A propaganda video about the supervirus Daemon
Download the Video
Version J (May 16, 2004)
MPEG (50.6 MB, VCD Quality, 352x240)
RealVideo (8.2 MB, Low Quality, 320x240)
DVD (114 MB zipped, DVD Quality, 720x480)
Music Credits
"Ave Maria, Op. 52 No. 6" from the movie Fantasia
Written by Franz Schubert
Soloist: Julietta Novis
Description of the Video
This video was designed as a sort of propaganda piece that Daemon might send to a system to convince them of her "good intentions". The music was chosen not only to complement her gentleness and charisma, but also to contrast her ultimately destructive goals. It was also chosen to match the character's religious overtones. The video clips were selected to depict her as a kind person who wished no harm to anyone, so don't include scenes such as her battle with Hexadecimal or some of the more destructive shots of her influence spreading. Most of the clips have been slowed down at least 10-20%, some by as much as 90%. This contributes to the dreamy quality I was after for this project.
^ TOPIf You Are New To ReBoot
Daemon is a supervirus, probably the most powerful villain the people of Mainframe have ever faced. Other viruses in the show's past (Megabyte, Hexadecimal, Gigabyte) have always been presented as overt villains: monstrous beings with claws and evil leers. Daemon wasn't like this. She was sweet and likeable. She didn't subjugate people through fear. Instead, she would infect them with "The Word" and they would be brainwashed into her loyal followers. The obvious metaphor is that she was like a cult leader.
Each virus has their own motivations. Megabyte wanted power. Hexadecimal wanted chaos. Gigabyte wanted destruction. Daemon wants unity. She wishes to infect all the systems in The Net.
The word "chron" in the video refers to the type of virus she is. A chron virus infects many systems then at a predetermined time, something happens to all the systems (in this case, all of the system components start a countdown to their destruction). When she says "The Word is chron" that is her signal that the moment has arrived and all systems will be destroyed.
^ TOPThe Making of the Video
Daemon was a great villain and a video about her was one of my first ideas. This was also the first video I finished. It seemed like the perfect beginner project. The simplicity of the video design would allow me to get familiar with video editing concepts. And the fact that Daemon was in only four episodes gave me less material to sift through (ironically, that would turn out to be my biggest obstacle).
I wanted a religious song, so I was considering gospel or a hymn. Ave Maria is probably my favorite piece from Fantasia and once the idea occurred to me, I instantly felt it was the perfect piece. However there was one problem I didn't realize at the time: the song is five minutes long. The reason that is an issue becomes clear later.
After listening to the song a few times, I realized that the video should be one that honored Daemon, rather than one that gave a realistic depiction - a propaganda video. I figured I'd intersperse text about The Word with images of Daemon. I had the speech from her intro (I am Daemon, I am The Word, and so on) I axed the line about her being a supervirus, because that didn't fit the image I was trying to project. I also had her closing speech (...My time is now. The word is chron...). But I still needed filler between them. I wanted the scenes with AndrAIa, Matrix, and Mouse since they showed how she met violence with The Word. I kicked around various text for this sequence ("Some of you resist" "The Word is inevitable") but none of it clicked. Then I found the scene where Turbo says, "The Word brings peace" and I knew that was it. I hit on the rhythm of "The Word does not bring <bad thing>. The Word brings <good thing>."
Soon I began to see the problem with the piece of music I had selected. Daemon is in four episodes, so that's about 88 minutes of video. My rough notes show that her scene total only about 17 minutes. Of course, she's not on screen all the time, plus many of her scenes just don't work in the video. I had substantially less than five minutes worth. My decision to intersperse video and text, though made for artistic reasons, turned out to be a good plan. The fades between clips helped as well, however I was still short. So I started stretching the video, and it worked...sort of. The problem is that Studio uses a weird algorithm to slow clips, so some shots look jerky after reducing speed below 80%. (Note: As I discuss below, I realized later that a large part of this problem was that ReBoot was shot in PAL rather than NTSC)
One thing that really helped the creation of this project is that I wasn't tied to synchronization between video and audio as much as in later projects. Basically, the video has four sections to it: the opening music, the chorus, the solo, the closing music. I needed to synch to the beginning of each section, but within the sections I didn't bother.
