Just added a new article transcription.
This time the elusive Michael Synergy, from the first issue of Mondo 2000, interviews key people involved with the original Max Headroom telefilm and series.
Along with other elements of filmmaking, I’ve been putting a lot of focus into video editing lately.
You don’t get experience from just reading, of course — though, Blink of an Eye was a surprisingly good read.
So I’ve been enjoying not just the Slack Injection TV stuff (though that’s more of a chaos-collage kind of thing), but also seeking out projects like what this Adobe article offers.
It’s a collaboration between Adobe and the band Imagine Dragons where the band provides a master audio track and a whole bunch of their video footage from the music video for Believer. It was clearly intended to promote sales of Adobe Premiere Pro, but I’m using Kdenlive for all of this. Oops. 😉
Kdenlive is a very capable, cross-platform non-linear video editor. Some of the Premiere Pro features covered in the article, however, aren’t yet available in Kdenlive, but lacking those features just means having to be that much more creative with how you approach things, so I was not daunted.
After going through all the footage, there was clearly a boxing thing going on (with Dolph Lundgren!), and a guy sitting in a chair who apparently also boxes against Dolph. There were other bits, like of the band playing, and some ambient background stuff.
I made sure I didn’t look at the official, completed video to keep myself free of influence. While going through the clips I was struck by the lengthy clip of Dan Reynolds sitting in his little egg chair, just staring at the camera.
Being a perpetual jokester, I felt the urge to grab the wheel and drive the car off the road — instead of making a music video, I’ll come up with a skit about how guys in the booth are waiting on him to start the video. They chatter to themselves, confused about why he’s just sitting there doing nothing.
As I was assembling that joke (which involved very precise trimming and cross-fading of the clip — it worked well, surprisingly), I started to kind of feel like it could be ‘something more’.
Instead of 3 minutes of just uncomfortable staring, I played a bit with cuts over to an equally uncomfortable close up on certain parts of the song, until finally, as the music hits it’s final climax, he transforms into a child (a separate series of footage swapping Dave out for a “mini-Dan”) who is seemingly ready to judge you, and begins quickly scribbling something on his notepad: “BELIEVER”.
What does it mean? No fucking idea. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s a music video, after all, so it doesn’t have to! 😀 But it’s a VERY different take from the official version, thankfully.
But this was so cool! It’s the soul of what’s attracting me to film editing in general. It’s like being given a bag of LEGOs for a Star Wars vehicle and creating something else entirely from it. It’s like what I imagine forming shapes out of clay is like. Creativity just emerges from the process as you knead the cuts.
I learned very quickly that, in reality, no matter how pleased I am with this cut, it would never ever work in the real world — nobody would have the patience to sit through 3 minutes of that pseudo-artistic nonsense to get to the heart of it at the end, so I cut it down to about a minute. 😉
And here it is:
Time for more Slack Injection TV! Religion, fire, and UFOs conspire to take you on The Voyage to X-Day!
Backups: archive.org
Backups: archive.org
Found myself enjoying Deep Rock Galactic lately, and it was a bit of a rough start so I figured I’d go through a quick mission run to introduce the elements of it to folks who might be curious.
ANOTHER?! Yep. Making these shorter, too — longer they are, the more easy it is for me to get distracted and forget.
Only the slightest effort towards an actual ‘theme’ for this. But still hella random. Working on that. Trying to find what works.
Backups: archive.org, Vimeo, Odysee
Starting a new video collage series!
Somehow this will be easier to keep going as a regular thing than, say, the podcast version of Slack Injection. I just love video editing. 😛 Anyway, sometimes there will be a theme. Usually not.
Typically this is just a collection of pseudo-interesting and/or weird amusements that I come across and are certain to never get monetized. Enjoy!
Backups: archive.org, Odysee
That was, maybe, the perfect Batman film.
I mean, Batman ’89 will always be my personal favorite. It’s infinitely rewatchable.
But I can’t deny just how great nearly every corner of The Batman is. The overall mood. The music (oh god, the music).
It just all FEELS RIGHT.
The plot may not be terribly original (good luck finding a fresh Batman story after all these decades), but the nearly flawless execution of that story cannot be ignored.
More like this, please!
🐀🐈🦇❓
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Not fantastic, but not terrible. Inoffensive is a good word. Shame she’s leaving; she finally feels ‘comfortable’ at this this point.
