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!