SPN Vid Rec
SQUEEEEE!!
Yes, that high keening sound you hear is me breaking into a million pieces and loving every single moment of it. The total awesomeness that is
rhianne grabbed my puppy-dog eyes request that someone make a Dean-grieving-John vid from the Nilsson version of Without You and ran all the way to freakin Nirvana with it (the Buddhism one, not the grunge one).
This vid ( Without You by Rhianne) is so made of awesome I lack the words. Yet still, I will presume to speak.
Because so much of my writing focusses on the nature of grief and grieving, and because this song has been one of my favorites for years simply because it is so plaintive and heartbreaking (if you've only heard the Mariah version, you've never heard this song ... trust me), I asked Rhianne if she could do something specific to the concept of grief rather than simply a character piece of either/or John or Dean or something focussed on the relationship between them as a whole.
And holy crapoli did she hit it. Every color in the tapestry of Dean's complex and heart-breaking grief is represented here, in all their subtle and not-so-subtle glory. But beyond that, each is represented in a way that just blows me out of the water with the non-traditional and totally effective pacing she brings to a format normally predominated by quick cuts that abbreviate an emotion before truly felt.
When speaking on the subject of his comedy style, Eddie Izzard talks about "mining the moment" (and the material) to its fullest potential. He talks about the snap-snap hurry-hurry trending in comedy to hit and move along, and says his work is different because he finds a moment he likes and he stays there, takes his time, tastes it, plays with it, plays with the audience with it ... all so the moment has time to evolve to what it can be, to find its true potential. So it isn't required to communicate itself in the half a heartbeat alotted to most things in our whack-ass fast-paced world.
And that's exactly what this video does. It takes moments of intense emotion and mines them to their full potential. On several occasions, scenes we've seen in a kabillion vids on every subject -- ones invariably truncated to a 2 to 5 second grab of rippley Dean muscles or sad John face -- are allowed to really play here. To taste. To find their moment and stay with it to an emotional effect that is, simply put, stunning.
And devestating.
You keep expecting the scene to jump away, to give you that quick cut that mitigates the trueness of the grief captured by the original scene in the context of its original presentation. But instead, Rhianne stays with it, glories in it, mines it, brings that baby home to mama. The Dean-Impala scene and the post-Jim John scene, in particular, hit this so strongly I find it nearly impossible not to have a gut-clenching visceral reaction to their play ... and I've watched it about 30 times now, still getting that reaction every time.
Beyond that, her choices with the "I guess that's just the way the story goes" lines manage to touch on the mythic aspects of John hero's journey in all it's nobility and tragedy; as well as reminding us, in one small moment of "No, I can't forget this evening, or your face as you were leaving" who John is as a man and a father in one brief glimpse of the man he was before the YED forced him to go on living without Mary. That smile is everything I've ever loved about John Winchester, and where Rhianne puts it, and how she mines the moment in the play of it, breaks my heart beyond counting.
As a few of you (ahem) might know, John's loss has a season-long grieving for me; and Rhianne capturing that sense of grief and tragedy with this video before the season finale airs to whatever intention Kripke has in mind is a gift beyond measure. I hear it's been said that it's the constancy of the pain that gets you in the end. Anyone can survive the initial blow, but it is enduring the long haul of it that becomes the battle where wars and spirits are lost.
This is the constancy of pain, my friends. Go. Watch. Be amazed.
(And leave feedback.)
Without You by Rhianne
Oh ... and Rhianne? In case I haven't mentioned it seventeen times in the past 3 days? You freaking rock. Thank you so much.
Yes, that high keening sound you hear is me breaking into a million pieces and loving every single moment of it. The total awesomeness that is
rhianne grabbed my puppy-dog eyes request that someone make a Dean-grieving-John vid from the Nilsson version of Without You and ran all the way to freakin Nirvana with it (the Buddhism one, not the grunge one).
This vid ( Without You by Rhianne) is so made of awesome I lack the words. Yet still, I will presume to speak.
Because so much of my writing focusses on the nature of grief and grieving, and because this song has been one of my favorites for years simply because it is so plaintive and heartbreaking (if you've only heard the Mariah version, you've never heard this song ... trust me), I asked Rhianne if she could do something specific to the concept of grief rather than simply a character piece of either/or John or Dean or something focussed on the relationship between them as a whole.
And holy crapoli did she hit it. Every color in the tapestry of Dean's complex and heart-breaking grief is represented here, in all their subtle and not-so-subtle glory. But beyond that, each is represented in a way that just blows me out of the water with the non-traditional and totally effective pacing she brings to a format normally predominated by quick cuts that abbreviate an emotion before truly felt.
When speaking on the subject of his comedy style, Eddie Izzard talks about "mining the moment" (and the material) to its fullest potential. He talks about the snap-snap hurry-hurry trending in comedy to hit and move along, and says his work is different because he finds a moment he likes and he stays there, takes his time, tastes it, plays with it, plays with the audience with it ... all so the moment has time to evolve to what it can be, to find its true potential. So it isn't required to communicate itself in the half a heartbeat alotted to most things in our whack-ass fast-paced world.
And that's exactly what this video does. It takes moments of intense emotion and mines them to their full potential. On several occasions, scenes we've seen in a kabillion vids on every subject -- ones invariably truncated to a 2 to 5 second grab of rippley Dean muscles or sad John face -- are allowed to really play here. To taste. To find their moment and stay with it to an emotional effect that is, simply put, stunning.
And devestating.
You keep expecting the scene to jump away, to give you that quick cut that mitigates the trueness of the grief captured by the original scene in the context of its original presentation. But instead, Rhianne stays with it, glories in it, mines it, brings that baby home to mama. The Dean-Impala scene and the post-Jim John scene, in particular, hit this so strongly I find it nearly impossible not to have a gut-clenching visceral reaction to their play ... and I've watched it about 30 times now, still getting that reaction every time.
Beyond that, her choices with the "I guess that's just the way the story goes" lines manage to touch on the mythic aspects of John hero's journey in all it's nobility and tragedy; as well as reminding us, in one small moment of "No, I can't forget this evening, or your face as you were leaving" who John is as a man and a father in one brief glimpse of the man he was before the YED forced him to go on living without Mary. That smile is everything I've ever loved about John Winchester, and where Rhianne puts it, and how she mines the moment in the play of it, breaks my heart beyond counting.
As a few of you (ahem) might know, John's loss has a season-long grieving for me; and Rhianne capturing that sense of grief and tragedy with this video before the season finale airs to whatever intention Kripke has in mind is a gift beyond measure. I hear it's been said that it's the constancy of the pain that gets you in the end. Anyone can survive the initial blow, but it is enduring the long haul of it that becomes the battle where wars and spirits are lost.
This is the constancy of pain, my friends. Go. Watch. Be amazed.
(And leave feedback.)
Without You by Rhianne
Oh ... and Rhianne? In case I haven't mentioned it seventeen times in the past 3 days? You freaking rock. Thank you so much.