Watch Nip, Cheese, and Chaos here!
Background
When I first committed to working on "Fur, Fins, and Felons", the thing I was most worried about was the dialogue. I made a song with Suno as a backup plan in case the dialogue didn't work. However, IIElevanLabs exceeded my expectations and this song wasn't needed at all and we were able to proceed with the initial vision.
Kftiger did all of the editing for "Fur, Fins, and Felons" and after seeing the finished product, I was inspired try to edit something myself. We had a fair but of unused footage and I already had the song, so I floated the idea, and he agreed to provide support if I had any questions and give me feedback as I worked on it.
For reference, this is the most complicated thing I've edited up until this point, just cuts with no transitions and adding captions.
The AI resources used
Audio/Video:
MINIMAX | Hailou AI - img2vid for animations in the video
SUNO - Music
IIElevanLabs - SFX
Civitai (LoRas):
kftiger:
schmede:
Behind the Scenes
There were a quite a few images I really liked that weren't able to make the final cut of the trailer, one of my favorites being this one:
And MINIMAX | Hailou AI animated it to a whole new level with Sal confronting them with a whole new bag of cheese pulled from out of frame 🤣
Even with the unused clips we had from the original project, I still needed more for certain sections of the song, and also wanted to minimize the amount of clips that the two would have in common. One of my favorite new image generations was of Sal in a dramatic scene screaming at the sky as if asking a higher power, "Why?!"
Editing
I started with an idea of what clips that didn't make the trailer's final cut I wanted to use and what parts of the song it would be good for and I started watching rap music videos to see what they did. Then I watched a few videos tips on editing rap videos. My main takeaway adding a lot of motion to the video through transitions and different effects.
I would ask kftiger how to do certain things and send him exports for his feedback. His advice and feedback was invaluable and the final product would not be what it is now without his help.
I'm very happy with it considering I essentially had no editing experience prior to this.
I'm sure those of you that actually edit videos will cringe at this mess, and I'm sure I'll learn how to keep an organized timeline as I learn more. Here is the timeline of the final draft:
Here is my favorite part of the edit where I feel like all the things came together really well:
Final touches and submission
I got to the point where I thought I wasn't able to do anything more for the video, and sent a copy to kftiger to properly review. I had everything filled out in the submission when he suggested maybe some sound effects might add to it.
I took his advice to heart and went back to the project, created more sound effects with IIElevanLabs, and asked for kftiger's, feedback once more. At this point, I only had sound effects from the first gunshot. I sent him an export from that point to the end and he agreed it added to it.
I exported it and started the submission process and sent him the whole thing, asking if he could watch it one more time in case I had missed anything. He pointed out that it was kind of jarring that there were no sound effects up to that point. He was right.
I was this far in the submission process when I got that feedback:
I went back to the project and started thinking of ways to fill out the beginning of the video with more sound effects to even it out and generated more that I needed with IIElevanLabs. When I was done, I asked for kftiger's feedback once again. He was completely honest with me and said that he thought it was better with the sound effects, although it could be preference at this point. I did stop, review, and seriously consider his feedback at this point, but ultimately ended up going with the version with all of the sound effects that you can see today.
While I went against his last bit of feedback in the very end, I very much appreciate his insight and honest feedback throughout the entire process. It could be that it would have been better without any sound effects and that I was biased by the sunk cost of going back and editing it multiple times. I had this thought during that decision point at well.
So, I have a question for you readers that have made it to this point, do you think it would have been better without the sound effects? Please let me know in the comments, I'm really curious as to what you think.
A big thank you to kftiger for all of the help during this project. I was not able to imagine I would be able to make what it turned out to be when I started and it would not have been possible without his feedback and advice.
3K Followers and Moving Forward
I don't have much to say about reaching the milestone of 3,000 followers other than I never imagined this many people would like what I would make on Civitai when I first started, and I appreciate it very much.
After learning everything from working on Project Odyssey Season 2, I'm excited to use more AI resources together with my newfound editing experience to flesh out the ideas I've had even more.
I'll leave you with two that I'm particularly fond of that I created after the completion of this submission:
Thanks for reading!