Buffy the Vampire Slayer video: Same Place, Same Time video

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I made this video of the season 7 episode Same Place, Same time. It's the basement scene where they're all talking to Spike at the same time but can't all see each other, with both scenes playing side by side. Seeing it this way kind of ruins the mysterious quality of the scene, but it lets you see things the way Spike saw them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlfjIPxScss[/youtube]

The scenes as they originally are don't line up perfectly, including one part where there is a ten second difference in the timing of the scenes, and three times where there is an extra word in one of the scenes, but I've edited around that so they do line up with Spikes dialogue and actions. It doesn't look like there are a lot of differences between the timing of the scenes but there are about 44 edits in the clip. I used existing cuts as well as altering the play speed in places to keep everything lined up. Some parts where there is too big a time difference to cover up it just fades to black on that side of the screen. Lastly I adjusted the sound balance so each half of the scene plays out of the speaker on it's side.

Nice! The thought has hit me too, of trying to put these scenes together in some way, just to see how it'd play, but I never got around to it. Now I won't have to. Very interesting. Film and television pacing is all about compressed time (with the exception of things such as 24), and it really shows here, in how the scenes wouldn't have matched without your edits. Worth noting is also that they didn't use the same audio for Spike in both scenes, making his performance noticably different. If one was to make up excuses, one could say that this reflects either the instability of Spike or the difference between the two semi-separated realities. Most likely though, it probably relfects the fact that it would have been more logistically difficult to make two scenes that match up perfectly.

Definitely an interesting experiment.

Speaking of interesting Buffyverse fan-edit experiments, someone (or possibly a group of someones) once did an experiment where they took all the flashbacks of Darla, Angel, Drusilla and Spike, from both shows (Buffy/Angel), and put them together chronologically into a movie, beginning with The Master siring Darla on her deathbed, and ending with the first face-to-face meeting between Angel and Buffy. (When I say all, I mean all, including the "Mandy" scene in the diner, with all shots of memory-walkers Faith and Angelus cleverly cut out.) The thing actually ended up playing surprisingly well, with very little awkward pacing, although it played more as an epic tale than as a structured three-act movie. But the fact that it didn't feel like a jumpy mess speaks volumes to the quality of the scenes and the attention to detail that the ever-changing writing staffs put into putting that backstory together over an eight year period.
I think the feature-length fan-edit was called "The Vampire Angel" or something like that. It was up on Youtube for a while, but I'm pretty sure it's long gone. Might be out there somewhere in cyberspace though.