NEW VID: "Spring Breakers"
My first Club Vivid vid in FOUR YEARS WHAT.
"Spring Breakers"
Source: Spring Breakers (film)
Music: "Kids" by Sleigh Bells
Summary: It's Spring Break, bitch.
Warning: Nudity (NSFW)
Download: [here] (41MB, mp4)
password: kids
The lyrics are pretty unintelligible and therefore fairly irrelevant to the vid beyond the whole "this song is about going to the beach" thing. Here's what people on the internet seem to think the words are. BUT WHO KNOWS.
It was a Wednesday
I got the Kool-aid
I hear the kick drum
Talking to my baby
I wanna feel the ocean
Put on my suntan lotion
I see the sun glow
Water moving slow motion
I got a beach chair
I see the blonde hair
Kick up my feet there
I feel the cool air
The breeze is nice now
I'll tell you right now
I sip my Kool-aid
I'm feeling better now
Do I need a vacation?
Just need to get away for a while
Wait, did I forget my sunglasses?
Nope, got 'em!
I paint my nails pink
They're in the sand tough
I hear the old soul
Coming out my radio
I see a young boy
Hanging on a ropeswing
He gets a nosebleed
And I hear the gull sing
I hope the water's warm
Gotta get my swims on
I pull my straps up
I'll see a thunderstorm
Talking about boys
Put the music on
I'll just start dancing
Good looking sea shells
Need to make some new wishes
Watch out for sea glass
Watch out for jellyfishes
I see a young boy
Swimming out to sea now
I tell the life guard
He can't be bothered now
It's getting late though
Clouds are getting real low
The breeze is nice yes
I think I better go
But I never came though
They just sat right outside
And started looking at me
Everything was just perfect
I got a little sunburn, though
I wanted to vid this song two years ago (for CV 2013) but had two problems: 1) I was running TWO FaberryCons during vidding season, and 2) I had no source for the song anyway. I talked to my friends about it and tried to mine them for ideas, because there simply had to be something that would work. I wanted girls with guns kicking ass but also going to the beach. That was my vision for this vid. I knew things like Blue Crush (the surfer girls movie) wouldn't quite work because I wasn't willing to budge on the "girls with guns" piece. I had no viable ideas, so I shelfed it and watched faceless ladies kick ass in the vid in my mind, sigh.
Fast forward several months to a random weekend I'm at Lara's apartment watching stuff. We were super into Pretty Little Liars, so we'd heard of Spring Breakers because Ashley Benson is in it. I downloaded it out of curiosity, mostly. Based on just the cover photo, my expectations were low -- another pointless, stupid movie about straight party boys objectifying stupid girls. (I hadn't heard anything about the actual plot.) We watched it kind of ironically?
And we were very wrong! And very surprised! Because it's actually a pretty good movie?? And not at ALL what we expected!
It's super artsy! It's about women taking control and making their own destiny! There is no rape and actually very little straight boy fuckery! (Though there is a problematic race element that we couldn't overlook.) Still, it's a quality film with artistic vision that's about the ladies banding together and being awesome. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not terrible. We were sold in the first five minutes.
AND DID I MENTION THE LADIES HAVE GUNS AND ARE AT THE BEACH. (AND SOMETIMES MAKE OUT.) THIS WAS VERY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
I'm trying to remember when I made the connection that this was the movie I'd been waiting for. I think it wasn't until months after we watched it, honestly, so probably in early 2014. I heard the song again and made the O.O face. My little vidding dreams had come true. Bless. The movie even opened with slow motion shots of people being drunk and stupid at the beach, which is exactly how I'd pictured opening my vid. It was meant to be. Thank you, Hollywood and the vidding gods.
Because it's so beautifully made, I then had the problem of trying to decide which vid to make. It was a little panic-inducing realizing I couldn't fit my 50 minutes of beautiful clips into 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So, I had three options.
1) Straightforward movie vid that just retells the plot mostly in order. That could work, but it would include the parts I didn't like (an entire major storyline, really).
