End of the Night

Vid
Title:	End of the Night
Creator:	Gayle F
Date:	1993 or earlier
Format:	VCR vid
Length:	2:42m
Music:	"End of the Night" by The Doors
Genre:
Fandom:	Miami Vice
Footage:	Miami Vice
URL:
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End of the Night is a Sonny Crockett vid that is impressive for its use of color. The vid focuses on a series of episodes in which Sonny Crockett suffers amnesia and takes on his undercover drug dealer persona Sonny Burnett.

Vidder's Notes:

I realize this will not be obviously apparent to the viewer, but I do believe [color in vids] influences the whole, making it a more aesthetically pleasing and emotionally effective vid. …. I do think it is an often over-looked way of adding richness and cohesion to a video. It can be used to build mood, and to smooth transitions….. While color is generally only one of these many on-going considerations for me, I do have one recent vid where I feel it works a major force in the emotional effect of the vid, fusing meaning and mood. This is the MV vid, End of the Night.....When I was listening to the Doors' End of the Night, I decided it would be a great song for a Sonny-as-Burnett vid. Without a clear memory of that part of the series, I knew I wanted to use the dream sequence, and imagined that it would be played against a lot of night images, dark both visually and in content. When I actually rewatched the episodes, I was delighted by the frequent use of surreal color, and decided to build the vid using those images. Because so many of the images from these episodes have colored lighting, the same visual effect might have been inadvertently obtained choosing images only on the basis of content, but there were significant moments that could have been used with more natural lighting which I rejected in favor of the strange nightmarish world that builds up with the heightened color. All the night blacks are stained with either blue or red, and the cold, distant blue and the hot, flame and blood red are themselves used as the predominant lighting in other shots. The unnatural, bleached white of the dream sequence becomes the "bright midnight" of the lyrics, fusing the black nightmare world of Burnett with Sonny's haunted dreamscape. I choose just one moment of white interior lighting before the end of the song-in Burnett's bathroom, where the screen splits into black and while halves as Sonny/Burnett reaches out to touch his reflection in the mirror. Although the color was less exaggerated, it echoed the other scenes and epitomized the emotional conflict. Only when Sonny starts to remember and accept who he is, does natural sunlight, normality, enter the images. Even then, the first images are blue washed, impressionistic. Only in the last-paradoxically nightmarish-shot of Sonny's return to the station is the lighting clear and bright.

Sample Screencaps

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  "All the night blacks are stained with either blue...."

• 

  "...or red..."'

• 

  "....and the cold, distant blue and the hot, flame and blood red...."

• 

  "....are themselves used as the predominant lighting in other shots."

• 

  "The unnatural, bleached white of the dream sequence becomes the "bright midnight" of the lyrics..."

• 

  "...fusing the black nightmare world of Burnett with Sonny's haunted dreamscape."

• 

  "I chose just one moment of white interior lighting before the end of the song-in Burnett's bathroom, where the screen splits into black and while halves as Sonny/Burnett reaches out to touch his reflection in the mirror."

• 

  "Only when Sonny starts to remember and accept who he is, does natural sunlight, normality, enter the images. Even then, the first images are blue washed, impressionistic."

• 

  "Only in the last-paradoxically nightmarish-shot of Sonny's return to the station is the lighting clear and bright."