Time Loops are Impossible ⦿ BTS

Hello everyone, thanks for your continued support here on Patreon! Starting with this post, I'm going to be giving $1 and up Patrons access to a Behind the Scenes "blog" style post detailing the creation of my videos. This first one is going to be made public, for the sake of allowing potential Patrons to see the sorts of things I'm posting here. 

Researching. 

Making this video was a trip, I'll tell you what. I'd initially started out with this title: 

Why Hollywood Can't Do Time Travel

So, the first thing I did was get to work making 2 basic time travel laws: 

If a series of events takes place, then an outcome occurs. This series is unchangeable. Therefore, there can be only one outcome 

If a series of events takes place, then an outcome occurs. This series is changeable. Therefore, there can be more than one outcome.

I knew from the start I wanted this video to have an emphasis on Modal Logic, so I wanted to initially work from a syllogistic sort of logical framework, which is what these two 3-statement logical proofs entail. I then got to work taking some notes on some different time travel movies, comparing and contrasting the different rules they used for time travel. 

I eventually realized that comparing the two types of time travel would be way too ambitious, take way too long to make, and, to be honest, wouldn't have been much fun to edit on my part. So, I eventually decided on focusing on Rule 1, the idea that there can only be one timeline. 

Considering this, I decided to focus in on two movies, 12 Monkeys and Predestination, as they were the two most clear cut "Rule 1" movies that I could find. 

The title now went through 4 more iterations, before I eventually went with the title "Time Loops are Impossible": 

How Hollywood Screws Up Time Travel

The Metaphysics of Time Travel

The Modality of Time Travel

Looped Time Travel Destroys Modality

With all of this out of the way, I got to researching.

And I mean, a lot of researching.

And almost none of it proved "necessary" or useful to the script. I did find out a lot of interesting things though, things I wish I could've gotten to talk more about in the video. Who knows, maybe that'll be saved for a Unicast video for another time!

Scriptwriting.

Eventually, I got to writing the script itself. The orgy of information I'd gathered in the research process turned out to be a bit overwhelming. I'd ended up writing a 4-page long script that turned into a 17 minute long narration. 

It was way too detailed. (Ibn Sina spelled "Ihboon Seena" for convenience) This part of the original script alone came to almost 2 minutes of the original video, just prefacing time travel and metaphysics. I eventually cut out Ibn Sina's argument for god and just gave a brief explanation to save time. 

As you can see, I kept a lot of the bare bones of the explanation in tact. I initially planned on putting the K axiom on screen while explaining it, and that was something that carried over into the final video. Describing the whole thing down to a T though? Ion think anyone has time or the care for all that.

The rewrite process began with my poking holes in my original script, trying to come to some conclusion about why I felt it was lacking. I ultimately decided on two things: the lack of vocal inflection and the detail. So, I ultimately decided on the rewriting it with a more energetic, semi-cynical tone, cutting out long explanations . I wanted to go for something more lighthearted overall, since I know a lot of this can tend to go over the heads of people that don't take an interest in modality and metaphysics!

The "two rules" of time travel were carried over as "the two types of people, dreamers and pragmatists" as a preface for the end focus on time loops, and an original opening I made discussing Oedipus Rex was carried over as well, but with again with a more cynical tone, going so far as to call the "hard determinism" of the ancient greeks naive! 

Producing and Editing. 

As you can tell, a lot of original media went into the making of this video. What with the mug, the grass scenes, scenes at my desk, I filmed more for this video than just about any other video on the channel. 

I ended up buying a mini dolly for the video, bought some stock video too, just for the parts I couldn't really find some good free footage of nor that I could film. 

Upcoming Videos.

I'm going to be starting a new series of videos based on the responses to some of my favorite comments on my older videos. If all goes according to plan, I should be able to get one of these videos up by the end of this week, hopefully this coming Saturday or Sunday. 

I have some plans for a video on Lil Peep and a video on the history of leftism in the United States coming up too, so stay on the look out for those.

Upcoming Streams.

As many of you likely saw earlier last week, I started streaming on the piano again. I want to start doing Photoshop streams again too. I used to do these way back in the early video-essay days of the channel, 2016 into 2017. The output files will be posted here, of course, for anyone interested in them. 

For $5 and $10 Patrons:

All of the research for this video will be posted here later today in some coming posts. $5 Patrons will get access to a select number of files pertaining to my research and scriptwriting, while $10 will have access to all of them. 

- misteramazing