Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Challenge of the Challenger



I just recently finished the video for I See You (I am Empty) and the making of the video went very smoothly, for the most part, hence I have very little to write about the experience.  The most obvious problem I had making this video, which was obvious long before I even started, was that the main source was analog audio without a time code.  This was exacerbated by the fact the the video was produced as a videoSong, meaning, the actual recording of the song had to be incorporated into the video.  I didn't stand a chance of getting true sync for this footage.  The sync is okay though, not actually too bad.  I had to incorporate some cuts that weren't part of my original plan, because some of the imagery started to creep out of sync with the audio.  By making a cut, I could re-align the errant images.



Another thing that was not part of my original plan was to make visual references to the lyrics (like when I say "Yugo" you see a Yugo on the screen).  This came about because, after I started cutting away from the performances, I thought the video got a little dull.  My original idea was that you would see each of the four tracks performed in their entirety, to really see how the song was made.  Once I started cutting, I became selective and started cutting away more, to "justify" the necessary cuts and make them look more intentional.

Most of the added imagery was pretty much predictable and workman like, with one exception, the Space Shuttle Challenger.  It was challenging, for sure.



You can actually download footage of the tragedy on NASA's website.  I watched it a few times and considered including it.  But it seems so wrong to me.  I know I included a reference in the song, and that felt genuine, I mean, I remember it, it seems valid to talk about my experience of it.  In contrast, it would be weird if I wrote a song about experiencing the Kennedy Assassination, since I wasn't yet born, unless I was working in some historical fiction context.

In referencing it, I'm still telling my story.  But if I was to use the footage, suddenly, I'm no longer telling my story, I'm telling an American story about people who are not with us anymore.  It stops being about the witness.  And it seems wrong to do that in a song about a guy dating a robot.  And if it's not wrong, it's very distracting, overshadowing the fictional drama I'm writing about with events that actually happened.

Since many of my visual cues are still images, I decided to go that route and the image of the shuttle I chose is not even the Challenger, but the Space Shuttle Atlantis.  And rather than give it an abstract "flight" path like most of the other sprites in the video, I gave the still image of the shuttle a realistic path.  However, at the top of the screen, when the lyrics describe the explosion, the image of the shuttle just fades away and disappears and it's so much more effective than the real footage would have been. IMO

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and I explained why I couldn't use the actual footage.  But as a result of not using the real thing, I came up with something even better, for my purposes.  The challenge of the Challenger, resolved.

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