Oh, Vienna
Only, er, 2 months late, I am delighted to post my effort for 
silly_cleo's wonderful Aims Vidding Project! (Go and watch them all, they're all fabulous!)
Never Look Away
edited by
purplefringe
fandom: Doctor Who
characters: The Doctor, Clara
music: Never Look Away by Vienna Teng
summary: you’re made of memories you bury or live by
content notes: Contains some very fast cutting and flickery lights
I am eternally grateful to the following lovely people:
To
silly_cleo, for coming up with this whole beautiful project in the first place, for orchestrating everything, and, um, for being very very patient with me as I dithered and procrastinated and generally failed to deliver my vid even remotely on time. <3
To
such_heights, my wonderful vidwife, for letting me use this song in the first place. And then for watching the inevitable fifteen bajillion very slightly different versions and giving helpful beta advice, and for generally being super lovely and encouraging about this vid, even when I was being whiny and indecisive and annoying. <3
And to
elisi,
lonewytch,
janie_aire,
deborah_judge,
radiolaires and all of the other amazing meta writers, whose thoughts I admire and envy in equal measure, and who have fundamentally changed the way I watch this stupid show. <3
It was hard to make, this vid. Mostly because the lyrics fit too well - I am pretty sure that Vienna Teng is a timetraveler, who traveled to the future, watched this entire season of DW, then skipped back to her Tardis, came home and wrote this song. I just can't imagine it being about anything else. Having lyrics that matched the story *so* perfectly was a little paralyzing, actually. When the lyrics are less obviously relevant, paradoxically I tend to find it easier to choose which clips to use. (This is possibly why Devil's Spoke, my Wash and Zoe vid, was one of the easiest vids I've ever made and one of the very few I feel no desire to tinker with in retrospect - I have absolutely no bloody idea what that song is about or what the lyrics mean, even now, so it was easy to make things fit.) Here, every line is so loaded with meaning that I was spoiled for choice, and found that really hard. Also, almost every line could equally apply to the Doctor's perspective on Clara or Clara's perspective on the Doctor. At first I tried to incorporate both, but the result was a bit of a mess. So eventually (and with much woe at having to cut out some really shiny parallels) I decided to concentrate on Clara's POV - until the second, epic iteration of the chorus, when it becomes about both of them. I do hope that comes across...
ETA: As these notes are mostly for my own benefit - I sometimes find it interesting to go back and see what I was thinking when making a particular vid - I should add what I forgot to say initially: I started making this vid quite a few weeks before the 50th Anniversary aired. I was 99% confident (for reasons of Meta) that Gallifrey was going to return, at least temporarily, and that Clara was going to be instrumental in this. So I already had an inkling of what 'bring you to your birthright' was going to mean in the context of the vid...but I started making it anyway. Then The Day Of The Doctor aired, and it fitted with this song more perfectly than I could have ever imagined, and it undid me a little. Suddenly every line had even more resonance than before, and a lot of sequences I was really proud of had to be ruthlessly deleted from the timeline to fit in the new context. (I am very bad at ruthless. I'm painfully indecisive.) And then....the obsessive in me took over. I couldn't finish this vid until the Christmas ep had aired, and we had ALL of Clara and Eleven's story. It would have bugged me FOREVER if I'd made it without the ending. (dammit, open canon.) And then Christmas came, and the same thing happened! Cue deleting, cue re-interpretation of lyrics, cue much flailing on the sofa and being unable to even.
The vid was also hard to make because of ALL THE META. Seriously, this last season has done terrible things to my brain, to the extent that I almost (almost) wish I didn't care about the Hero's Journey or the World Tree or any of that, because it would be a significantly more relaxing viewing experience. As it is, there was SO MUCH to cram into this vid, I put off making it for a really long time because it was slightly overwhelming. There are already some really fabulous meta vids out there about Clara - the mystery of 'Clara who?' seems to have really inspired them - and I particularly recommend Message and I See The Light by
radiolaires, State Of Dreaming by
niyalune, The New Age by
promethia_tenk and To The Grave by KatrinDepp.
This was a rather daunting backdrop to vid against! (Or it is if you are me, and easily discouraged by everyone else's awesomeness). I wanted to make a vid that summed up the lens through which I watched this last season, and that inevitably meant making some tricky choices - do I go with the pretty, swirly shot, or with the shot that looks slightly less shiny but has more resonance if you are aware of the context? Will most viewers even remember the context? Does it even matter, if the clip is less than half a second long?! Obviously, these are questions that come up when making any vid, but I found them harder than ever this time. It's not just my usual problem of 'which face shot looks cuter?' or 'which shot has more movement?', but more along the lines of 'do I use shot X because it fits more obviously with the lyrics, shot Y because it has layers of meta that about 3 other people will understand, but are really important to how I see the show, or shot Z just because it is so very pretty it seems a shame not to include it?!' (It's really weird, living in my brain). There was no set answer to that one, and some clips kept switching and switching back every time I exported a new draft. (I'm really sorry,
such_heights...) I'm still not sure I'm happy with all of them, but I JUST WANT THIS VID TO BE OVER NOW.
