When I have these urges, it is in my best interest to grab them and see where it leads me (Unintentional innuendo count: 1). My greatest weakness as a creative mind is drawing on motivation and time to help me create with more regularity than a polar shift. I've tried a variety of methods, the desire to "try a method" comes and goes like the tides with enough occurrences to create a "variety." For awhile, more so when I was younger, I thought the only way to really create something amazing was through a big bang of inspiration. The people that created incredible things simply had it manifest in their imagination with such vividness it simply burns in the blueprints of its own creation. Now, knowing a little better, I call the pursuit "forcing a revelation." Engineering those glassy eyed moments in stories that obliterate all mental obstacles through sheer comprehension, galvanizing our protagonist to reach a new level of personal existence.
Out of all the methods I've tried, music has been something of a beacon of hope for me. I can always return to my musical collection to find dozens of scenes, images, emotions, worlds, and all inbetween concepts infused in the beats. Instead of many others, keeping myriads of notebooks, I have the files cluttered in my own head. Music is connected with these "files," able to dredge them up from wherever they are stuffed at the time. I have on many occasions gone back through my musical collection, digging for some inspiration, and coming out of it with a scene or image I had forgotten. Like the charmer luring the snake out of the basket, in a way. Other times, I may come upon a song that I had nothing to attribute to in the past, but now have something to apply to it.
For the record, I listen predominately to electronic. My tastes are eclectic, starting from there. I enjoy music that fits with scenes. Music that leaves a bit of bend to what it can mean or how it can apply. These scenes do not always manifest immediately upon hearing the music. For the most part, I enjoy the music to such a degree I try to create something that fits with it. The pacing of the music as pronounced in an in motion sequence.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDqrB6vg_tI
When I first heard this song, I was too busy enjoying it for its raw sounds than to apply anything to it. But the more I listened to it, the more I wanted it apart of something. Like a director pulling out all his favorites songs and rapidly going over his scripts, trying to find where the beats best fit. Changing scenes to match with them, in some cases.
Pardons, I find my vocabulary is limited in describing how a song makes me feel. It has... texture. Its in the beat, obviously, but there are so many little details blended into the overarching theme that it makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly why and where something makes me see a certain whatever. Yes, that was perfectly eloquent.
Anyway, the song has a time line. It builds, it changes in tempo and power as it progresses. It can easily be fit to a scene. To movement. You only need apply a context that fits properly with the character of the song. A scene that is potent. There is nothing worse than scenes that are overtaken by the music. You require subtext for the scene to have that much "oomph," which means you require a past. The song feels like an end. Not a climax, per se, but the ride on the blastwave of one. The song feels happy, too. Upbeat.
Now, after listening to the song here and there over the weeks and turning over visions in my head, I might be pretty established in what I want this song to represent. What it is "bound" to. Now, whenever I listen to this song in particular, that scene will start to play in my head. Some qualities stay consistent, while others shift with each new play. The ones I like, stay, the ones that don't strike me, generally fade away. Dozens of songs are records in this sense, holding visions that I chip away at.
I have tried to actually transcribe these scenes into text, but has proven to be... difficult. This is either due to an inherent flaw through the translation or I need to keep picking at it. The last attempt I made at this transcription seemed to come along well enough, using direct timestamps to describe what I was imagining visually. The problem began when I started to reach parts that were muddy in my head, which told me to wait on finishing it until I could create further mental revisions. Whatever the case, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTw2YvutJRA
And my attempt:
This track struck me as an action sequence. It has the right tempo and enough variation to create a fluid progression in a physical scene. It has the flavor of sound that fits with my most enjoyed world.
Scene awakens (black to full image) to a ground view of a train graveyard with tracks holding derelict metal monsters. The machines might have been a proper colorat one point, instead falling to a disused mixture of speckled black and rust similar to the wind tickled weeds poking up from the gravel. Our focus character drops a black, buckled boot down the center of the image, walking at a brisk pace. Scene blinks when focus character is up to hip exposed. Scene blinks to hide between train engines, showing only between the focus characters waist and chin as he passes through the shot. The shot lingers to sound off a metal groan coming from “around” the camera before blinking again.
