I’ve always wanted to create a Dallas TV Show parody of the British TV Soap Opera Crossroads. Being in lockdown due to COVID19 and wanting to learn video editing software created some time for me to do this. This is the final product:
How It Was Made
The most challenging thing to me was creating a parody, keeping to the original feel of the show, and I, of course, felt a sense of responsibility not to upset the many fans out there.
Technical
I used two video software programs to make this video, Aimersoft and Adobe Premiere Pro.
In Aimersoft I cut out chunks of clips from episodes that I would use in the parody. I had to transfer them from 4:3 to 16:9 aspect ratio format so it would have a modern feel about them. Many of the episodes didn’t really pass the quality check so I had to abandon them.
In Adobe Premiere Pro I performed most of the editing. I hadn’t really used the software before, apart from very basic stuff, and I had never been on a training course, so it was fairly challenging. Parts of Premiere Pro was easy to learn, some weren’t as there are so many options all over the place.
Clips
Deciding what clips from the shows I should use were extremely challenging. There were over 4,800 episodes to choose from. I had to decide what were the most prominent moments in the soap opera’s history:
- The Motel fire
- Nutty Rosemary trying to kill David Hunter
- The Christmas sing-a-long
- Farewell to Meg
Then I wanted to include as many true actors that were loved by the fans. Crossroads was prominently linked to Noelle Gordon and Jane Rossington to me, they were the show, so they feature heavily in my parody.
Extra Bits
I didn’t just want to include the actual edited Dallas theme in itself, I thought about some extras. So I included the ATV logo to start off, modifying it from 4:3 to 16:9 worked out really well.
In many episodes of American soap operas, prior to the intro theme, there is a “what’s going to happen in this weeks show” teaser, at least there was back in the early days of Dallas, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest. So, I decided to include my own mash of moments from particular episodes, mainly to the events that led up to the Motel fire.
How Long Did It Take?
It took roughly 30 hours to make. Most of that time was taken up by finding and editing clips from the shows and learning Premiere Pro. Luckily, YouTube is a good resource for mini-training videos, I totally couldn’t have completed the end product as quickly as I did.
In Conclusion
I am totally not happy with the video. I think I’m a total perfectionist and could have done so much better in various spots. But, I did learn so much and this has given me the inspiration to produce other videos.