The opening music I knew required some kind of introductory shot. Well, the very first shot we get of her is a zoom in on the supercomputer, then a slow pan down to a shadow figure sitting on a throne. Perfect! Well, almost. It was about 13 seconds long and the intro was 19. Studio is can speed or slow clips only in multiples of 10% (not completely true, but it's tricky to do anything else). I reduce speed to 70%, and the new length is...19 seconds! It was precise almost to the frame. Not only that, but the scene switch from the exterior to the interior shot occurred right at a beat, and the pendulum swing as the male chorus comes up.
The second section was easy. I just plopped in title cards and clips. I originally tried working in multiples of 2.5 seconds, since each measure is about that long. However later I just put in what fit. My only limit was that I had to end it by 2:33, where the solo began. I experimented with various timings and clips and finally settled on what I have.
The third section was trickier. I wanted it to be just Daemon's final speech, but it was nearly two minutes long. My original vision for this sequence was less than half that. So I padded the heck out of it. Each title is on the screen longer. I used longer fades. I added video to the "chron" sequence that didn't actually belong there (but fits nicely with the other clips). And I slowed everything down. A lot. Some shots stutter ("I am a time" and "My time is now" come to mind). Some shots look better. Some of the "chron" clips were awfully destructive, but slow them down and suddenly a violent explosion looks like a beautiful light show.
That just left the closing 30 seconds of music. I wanted some text that appeared innocent to one who didn't know Daemon, but sinister to those of us who know her ultimate goals. I tossed around ideas ("The Word is coming", "The Word will find you") but none were right. Then I watched the episodes again, and there was the line, spoken by Daemon herself: "Soon we will be one, joined in The Word." Great! But still, thirty seconds staring at that line is a little much. I wanted a scene of Daemon looking beatific. Found a great shot, but it was less than a second long. I ran it at 10% speed, and rather than looking jerky like some of the clips, it comes off as dream-like. Just what I was looking for.
I had a decent finished draft (version C) after about twelve hours of work. I've tweaked on it since then, eventually ending up with version H. Mostly I played with playback speed, clip start times, and so on, no substantial changes from that first draft.
Total creation time: about 40 hours
Version H was released August 21, 2003. Version J was released May 16, 2004 (Version I was skipped because of that whole "I looks like l in Arial" thing). Version J was remastered using the season 4 DVDs. I made some slight modifications to some of the timing and increased the volume of the soundtrack, since it was a little low. I also discovered the source of some of the jerkiness in the slowed-down clips, like the shot of Daemon opening her eyes at the beginning. I fixed the three worst clips (the eyes, the glow of her arm symbol, and the headshot at end). There are several other clips that could stand being fixed, but I don't have the patience. I'm willing to live with the imperfections at this point. As for the fix itself, I'll detail it so that my fellow video artists can benefit.
As some may know, ReBoot was originally created in the PAL standard, the video standard used in Europe. However, the DVDs are in NTSC, the video standard in North America. Among other differences, PAL runs at 25 fps and NTSC runs at 29.97 (someone please explain WHY it's 29.97 and not 30?). So to convert from PAL to NTSC, every fifth frame must be duplicated to pad the 25 PAL frames to 30 NTSC frames. Since the DVDs were converted incorrectly as film to NTSC (film runs at 24 fps) that means than every 4th frame was duplicated. This is invisible to the eye at normal speed, however if you slow a clip down these duplicates become quite obvious and lead to stuttering in the video. What I had to do was take the clip I wanted, excise the duplicate frames by hand, then save just that clip as a DV AVI file. Then I could import it into the project, slow it down to as little as 10% of normal speed, and it was still smooth.
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