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Information

• Member: AmadeusReborn
• Title: That Deleterious Light
• Premiered: 2022-12-05
• Categories:
  • Other
  • Serious
• Song:
  • Magdelena Bay Follow the Leader
• Anime:
  • Call of the Night (TV)
• Comments: When I first tried watching Call of the Night, the colourful visuals gave a strong first impression. Some weeks after, I started getting the itch to make another AMV, and while I really didn't much care for the show itself I felt like it would be a good candidate to create a fresh video. The tone I was originally going for was wildly different. I had more of a party vibe going with some new indie electronic pop song I had come across. As I was collecting clips, however, I was reminded of the sort of mysterious air the first episode was -trying- to put on, and I wondered if I might take that idea to its full extent instead of where the show actually went.
  
  A friend recommended I listen to Magdelena Bay's new album "Mercurial World". I put it on while doing dishes one night and the song "Follow the Leader" really stuck out to me. It wasn't super flashy or danceable like some of the other songs but it had a way of burrowing into my head. The song ended up being exactly what I was looking for to support the direction of the AMV I had been wanting to make. It communicates a sense of being trapped: "You took the bait" in past sense suggesting that there's no turning back and you've already lost, and all you can do is accept your fate.
  
  This began meshing with some reflections I had been having on temptation (of a less salacious nature!) and its affect on my life. For example, after work, there is always a strong pull to sit on the couch and put off making dinner or doing housework because I feel tired. I sometimes gave in, and once you start giving in once it becomes easier and easier. But, as if often the case with temptation, there is a price to be paid once you've yielded. All the small temptations alone eat away at you as a person, building bad habits and amassing poor choices, let alone bigger temptations that can ruin someone's life entirely like cheating on a partner. This is what I am getting at with the title, and the video in general - it's a light that calls you forward and is easy to follow, but is ultimately bad for your health. Like a moth to a lamp, it's hard to resist the pull but if you don't, only ruin awaits.
  
  Throughout the video I make reference to these ideas. The traffic lights appear three times, always red until the last one when our character gives in to the temptation and abandons the brakes. I make a nod to the analogy of a moth I mentioned earlier with the flickering lamp that fades in from him looking at the antagonist.. When the fire is lit by the spinning finger, our character is shown walking down a road marked with signs telling him to turn away, or 'no entry'. For the protagonist himself, there's an initial fear, then a cautious approach, a fascination, then a passivity of acceptance until the final moments where he is about to be attacked. He is awake and no longer has the strength of will to do anything to save himself even as death approaches him. The other thing I wanted to make a slight suggestion of is that ultimately the tempter is present in the tempted. There's a brief scene where both faces are overlaid over each other when they first make contact. Temptation is powerless without some part of you that wants to give in, wants to lose yourself in that feeling. We may even deliberately put ourselves in positions where we know we will be tempted. I don't want our protagonist to be seen as an innocent victim - he paved the road he followed the antagonist down.
  
  I use DaVinci Resolve for editing, but I'm definitely an amateur with the tools they provide. This video was a great opportunity to learn some new tricks and understand the editor a bit better. I don't normally use any effects in my videos, but decided to give them a chance and liked the results so far.