Editor's Notes:

"Bittersweet Symphony"

Performed by The Verve

Spoilers: SS, COS, POA

______________________________________________________

One day, while driving in my car, I heard this song on the radio, and was taken back to my high school days... There's something about this song that is so dreamy, yet somewhat sad. It has a really great jam to it, but can also be very classical and sensitive. When I got home from wherever I had been, I downloaded it (yes, I paid for it :) and put it on a CD. When I moved to Atlanta in late January, I had the CD in my car and was listening to it a lot. And, for some reason, images of Harry and Hermione started popping in my head. I guess it was that mixture of a romantic sadness that made me think of the characters, so I decided I would give it a shot as a video. Since I didn't have much going on when I first got to town (I had a week before starting my new job), I took some time for editing. I would say it took me about 4 to 5 days to get it to where I was finished with all the clips, but then I took some more time to polish the edits and effects. If I had to say, it probably took me about a week to get it to where I was happy with it, but can't say for sure how long exactly... The picture-in-picture effect from the beginning just came to me one day. I had played around with that a little for some wedding things I'd done and thought it would be a pretty way to start the video. (I actually borrowed the idea for the effect from the Official Star Wars WebDocs :) The violins at the beginning are very haunting, yet inspired :) I had remembered reading something Kate (from HarryLovesHermione) wrote one time about the scene in POA where Harry and Hermione are in the woods talking and how she thought that was such a romantic moment...with the bats flying through the trees and even the music underscoring them was so beautiful (which I would agree with :). So, I took that scene and used it as the background drop for the effect (otherwise, it would have been little images over black, which would have been insanely ugly :) The shots I used for the actual effects are from their first and second years to show some growth, leading up to the big downbeat. I went with black and white video at the beginning to fit the classical sound of the violins. In order for the effect images to standout from the background scene in the woods, I needed to give it another effect added onto the black and white. For this, I chose to go with a white glow/highlight, which really adds a dreamlike quality to the picture. This effect took me the most time to complete, having to resize the image to fit and place it on the screen where I wanted it to go. Then, from there on, the trick is to make them dissolve up and down, not running into each other. At the big downbeat when the drums come in, I went with the white flash, transforming the video into color. The transition reminds us that the black and white was the past and the color is now supposed to be the present-day. (Side note: I think white flashes can be overused and become unneeded, but I like to use them for big downbeats and reveals.) From then on, I used all POA scenes, with Harry's point-of-view at the start and going into Hermione's view during the second verse. My personal favorite moments of this video are: 1) Harry and Hermione flying on Buckbeak because of the way they come into frame with the music. 2) The way I used the shot of the dementor sucking Harry's soul. It fits the lyrics really well and gives a sense of danger to the story. 3) Towards the end of the video, after you see Harry going to approach Buckbeack during class, I showed Hermione smiling as she were smiling at him. In that shot, I went from real-time to slow-motion. I think it's pretty seemless and I really like it. In the last shot with Harry in the hospital wing, I chose to dissolve back into the glow/highlight video effect. I like doing that because I feel it gives the story some consistency and closure. To dissolve from one shot to another shot with an effect, all you have to do is (I hope I can make this make sense) is make a cut in the clip, put it on another track of the timeline (usually above the original version of the clip) if you can, keeping the same position, and just add the dissolve into the new version of the clip. The trick is to keep it so even though it's on another track, the frames line up. I find this to be very helpful and use it in a lot of different ways. "Bittersweet Symphony" is a long video, but hope it's rewarding to stay until the very end.