Originally posted by: Anti-Matter
"Both these events need the illusion of the passage of time"

I agree, which is precisely why the fades are there. In each case, I feel the type and length of the fade is adequate. Granted, it is possible that I have watched this footage too often and that I am missing the novelty of the edit--or maybe you were watching with some biases that impacted your initial perceptions. We'll see what happens when more people watch.

I am reasonable. If dozens of people have the same impression or interpretation that something isn't working, then I will re-visit the material and try to (a) appreciate the problem myself, and (b) devise a creative solution.

I think I know why the fades throw me off: it's the stylistic difference from the originals. GL has never used a fade-to-black, as far as I can recall. Instead he uses wipes, crossfades, etc. Heck, I think jump cuts can be fantastic for the passage of time. A few of those might work better. I suppose it's not only the fact of the stylistic differences, but also because there are so many. Your explanations would work for any one of the ftb's you explained, but to have three of them in as many minutes and a fourth only three and a half minutes later seems quite overkill. I know I'm sorta resurrecting the thing, and I'm sorry if you dealt with this already and I missed seeing it earlier. No pressure of course, just all the fade to blacks make it seem like a tv show going to commercial.

Otherwise, this looks really really great. Kudos.