[Equilibrium vid] Words of the Dead

[permetaform]

(I would recommend using VLC Player to play the vid, it's free; or if you stil have problems playing the vid you can look at this guide.)



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Words of the Dead | .avi (720x480, 29.9mb)
_{Source: Equilibrium
Song: "The Chemicals Between Us", by Bush
Summary: Preston's dead haunts him still (always).}

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Thanks: Much love to morgandawn, lierdumoa, and laurashapiro, for betas and audiencing and encouragement.


Chemicals Between Us by Bush

I want you to remember
A love so full
it could send us all ways

I want you to surrender
All my feelings rose today

And I want you to remain
The power of children can amaze
I'll try not to complain

I know that's a pisser baby

The chemicals between us
The walls that lie between us
Lying in this bed

The chemicals displaced
There is no lonelier state
Than lying in this bed

I want you to remember
Everything you said
Every driven word

Like a hammer
Held to my head

The chemicals between us
The walls that lie between us
Lying in this bed

The chemicals displaced
There is no lonelier face
Than lying in this bed

The chemicals between us
The chemicals between us
Lying in this bed

We're of the hollow men
We are the naked ones
We never meant you harm
Never meant you wrong

And I'd like to thank
All of my
lovers
lovers
lovers
lovers
lovers
lovers

The chemicals between us
The army of achievers
Lying in this bed

The chemicals displaced
There is no lonelier state
Than lying in this bed

The chemicals between us
The chemicals between us
Chemicals

The chemicals between us


Notes: This vid took both forever and 2 months. Or rather, 2 months stretched over the course of a year. I...gah, I give up. This really should've been done in Adobe After Effects, but I was crazy and stubborn and in the end too lazy to redo my work elsewhere.

My computer had it's revenge tho, in massive export problems. Fun times.

One of the most interesting problems was attempting to make the lyrics more audible with certain cuts. Dunno if the solutions succeeded, but it was an entertaining experiment in any case. Other interesting problems include trying to include massive amounts of relationships in only 4 min., the solution as near as I could make it is to basically have an intro section the length of an entire verse and chorus (PLUS the intro). Usually I'd only story intro during the song's intro, but the world I was trying to include was too big.

I...really really don't want to imagine attempting to remaster this sucker. ::facepalm:: Or at least, not before the next evolution of whatever programs' gonna replace After Effects. Because honestly: way. too. tedious.

I think...this is actually the first vid I posted this year. Wow, I'm lagging. ::wryyyyy::

_{[main vid index]}

Comments

[astolat]

AAAaaA GODDAMN YOUUUU NOW I FINALLY HAVE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE. rarr.

Spectacular. I so want to know how you did the effects -- did you actually hand-edit frame by frame to insert Sean Bean into those scenes? I have already gathered some sense of the movie via fannish osmosis, and the song choice is perfect; the intercutting of the snowglobe and the book of poetry (even while I'm probably missing some significance) leading up to the gunshot is just fantastic. Also, I love that one shot of the martial arts practice -- something about that is just perfect, and the one shot where Bale is on his knees crying out on "lovers" before the final fight sequence with Sean Bean's ghost at his side.

(PS: I just rewatched Welcome Home also after seeing this several times, and that vid still makes me get all teary every single time.)

[permetaform]

HEEE!! I FEEL NO SHAME; YOUR BOOK MADE ME CRY FOUR SEPARATE TIMES.

Heh, actually I 'cheated' for most of the effects; Sean Bean was actually in most of those scenes. I don't trust myself to edit frame by frame and be able to maintain a smooth motion with any degree of accuracy. Instead I took the basic glow effect (opacity 30%, brightness/contrast +35ish, blue tint) and constrained it with a 16 pt. garbage matte around Sean Bean...then I keyframed it so that the glowy area followed him when he moved. I tried to keep the scenes out of context (when I needed it out of context) by changing the color...most of the golden sections where Bean was following Bale were originally blue, and thus hopefully unrecognizable at casual glance. (and the slight-of-hand via fast cutting helped as well =D )

In a couple areas I took the Sean Bean from the previous clip and extended it a bit, with a bit of the bottom-non-blurred portion on the layer beneath it. The non-blurred portion has a layer that's just the edge, with gaussian blur, because Premiere is stupid and doesn't let you blur the edge of your garbage matte.

the snowglobe-gunshot sequence is one of my faves...possibly because it worked with the least amount of anguish ::wryyy:: ditto with the 'lovers' sequence.

The martial arts practice was actually a later clip when I stared at the vid and realized I wasn't adding enough 'world' to it. After a certain amount of teeth gnashing I found the clip and went yay!

(::awed and pleased:: I'm very glad that Welcome Home stands up to repeated viewings and that you found it to be emotionally effective. I try to make my vids emotionally accessible, so it's awesome to hear you find it works for you on that level)