⭐⭐⭐
I’ve mentioned this show before, but I figured I’d tackle the whole series here in this one post.
Let me tell you: The Prisoner is a truly incredible show. Don’t sleep on it. In fact, consider it required viewing.
It’s a thorough mind-fuck of a war between unstoppable forces and the immovable object. It’s the grand-daddy of many a subsequent TV show’s mysteries, most notably there’s an obvious influence on LOST. At least to me. Though that show went down a different path, the basic kernel of mystery and raw “is this really happening” fuckery is unmistakable to me.
A quick refresher: our protagonist is an ex-spook who angrily shows up one day and and retires from the job with a tea-cup smashing slam of his fist on the desk.
His head full of secrets, valuable to both ‘sides’, he’s gassed in his own home and wakes up in The Village — a small microcosm of a perfect community where people are issued numbers instead of using their names. Escape is made nigh impossible, enforced by a gang of thugs and a bizarre (sentient…?) white ball that smothers people to death.
The people running The Village, headed by the ever-changing form of No.2, just want to know: why did you resign?
No.6, as he’s labelled, not knowing which side his captors are on, refuses to answer the question. He’s valuable to whoever is running the show, so they’ll do everything short of physical torture to try and break him. The various ways in which they attempt to pry this information from him in each episode is quite impressive, and imaginative. And often downright cruel.
I’ll include a brief synopsis (via Wikipedia) as a refresher and talk a bit about each one.
Oh, and uh, it goes without saying but: _spoilers._
And these were watched in the order Shout Factory put them in. I recognize and even noticed that some episodes feel out of order — Dance of the Dead, most notably, suggests No.6 has ‘just arrived’.
There’s a recommended fan-authored viewing order that, in retrospect, I might have followed. But what’s done is done…
…about half way through the series run I started keeping realtime observations and commentary as I watched each episode. I circled back afterward and made some quick notes on a speedy rewatch of the first six, but they’re nowhere near as detailed.
Anyway, onward…
After waking up in the Village and discovering his captivity there, No.6 encounters a friend from the outside who may have a possible escape.
They really pull out all the stops for the first episode — the sheer wall to wall insanity at times is impressive. The series doesn’t quite put the pedal down quite like it does here, going forward, but that’s a good thing.
If you watch this and enjoy it, yeah, it’s safe to say you’ll be all set for the rest of the series.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A new prisoner, Nadia, may have information about the Village that makes an escape attempt possible.
You might think that it’s a bit early in the run to have him escape all the way back home, being only the second episode. But I choose to see it as a show of power: look at how convincing a fake they can create. How far you think you’ve gotten — yet every single step along the journey was artificial.
But then there’s the whole thing where the series is probably being shown out of order, but let’s take the wins where we can.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
A desperate No.2 manipulates No.6’s dreams to discover where his loyalties lie.
An interesting exploration using “what would No.6 have done” to figure out his loyalties. Fun watching No.2 sweat in fear of the big red phone, too.
⭐⭐⭐
Presented with the opportunity, No.6 runs for election to the post of No.2.
This isn’t the weakest episode of the series, but for some reason I found myself struggling to pay attention. Just a mind-fuck to screw with him. What else is new?
⭐⭐⭐
No.2 replaces No.6 with an identical duplicate (played by McGoohan) to weaken the real Six’s sense of identity.
This was so damned good. There was even a moment or two where even I was questioning the real No.6’s authenticity. But what’s really great is that they go the extra mile in the last third of the story to turn The Village’s plan to break him, into an escape attempt. If No.6 didn’t botch a bit of personal information, he might have genuinely escaped. (Well… I thought that way until “Many Happy Returns”, at least.)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
An important prisoner’s new speed-teaching machine can be used to indoctrinate everyone into believing the same thing, posing perhaps the greatest threat to No.6’s independence.
A classic Trek story: secret hidden intelligence turns out to be a computer. Damned well-done story, though. Three years of education in 3 minutes! I enjoyed it despite not just borrowing a Trek “computer god” cliche but also defeating it with the usual “tainted data input” that causes the machine to eat itself.
This episode made me lose a whole Saturday investigating the Professor’s typewritten manuscripts.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
After waking to find the Village deserted, No.6 returns to England, but he does not know whom he can trust there.
