Spoilers/Speculation for Transformers: Animated Season Three

While I avoid plot spoilers like the plague, I do like to know which characters might be coming down the line, mainly so I can run in small circles squeeling at the top of my lungs. So today I sat down and had a serious look at the cryptic list of upcoming characters that was posted on Seiberton.com a while back.

( Cut for those who don't want to know. )

Vid Polling

I have had my shiny computer set up for one week now, and I now have a trial version of Premiere CS3 downloading and installed, hooray! Which brings me to my current inquiry.

[Poll #1255627]

It is kind of awesome to be working on a light, funny vid where I can contemplate including gratuitous nudity. So often I end up cutting this kind of thing out. I mean, Jack makes out with people in A Thousand Suns, but nowhere near as many people as he could have done. Which reminds me of one of the great lessons I have learned while vidding: sometimes actors are too hot.

For a long time, there was a shot of Jack Harkness pulling Susie's body out of cold storage in End of the World News. It would have been thematically relevant and it was a good clip, except that the good captain was bent over. After much messing around with the draft, I realised that if John Barrowman's arse was pointing at the camera, nobody would be paying attention to the lyrics, let alone my Srs Bizness themes.

Similarly, American Tune intially included, I think, every clip of Jack Bristow - what is it about guys called Jack? - in handcuffs/tied up from the first three seasons. It took me a while to realise that half of them had NOTHING to do with what the vid was trying to say and were just there for reasons of kink. (I don't even remember which episode it is from Season One where he's in a pale suit and gets tied up and interestingly rumpled, but that was the last one to get cut.)

I think the most important thing in vidding is to stay on message at all times - if your message is that guys called Jack are hot (has someone made that vid?) you can have all the arses pointed at cameras and bondage you want. Otherwise, it is always a bad idea to get off topic when you only have four minutes or so to make your point.

One of these days, I should just make a drool vid. It would have way too much Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, though.