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Today's post comes from Sarah Miller, author of the terrific Miss Spitfire (review and interview), writer of a very fine blog, and all around great pal.

Her obsession with the Romanovs is evident in her current work-in-progress, "a novel about the final years of Russia's last imperial family, told by the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II." And today is a very important day in Romanov history. . . .

The other day I succumbed to the dual temptations of peer pressure and procrastination to fritter away a few hours composing a video tribute to the last Russian imperial family. The 90th anniversary of their assassination is July 17th, you see. Cheesy as it's become over the last ten years, I began with the theme from Titanic as my background music. That song fairly drips with connotations of love, loss, and opulence, and I couldn't resist the cliche. Plus, it's pretty music. (No Celine Dion vocals though, thank you very much.) About halfway through the process, I took a break to surf YouTube and peek at some other Russian history nerds' memorial movies. A LOT of Romanov videos use the Titanic music, I've discovered. But one had a tune vaguely similar to the theme from Finding Neverland, which I love. On a whim, I duplicated my iMovie project, yanked out Titanic, and dropped in Finding Neverland instead. That's when the trouble started. Um, what on earth does this movie-making stuff have to do with being an author? Well, suddenly I discovered that swapping out the music tracks changed the voice, pacing, and tone of my video. I was still telling the same story, still trying to express the same underlying themes of family love and lives cut short, but a slew of the photos I'd so carefully selected no longer fit. Welcome to the wonderful world of editing. Have a look and see what I mean: The Titanic version is relatively fast, and the mood of the music fluctuates throughout the piece. By following those natural crests and troughs in the melody, I could construct a fairly straightforward visual retelling of the imperial family's history and rely on the music to amp up the emotional level. (Romanov buffs will recognize a chronological progression of images from Nicholas and Alexandra's courting days to the last known photos from family's imprisonment and exile.) In short, the photos are representative first, and emotional second. There's also a lot of plain old motion, both in the images themselves and in the way I panned the camera across them. At the end, the fate of the family is portrayed more or less directly. The Neverland version is essentially a sliver of ambience. The music is slower and softer, with a constant, level mood. Consequently, the sense of story has to arise out of the emotion inherent in the images rather than from the music. So the photos I'd originally chosen to represent specific stages in the Romanovs' life weren't nearly as effective, which meant I had to give up scenes I loved - in particular, that cut where the music swells and the children grow from darling toddlers in matching sailor suits into a line of poised young adults. *le sigh* But the trade-off was resurrecting photos I'd discarded from the original Titanic version -- photos that were emotionally stirring, but too static visually. Also, this time the Romanovs' death is only implied: while panning over the field of white lilies (the site of the family's original mass grave) the music itself fades away without the customary drop in pitch on the final note. It's downright unsatisfying the way it leaves you hanging, but oddly enough I think it works in this context. What do you think? Which is more effective? I'm really not sure, myself. Mostly, I'm just fascinated by how quickly I recognized what needed to change, and how willing I was to make the necessary cuts. I am not nearly so amiable when it comes to editing my writing -- probably because in that case I don't get to share the alternate version. I'm also mulling over how many ways there are to tell the same story, even using a heap of the same scenes. All it takes is one change, and everything shifts.

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