Epilogue

After Thoughts

I recently finished creating a Moffatt Tribute video. Hopefully you've successfully downloaded and watched it. And hopefully it was the larger video because it looks better. If you're still having trouble watching it, please email me at webmaster@walkingbehind.com, and I'll try to help you.

So this all started relatively recently. I downloaded Adobe Premiere 7 PRO, and wanted to learn about it's features. As I played around with it, that's where it kind of started. I've seen other tribute videos, and knew what things I enjoy watching. So I wanted to make something for the fans specifically. Near completion, I realized that I could also tribute it to their birthday since March is the month they all celebrate B-days.

I knew from the start that I wanted it to have a song playing, with clips of the guys showing. Since I've got shitloads of videos, I had no problem finding footage to use. Then I thought about having the video border along the lines of "music video" by having the performing clips match up with the words. When I came up with this, it was almost obvious which song to have it be about. I've got a ton of performances of the song Bang Bang Boom, so it would have the most options. It's not really my favorite song for this, but I didn't have any other reasonable choices.

So I started out with the song playing, and I'd look through the videos to see which one looked the best at that particular part. I laid it out, and filled in the gaps. Originally, the only non-performance clip was the one of the guys in the shoe store where Clint does that weird hand gesture as he steps out of view. But later on watching the video, I liked the non-performance interlude so much that I put in other clips in.

The very first clip I used is from near the beginning where they're singing acapella. The original is about 20 seconds, but I hit my first big challenge in working with this clip. Turns out that when they sing things (except for lip-synched performances), they tend to sing at a different pace. So no matter how I had it lined up, I couldn't have everything in sync. Eventually I settled on just that short clip of him singing. Although the lip synched performances made it easy to match up the audio... those guys have a tendency to not sing all the words which also looked weird!

When I decided to make it a tribute to their birthday, it actually made it easier for me. There was about 30 seconds near the end that I thought everything I put there looked crappy. So a slide show was a huge improvement to me. I wanted to have an audio clip of the song Happy Birthday, so I decided to make the slide show extra long and extend past the end of Bang Bang Boom. I had to justify the Happy Birthday song because it did seem awkward to me. It bugged me to no end that it was being sung to Carrie. But I thought having a clip of them singing was appropriate. It's from Fan Club Party in June 1996.

So I made various previews of it to see what it looked like. I spent a lot of time making sure the audio was in sync, and that the transitions were smooth. I sent out sample videos to see what other people thought. After positive feedback from others, I decided that people weren't seeing the huge obvious blatant mistakes that I was. Oh well.

I do have some favorite parts. At about 25 seconds into it, I love where Clint kind of bounces at this one drum beat. It just looks incredible. I love the acoustic performance that's at 1 minute. I thought it would look weird since they weren't playing their instruments, but I don't really notice it so much. But I do hate how the clapping they're doing is completely out of sync with the audio. That's what happens when they perform it live though... it's at a different pace. This clip required some justification on my part, it almost didn't make it into the final version. And just after that where Dave's singing "She supplies me," I love that one. I think he looks adorable with his choker on. One of my favorites. It also includes the weird clip of Scott walking up to the microphone as he sort of kicks his legs out. Whatever Scott.

I love the part at 1:53 where Clint is standing next to Dave and they're banging their heads together. Oh god, the clip at 2:14. That was the second clip to make it into this video. I worked everything else around it. It's from the Anti-piracy performance. Clint and Scott are running around on stage. I absolutely love the part where Scott runs and jumps and almost misses his cue. It's followed (after the karate thing) by Dave singing up front. It's the only performance I've seen where he does that on this song. So I thought it was worth keeping in the vid. Oooh and after that is a clip of Dave and Bob singing at the Moffatt Reunion show in September 2003. In the original where Bob puts his arms up, there's so many girls screaming that you can't hear them sing at all. But turns out that the singing matches perfectly. After that is the slide show with pictures of the guys from different performances I've seen them in in 2003. Hehe, I had to go back and fix the date on them because I wrote March 8th 2003.

And the very last clip of them singing (with blonde hair), was the only clip from a bootleg. I didn't like how shaky it was, but I absolutely love it as an ending to the song. So it stayed.

So now what? Well I don't know. I'd like to make perhaps one more. I think it'll be from the song Misery, and have clips from their entire career. At least that's what I'm thinking about right now. I know that Manda did a similar project for a birthday tribute for Scott, but I don't think it's been done before for the whole group. At any rate, I'll try to feature footage that hasn't been seen before.

So if anyone would like to tell me what they thought about the video, any comments, suggestions, hints, complaints... If anyone wants to give me suggestions for what they'd like to see in the future... go ahead and email me at webmaster@walkingbehind.com. If enough people are interested, I'll pursue more projects.

-p.p.e.