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.

A Compromise and Delicate Balance, Maybe, and That's Final

As I wrote before about what I've been calling The Retro Project but which is actually an entry for Simon Holland (aka Carrillion)'s 80's Bedroom Tape Compilation my original intention for this cassette based song was to only include vocals by the Speak n' Spell.

Currently, I have used up 3 of the 4 tracks available to me.  I like the song so far, but it sounds thin on content when I'm used to using 20-30 tracks for a song.  If I worked with 4 tracks everyday, I'd have a different attitude, but considering what I'm used to, it's hard to adapt.

The only thing I had planned for track 4 was the Speak n' Spell.  I've decided to crank up the Casio MT-540 again, which has a peculiar "sound effect" section, in that it contains sounds identical to the video game "Galaxian" in addition to the "natural" sounds that don't sound natural at all.  I'm thinking to add at least one sound effect from there to the vocal track with the Speak n' Spell.  But I still don't think it's enough. So I'll probably end up adding vocals of the traditional variety.  I was originally going to use an old poem, but with the lyrics from the Speak n' Spell, I need something different.

As such I started working on some lyrics.  I want to fill it with 80s references, to suit the theme of the project.  Having recently seen Cars 2 for the first time, the first thing I thought of was the Yugo.  Although the car was around for a little while longer, it's really a kind of mid 80s phenomena, meaning, my song is going to be a faux mid 80s song.

So, of course I had to have a shopping mall reference and I couldn't leave New Coke out, and given people's negative feelings toward that product, it's a negative reference.  Keeping with the beverage theme, we also have some wine coolers.

I struggled to figure out which band to name check.  I considered the Smiths and New Order, but settled on the Cure.  I'd have preferred to go with New Order, but I needed something with two syllables.  Such is the way with song lyrics (and poetry).

I didn't have one, because my family had an Apple IIe, but I knew a guy who ran a BBS at the time, using one of two Commidore 64s he had.  BBS was a kind of proto internet for those who don't know.  He also had two phone lines, one was dedicated to the BBS.  Not to get too Geeky, I also included a cyborg reference, because the first Terminator movie had been recently released to much popular acclaim.

This stuff is all fine and dandy but I wanted to punch up the drama a bit, and what was more dramatic in the mid 80s than the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  I set the song's dramatic conclusion against the doomed space flight.  Like Kennedy for an earlier generation, Americans always remember how they heard about the Challenger explosion.

One thing I really wanted to avoid was the kind of self-consciousness I witnessed in the movie The Wedding Singer, which did things like referencing a Van Halen breakup in retrospective faux foreshadowing.  Nothing takes you out of the moment like those kinds of hindsight induced references.  In contrast, I wanted to write lyrics that sound like they could be from the mid 80s but super timely.  I did not want lyrics that sounded like they were written in 2012, as they were.

It's a delicate balance, actually.  Of course, you'll be the ultimate judge of my success.