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Information

• Member: SarahtheBoring
• Studio: Ultraviolet Light Productions
• Title: Danse Macabre
• Premiered: 2004-08-25
• Categories:
  • Drama
  • Instrumental
• Song:
  • Vanessa-Mae Contradanza
• Anime:
  • Descendants of Darkness
• Comments: Summary: Undead prettyboys fight the forces of darkness, with violin accompaniment. Wait... that's the series itself. Undead prettyboys fight the forces of darkness, with even more violin accompaniment.
  
  Warnings: A little gore, a little Very Special Friendship, a few flashes of Mr. Very Bad doing Very Bad Things. Nothing too major. No major spoilers either.
  
  
  Concept:
  
  Since I've covered the dramatic angle and the goofball angle, I thought I'd focus on the actiony side of the series this time. It's kind of a summary of arc 1 and part of arc 2, at least the more dramatic parts (note the lack of "staff meeting" scenes, ahem). In the end it wasn't violent enough to denote it as an Official Action Video, so it's just listed as drama. But it's more toward active than introspective on the drama spectrum.
  
  Mainly, this was an attempt at an instrumental video. I'd never tried an instrumental video before. It was fun, but I am deathly sick of violins now.
  
  About the title - "Danse Macabre" is an entirely different piece of music, a classical work by Camille Saint-Saens. However, err, I thought the title fit and stole it. I was having problems figuring out what to call a straightforward summary video set to a song with no lyrics... its working title was "Death and Violins," and that's just too silly.
  
  Two of the scenes are changed substantially, but those of you familiar enough with the series to play Hey, That Didn't Happen That Way will find them easily enough, and those of you who aren't are not being misled that badly. ;)
  
  On the off chance that you are coming in cold, the main cast is:
  Tsuzuki - the main hero. He has mad magical skills, including summoning several guardian gods, but is kind of a goober. Naturally, he has an Angsty Past.
  Hisoka - the second hero. He is an empath/mind-reader/psychic, and much tougher than his cute young exterior would suggest. He also has an Angsty Past.
  Dr. Muraki - the big villain. Evil mad-scientist molesting serial killer, and did I mention evil? Evil. Really, really evil. He can also summon things, hypnotize people, and wreak all manner of assorted havoc. He tends to cause people's Angsty Pasts.
  
  Also appearing are Maria Wong the unwilling vampire, Hijiri the cursed violinist, a large demon in the shape of a six-legged Doberman pinscher, a small librarian chicken in a funny hat, three summoned monsters/gods, and a couple of frames of the accountant of the dead.
  
  
  Song:
  
  It's an obvious move to connect Yami no Matsuei with violins, but the energy in this particular song seemed to fit well with the tone of this series. In the end I don't know if I completely did justice to what I wanted to do, but it was interesting to try, and I like the results well enough.
  
  "Contradanza" is from Vanessa-Mae's The Violin Player. Right after the rock remake of "Toccata and Fugue in D minor." It's that kind of album.
  
  
  Technical:
  
  Cuts, speed changes and a couple of garbage mattes to cover the worst lipflap. A few transparencies. And a blur and such for the flashback. I just don't have the patience to do technical things, I think. I have no attention span.
  
  The ending clip was one of the first clips laid down. By the time I realized that this ends exactly like one of my other videos, I was already more than halfway done and liked the ending too much to change it. Oh well. I'll try not to do it three times.
  
  ----
  
  Incidentally - the people who don't read notes should see this part - the song does fade in, so Do Not Attempt to Adjust Your Volume Control. It hits full volume at 0:15.
  
  ----
  
  And that's it. Enjoy.
  
  
  ----- added Monday, August 29, 2005 -----
  
  Addition as of 8/29/05: To my great shock and amazement, this video was apparently played as part of the Instrumental Vidshow at Vividcon 2005, a convention that focuses mostly on live-action fan videos with some recent inroads by AMVs. In scarily good company, too. One of the best moments in my very un-illustrious video-making "career."
  
  Anyway, because of this I've put up a direct download, no membership required, for those who don't want to sign up (although you should, because there's tons of great stuff here! End pitch.). Click "Direct" for that download. It's the same file as the original, because unfortunately I couldn't get a smaller encode to work properly. If you can, please go for the Local version, because it's probably faster. Thank you!