Two good days. I had a full day yesterday steadily working on a new video for Islands of Memory, a lovely relaxing tune from Synaesthesia. Years ago I made a video for this, just after I made Challenger, and it was very similar to that, but that video didn't exist in high definition, and also the bright colours and technological-look didn't suit the music as well as it did for Challenger. I thought about doing a new high definition remake, so I began with the idea of memory and images looming out of a fog. The key with these videos is to consider how it makes you feel and what the feelings mean, from that a story can be made.
The video starts in a sepia mist, the mist of time, we could be in a brain. Images fade into existence and out again like shadows along a ghostly pathway. The storyboard called for silhouettes but I quickly thought that real old photographs would be much more evocative, and be much more visually interesting, so I assembled 37 or so, a timeline from my past from childhood to now. I added some sparks of light when the pizzicato strings appear, and some shapes of green light to correspond with the main lead; this is an echo of the first version.
As the colour scheme was broadly a coffee-fog sort of brown, I thought of my old digital images for palette guidance, like Sardt below; lights of green and pink which seemed to work better than blues.
The intro needed something, so I added a glowing embryo which seemed to match the angelic voices which appear.
Finally, I thought of a finishing touch. The video fades to darkness, as the music fades to peace, but I thought it would be nice to add an element of afterlife or rebirth, as this fits the next track in the album, so I added a tiny twinkling speck of a distant star, tantalising us in the distance. A few millisecs before the end it shoots forwards to emblazon the screen with pure white.
I'm really pleased with it all so far. I've made some program changes to Argus too, now on v1.07, all tweaks to make certain aspects easier. Here is a screenshot from the video. Each of the glowing objects is an instrument playing:
