TOPIC: Spin Wars 2016: Call for videos

Hello Sabering community. As 2016 comes to a close, the air has gone cold, the decorations are in the windows, and it is time once again for people who love showing off with LED sabers to come together and show the community what you learned over the last year.

That's right, it is time for Spin Wars: Episode 3!!!

Simply put, most of us here tend to do our own things. We do choreographed fights, martial arts demos, spinning routines, costume work, etc. What if there was a way to get several of those things into one project that would showcase a wider picture of what we, as a community, do with lightsabers? That is what Spin Wars did last 2 years. For anyone unfamiliar, the archived videos are here.




So what about this year? Anyone willing to volunteer, post a video in which you show us your saber work. You can choreograph a fight, you can give us spinning, you can film some freeform work, you can do it with lit or unlit blades, in costume or in plain clothes, outside, inside, or on green screen. This footage will be edited together into a montage. This year like last, if there are enough people interested,we may even look at two videos (a light side and a dark side). Preliminary interest tells me we may be able to make this happen this time around.

The criteria:

1. For editing and theme purposes, the video should be designed to accompany a piece of music posted below. Please have the music playing in the video so that I can hear it in the background for timing. If you record it without the music or while the music was playing through headphones, please attach the music track to it before you post.

2. Your video must include a lightsaber and be something recognizable as "a performance".

3. Your content should not violate youtube or forum rules.

The details:

If you are interested, please post and say so. Also please indicate if you will considering yourself dark side or light side for this performance. The initial interest will help determine if we are doing one video or two but I will operate as if we are doing 2 until the situation proves otherwise. When you have a video, please post it here. I can rip things from youtube without a problem for editing. Please include the name or moniker you would like to appear in the credits. If you have a signature move, pose, or other brief trademark, please post it as a separate video or still image as you would like it to appear in the credits. If none is submitted, I will use a short clip from your routine. If you have a youtube channel or web link, post it and I will include it in the description. Please try to submit material as soon as you are able. I would like to start editing in mid December with a video release on Youtube around the first of the year.

The Music:

We will be going with the music selections from last year since we did not end up using them and they are good tracks.

The Dark Side track is "Dark Side from Dyman

Download mp3 here
www.jamendo.com/track/1121484/dark-side?language=en

The light side is Return of the Jedi (order 66 cut) by Darth & Vader

mp3 can be found on http://daimp3.net
search for "darth & vader - return of the jedi order 66"

Additional notes and disclaimers:

This is not a professional video and my channel is not monetized so there is no profit being made. This is by and for those who are willing to donate time and energy to make it happen. I will have to decide what makes it in and what does not. I will attempt to give everyone equal time (provided they submit a long enough clip to accomplish this). We are only working with 6 minutes between the two videos. I will try to include everyone, and if too many people are interested to do that, I will try to make a second cut. This may have to come out after the first though. If you have a favorite segment, feel free to let me know the time range and I will do what I can, but no promises. Other than that, feel free to discuss and ask questions if you wish. If there is anything I can do to help you put together a submission, let me know. Otherwise, happy sabering and let's make this one a good one to cap off the first trilogy.

I'm probably in.

What's your deadline for submissions?

I am informally calling it the 20th of Dec. We can push it to the 22nd if we need to but not beyond that as I need time to put it together by the first.

Quick update: We have a few video submissions already, well ahead of the Dec deadline. It looks like the dark side is showing up. The light will have its work cut out for it.

Dark side submissions by:
Venturous

Enso Marr

Samhain138

So I shot mine yesterday. First though, this is the long cut of the footage. I had the song on repeat so I ended up shooting about 15 minutes. This is the best 7 minutes. There were a lot of neat tricks in here but only so much room in the final cut. Even less in the final edit.

This is the short version to the music. This demonstrated my flying saber with an echo effect added. I am pretty happy with it.

So with just a few more days left to submit videos, I figured I would post a quick reminder and an update. As a reminder, the unofficial deadline for submissions is the 20th. If you have something coming and let me know, I can fudge it a bit, but I will start making the montage on the 20th so try not to do that to me if you can help it. For the update, here is what we have so far. For those who submitted more than one video for a single side, please tell me which you want to use or if I should just cut the two together. If I don't hear an answer before I start working, I will default to the second option. Thanks to all the people who submitted. This is shaping up to be the busiest spin war to date, and it was made possible...by viewers like you. Sorry, that was a bit PBS, but I could not help myself.
Light side
Cephalus

Samhain

Thunder blade

Hazard

Son of Hazard

Ryan


Timotius





Dark side
Ryan

Cephalus

Venturous

Enso

Samhain

Update:
Just finished with the transitions and intro on the second video. Now I just have to add credits and QC check the sound. This year there were too many people so I went with list credits rather than stills as it was too long the other way. I will link to originals in video description. 14 participants in all this year, surpassing the previous 2 years by 11.

Update to the update:

and...they're done! I will upload and make them live tomorrow night so people can watch them on New Year's eve.