Birthday present => new Lee/Kara Music Video: Lift
This is the day brokenmnemonic was born, the day the world became one good man richer :)
Happy Birthday my dear friend! I wish you to have a wonderful day! Remember how much you are loved and appreciated and to quote a famous song's lyrics - don't worry, be happy! :)
As a matter of fact, I didn't send you anything by mail - I wanted to give you this video as a ( Read more... )
Happy Birthday my dear friend! I wish you to have a wonderful day! Remember how much you are loved and appreciated and to quote a famous song's lyrics - don't worry, be happy! :)
As a matter of fact, I didn't send you anything by mail - I wanted to give you this video as a ( Read more... )
The pacing of your shots of Lee racing to the destruction of the Cylon mining colony is impeccable, and the footage looks better than I've seen it before - did you desaturate a little, to make it look crisper? The flash of Kara's eyes, distorted by some sort of luminescent effect around a flicker of the plot table help show the two of them tied together, as well as highlighting one of the few moments where we've seen Kara openly concerned for Lee.
There's an odd reverberation to the notes, and you've gone beyond just tieing the images to the echoing beat - you've made them pulse and flex in time to the reverberations, and I'm in awe of the way you've managed to embed smaller captures of shots; I particularly like the way you sow images of Lee, battered and bruised physically in colour on the right with images of Scar in grey and white and black, only to shift back to images from Scar in colour with monochrome images inset. You make the footage look not like one image with another overlaid, but rather a jagged jigsaw of interlaid images, the strongest images alone being given the full screen to play in, for flickering instants. That jagged interplay fits the two of them very well - interconnected, but so many sharp edges. I don't know how much of that is the chromakey extraction you did to pull the images out, and how much is intentional - but it works beautifully.
There's a shot around 1:21 of Kara dancing with Baltar, but looking away - I've not really looked hard at it before, but the way you use it here makes it feel like Kara's looking at Lee, and interwoven with images of her walking away it's a profoundly powerful shot, one that appears for just a brief instant but which seems to echo through the following shots.
There's such a contrast in the images beginning ar atound 1:40, where a sad refrain backed up by cutting imagery becomes instead an animated, excited shift to the two of them lifting each other up that it almost seems enough to doubt that the two of them can lift each other... the shift from the lighthearted shots, so many of them culled from S1 and the mini, to shots from later, of those jagged edges creeping back in... again, something that works beautifully. The images don't sit still for too long, and soon there are multiple images overlapping each other again, those jagged edges coming back. Nothing ever stays good with pilots forever, does it?
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He-he, the handcuffed hands, the palms that open up and let the butterfly/Viper fly free - is the only non-BSG clip I used in this video. :)
In terms of narrative this vid has a spiral-like structure, the story makes circles over and over again - and each time I try to dig dipper as if I was using a drill, going back and forth between seasons, drawing parallels in order to sharpen this debate. I tried to string the vid’s story on several themes like a theme of a never ending journey (a theme of road in other words) and a theme of freedom of choice (or lack thereof). I start from the brig where Lee and Kara are both kept in different periods of time and end it exactly there with them together. And of course it’s not a coincidence - but my deliberate choice; I knew from the beginning that I was going to use S4 brig scene in the end (fortunately you made it possible for me to use it’s extended version). So from the very start I wanted the viewer to have an opportunity to ask himself/herself all sorts of questions: whether pilots are morally free in their decisions that got them thrown behind the bars (around episodes 201/402) or it was all the great couple Plan and Destiny who stood behind it, how their personal journeys intertwine with one another, influence one another, whether L/K are meant to be or not and who is to decide it. And so on, there are no particular boundaries here, especially considering that some of the question the video might ask have more than one answer.
Is Kara (or Kara&Lee=>Humanity) “pregnant” with her internal drive for Earth because that’s who she is and who she wants to be or because it was rooted in her from the outside and she’s being manipulated like a puppet? What is Earth anyway?
That’s what I was asking myself (if not making the viewer ask himself) at such moments as 2:44-2:46, 3:06 etc… The 2:46 shot is one of my favorites, actually, because I tried to make it seem like Kara’s painting or writing the next step (next page of scriptures?) on the wall, and then Lee in her is the one to make her turn around, step aside and think of what she’s doing and what’s driving her, whether it’s conscious or not. In a few seconds I try to capture the essence of Demetrius mission’s personal meaning for Kara (and Lee)… Then I approach Lee’s path in a somewhat similar way, and technically the images are interspersed a lot of the times, they’re not meant to come together and create a clear picture during the first watch.
The pacing of your shots of Lee racing to the destruction of the Cylon mining colony is impeccable, and the footage looks better than I've seen it before - did you desaturate a little, to make it look crisper?
Thank you :) The footage looks better because I tried to change some codec settings while encoding the video. It took me half a night before your Birthday but at least now I don’t get as irritated at seeing this image quality as I was after my first four or five encoding attempts. Worst thing for a vidder except for having the hard drive with your project crash is to see your few months work result in shitty quality.
There's an odd reverberation to the notes, and you've gone beyond just tieing the images to the echoing beat - you've made them pulse and flex in time to the reverberations,
Oh I love those reverberation background sounds in the song, so I couldn’t help it - it was the most difficult part where I wanted to accentuate both lyrics and musical notes in the verse, and also the tastiest part. :)
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Oh, that “moving circles day to day” moment was one hell of a sequence to make. I think I got frustrated with it and shrugged it off twice or three times, then made myself come back again and again to change things and some elements to make it work.
I don't know how much of that is the chromakey extraction you did to pull the images out, and how much is intentional - but it works beautifully.
I pulled the images out and made them flow one after the other using motion effect, edge feather, opacity and some of the others but there’s no chroma key applied there.
I’m very glad you like this sequence and black and white manipulations! :) Every single second of it is thought-out and intentional.
There's a shot around 1:21 of Kara dancing with Baltar, but looking away - I've not really looked hard at it before
Yay! You’ve noticed :) *is joyful* I love this moment in S1, it’s so subtle and brief, it’s barely visible but speaks volumes. She sure as hell turns her head for a second and looks in Lee’s direction, while he’s standing right behind her and Baltar and watches them perplexed indecisive and unsure what to do (is it bad that I always want to spank and hug Lee at the same time when I see this scene? :) Silly silly kid. But I perfectly understand his perspective because I’m also very good at doing nothing hesitating and overthinking in similar situations).
but the way you use it here makes it feel like Kara's looking at Lee, and interwoven with images of her walking away it's a profoundly powerful shot, one that appears for just a brief instant but which seems to echo through the following shots.
Yes, and then there’s Lee who looks at her and also unwillingly walks away, and for a moment he’s touching his wings pinned to his uniform jacket in such a nervous gesture it makes me swallow hard, and the look on his face - altogether it breaks my heart. It’s like I can feel the cold of his wings through the skin of his fingers, the ribbed cold metal, just as cold as the day he placed similar wings on his brother’s shiny white coffin.
The images don't sit still for too long, and soon there are multiple images overlapping each other again, those jagged edges coming back. Nothing ever stays good with pilots forever, does it?
I’d say it’s an understatement :)
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