breakdown - part III, the capo so, the third and final installment. i was a bit unsure of what i was going to do for thane's section as i felt it might almost be a bit of a let down if i didn't do something cool, and i had no idea what cool thing i could do.
i had wanted to use the quote about friendship somewhere and had orginally thought of putting it at the end of thane's section. i knew at the end i wanted to bring everything (everybody), back together again - to punctuate the family theme. i thought the quote would be a good way to do it.
but then i realized i had setup this precedent of starting the films with a quote - and as much as i tried to find one that i thought could work, i kept coming back to the friendship quote. so i put it in - and it worked perfectly with the music. the music doesn't actually end at that point btw, i edited it down. but its a natural stopping point, being as its the end of the melodic theme.
another interesting thing about the quote - i actually just watched the first two godfather films over thanksgiving (kimberly had never seen them). that quote wasn't in either. apparently its said by the don to johnny (im assuming fontaine), but its not in the original version of the movie. its in the book i believe, and perhaps is in an extended version? but its all over the net as one of the godfather quotes.
once i had decided to call thane the capo, the famous clemenza quote fit right in (clemenza was a capo in the corleone family). and it was short enough to work perfectly with the intro of the tears for fears song.
'everybody wants to rule the world,' is a piece of music that has definite beats and emphasis. in fact the whole ebb and flow of the music is predicated on the punctuations of the main chords. so i had to cut to the music - something i love doing as i am also a musician.
although surprisingly many of the shots naturally lined up with the music without much effort - the bpm of this song matched neatly with the rhythm of thane's riding, there were a couple of times i had to help it out. most noticably is during this scene:
you may not have noticed it the first time - but if you actually just watch thane's body when you watch this cut, you'll clearly see how i sped up his crash - just for a few frames as hits the water.
interestingly, the original footage then got shaky as the boat slowed down and the camera moves quite a bit. when i sped up the film from the apex of his jump just to his entering the water, even tho it comes back to normal speed, it all looked ridiculously fast because of the camera movement at the end of the shot. so instead of coming back to normal speed, which the shot started at, i come back into slow motion - which made it all look normal speed. funny what
the brain interpolates.
im especially happy with the sequence that begins at the bridge of the song here:
i really like the way the guitar chords and the three jumps come together.
at the end of the video, when thane slides the wake, i go to slow-motion and black and white here:
when i first did this i just had it go to monochrome - but the original footage is so blown out color-wise it almost is black and white already, so i also slightly dimmed the scene. i wanted to get that faded photograph look, a feeling of wistfulness, of reminescence.
finally, im an really happy with the way it all came together at the end. as i said before, i had thought about using the friendship quote at the end, and since i had put it at the begining i wasn't sure what i was going to do.
i knew i wanted to bring everyone together. i
originally thought about doing the crime scene photo idea - four black and white pics of each rider frozen mid-ride, perhaps accompanied by sounds of gunshots. but that seemed a bit to mafia, criminal-like. i was more interested (obviously), in the familia aspect. so i decided on moving photographs.
once i had built this scene:
with the four sources, i realized it needed something textual to pull it all together. at first i was just thinking of the title "la familia," but then i hit on repeating the main part of the front quote - and thats when it all (for me at least), really came together and put a perfect ending on it all.
one interesting discovery from making this scene was that the frames still look good elongated horizontally. not so much vertically, but you'll notice if you look closely that the upper right image of kimberly and the lower right image of mark and tim are both squeezed vertically, but not horizontally, yet they still look good.
well, hope you enjoyed viewing these as much as i enjoyed making them. i hope others will also give us the insight on how they made their films.
cheers
christopher
(Message edited by deepstructure on November 29, 2003)