hey! so, looks like season two is all wrapped up in a neat little bow. jackson and noel aren't fighting anymore, halemore came to terms with their breakup, noel is gonna be living with a loving family in season three (stilinski's or martin's? who knows!) everything can be happy forever now, right?
...
nah. who do you think i am?
season three will premiere next moonday (when was the last time you heard THAT phrase in this fandom?) sometime in the afternoon. until then however, i've decided to go a bit in depth about how i write these episodes and make the edits that accompany them. sort of like a special feature on a dvd so to speak.
...yeah, i'm being way too serious about this. whatever. this chapter isn't gonna get any reads anyway i'm sure.
so, first thing's first (rest in peace uncle phil), how do i download these episodes?
i use mega, which is an app as well as a website. to get the episodes onto my phone, i use the links provided by the twitter account downloadinhd. in their pinned tweet is a link to all the content they have, which includes movies and tv shows.
once i go to the teen wolf section and get to the season i want, i open it in mega (which i have a free account for that you can also get when you download the app) and download it into my offline files (i prefer saving them offline using download as opposed to saving them online using import, but this is just a personal preference).
the time it takes to download an episode depends on the speed of your internet connection, but usually the process takes no longer than 5-15 minutes per episode. sometimes it can even go as fast as just a few minutes.
another thing to note is that this method is 100% safe and 100% legal! the only person that could get into any sort of trouble doing this is the person that torrents the show/film then uploads it to mega. for anyone using the content on mega, you have nothing to fear.
with the episode(s) now in my offline files, i can save them to my camera roll or just watch them in the offline tab. if you exit out of a mega video, it will hold your place, which is great when i don't want to write an entire episode in a single sitting.
with me so far on how i download episodes? great.
now a quick word about the most important part of this whole production: writing.
i have all of noel's information, important plot points, relationships, and chapters/episodes saved in one document. at this point the document is over 100 pages long and has over 68,000 words. i'm tempted to put season three on another document, because it takes forever for the current one to load up to where i can get to the last thing i wrote. but that's off topic, here's how i write the episodes.
i usually write these episodes super late at night and revise in the morning, because i'm more creative at night and more of a perfectionist in the morning. i write the episodes on my laptop while the episode plays on my phone, and i just watch through until i get to a scene where noel could fit in and then pause and write the dialogue and actions out with him added. often times i just give noel some of the canon dialogue instead of the original character that said it, and other times i'll write in lines and scenes just for him. it all just depends on how the scene flows and what it would take for the scene to make sense when another character has been added.
with me so far? great. now lets talk about editing.
when i make manips for this story, the first place i look for screencaps is the teen wolf page on screencapped.net. if the images there don't suffice, i sometimes take my own screencaps from the mega app (as the quality there is 1080p anyway).
but for screencaps of timothée, the only project of his i have downloaded in good quality is call me by your name. i take my own caps from there on occasion, but normally i prefer the screencaps on one of timothée's fansites, timothee-chalamet.net.
on this website, i can get timothée screencaps from almost all of his projects, which include call me by your name, hot summer nights, miss stevens, and one & two. (these four films are my main sources for noel content.)
once i find a screencap from teen wolf and one from a timothée project that can work together, i open the app superimpose x and start editing.
superimpose x does cost quite a bit of money ($4.99 to be exact), but i got it when it first launched when they offered it for free for a limited time. it is well worth the money if you enjoy making edits of any kind, and if i had to pay the $4.99 to continue to use the app, i definitely would.
however since i know some people may want to make edits themselves and spending $4.99 on an app isn't realistic, picsart is a completely free alternative app that can do the same things (and more i've been told) just as well as superimpose x does. i personally prefer superimpose x's design and execution, but if picsart works better for you, please feel free to use that instead! save yourself some money!
so anyway lets walk through the making of a simple edit! i'll be using this one from 2x06 to demonstrate.
so first thing's first, i load up superimpose x and import my two screencaps (the cap from teen wolf on the first layer, the cap from call me by your name in this case on the second).
after the screencaps are loaded, i use the mask tool and trace around the screencap of timmy until he's the only thing in the layer. everything around him is gone, and he blends into the teen wolf scene behind him. then i go into the filter tab and edit the coloring of either screencap until they match, because as you can see below, the screencaps look completely different without coloring edits.
after i've made an edit i'm happy with, i'll add a filter in polarr. polarr is a free app that produces some of the best filters i've ever seen, but lately the app has been giving people problems and pushing its fans away as a result. i recommend polarr if you don't mind the annoying new interface, but if not, i also like the apps vsco, linecamera, and afterlight (not free) for filters.
once a manip has a filter on, it's ready to go! sometimes i don't even add filters, as you'll see in an edit for 3x02 which is coming out in a couple of weeks. i'm sure you can find other edits of mine that aren't filtered, but that's just one off the top of my head.
all that being said, i think it's time for me to sign off. i'm really sorry if you were expecting to see the season three premiere this week, but hey, all good shows have hiatuses between seasons, right?
you can rest easy knowing that as of right now, when i post this, i have all of 3x01 and 3x02 written, edited, and ready for posting. i'm also almost done writing 3x03 as well, and those will be coming out consistently every monday for the next three weeks. so if you have nothing else to look forward to on mondays, at least you get noel!
also before i go, i really want to thank all my new readers. this story started picking up some traction a couple weeks ago and has been steadily cruising ever since, and last week's season two finale actually hit 100 reads (and in just five days no less) which is something that hasn't happened since i posted the season two premiere back in january. i have tons of love for everyone that reads this story and loves noel just as much as i do.
with that i'll let you all go. i hope you all tune in on monday august 20th for the season three premiere, and then again on august 27th for the episode that i've actually gotten the most enjoyment out of writing throughout this whole series (aside from maybe 2x12 or 1x07...)
lots of love,
noah. ♡