BSG vid: The Ledge

[m_a_r_i_k_s]

I've finally finished making this Lee video. It's been the main project for me since autumn 2007 and it took me about three months to make. Now I feel kind of fagged out emotionally but relatively satisfied, which is nice - I think one of the most pleasant moments of the process for a vidder is when you give the final touches to your work and you

Comments

[m_a_r_i_k_s]

and I think that makes this much stronger than if it was something that focussed simply on his relationship with Kara.

Yes. You know, I find some special touch to videos from _Lee’s pov, focused on his relationship with Kara. Pilots represent a whole world without frontiers to me, Lee’s perception of this world - is one of projections interesting to me, concealing the truth, the pure picture somewhere in the middle. Cold probably was the most intense and bright from such clips that I made.
But at the same time I consider myself being lucky to perceive Lee’s character integrally from the beginning of the show, I mean, his storyline has always been fascinating whether he was interacting with Kara or Roslin, Zarek or himself. To me he never was just Kara’s man, her best option or something like that… In other words, he’s an all-sufficient cell of the organism. Both Lee and Kara have stories so huge and breathtaking without each other that when their universes collide, the clash creates an all consuming bubble…
I’m not just a shipper, I’m a Lee-fan and a Kara-fan, two in one. To tell you the truth, it is strange, because usually I tend to sympathize with one of the characters in the pairing more than with the other. But at the same time such unique mixture of respect, love and interest in both of them is the only reason I can try and work from both of their povs in videos like “24” or “The Ledge”…

The first time I watched this, the credits really caught me by surprise - I was checking to make sure I had the sound on,

The first thing that igrushka13 asked me was whether or not it was a glitch in the video file she downloaded because in the middle of composition the sound and picture kinda cut off suddenly. I explained her the reason I deliberately made a gap there. Something similar I used at the beginning of the video. I didn’t make the credits at once, but the more I was listening to the song, the more this opening in silence seemed appropriate, in fact, maybe the only right one. To translate Lee to the sounds’ language - he is an amazing combination of silence, cacophony and a neat sequential melody. It would be wrong, I think, to open this vid by some kind of vocal epigraph - the song itself and the following flow of video clips contain enough of info. Thus, in the opening I tried to let the viewer listen to this silence and tune in the character.
And the back of Lee’s head in sight for me resonates with silence - these shots - are the last second of the instrument’s adjustment when we can look at him from the outside as it often happens from Kara’s position… or Kendra’s in Razor… Bill’s - whoever’s - all of this just for the chance to become thoroughly engrossed in Lee’s internal world, to shift the focus point inside him and his system of judgment.

There seems a certain symmetry in the fact that you start with where Lee's at his most idealistic, and then hit us straight away with images from his death.

You’re right, there’s symmetry in many things here - I deliberately bring Lee-idealist from S1 to the viewer’s attention, then I make kind of jump in time to see the man who’s loosing himself, going through the collapse of all those principles and beliefs, moral pillars that were buoying him up.
The video itself doesn’t have any chronology directly reminiscent of canon, it’s built on opposition and comparison of key moments and insignificant details rather than some neat sequence of events in Lee’s life.
His role in the destruction of Olimpic Carrier and the Resurrection Ship organically melted into one another, created another contradictory picture. The shots of presumably empty windows, an explosion… and another one with thousands of skinjobs floating into space, followed by questions whether or not it was a right decision in the first case, whether or not they/he made a mistake and finally… was there ever any point in what they were doing at all?..
All of these visions and questions flash by in seconds, but to me it is vivid, sharp, painful a lot of the times - and it’s Lee.