the first episode of year 2
www.shadowworldvideos.com

Click to play

ok, so this was all shot on probably the fourth time I went out to shoot this year. It took me that many times to start feeling like I was back in it again. I do have some nice shots from those other times that i will try to use at some point but except for some kids who I decided not to use in an episode, this man was the first to stop and talk to me.
As you can see though, this episode is more about nice snow shots than anything else. my favorite shot is from around :29 to around :40 where the truck pulls up and fills over a third of the frame. I knew it wasn’t going to be the strongest episode ever but I liked some of these shots. I find these quiet episodes to be necessary. Besides being depictions of the character of certain locations under the el that are more desolate and deserted, they help to remind the viewer that this is an exploration of a space that has it’s own unique character separate from the individuals who often become the main characters in the episodes and that seems like a good thing to remind viewers after a year of absence. I do feel like I need to have at least one character in every episode now though, even if that person doesn’t say much. I feel that a face helps to define an episode and even a line or two of dialogue is able to add so much more dimension.
In this case, the dialogue is about movies that this man has seen recently. It is strange that every film he mentions is from between 1988 to about 1994 and several of them are sequels. How or why it is that he only seems to watch movies from 15-20 years ago is kind of a mystery but it doesn’t matter so much. The important thing is that this man likes the sequels better than the originals and that seems fortunate as I embark on the sequel to Shadow World. Of course the title, Better Than the First Part plays off of this and of course since this was the only episode finished so far it would be completely speculative claim.

the other thing to mention about this episode is how it sent me on a Robocop binge where i watched all three movies in 2 days  For the record, Robocop 3 is not “better than the first part”. It’s horrible.

The moral of the story is that sequels are pretty much always a mistake.