In a basement filled with fluorescent white light, a new and somewhat-innocuous parabolic lens sat well inside a plastic frame, its contents including a motherboard connecting it to a computer below its plastic table. The cool fall also hosted a lavender hand covered by the sleeve of a white lab coat adjusted knobs and buttons on a fan-enabled dehumidifier behind the black case of her computer to aid her breathing, despite the mountains of dank, older books and old schoolwork that were mostly recycled at this particular moment. With her computer glowing green, operating at optimal performance, and the record button waiting to be pressed on the program on her screen, her shot included the props laid out before the camera, her phone connected by a matted wire to the front of her machine, and the basement as clean as she could get it for her dealings in the sciences. Scientist Twilight Sparkle of Canterlot High School welcomed her prospective viewers to Twilight Sparkle’s Twilight Time. Filling the screen was a 3D rendering of her logo that she designed with an art student at school, complete with a twirling six-pointed star that served as the dots of the “I” in Twilight, accompanied by a song from a not-so-obscure video game. It was from another video game, but far as anyone knew, no one really cared about the state of video game music copyrights.
"Hello, everyone," Twilight said, "and welcome to the very best of Twilight Sparkle's Twilight Time. Over the next hour or so, we will be watching some of my favorite questions and answers over the last year. It's been a real fun year, especially with what happened during the Friendship Games and the Camp Everfree field trip, and I thought to combine all the fun stuff that we learned into this DVD for your viewing pleasure. Sit back, relax, and crack open a Lab-Rat Energy Drink."
As she said the latter, Twilight picked up a small soda can labeled "Lab-Rat Energy Drink" with a picture of a rat in a lab coat.
"Yep, Lab-Rat Energy Drink. With natural ingredients, low sugar, and 8 vitamins and minerals for the big thinker, it's student-tested and test-approved."
As soon as she finished recording her introduction, the stop button was pressed. With a few clicks and keystrokes, the video she recorded was cut, spliced, and incorporated into a video editing program. Beside her was a blank DVD-R ready to burn, but that was for later in the day. The transition she used for after the introduction wiped the video to older footage that she had on the Internet for several months. And it went as so:
"For today's question on Twilight Time," Twilight said, "we'll turn to @sunshimr, who says:"
Dear Twilight,
It's my first time driving a car, but I've noticed that the passenger side mirror always says that the objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Is that some sort of a joke or is it a natural flaw? It doesn't look like they're any closer to me.
"Well, in reality, it's neither. Those mirrors are mirrors nonetheless. The rearview and driver-side mirrors are both planar, they're completely flat and you can look at things in them as they appear," Twilight explained.
"The passenger-side mirror, however, is not. That mirror is actually what is called convex; it's bent outward so as to give you a broader view of what's there. Looking into a convex mirror, you usually see objects in the mirror as if they are far away, when in reality, the reflection is coming in from much closer, as we'll demonstrate with this laser and set of mirrors..."
Soon as she was able to verify that the video was exactly as she needed it, cuts and all, she moved on to the next archival footage.