal scenes, it was all silent reaction. It’s such a nice change from vidding Boosh, where I’ve had to do some pretty sharp cuts to avoid talky-face (or have just had to live with it).

As the music gets even more intense, we see a new side of Gaunt, the one that wants a trick as part of the payment. I love the smile on his face when he shows Hugh the knife. I’m less keen on the speed of the clip where Gaunt throws the apple to Brian, but I never found a way to speed it up without making it look really odd, so in the end I trimmed it as much as I could and left it.

And randomly, we have a quick shot of Nettie making a fuss of Raider (the dog) for context on the next shot – Hugh pulling out the knife while with Raider.

As the music kicks off, we have Nettie slamming a pink slip on Buster’s wall. I wanted to start with Nettie, since I’d started with her and Brian to begin with.

The slashing of the tires was a happy accident, both stabbing in and pulling out hit the beat perfectly as I laid it down on the track, no tweaking, no trimming. I randomly get one of those per vid, where the action fits the music perfectly without any further trimming or moving around. That was this vid’s.

A shot of Brian throwing the apples. Oh, wait, I lied about my random happy accident, the TV exploding was another one. Actually, I wasn’t going to use that clip, it was on the tail end of the previous clip, but it fit so well that I kept it, even though it does seem to drag a little.

The section of clips following that, up until Nettie finds poor Raider all strung up, was actually harder than I thought it would be. There’s actually not that many “pranks” shown in the movie, and not all of them are visual (such as Polly being made to think that Alan is embezzling money). I can’t for the life of me remember why I didn’t use a clip of Buster finding the pink slips though.

There are a few clips of the town going mad (window smashes, Alan seeing residents attacking each other), although as someone mentioned on imdb, why are they doing this? Why are they looting? The whole point is that Gaunt uses people to play pranks, so that the victim will assume it’s the person they’ve had issues with in the past. Naturally, they go nuts at that person, they don’t go out looting…

Ooops, back to the commentary.

Wilma sees her smashed windows and goes for the meat cleaver, I love the lightning flashes in that scene. Tips on hitting the beat by here’s luck, “This is the sort of thing that became absurdly easy once I figured out the trick to it: place the frame with the point of impact three frames *before* the frame where the beat actually falls.”

And once more, I steal from here’s luck. I think the fight scene of “Come On” is absolute genius, I’ve read the commentary hundreds of times in the vague hope that her talent will rub off on me if I just read about it enough. Wilma slams Nettie against the fridge, Random Guy goes in for a punch with another random guy, Nettie ducks the punch, Random Guy slams other random guy to the side, and Nettie and Wilma go flying over the table. I think I flipped one of those clips to make it synch up.

Using here’s luck’s method of hitting the beat I had Nettie bring the cleaver down on one beat, and them falling out of the window, to land heavily on the next.

The next bit of music fit Buster’s suicidal insanity brilliantly. J.T. Walsh is a god.

Boom, lightning hits the church steeple. Boom, church blows up. Two well-hit beats.

Alan gets out of his car, this was a spacer before the next explosion. Since the vid never pays much attention to Alan, he could be a lunatic with a gun for all the viewer might know. Either way, it works. If you know the story, he’s trying to stop the insanity, if you don’t, well, a crazy has just gone and armed himself.

Four more explosions hitting the beat. The second needed setting to 99% speed to last the correct amount of time, as did the fourth, but overall, I was quite lucky with the speed of things.

Well, that was fun. If I ever make another vid I like so much, I might do it again.

New video, this time to Needful Things.

Vid Title: In The Hall of the Mountain King [commentary]

Artist: Sconosciuto/Edvard Greig

Fandom: Needful Things

Summary: A very short summary of the film, set to music? I think that’s the best I can do.

Rated: R – same as the source material, for a certain doggie scene. My apologies.

File Size: 18.7 MB – it’s very pretty quality.

Format: Real. Why? Because there’s hundreds of copies of Hero all over the net, thanks to YouTube, and I like to keep track of my vids – also, Real is far easy to deal with than Quicktime. I should have chosen this format years ago.

Notes: Again, I state this vid is rated R because of a quick flash of nastiness. It’s not on there long, so I can’t imagine people will be disturbed, but don’t say you weren’t warned.

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