Friday, December 31, 2004
I know I should wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I know I should update you all on the progress of my PSP, or tell you what I got for Christmas. But something else happened, something far more important: My super-secret project was finally revealed. The one I've been hinting about for months, working on for a year, and thinking about for three years. I am both proud and ashamed to present to you:
The Goals of Winning Eleven, Volume 1.
Yes, I did it. I made a 45 minute long DVD filled with Winning Eleven goals from WE5 to WE7I, patterned upon your classic football highlights videos. But before I get into the what, I have to go into the how and why first -- and if this all seems ridiculously overhyped and pompous, please indulge me: I've been toiling away at this for ages and this needs its moment in the sun.
The whole idea came about because of three entirely seperate factors. Firstly, I bought a brand spanking new Power Mac G4 in 2001, featuring a (then!) state of the art DVD burner. Except I didn't have any home movies to burn. Secondly, at this point I was rapidly running out of PS2 memory card space because they were chock full of WE goals -- and I'm not the throw-away type, so I kept them and kept buying new memory cards. That's when I happened upon the idea of archiving goals to DVD. It was going to be strictly bare-bones, just recording each goal seperately so that I could delete them from the memory cards while still having the flexibility to watch them at any time.
Of course, to do that I needed some vital pieces of hardware (the main one being some sort of video capture device) and I needed to know how to use iMovie and/or Final Cut Express. Given that neither was likely to happen any time soon, the idea was just an idea, and I readily announced my intentions to anyone and everyone (which led to Kavi loading up one of my memory cards one day with really bad goals just so he could have some of his goals preserved for eternity on the DVD). But then Haneal had a great idea of his own: We've spent half our youth watching countless football highlights and goals tapes. Why not turn this into a Winning Eleven highlights video? Dress up the goals with some fancy presentation, add in featurettes commonly found on those videos like player profiles and you're done. I loved it, he loved it, and we swore ourselves to secrecy while I worked away on it.
Sadly, without the necessary pieces of hardware all I could do was lay the groundwork out. And so I didn't actually get started on it until last November, when my grandfather bought me an analog-to-DV converter ostensibly so I could convert his VHS tapes to DVD (I have done exactly half a tape so far, heh heh). At this point there was another purpose to the project: Training. Given that I work for CNN, knowing how to edit video is useful, and I figured taking on this project would give me a reason to play around with iMovie and Final Cut, and give me more insight into how they actually work (I've found that the best way to learn an application is to find a project you're interested in and do it). And it gave me something to DO after frustrating and quiet days at work. This is why it looks so damned shoddy in places -- my skill-level when beginning the project were on a totally different plane to where I was when I ended it, and I took advantage of this training to test out everything in the Mac's arsenal (which is probably why I've used every single transition known to mankind).
Since November, I've missed many a deadline, underestimated the size of the project several times, stopped and started several times, and switched from iMovie to Final Cut back to iMovie (basically, the project and my skills outgrew iMovie -- but too much was invested into iMovie to make it convenient to move away, so I did segments in Final Cut and imported them whole into iMovie). I've even abandoned it in fits of "this is really lame and everyone will hate it" depression twice. Hell, it isn't even finished now -- it's still lacking audio in places, bits had to be sacrificed when I lost a memory card full of bloopers, the amazing DVD package with special features and awesome menus isn't done and far from my original plans I'm definitely not re-rendering the entire project with even more extras in Final Cut Pro for a Two-Disc Special Edition -- but the video track was done, and the time was right to show it.
So what's in it? After an intro themed (loosely) on Match of the Day and The Premiership in the UK, it goes right in to goals from WE5, 5FE, 6, 6FE, 7, and 7 International. In between are various segments, like a quick Michael Owen and Ruud Van Nistelrooy testimonial, a Dream Team game featuring our virtual doppelgangers playing a real All-Star side (this was the highlight of the evening) and the Top 3 Goals. Sandwiched in between those were various Nike commercials, which were also a highlight because I picked some of the classics and I think people were quite happy to see great ads we remember. It might not sound like much, the whole thing clocks in at 114 goals and 45 minutes, so I think I did good. And though I endured a lot of "Oh my god, you have FAR too much time on your hands" jibes, their reaction during the Dream Team game made it all worthwhile.
I'm a bit torn however on whether I should share this with everyone. On the one hand, I think WE fans would like it; even if they don't WATCH it, they'd appreciate the effort. On the other, the best bit of the DVD (the Dream Team game) is totally lost on anyone not in on all our in-jokes (which is everyone, really), it's a hefty download at 45 minutes, and while the editing wowed my friends I realise it's totally amateurish and will make me look really bad. So I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. But I tell you what: I'm absolutely freaking delighted that it's basically done. I really never thought I'd get it done and show it off, but now that it has, I'm just really, really happy. Nothing else can sum it up, really.
Merry Christmas to all, and have a Happy New Year!
Posted at 5:54 AM