2) Ship vid between the two lead ladies, which there was plenty of footage to support but not really enough?
3) An AU version, sort of, where I rewrite the movie to play out differently and focus on the parts I like, actual plot be damned.
Ultimately, I went with option 3. I wanted to take out two specific elements of the film. First, James Franco. He did a fantastic job in his character, but I don't want that sketchy dude anywhere near my ladies. (He does make a brief appearance at the end of the vid.) Second, the super problematic racial element. The gangster storyline involves a black drug lord who is Franco's enemy, and [SPOILER] the movie ends with the little white girls going and shooting up him and all his black friends.[/SPOILER] I...am not comfortable glorifying white people killing black people in my vid. So, I used the clips I could that focused on the girls and not their victims, and showed dead bodies of all colors. But it really was something I had to consciously work around.
The other tricky thing I had to work around was the fact that their big crime (in the restaurant) is shown from weird angles. (When it happens, you only see it from a distance on the other side of the wall.) I redid the first chorus so many times, I lost count. The rest of the vid didn't come together quite as easily as I wanted, but it was pretty par for the course. The song has such a great beat and the clips were all so pretty, most anything I laid down looked okay, but I wanted to push myself to keep trying to make it better. It really evolved and tightened up over several drafts. And in my version, they never even go to jail! \o/
A note about the credits -- The credits on the film use those weird capital ocean-theme letters for the names of about 15 people. It wasn't the whole alphabet, but I was thrilled to discover that they gave me every single letter I needed -- including V, W, and G -- save for O, which I just built myself. So, I was able to chop up their footage and build my own credits with their weird animated font. Awesome.
In the end, I'm just so excited that this vid actually exists, considering it started as a vague notion. And I hope that the introduction to the vid makes you think it's just about boobs and booze, just like the movie does, before taking you in a much more interesting direction. I know it's different from my other Club Vivid vids -- a slow jam, not using physical comedy -- but hopefully you still enjoyed it.
p.s. Being able to line up Selena Gomez laughing along with the audio from the song at 1:34 made me very happy.
"Spring Breakers"
Source: Spring Breakers (film)
Music: "Kids" by Sleigh Bells
Summary: It's Spring Break, bitch.
Warning: Nudity (NSFW)
Download: [here] (41MB, mp4)
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
password: kids
The lyrics are pretty unintelligible and therefore fairly irrelevant to the vid beyond the whole "this song is about going to the beach" thing. Here's what people on the internet seem to think the words are. BUT WHO KNOWS.
It was a Wednesday
I got the Kool-aid
I hear the kick drum
Talking to my baby
I wanna feel the ocean
Put on my suntan lotion
I see the sun glow
Water moving slow motion
I got a beach chair
I see the blonde hair
Kick up my feet there
I feel the cool air
The breeze is nice now
I'll tell you right now
I sip my Kool-aid
I'm feeling better now
Do I need a vacation?
Just need to get away for a while
Wait, did I forget my sunglasses?
Nope, got 'em!
I paint my nails pink
They're in the sand tough
I hear the old soul
Coming out my radio
I see a young boy
Hanging on a ropeswing
He gets a nosebleed
And I hear the gull sing
I hope the water's warm
Gotta get my swims on
I pull my straps up
I'll see a thunderstorm
Talking about boys
Put the music on
I'll just start dancing
Good looking sea shells
Need to make some new wishes
Watch out for sea glass
Watch out for jellyfishes
I see a young boy
Swimming out to sea now
I tell the life guard
He can't be bothered now
It's getting late though
Clouds are getting real low
The breeze is nice yes
I think I better go
But I never came though
They just sat right outside
And started looking at me
Everything was just perfect
I got a little sunburn, though
I wanted to vid this song two years ago (for CV 2013) but had two problems: 1) I was running TWO FaberryCons during vidding season, and 2) I had no source for the song anyway. I talked to my friends about it and tried to mine them for ideas, because there simply had to be something that would work. I wanted girls with guns kicking ass but also going to the beach. That was my vision for this vid. I knew things like Blue Crush (the surfer girls movie) wouldn't quite work because I wasn't willing to budge on the "girls with guns" piece. I had no viable ideas, so I shelfed it and watched faceless ladies kick ass in the vid in my mind, sigh.
