Creating for your inner child when you're a jaded adult
"Arm Candy" outtakes, gear talk, and a little confession
Last week’s video was a finicky one. In case you missed it, I did some thrift flipping, and transformed a $10 coat from this:
into this:
using just this:
I usually like to wear/sew with depressing, murky, muted colors, so this one was an especially challenging project for me. In my last post, I alluded to this and went over some of the research and development that went into this one, so for this week’s post, I thought I’d dive into some behind-the-scenes: shotlists, outtakes, and technical notes on filming/editing.
Here is the full video in case you haven’t seen it yet:
This one is a long one, so I do recommend opening this email in your browser to read it in full—you might be looking at a truncated version.
The Idea
Two years ago, when I first started making videos on YouTube, I sat down and eagerly sketched out a bunch of ideas that I knew I’d want to make some day. Some were material-centric (”Plastic Fantastic”), others more romantic (”Precious Cargo”), and some slightly childish but with potential to be weird in a good way. “Arm Candy” was one of these.
Here is my masterful sketch from two years ago for your amusement:
As you can see, the practical details are…nonexistent. The starting point was there in the form of a stick figure. But how was I to make these so-called “candies”?
The Technique
I found the method to the madness within the pages of my favorite couture embellishments book: a two-fold inverted box pleat technique involving ribbons. I like techniques that are complicated in themselves, but that don’t involve precious materials. Anyone can have access to ribbons. A democratic type of couture. For this project, all I needed was some ribbons, beads, matching thread, fabric to create a sleeve base out of, and the usual pins and needles.
Planning the video
Before I begin any part of a project, I sit down for a mood session. I put on music that feels right (in this case, a lot of Spandau Ballet), and daydream while sketching out shots that I think could work. These are usually related to the intro/outro of the video, with asides in between to break up the monotony of sewing footage. All this ends up becoming the visual constraints that I then plan and storyboard the rest of the process segments within.
If you’re interested in how I moodboard/storyboard/shotlist all my videos, let me know. This is what I do for work, but I love bringing that over to my hobby here and could talk about this topic for days.
At this stage, it’s mostly fantasy mixed in with a bit of practicality. How to film the tools I’ll be using in a different way than I have done before. How to bring a bit of magic into a practical video.
Not every one of these came to be. Sometimes I’m constrained by gear/technicalities, but mostly it’s just lack of time and that I’m doing all of this by myself. I also really need an editor asap. But that’s a topic for another day lol.
As you can see, the bokeh was there from the get go. I had recently been studying close-up shots from my favorite films, and this one of Saoirse Ronan in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel was rotating around in my brain.
I ended up filming myself against green screen, grading the footage in DaVinci Resolve, then removing the background using the Green Screen Keyer in FCPX, and adding that bokeh footage in (4K stock footage ftw).
The pink wig is another little film love letter to Natalie Portman in Mike Nichols’s Closer, and Scarlett Johansen in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.
The Process
Since all the ribbons were so flamboyantly saccharine, I used a black table surface to ground everything down. Giddy candy-making atop some jaded glass.
Always on my mind when filming these types of detailed projects is how to keep my hands from covering up everything I’m doing. When the object of craft is so mini, there’s always the danger of pulling a Mr. Bean and filming everything but the process.
To get right up in there, I bought a cheap 8x magnifying lens filter, and it worked great. The tiny 4mm beads I used as garnish were magnified into mahoosive fortune teller crystals.
The only downside is that every inch of your hands/fingers will be enlarged. Nothing like a savage close-up of your finger to remind you that you need a manicure asap. Mad respect to hand models everywhere.
Another filter I used was this kaleidoscope one that I got a while ago. I manually rotated it on my lens while the camera was rolling to achieve a little daydream effect on my mountain of ribbons.
Project Duration
To give you a sense of how long this one took: I watched seasons 1 and 2 of Severance, and listened to every single official Severance podcast episode, and I still wasn’t done. My boyfriend got used to me getting out my box of ribbons every time we’d sit down to watch something, and even the cat became disinterested after the third day lol.
Giving myself permission to not need permission
Even though I enjoyed every minute of this project, from planning to making to filming to editing it all together, I would get these sudden pangs of guilt. It felt like I was being selfish, making something that doesn’t really help anyone, that no one really asked for. Like a bad singer trying to sing My Heart Will Go On in the subway station.
But hearing your stories of childhood, the crafts you loved doing as a child, the nostalgia shared, those all made it clear for me. I’m not the best maker or sewist or filmmaker in town, but if I can make even a few of you want to pick up your needle and make something that would make your inner child soar, then I’ll be happy.
On that slightly emo note, I do hope you enjoyed this peak at my process. Let me know if there are other things you’d like me to focus on for the next behind-the-scenes post.
And let me know what you’re working on next! What materials are you going to be kerfuffling with? What’s on your moodboard?
As always, thanks so much for supporting this newsletter. I’ll see you in the next one!
Vic
I think this project has been my favourite so far! I love the Couture Embellishments book and am feeling so inspired to try out some of the techniques :)
I learned a new word from you: kerfuffling. hah.