Comic-Con 2008 - Enhanced Edition of Supernatural Panel
Direct link. Warning: Some of the special content I added has big spoilers for season 4 beyond the original videos.
This video features Jared, Jensen, Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, and Ben Edlund. If you've already seen the original videos and you're wondering why you'd want to watch this, see the details about the enhancements below. For other enhanced videos, check my YouTube channel or my Tumblr index post.
Video Improvements - Upscaled, fixed bad aspect ratios, improved colors
I received a great deal of help from @sensitivehandsomeactionman on the color correcting. They gave me tips on how to achieve better colors and they even took a screen shot from my video and corrected the colors on it with their own software to provide me with an example of what was possible. Having that example to reference was invaluable for me, because I'm not good with colors.
Without that help, Jared and Jensen would have looked like they were in training to become the world's tallest Oompa Loompas. Any remaining color wonkiness (Wonka-iness?) is due to my own failure to apply what I was taught and my failure to see the colors properly. But look at that difference! I was pretty excited about this.
Combined Videos to Cover Entire Event
As with my other enhanced videos, I combined multiple videos to create as seamless a video of the event as possible, from beginning to end. For my earlier videos, that meant combining maybe 5 videos. For this one, I used a total of 19 videos from 3 different sources. A lot of those were used for the talking head bubbles, explained further below.
None of the videos are my own. My video description on YouTube has links to the original videos I used.
Good, Color-Coded Subtitles
As with my other enhanced videos, I attempted to provide accurate and as-complete-as-possible subtitles. They're color-coded to make it easier to tell who's speaking. This is especially helpful when people are speaking at the same time, or when the speaker is off camera.
Since there were so very many people talking in this video, I doubled up on a couple colors if I thought I could do so without it being too confusing. Here's the complete color key:
Red = Jared
Blue = Jensen
Brown = Eric Kripke
Pink = Sera Gamble
Purple = Ben Edlund
Green = General audience
Yellow = The person asking the questions. In the first half this is the moderator, Alynda Wheat. In the second half, this is the fan at the mic.
White = Mostly the publicist (Holly Ollis), but a couple times it's used for people off camera who I believe were Comic-Con staff.
Two shades of orange = surprise guests
Additional Clarifying Content
As with my other enhanced videos, I've added some images to help add clarity to the references used by the speakers. I added images of characters and scenes referenced from the show, images to explain various pop culture references, as well as some explanatory text to help add details or clarity when I thought it might be useful.
I mostly kept this extra content to the sides so that, if it doesn't interest you, you can hopefully ignore it and focus on the main part of the video. Unlike my previous videos, sometimes this is on the left side and sometimes it's on the right side. The margins shift depending on where the talking head bubbles are.
Talking Head Bubbles - Jared and Jensen front and center, but other speakers visible too
This "enhancement" isn't anywhere close to perfect, but it sure as heck isn't from a lack of effort. This represented at least half if not two-thirds of the time I spent working on this video.
I always find the Comic-Con videos frustrating to watch. When the camera moves to other people who are talking, I want to see Jared and Jensen instead. I like to see their reactions and sometimes they do funny things that get missed. But when the camera is steadfastly focused on Jared and Jensen, I also get frustrated because I can’t see the people who are talking. Nope, you can’t win with me! I want to see everything.
I attempted to mitigate this frustration by adding talking head bubbles. The main source videos I used were the ones with the most constant and stable focus on Jared and Jensen. However, if one of the other source videos had a decent focus on another guest, I inserted a small window into that other video as seen below. Eric shows up on the left, because that's where he was seated relative to Jared. Sera and Ben show up on the right, because they were on the other side of Jensen.
Like I said, it's not anywhere close to perfect. Trying to make the bubbles look stable was an enormous challenge for me. Behind the scenes the person in the bubble was bobbing and weaving all over the original video frame, so I had to constantly adjust the position of the secondary video to keep the subject centered in the bubble. They also aren't always bubbles. The people taking the videos often had the writers on the edge of the frame because they wanted to capture Jared or Jensen too, so the bubbles start to collapse when they get too close to the edge because there isn't enough video surrounding them to form a circle.
I haven't decided if the end result was worth how much effort I put into these darn "bubbles", so I'd welcome any feedback -- good or bad.
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I saw this ad for Sexy Christmas Sirens (which, disappointingly, is apparently not a game about beautiful singing women who lure wayward sleighs to their doom) and I thought the brunette's legs looked wonky so I found 2 versions without the text blocking her legs and ... I think she's a serial killer displaying her collection of dismembered legs from her previous victims.
Maybe she is actually a siren after all.
(Ads for Sexy Christmas Sirens, Naga Games)
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