I'm a methodical vidder, who gets inspired by music, which I then pair with visuals. Of course, the visuals come first, so what I tend to do, when I have time, is listen through a long list of possible music and then whittle down based on what sparks any type of connection with the visuals. Mood of music and lyrics are very important to me.

I tend to then scrub through my source, marking times for possible clips in a text file. I'll open my editor and have the list to refer back to and then trim. Unless I'm very familiar with my source, this is my go-to process, but familiarity will have me making drafts and then pulling in different clips that I think will work better.

For the first exercise, I already knew what my theme was, and the best episode of Gravity Falls to work with. I ended up ditching one of my possible songs and going with an alternate, but I didn't do a lot of clipping. I like the tight focus of pechakuchas, and using longer clips lends itself to less choice, and more testing of what works. I always start with a bigger pool of clips than I end up using.

For the second set of pechakuchas, I spent less time choosing music, and went for the first viable options that said what I wanted them to say in mood and lyrics. The film has a certain mood and themes, so I kept those in mind.

Last time I participated, I didn't have a lot of time to make the first exercise, so I was happy to spend more time and thought on it. Otherwise, I don't think I would have made two sets.