Stang Video Editing

Jan 13 2002

In article <120120021747447940%redbeard@piratehaven.org>, Greg Kucharo <redbeard@piratehaven.org> wrote:

> Does Stang ever respond to mail! The real question is, did he ever
> get the hard drive I sent him?

I think I just emailed you about that this morning...

answer, YES, I got the hard drive, but only yesterday did I actually get to the P.O. and KNOW that it WAS the hard drive you sent that the yellow slip was for... I have been there earlier in the week and SUSPECTED that the yellow slip might mean the box you sent, but at this particular post office there's a really nasty long line unless you come early in the morning. Which is what I did yesterday.

And sure enough, inside is a sealed up bag of HARD DRIVE!! BIG HARD DRIVE just like you said!

DOBBS SHALL REWARD YOU WITH BLOW JOBS ETERNAL, COME X-DAY! Maybe he'll even move over occasionally and let somebody else blow you.

But seriously, and stentoriously, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for this GREAT DAMN CHUNK OF TOOL!

I spent this whole week, as it happens, engaged in learning what to DO with an 80 gig hard drive, namely, I finally learned high end professional style computer video editting. I have hardly slept at all for a week, as I knew would happen, and as I guessed would happen, I already invented 2 weird animation techniques, have cranked out several quasi-animations, and am in the processing of totally revising a lot of our old rinky-looking stuff... and that's just since THURSDAY! You should see the list of fun little things to do LATER.

FINAL CUT PRO is the name of the program. Until a year ago, any new fangled video editing I learned was kind of a moot point since a) I was no longer doing that for a living and b) my equipment couldn't do full res video anyway. But a year ago I got this Mac G4 and, thanks to DONATIONS largely, and a bunch of outlay on my own, I now have the gear to work in REAL video again.

AND I AM SHITTING!!

As I knew would happen.

I used to cut Con film on Moviolas and stuff. Then I learned the old VHS offline to Quad online sort of way it was done in the 80s. Then in the 90s I JUST did DOBBS WORK. All SubG videos I put together in the 90s were done with two Handycams and a pause button. That's IT.

Ah, but now... NOW I can begin life ANEW!!!

It's like being BORN AGAIN!

This Final Cut Pro program is somewhat like Photoshop combined with a music mixing program combined with Director combined with, well, a Moviola. If I hadn't already become a well versed Photoshop amateur I would never have been able to get through the Final Cut Pro tutorial. Now I'm a timeline-marking fool. I'm a spline-tweaking razzmatazz. Well at least I have cleared up a lot of my own ignorance about video formats. And I can make a spinning shiny logo from scratch and superimpose it on trippy background footage and output it at broadcast quality.

The 60 gig drive that I use for multimedia -- mostly HOUR OF SLACK and old-SubG-tape remixes -- was hovering around 20 gigs used for months -- until this week. Now I've added another 20 gb of original animations, title sequences, alt.binaries.slack-art "slide show" movies, and transfers of my old 16mm underground movies, which I intend to spruce up.

Space was already getting tight when this drive arrived.

I don't actually have a digital video CAMERA or other interface device of my own yet. My High 8 video cam is analog only. I have been using the new digital cam owned by A.C.E. to do these transfers from tape to computer and back.

At Thanksgiving, I learned the kids' video editing program, iMovie, and cut my Burning Man home movies for practice. What I'm shooting for immediately with Final Cut Pro is to drastically repair the videos we sell now. PREDOBBS STANGFILM, SUBGENIUS INTERVIEWS, and the X-days primarily. The submasters are all falling apart anyway.

But what i'm REALLY shooting for is a documentary about WEIRD SUBGENIUS EVENTS, where I'd pore through all our raw videos going back to the 80s and find the very weirdest, most unusual moment at each devival or campout or whatever. There is always SOMETHING at each show that really should be... remembered... and now I don't have to borrow equipment to do it, I can sit here and trim and clip and narrate and subtitle at my leisure, such as it is.

Frank Zappa did that with spare footage and backstage video for THE MAKING OF 200 MOTELS, which in some ways is better than the over-ambitious 200 MOTELS itself (one of my all time favorite movies).

The Merry Pranksters just managed to finish doing a similar thing with their old "bus movie" just before Rev. Kesey died. I understand that this was done by Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs, working with their SONS.

Likewise, all the advise that I've needed outside the free online tutorials has come from my son. I spent half my retirement $ putting him through fancy film school and at least it has paid off that way. I am now about one third of the way caught up to where my LITTLE BOY is at, technically, modern video-wise.

So that's what I've been doing -- living out my fucking DREAM COME TRUE. I have JUST enough money to SCRAPE BY, if people buy new SubGenius CDs (I HIGHLY recommend ALL of them), which buys the TIME to apply these FRANKLY UNBELIEVABLY GREAT NEW TOOLS to my lifelong trade of making monster movies.

I did get off the track there, but now I can slowly yank reality back into conformity with my desires. I can make movies again. ANIMATION!! Fake documentaries! Bug Porn! I have a Bug Porn 1-minute commercial made of stolen footage about 1/3rd done.

However, I have ignored my wife, starved myself, gone without sleep, drank too much coffee, abandoned all hope of answering email, and otherwise acted like a male dog when there's a bitch in heat nearby. The bitch is AFFORDABLE VIDEO AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS production and just enough new knowledge to try to make myself dangerous.

I knew this would happen. AHAHAHAHA!!! FINALLY!!! ULTIMATE TECHNO-SLACK!!! And Princess Wei is TOTALLY UNDERSTANDING!! She knew I'd finally, eventually feel I had used the gear enough that I wouldn't be afraid of FORGETTING what I'd just learned, and that has happened.

This morning I kind of resurfaced... checked last night's Dobbshead morph rendering, nothing that can't be fixed in "post," and realized I was AGAIN several days late on THE HOUR OF SLACK, I hadn't even THOUGHT about what bills I needed to pay, the house was cluttered with the PREVIOUS project I'd been in when the Video Editing Bug bit -- getting our huge stash of poster sized artwork framed and hung -- and so, now that I think about it, I should quit this spew and go spew into the Hour of Slack bucket... gotta get that produced and 17 copies made and mailed! CAN DO thanks to the NEW CD BURNER -- ALSO DONATED, by the Church Architect, REV. ED STRANGE.

So back to Sound Land. If I wanted to REALLY drive myself around the bend I'd choose this Sunday to switch from cutting HOUR OF SLACK on PEAK (basically all 2-track) to Pro-Tools (a huge, complex multitrack sound mixing prog which I half-know.)

As far as the email goes, I'm probably no more swamped with email than most people. What I'm "swamped" with is more often stuff like grocery shopping, clothes washing, book keeping, gear repair, phoning my family.

We do what MUST be done around here, and no more, so that I can spend all the rest of my spare time chasing my new wife around the desk while she giggles and pretends to flee, and stuff like that. This Space Princess Consort/Sacred Scribe gig is PERFECT. It is like HEAVEN. There IS Slack, Dobbs was NOT lying!

I will post some mini-renditions of these animations and so forth on a.b.s. as soon as I tweak 'em better.

Wait'll you see the video of 4 months of LeMur art compressed into 2 minutes. (ALL the art that I've done in eight YEARS only runs ONE minute)

Back to document index

Original file name: Stang Video Editing - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:44