Sunday, March 15, 2015

End of the World in Fort Worth - Take II

There was no additional video but the clips I used in the one I uploaded earlier were normalized for approximate time of day by playing with various lighting effects.  The flow through the end of the world part is novel and now it's generally consistent.  The length is holding at two minutes and there's always the temptation to go off to get better clips but the words about it were pretty swell from the only actual Fort Worth resident I know who has actually seen it.  This version may hold just as it is.

There was a suggestion earlier that I need lasers and a puff of smoke or some type of visual for when the innocent people of Fort Worth get vaporized.  I'm not convinced as it's highly mystical if something disappears right in front of you, so long as the music tells it right.  Conversely, gratuitous visual whizbang sells a lot of popcorn so why not give those cowboys a blast of heavenly laser and fry those damn sinners.  I'm mixed as it would look cool but I lean toward the mystical for now.  It depends on how it goes with the music and it's about time to get cracking on that.


The object isn't to try to compete with Werner Herzog but it would be pretty cool if this were anything close to an Ed Wood video.  Werner Herzog is a major and respected artist but so is Ed Wood in a bit of a different way.  I respect both of them and equivalency really doesn't mean anything to me, they have visions and they make them happen.

Take Ed Wood back to those lasers and what would he do.  I don't want to imitate him but my budget is the only video budget that was ever less than his so I'm interested in his approach.  I'm not going to do spaceships on strings, tho ... or ... well ... why not.  There's doing things because they're cool for what you're making and then there's overtly retro ... the latter is guaranteed to be crap.


Take II has got an older video with big laser effects tacked onto the End of the World part to show me how this Wizard of Oz bit really goes.  I was satisfied with the visual bang as that is spectacular.  In the last segment of driving down the road there's now a growing Twilight Zone effect that makes the road become something of The Matrix with a similar green.  From that ... boom ... big lights, lasers, and lots of noise.

The change is not satisfying as it doesn't make sense without the intro to build up to it.  As a schematic, you drive quietly down the road, it turns green, and suddenly everything blows up.  Well, ok, but wtf just happened.  There needs to be some musical 'tension' that's resolved by the big bang or it becomes philosophically the same as the actual Big Bang.  Yeah, it looked really cool ... but what did it.

(Ed:  physicists just need a better soundtrack?)

Right.

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