Mini-DVD Meme

[thuviaptarth]

Lifted from chaila and nicole_anell:

Pick any section of a vid or a paragraph or any passage less than 500 words from any fanfic I've written and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet of what I was thinking when I made or wrote it, why I wrote it, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the vid or fic, and anything else you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Comments

[such_heights]

Ooh! Can I cheat slightly and nominate whatever your favourite section of Etheric Messages is?

A picture is worth a thousand words

[thuviaptarth]

Oh, that's hard to say! I still like all of the vid. But I'll go with the section from 0:56-1:10, which begins with the thunderstorm sound and the end of Olivia putting out lights with the power of her mind until the end of the universes colliding section.

I started the vid with no idea of what I was going to do with the rain sounds and then when I ran out of other immediately obvious things I thought, "Fuck! What am I going to do with rain?" I can't remember whether I was walking around brooding or rewatching the episodes when I realized the show had conveniently provided me with sections of great emotional and thematic import that occurred during rainstorms. It was so easy! I had to nudge the bit with lightning to get it placed just right but the charred double bodies went down perfectly the first time.

It also includes the end of only AE work in the entire vid, which is the lights overlaid on Olivia's face and then Olivia's face fading dimly to blue. Originally I'd intended to do a lot of effects work on this -- I wanted to split and double Olivia and have her cross over into herself, to play with the themes of the alternate universe and the divided and doubled self. (Little did I know!) But I forgot about it while putting clips down and by the time I remembered/consulted my notes, I liked what I had down enough to keep it.

Anyway, I did most of the layers work in Premiere--more layers than I ended up using AE to massage, and there actually is a clip in the show of Olivia's reflection on the lights that is almost exactly what I needed. But I wanted the fade to match the music and still give you Olivia's expression, and neither the show nor what I could do easily in Premiere quite worked, so I did the masking and fading in AE.

I am also hugely fond of Jones disappearing into Walter's equations -- well, of the tracker opening up on the equations pinned to wire and the hole between worlds and Jones disappearing into a gap in the world and Walter's equations. Walter's troubled look. He appears in glimpses at other times in the vid, but this is the only time you see his face in full, with long enough to take in that troubled expression, the expression of regret. That is where he belonged in the story of Olivia's powers and violation.

Then the multiverse section -- the flute and the ending of the rain made me think of sun, illumination, pretty blues; I was going to do more with textures originally, a yellow thread uncurling in blue water, but it went the way of my other effects plans. Instead I thought of the clouds clearing to show the sun, the illumination of knowledge: so you get the text of the book, the branching path on the chalkboard, the snow globes smashed, the blue liquid in the tube spilled, the tower in the sun. Which you might not think of as "bright," because it expresses danger and catastrophe, but it's the revealing of knowledge, the illumination of understanding. Things coming together, patterns coming clear.

I always knew I wanted to combine the chalkboard, the liquid, and the snow globes, the World Trade Center. Worlds parting and colliding. I did a little coloring to make all the World Trade Center sections match -- one of them was orange, but the other two weren't, and I wanted strong coloring to convey that they were connected to each other the way the clips with the liquid tube or the the clips with the snow globe were connected. Fringe kindly provided all the lens flares and brightenings, though.

Re: A picture is worth a thousand words

[such_heights]

Oh this is awesome, thanks a lot for sharing! I am even more impressed than usual at the depth of thought that goes into your vids.

Re: A picture is worth a thousand words

[thuviaptarth]

:D Thank you!

[chaila]

I will shock you and pick the section of "Riot Act" that starts around 1:35.

[thuviaptarth]

I am shocked by the section! Which for most of the vid was "the blank space between Riley's suicide attempt at 1:34 and Jesse's kiss-slap at 1:54 that I need to fill." It's not that what's there is random, it's just that it tended to be the place in the timeline where I put things that I wanted in the vid but didn't know where.

Starting off with John's kiss to the forehead is supposed to parallel Jesse's kiss at 1:54: they're both Judas kisses, I'll take care of you from people who already know they're going to use her. (The clips are probably too far apart for the parallelism to work -- astolat told me when we were working on "Black, Black Heart" that visual parallels don't tend to work unless the clips are next to each other. They also work well when they're placed in conjunction with repeating lyrics, I think, but I haven't gotten that kind of consistent lyrical-visual structure down yet. Someday!)

There's a lot of Jesse beckoning Riley in the cave -- I wanted to emphasize that this is what led Riley here, the girl in the hospital bed was beckoned there by Jesse in the tunnels, the girl whose face Jesse lifted up was set on John Connor in the car "ready or not" (not). "So loud it's quiet" -- it took me a long time to figure out this bit, and I'm not sure it gives the viewer enough context to identify the scenes, but it's John leaving Riley's bedroom after the discussion about the bear poster, when he realizes she's from the future, and then Jesse drawing a curtain to hide Riley from possible watchers when Riley visits her on her own. Again, it's the betrayal by both John and Jesse -- they are focused on their plans and reactions, not her. John abandons her, Jesse hides her. And they're the friendly ones, not the ones Riley didn't even know to prepare for: Cameron, Sarah. Indifferent nurse flipping a clipboard closed, Jesse in disguise doing the same. Then Riley fighting back, but against the wrong mother -- and of course it's a stand-in for Jesse, it's a precursor to Riley's attack on Jesse. It's desperate and it's stupid and she wants to survive. It's another suicide attempt and she wants to die. It's a demand for truth and she wants Jesse to be for real. She's fighting for something.

I didn't have a really clear idea of what this section should be; the thematic stuff above is true, but hindsight. I mean, it's stuff I felt, but mostly stuff I hadn't verbalized. I was mostly focused on the physical movement, I was trying to figure out how to get the viewer's eye to go where I wanted, and on the emotional movement from suicide to fighting. And throughout the vid I had the background sense of wanting to parallel Jesse and John and to show how Riley's past as a tunnel rat shadowed her entire life in the pre-nuclear "present" day.

It's odd, when I started the vid I thought Jesse was more responsible for Riley's death than John was and when I finished it I thought they were equally responsible, and now I'm back to blaming Jesse more again. I'll have to see how I feel on rewatching the show.

[chaila]

What I find really interesting about this is that focus on physical movement and visuals leads, even if somewhat unintentionally or subconsciously, to some really great meta. Because for me, 1:35 to 1:40 or so is absolutely STARTLING in the clarity of its indictment of John. Because the focus on physical movement is intercut between Jesse and John, so the effect is that John kisses her on the forehead and then not just leaves, but leaves her to Jesse and Jesse's plan, through his refusal to reach out, he leaves her vulnerable to Jesse's reaching out, because Jesse's the only one who is. And John doesn't just abandon her in her bedroom with the bear poster, he walks away and leaves her alone in a hotel room with Jesse, who walls her in. The context is important too, if you know that's the scene with the bear poster when he figures it out, but I think the startling bit of it is the physical movement itself, and the way that physical movement very directly connects John's abandonment of Riley and Jesse's penning her in. To me, it just seems so visually clear that Jesse's plan resulted in Riley's death only because of John's enabling; John could have stopped it any time but he didn't, he walked away and didn't just leave her, but specifically left her to Jesse, multiple times. (Which isn't to say John is more responsible than Jesse, but I think it's an indictment to say that he's even equally responsible).

Which, okay, is a lot of words for what's about five seconds of vid but the effect of it is a really powerful meta point, and I think it's pretty fascinating that it sounds like maybe that wasn't exactly where your specific intention was? Vidding ftw.