0:00-0:22 Blink brings shot to show the back of the focus characters head as it bobs downwards off the shot, revealing what this railway leads towards. A large, seemingly busy depot out in the distance planted in the center of an alpine region. The depot is a simple, expansive building, looking more like a large gray square squished down into the earth with a series of angular openings sprouting cranes and communication towers. Scene fades
0:22-0:49 Scene awakens. View is pulling back slowly, showing a large square entrance into the depot. Cranes and workers are busy in the foreground. Focus character blocks out the scene briefly as he walks through the lens, moving into the depot along the center railway. Scene blinks to show everything above his thighs. His face is impassive, his skull buzzed down to bristles. Someone shouts and the focus character regards something off camera. Scene blinks to behind the shoulder of a generic fatigued guard standing at the lip of the concrete above the railway. He is aiming a rugged, blunt nosed rifle readied at the focus character. Another guard appears on the other side of the railway, a similar weapon drawn. They shout again. The character looks between the guards and the scene blinks to the front of the character, holding out his arms in mock proof he is unarmed. His eyes are amused, like a child with a secret.
0:49-1:19 The scene blinks to show the guard looking up at the same moment a massive metal object plows through the upper wall of the depot. Time stops, blurred by the sudden, violent action. Time unfreezes and the scene blinks to show the full length of a rusted engine hammer the guard into nothing. Time is slow, showing off every detail of shattering concrete flying in all directions and the distorted groan of stressed metal. The engine tilts forward, deciding between toppling over or falling backwards into the wall it came through. The scene blinks to the other guard, staring over his lowering rifle butt in startled awe. Another burst of howling metal and shattering wall blot out the scene as the guard is flattened under the nose of another sieging train (0:59). The scene blinks to show the focus character standing between the uneasy monoliths, his arms still outstretched in the same position. The scene blinks briefly to show his expression again, unchanged, before blinking back to the previous scene. Time has ceased to slow, the trains creak and groan groggily. The scene blinks to view the side of the focus character, maintaining the left side train as the focus of the shot and following the train as the character drops his arms to the side and shoves them forward, immediately causing distanced onlookers to scatter in panic.
1:19-1:33 The scene blinks to a bird’s eye view of the cacophony. Figures in olive are running in all directions, evading the rolling engines and rocketing debris. The scene blinks to a klaxon, vibrating from its alarm.
(At this point I am becoming tired, so I will try and do what more I can. The scene angles will likely not be as precise or missing entirely. I will try and correct this later.)
1:33-1:50 The scene blinks back to the figure, arms still outstretched as return fire buzzes and skirts around his frame, some clearing veering off course. The scene blinks to the focus characters eyes as he surveys the chaos. The scene blinks to show what he is seeing: hunkered down guards attempting to use cover to get closer. The scene blinks back to face the focus character, panning to show a guard drifting from out behind a crate and making a full leap at the focus character, a combat knife in hand. A grating groan of twisted metal dampens all other sound and the guard is swiftly decapitated by an uprooted rail segment.
1:50-2:13 The next scene blinks rapidly as more rail segments are torn free, rotating and spinning around the focus character. The weapons fire has become less chaotic and sporadic, slipping into a constant blizzard of rounds. The focus character launches a segment at a guard too far out of cover, crushing its ribcage against the adjacent engine. Another bar whips free and hammers a guards head down into his torso. The forms of brutality continue, all swift and final. The scene shifts quickly to imply the renewed chaos. Gun fire, metal against metal, the crunch of bone and meat shifting violently, guards yelling.
2:13-2:42 The immediate threats are gone, the scene flashing over the pictures of carnage before settling on our wide eyed focus character. His face locked in concentration, his lips barely holding back the betrayal of a smile. The segments, now smeared in blood and fragments of meat, return to swiveling around the focus character whom increases his pace down the main railway. The weapons fire continues, but in far more discouraged bursts. Figures come and go between cover, shadowed in the foreground.
This is where I run into a snag. I’m not sure where I want this to go or how I want it to end. I believe the solution is to create context and subtext for the situation, giving it meaning. I would need to define the character and what is going on, then. Which means I need to define the other parties involved here. As well as the world they are on.
Bahg.
No comments:
Post a Comment