Fast forward several months to a random weekend I'm at Lara's apartment watching stuff. We were super into Pretty Little Liars, so we'd heard of Spring Breakers because Ashley Benson is in it. I downloaded it out of curiosity, mostly. Based on just the cover photo, my expectations were low -- another pointless, stupid movie about straight party boys objectifying stupid girls. (I hadn't heard anything about the actual plot.) We watched it kind of ironically?
And we were very wrong! And very surprised! Because it's actually a pretty good movie?? And not at ALL what we expected!
It's super artsy! It's about women taking control and making their own destiny! There is no rape and actually very little straight boy fuckery! (Though there is a problematic race element that we couldn't overlook.) Still, it's a quality film with artistic vision that's about the ladies banding together and being awesome. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not terrible. We were sold in the first five minutes.
AND DID I MENTION THE LADIES HAVE GUNS AND ARE AT THE BEACH. (AND SOMETIMES MAKE OUT.) THIS WAS VERY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
I'm trying to remember when I made the connection that this was the movie I'd been waiting for. I think it wasn't until months after we watched it, honestly, so probably in early 2014. I heard the song again and made the O.O face. My little vidding dreams had come true. Bless. The movie even opened with slow motion shots of people being drunk and stupid at the beach, which is exactly how I'd pictured opening my vid. It was meant to be. Thank you, Hollywood and the vidding gods.
Because it's so beautifully made, I then had the problem of trying to decide which vid to make. It was a little panic-inducing realizing I couldn't fit my 50 minutes of beautiful clips into 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So, I had three options.
1) Straightforward movie vid that just retells the plot mostly in order. That could work, but it would include the parts I didn't like (an entire major storyline, really).
2) Ship vid between the two lead ladies, which there was plenty of footage to support but not really enough?
3) An AU version, sort of, where I rewrite the movie to play out differently and focus on the parts I like, actual plot be damned.
Ultimately, I went with option 3. I wanted to take out two specific elements of the film. First, James Franco. He did a fantastic job in his character, but I don't want that sketchy dude anywhere near my ladies. (He does make a brief appearance at the end of the vid.) Second, the super problematic racial element. The gangster storyline involves a black drug lord who is Franco's enemy, and [SPOILER] the movie ends with the little white girls going and shooting up him and all his black friends.[/SPOILER] I...am not comfortable glorifying white people killing black people in my vid. So, I used the clips I could that focused on the girls and not their victims, and showed dead bodies of all colors. But it really was something I had to consciously work around.
The other tricky thing I had to work around was the fact that their big crime (in the restaurant) is shown from weird angles. (When it happens, you only see it from a distance on the other side of the wall.) I redid the first chorus so many times, I lost count. The rest of the vid didn't come together quite as easily as I wanted, but it was pretty par for the course. The song has such a great beat and the clips were all so pretty, most anything I laid down looked okay, but I wanted to push myself to keep trying to make it better. It really evolved and tightened up over several drafts. And in my version, they never even go to jail! \o/
A note about the credits -- The credits on the film use those weird capital ocean-theme letters for the names of about 15 people. It wasn't the whole alphabet, but I was thrilled to discover that they gave me every single letter I needed -- including V, W, and G -- save for O, which I just built myself. So, I was able to chop up their footage and build my own credits with their weird animated font. Awesome.
In the end, I'm just so excited that this vid actually exists, considering it started as a vague notion. And I hope that the introduction to the vid makes you think it's just about boobs and booze, just like the movie does, before taking you in a much more interesting direction. I know it's different from my other Club Vivid vids -- a slow jam, not using physical comedy -- but hopefully you still enjoyed it.
p.s. Being able to line up Selena Gomez laughing along with the audio from the song at 1:34 made me very happy.