The Notorious W.O.L.

Yesterday a conversation popped up in my Twitter stream

You’ve undoubtedly come across this, but just in case https://t.co/oJfgdLiUqh

— Martin Weller (@mweller) October 12, 2022

which introduced me to the Walk of Life Project. The hypothesis stated on the site is that the Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” is the perfect ending song for any movie. And it has a lengthy list of examples for evidence. I don’t want this experiment to fall victim to the replicability crisis, so I felt a responsibility to test the hypothesis myself.

I think this kinda works. I should have edited the video a bit more to align cuts and beats. Maybe that extra step is the difference between an artist and a hack like me.

The track does have versatility. I think it works better when there’s a shift in mood that goes along with the flow of the music, like in the project’s edit of The Birds.

I remembered that Notorious ended with a walk scene

I had to play around a bit with where the music should start. I thought it might be good to have the initial guitar strum align with the locking of the car door. Sebastian then goes on a walk of death, so I suppose it only works in an ironic sense. But who doesn’t like a happy ending? This is now a ds106 assignment so everyone can test the hypothesis. Science!