Harry Potter - Lonely

 

 

January, 2021 (Made public February, 2021)

Fandom/Character: Harry Potter

Song: Lonely by Justin Bieber

Description:

Who knew Justin Bieber and Harry Potter were the same person?

This is for the favorite character challenge as part of The Happiness Project! I thought a lot about vidding which characters were popular at the moment or more current. If you ask me my honest answer for favorite character of all time though, it'd still be the one and only Harry.

 

Unfortunately this song was unavailable for me on YouTube. Please visit the vimeo link to watch the whole thing: https://vimeo.com/501887944

Program: vegaspro 18

Coloring: sunnyvids Soon You'll Get Better

 

I probably spent more time navigating how to upload this video rather than the editing process. I knew the song was popular at the moment, so I checked to see if any others vidded to this song already. The answer? They had. There was even a video within the Harry Potter fandom TO THIS SONG uploaded recently. That gave me the confidence that this song was fair game. Unfortunately it wasn't and I got dinged and blocked worldwide for the first month I had the video uploaded. How did others get away with it?! Why am I ALWAYS cursed for copyright so often??

 

It used to be that YouTube offered a tool that allowed you to search for songs and their current copyright statuses. I suppose the service wasn't being used "enough" to keep it going, so they disbanded it. That sucks because I completely relied on it. I'm not a fan of pitch shifting songs to avoid copyright detection, as it rarely seems to work and ruins the song in the process. I desperately tried it in this case with no luck.

In the past, if I couldn't upload a video for copyright reasons, I could at least share with family and friends in-person. COVID combined with my move across state lines makes that impossible. I had used Vimeo for the first time to share with friends/family.

Okay, now that I've ranted about the copyright process, onto the actual editing process, which was alarmingly fast! Pre-Vegas, I could spend up to several months on a video that I was far less satisfied with. I did this video largely in one day and maybe a few sittings for snack breaks, with a little prep the previous day. And I'm really happy with what I was able to do and just continually impressed with this editing program.

There are a few things that made the vidding process so fast. One is that I know Harry Potter like the back of my hand, shot for shot. Second is that the video is largely lyrically-based, so it was easy to match moments to lyrics. It was probably one sitting or two to put the clips and voiceovers in the order that I wanted them.

 

I spent far longer than usual on deciding a coloring. I had an idea in my head of what it should look like (cool colors, largely washed out, maybe with a lot of emphasis on white), to convey the mood. I was not confident enough that I'd be able to create it myself so I went through SEVERAL different colorings created by users that I admire, to try to come close to the picture in my head. The one I decided on by sunnyvids (my favorite coloring creator), is definitely blue-ish in tone, though more of a turquoise, and doesn't emphasis whites the way I had pictured. I think it still worked perfectly, though. The title "Soon You'll Get Better" also fits the theme of the video. I actually saved it a while back thinking it was really pretty and not knowing when I'd have a chance to use it. It took a lot of trial and error to decide that this was the time. Harry Potter is so dark, and the color schemes vary so much from film to film, that it can be REALLY difficult to color in a way that I find decent. There were a few scenes that were just too dark, and I used a similar, but different, sunnyvids coloring to make up for it. I hope those moments are undetectable.

 

The thumbnail was more of a struggle. I really wanted to blend together two scenes (which I did) but was definitely out of practice and still not entirely satisfied with how it turned out.

 

The decision to use this song was easy. Child fame screams HP to me.

I actually considered other videos for the Favorite Character, not because I like them more than Harry Potter, but because I've done Harry Potter so many times. I just realized that my unfamiliarity in editing them would take too long for the limited time I have, and the challenge ends at the end of January. The only reason I was able to pull this off was because I had an extra day off for MLK weekend. Fingers crossed I'll get around to one of those other favorite character videos next.