"And then eventually the whole thing will just end" buh buh buh bum.

 At midnight last night there was a cut of Act One of Titus Andronicus all finished and ready to be uploaded to youtube, but it had no "flourishes" - the trumpets and drums repeatedly referenced in the stage directions. It had no sound design at all in fact, and that was fine, obviously, these were just meant to be readings. But I had really begun to enjoy how much scene-setting, even world-building, could be done with the right effect (as I said here) and ideally I wanted to give something similar to Titus, especially given how different it was to what had come before and how much the play's version of Rome bordered on Fantasy (like all Horror). The thing is, though, I'm very indecisive, and choosing what to add, and whether or not to keep it, takes up at least a third, maybe a half of the total time I'll spend on these videos, and that seems mad. An earlier edit of Act One (about nine in the evening) was plastered in iMovie's "Suspense" cue in place of the flourishes, a simple electronic chord nothing like a flourish, but an abstraction which set a mood and didn't sound too ridiculous, yet ultimately had too little going for it beyond just being tolerable (and even that was questionable given how often I was using it - there's only so many times you can hear a "Suspense" chord before it goes from foreboding to dithering). So I dropped all the cues, uploaded the act without flourishes, went for a night walk, and began to think more and more about the "Vintage News" march that I'd earlier dismissed as too wacky.

Material is limited on a night walk. 

 I did love how un-alien the march had suddenly made Rome, by which I don't mean that it stopped Rome seeming weird, but that it made Rome's weirdness far less easy to write off as alien. It meant I wouldn't be presenting the story as a trip to a faraway, savage time, but as a nightmare just a couple of wrong decisions away, in which duty, tradition, processions, seeking for comfort in precedent, the celebration of war and just the very concept of "victory" were all complicit, and fair targets. And so by the time I'd got back from my walk, sticking an old newsreel march with no inkling of tragedy through a "Cathedral" effect to lose the crackle and then playing that over a human sacrifice felt like getting a lot off my chest, which seemed a valid feeling to have when presenting Titus Andronicus. So I re-edited the act (thre's always tweaks) re-downloaded it in place of the original edit, managed to render only about ten minutes before it crashed my laptop, crashed my laptop trying to fix it, crashed my laptop again, crashed my laptop, went to bed, didn't sleep much, woke, had an idea, thought I'd fixed it, uploaded it onto youtube, found out I'd fixed it but hadn't actually finished the edit before uploading it -  huge thanks to @Christelle_C for the head-sup - took it down again and had another tinker and so that's why it's only going up now. And why it has the tune for Adam and Joe's "Big British Castle" plastered all over it. Sorry. I know I said I'd keep my youtube and blog more separate form now but, guys, really, this is all I have to show right now so Ta - as I say - daaa: