Gathering movies is very similar to gathering music, but a lot easier. It's probably the easiest part of the research. The '1998 in Film' Wikipedia page is pretty much a one stop shop here. I basically run down the list picking out the most important looking ones and finding the corresponding movie trailers. After that I check up with the blogspot contributor page to make sure I didn't miss anything important. [Again there were a few suggestions there that I hadn't picked up.]
For most of the movies I'll end up using a clip from it's trailer, but if I decide to use a scene that isn't in the trailer, I'll go find that when I get up to the editing stage. For now all that matters is creating that master list.
Some pretty great films came out this year and, as always, some I'd completely forgotten about, tons I've never seen and others that look intriguing that I've never even heard of!
Take a look as the clips below! By all accounts these were terrible movies, but sometimes you've just got to find out for yourself, y'know?
The beginning of these video projects is always the best part. Rediscovering all the things that came out in the year and the memories that come with them is a rush! The finished videos often receive comments to that effect, but for me the nostalgia happens during the research stage. [By the time the video is done I'm well and truly sick of everything, having seen it over and over again!]
Music is the first thing to be investigated. I start with the top 100 songs of the year in the US and the UK and then move on to other lists of singles and albums from the year. I check the contributor page at the end to make sure I didn't miss anything, and I always miss something. This year there were quite a few gems that I hadn't discovered elsewhere; like The Cardigans and Emillia. Thanks contributors.
Moving through the various lists. Each song's release date is checked to make sure it came out in 1998. If it did, I find the music video online and download it. This makes a nice folder full of songs that also serves as a final list.
In the first videos I made, I wasn't very careful about checking release dates so those vids have many songs that came out the year before. It could be argued that this was a better way to do it as you remember the songs from when they were hits, not necessarily the year they were released. But it also makes it more difficult to decide which year a song belongs in without some kind of final authority. So I decided that the actual release dates would determine which video the songs will feature in.
There are other complications too. Like different release dates in different countries or albums being released earlier than singles. I think I'll explain the loose rules about these kinds of things in a dedicated post another day.
A peek inside my 1998 songs folder
Right now though, my final list is sitting at a clean 220 songs! That's about what I always end up with and is far too many tunes to feature in the final video. About half of them will need to be culled away by the time it's finished. Ideally I'd like Remember vids to be around 10-12 minutes long. The last couple were too long in my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comments.
With every video I rediscover songs that I had almost forgotten existed. Some are great finds, others are maybe better left forgotten. Here's a sampling of stand outs from this year:
I always enjoy the research part of the process. I've been rediscovering long forgotten tunes and all too familiar ones, plus some I've never heard before. More info on that soon. In the meantime enjoy these pages from 20C Pop Culture.
The first step in making these videos is a shed load of research. Luckily there's this thing called the internet that really helps with that, particularly a little site called Wikipedia. And of course I'm very thankful to all the folks who contribute to the RememberVideos website with all their useful information.
However, my research for these projects always starts with old fashioned ink and paper in a book I discovered a few years ago called 'Twentieth Century Pop Culture' by Dan Epstein.
I gotta say, this is a pretty great book! Covering 1900 - 1999. Every year from 1945 onward has at least four pages dedicated to it, full of information and pictures.
This is only the starting point of the research though. As good as the book is, it only scratches the surface of the content that will eventually end up in the video, but you have to start somewhere and this is a great way to get a thumbnail sketch in my brain of what was going on that year.
So what does the entry for 1998 have to say? Here's a looky at the first two page spread until the next post. See ya then!
Welcome to the Remember Development Blog. This is where all the latest info on Remember videos will be found. Hopefully you'll get a better idea of whats going on instead of being left in the dark, wondering if another video will ever be released.
1998 received the most votes on the last poll, so that's the year I'll be doing next. I'm intending to document the whole 'making of' process right here... [We'll see how that goes!] I haven't started any work yet, but the plan is to get going sometime this week. Stay tuned.
Feel free to leave any comments or questions here, but if you have suggestions for video content, please use the main page over here to do that.
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