Psalm 18:1
the beginning and the end
Unto the end. A psalm for David. (Psalm 18:1 DR)
This Psalm begins with a typical inscription: Unto the end. A Psalm for David. Many of the Church Fathers understand the phrase unto the end as signaling is prophetic aspect, either as being typologically the words of Christ or as pertaining to him. St. Augustine commenting on Psalm 4 lays down something of a general principle:
To the end, a psalm song to David.
“Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes.” (Romans 10:4.) For this end signifies perfection, not consumption... Now meanwhile we must look either for the words of the Lord Man after the Resurrection, or of man in the Church believing and hoping on Him. (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 4, 1.)
Coming back to Psalm 18:1, he notes:
To the end, a psalm of David himself.
It is a well-known title; nor does the Lord Jesus Christ say what follows, but it is said of Him. (ibid.)
Thus, this Psalm is in the words of the Psalmist meant for David (either biographically or autobiographically) but has typological import in that its end is the consummation of the Psalm, brought to completion and perfected in Christ.
In that vein I found some imagery from the Chludov Psalter, a Byzantine Psalter from the 9th century. Apparently the images were created secretly in the midst of the Iconoclast controversy. On one of the pages is an image of David with a harp/psaltery, and on the other a representation of the crucifixion.
Going off of St. Augustine’s reading of unto the end, I took it even further (hopefully legitimately!) to link the crucifixion with the end, alluding to one of Jesus’ final words on the cross:
Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost. (John 19:30 DR)
I though the juxtaposition of the two images would not only have some theological nuance but also compositional balance.
For this animation I cutout the two figures in Photoshop, and had to do some extra work on David. I separated his arm to make it a separate layer and then did a hefty amount of clone stamping to replace the lost areas and to try and clean up some of the wear ad tear on the original 1100 year old (!) image. I also isolated the hill and the dove on David’s shoulder.
In After Effects I precomped the body of David and the arm into separate precomps. I often do this with imagery as scaling them in any way will skew the results of the Puppet Tool, which I used on the body and the arm.
I then used PuppetTools 3 (a very handy script!) to attach the nulls to points and then parented the nulls of arm to a null point on the shoulder. I then added a very basic sway using three keyframes and the loopOut() expression. I also added a Hold Wiggle to the “hand” Null of David to give the hand random position movements so as to simulate him playing the instrument.
I did a similar those less intense procedure for the Christ figure and the dove. I timed the sway of David and the Christ figure to basically mirror each other so as to subtly allude to the connection between them, and how the words of the Psalm are fulfilled in Christ. I did, however, offset them just a bit for visual interest. The dove is also saying slightly to allude to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in the Psalmist’s ear.
Enjoy.
Unto the end. A psalm for David.
(Psalm 18:1 DR)
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