“It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.”

~Philip K. Dick

Imagine waking up to find yourself in a body that isn’t yours, a body that isn’t a body at all. You wake to find yourself inside the shell of a powerful machine. It’s a weapon, and it has a controllable trigger. This is what happens when someone pulls that trigger.

The source video is a captivating trailer from Riot Games for League of Legends set (not coincidentally) to “Machine Dreams” by Two Steps from Hell. The glitchy nature of the original video allowed me to do some things I normally can’t, which doesn’t distract from the original and helps further the story. The song is unusually electronic for TSfH, but it’s just as powerful and epic.

This is one of those rare videos that was put together in a single evening. I’d already done another mashterpiece with this video before, but the themes were strangely perfect. After a few failed attempts to merge the two, I had a breakthrough when I realized that Premiere Pro’s optical flow setting totally worked in my favor this time. The video itself is already filled with glitches because of the storyline, so my digital meddling mostly goes unnoticed.

audio: “Machine Dreams” by Two Steps from Hell
video: PROJECT: OVERDRIVE | Skins Trailer – League of Legends