After seeing how far No.6 got in The Chimes of Big Ben you’d be forgiven for spending most of the episode waiting for the other shoe to drop. The journey he takes, making a raft, getting picked up by gun-runners, and stowing away in a truck on the way to England makes for an impressive episode, with very little dialogue for half the episode.
What’s interesting here is that he really DID escape, and he was able to get information about The Village to his associates. Even locating it somewhere off the coast of Morocco before being cruelly jettisoned back into The Village by the end.
This one was a delight and it really kept me guessing. But what’s interesting here is that No.6 did make contact, he did reveal what happened to himself, he did give them a general idea of where he was being kept, and they weren’t in on it. And none of that was undone or otherwise subverted by the end. An interesting choice.
In theory, in light of this, a rescue mission should not out of the question. Though that’s never alluded to during the episode.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 tries to save an old friend who is headed for destruction at the hands of the Village.
Maybe the worst episode so far? Only the pure grit of Mary Morris’ performance as this installment’s No.2 keeps this one interesting. She’s a bit over the top at times, especially looking into the camera cackling madly before the credits roll. But still, she’s quite memorable.
It’s recommended that this be seen as the second episode of the series, and the events and dialog that go with it, seem to concur. The episode has elements that either got dropped or at least not explicitly stated before (No.6 being assigned an ‘observer’ for example).
The episode seems more of a showcase for insanity, and an attempt at cementing No.6’s fate.
No.6 thinks he has a means to tell the prisoners from the wardens.
Another one that feels like an early episode. Probably even right after Dance of the Dead. More “getting to know” the island. Prisoners vs guardians.
A weak escape attempt considering Six SURELY must know even stepping foot on British soil doesn’t mean he’ll actually have escaped. Actually escaping from The Village doesn’t mean you’re free.
But it’s hard to be fair about the show’s intentions considering the actual order of them is up for interpretation. There’s a low-level of continuity, but even that’s scrambled a bit.
Mediocre episode, but the “Battle Chess” theme in the first quarter is fun.
⭐⭐⭐
No.6 takes revenge on a sadistic No.2 for the death of another prisoner.
Yet again, this one feels like an early episode…. though the plot could easily have made for a fine penultimate episode. No.6 turns the tables on the new No.2, stoking his paranoid tendencies, making him afraid of everyone around him until he finally breaks, calling in for a new No.2 to replace himself. That’s crazy.
I wasn’t sure about this No.2 — he was intense out of the gate, and physical, actually striking No.6. Something we’ve never seen before. 2’s are usually hands-off masterminds kind of characters. But seeing him slowly lose his grip and spiral out of control was incredible.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
To save the Village from calamitous consequences, No.6 must intervene in a Village power struggle and prevent the assassination of the retiring No.2 by his successor.
Definitely one of the weaker entries. An interesting premise, pitting one No.2 against another, but it struggles to keep it interesting. It even devotes over 3 minutes to a phony sport supposedly invented by Patrick McGoohan himself.
⭐⭐
No.2 stirs the Village to ostracize No.6, and then takes even more drastic measures to cure Six’s “unmutuality”.
Another episode where the tables are turned on the current No.2. It feels like a bit of a cop-out that they didn’t actually do the full “social conversion” on him, but considering it’s a weekly TV series, we can’t do TOO much harm to our protag.
⭐⭐⭐
Deprived of his memory and placed in another man’s body, No.6 travels back to England to seek a missing scientist. Nigel Stock portrays Six for most of this episode.
One of the more daring, fantastical sci-fi plots, the Wikipedia summary spells it all out. An interesting premise, with a different actor playing No.6 for the entire episode.
Another story where No.6 is literally back home on British soil, yet he’s not really free. We get a peek into some of his personal details, too.
This might be my second or third favorite post-Arrival episode, but by far the least interesting No.2, existing only to get hornswoggled in the end by an elderly white man.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
In an Old West setting, a lawman who resigned is trapped in a town called Harmony where the Judge wants him to be the new sheriff – by hook or by crook.
This one goes right off the rails immediately. If you didn’t know the actor and the typeface on the episode title and minimal credits, you’d never know this was an episode of The Prisoner and just assume it was some random western.
An interesting premise: kind of a microcosm of the entire series, but in Western form. Unfortunately the actual plot is so thin that it has trouble filling the hour without long drawn out stretches of scenes, and all the fist-fights allowed by law. But when you get down to it, this is basically The Girl In Lover’s Lane crossed with vaguest suggestion of The Prisoner, Westworld, and every other generic western.
The ending takes a twist, but with more of an unsatisfying “What the fuck was THAT?” whimper, rather than a real doozy of an angle.
Anyway, I bet if I looked we could find some other shows around the same time using the same Western sets. They’re elaborate, damned good looking TV sets. I can’t believe they’d have been erected just for one novelty episode… probably just heard of the opportunity and slapped together a quick script to take advantage of them. If not, it sure feels like it.
Sigh. Well, nobody can accuse The Prisoner of not having a large variety of settings to keep things fresh. It just doesn’t always work.
EDIT: Turns out this episode was quite literally filler.
⭐⭐
No.6 avoids the assassination attempts of a beautiful woman while foiling the plots of her megalomaniac father.
This one is… I can’t help but describe it as a drug-fueled over-indulgence. Like a 50 minute long music video.
It just hits the ground running and forces you to piece together things as it goes along. Except none of that matters, since none of this happened because it’s stories he invented for children…?!
Ambitious… The Prisoner certainly takes some big swings, and it usually hits it out of the park. Being that this and Living in Harmony were among the final episodes filmed, it might admittedly be premature to think that maybe it’s best there wasn’t a second season. This just feels like desperation to do something different.
Up until the last quarter I was actually enjoying the inventiveness and creativity put into the whole thing. I LOVE the ‘poisoned’ shot glass and the creative use of the rear projection screen during the driving sequence, for instance.
But once it gets to the Napoleon stuff, and the reveal at the end… eeh.
This was like one of those episodes of Bob’s Burgers where the kids all tell different stories, and that’s the WHOLE episode. Same idea. More or less.
⭐⭐
No.2 subjects No.6 to “Degree Absolute”, a desperate, last-ditch effort to subdue him – an ordeal that will not end until it breaks one of them.
Hooooooly shit. Was this the Infinity War to the series finale’s Endgame? This was crazy intense. I mean, wow. These two just going off into a bizarro psychological showdown. A lot of screaming. This feels like an episode that if they knew about it, they’d never have given these guys money to make this series. And I love it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 encounters the forces in charge of The Village, but can he finally escape?
You know that last week of school before Summer where you’re obviously done with school, and the teachers stop trying, and it just devolves into skipping classes and generally screwing around, getting away with anything until the bus comes at the end of the day?
That’s the series finale of The Prisoner. It decomposes into a crazy, unhinged, strange, abstract art piece.
I don’t know if it was good television, but it was one hell of a show.
And it conclusively ended.
With some minor asterisks.
It’s a shame that it spiraled out like this. A large part of really appeals about the show’s basic premise was that it was the usual “out there” super-spy stuff, but it was grounded. More or less. Mind swapping machines notwithstanding. Instead of an ending that suits that ‘groundedness’, it quite literally takes off into orbit.
Frankly, I’d rather have had it be open-ended without a conclusion (which I’d feared), than go out the way it did.
Bit of a monkey’s paw wish seeing a proper finale, I suppose.
Hell of a ride, though. 🥃
EDIT: This was apparently a rocky, last minute scramble to assemble a finale. It’s kind of impressively weird in it’s own right given those conditions. Supposedly McGoohan had to “go into hiding in the mountains for two weeks, until things calmed down”. I kind of believe that. 😉
⭐⭐⭐
| viewed order | episode title | rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arrival | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 2 | The Chimes of Big Ben | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 3 | A. B. and C. | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 4 | Free for All | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 5 | The Schizoid Man | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 6 | The General | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 7 | Many Happy Returns | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 8 | Dance of the Dead | ⭐⭐ |
| 9 | Checkmate | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 10 | Hammer into Anvil | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 11 | It’s Your Funeral | ⭐⭐ |
| 12 | A Change of Mind | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 13 | Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 14 | Living in Harmony | ⭐⭐ |
| 15 | The Girl Who Was Death | ⭐⭐ |
| 16 | Once Upon a Time | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 17 | Fall Out | ⭐⭐⭐ |