Um. Moving on. At the other end of the clip-choices-spectrum, there was the small matter of Clara's face. Have you seen it? I defy you to look at her face and not swoon over how ridiculously adorable it is. SHE IS THE FACIEST. <3 The same goes for her wonderfully tactile relationship with the Doctor - I seriously could have filled an entire vid just with Clara's perfect facial expressions, her swishy hair, and the endless clips of her and the Doctor flailing at each other. I spent quite a lot of time bemoaning this to
such_heights, who made soothing noises at me. Though I do blame her a little bit - when I started making this vid, it was All Meta All The Time, and had very little in the way of Feelings. She took one look at it and told me in no uncertain terms that it wouldn't do. And obviously she was right (she usually is). So then faces and cuteness happened and it was a slippery downward spiral into wanting to make a completely different vid all about Clara's radiant smile, and screw the meta entirely.
But, you know. Meta. So I compromised.
download: 56MB @ mediafire
password: rycbar123
stream:
Never Look Away from Phoebe on Vimeo.
Lyrics
detect my sudden existence on your sonar
you feel the echo
electrify the resistance in your broken heart
and burn it up, oh
we’re gonna photosynthesize and drink up the sunrise
so do they ever shut up because you said so or
do you overthink ’em all
somebody ought to corrupt you on the dance floor
and take you home
show you all your daemons and desires and dark sides
all of your colonies and continental divides
let me uncover the silver in your dark hair
the weight of your bones
I want to witness the beauty of your repair
the shape you’ve grown
for you are made of nebulas and novas and night sky
you’re made of memories you bury or live by
so if you’re out there in the cold
I’ll cover you in moonlight
if you’re a stranger to your soul
I’ll bring you to your birthright
I want the storm inside you awoken now
I want your warm bright eyes
to never look away
don’t you ever look away
some nights we open up the flood
and some nights we are lost
and some nights we’re choking on the words
but some we light on fire
if you’re out there in the cold…
I want your warm bright eyes
to come back to me
and hold on to me
you know I won’t lie
I will never look away
silly_cleo's wonderful Aims Vidding Project! (Go and watch them all, they're all fabulous!)
Never Look Away
edited by
purplefringe
fandom: Doctor Who
characters: The Doctor, Clara
music: Never Look Away by Vienna Teng
summary: you’re made of memories you bury or live by
content notes: Contains some very fast cutting and flickery lights
I am eternally grateful to the following lovely people:
To
silly_cleo, for coming up with this whole beautiful project in the first place, for orchestrating everything, and, um, for being very very patient with me as I dithered and procrastinated and generally failed to deliver my vid even remotely on time. <3
To
such_heights, my wonderful vidwife, for letting me use this song in the first place. And then for watching the inevitable fifteen bajillion very slightly different versions and giving helpful beta advice, and for generally being super lovely and encouraging about this vid, even when I was being whiny and indecisive and annoying. <3
And to
elisi,
lonewytch,
janie_aire,
deborah_judge,
radiolaires and all of the other amazing meta writers, whose thoughts I admire and envy in equal measure, and who have fundamentally changed the way I watch this stupid show. <3
It was hard to make, this vid. Mostly because the lyrics fit too well - I am pretty sure that Vienna Teng is a timetraveler, who traveled to the future, watched this entire season of DW, then skipped back to her Tardis, came home and wrote this song. I just can't imagine it being about anything else. Having lyrics that matched the story *so* perfectly was a little paralyzing, actually. When the lyrics are less obviously relevant, paradoxically I tend to find it easier to choose which clips to use. (This is possibly why Devil's Spoke, my Wash and Zoe vid, was one of the easiest vids I've ever made and one of the very few I feel no desire to tinker with in retrospect - I have absolutely no bloody idea what that song is about or what the lyrics mean, even now, so it was easy to make things fit.) Here, every line is so loaded with meaning that I was spoiled for choice, and found that really hard. Also, almost every line could equally apply to the Doctor's perspective on Clara or Clara's perspective on the Doctor. At first I tried to incorporate both, but the result was a bit of a mess. So eventually (and with much woe at having to cut out some really shiny parallels) I decided to concentrate on Clara's POV - until the second, epic iteration of the chorus, when it becomes about both of them. I do hope that comes across...
ETA: As these notes are mostly for my own benefit - I sometimes find it interesting to go back and see what I was thinking when making a particular vid - I should add what I forgot to say initially: I started making this vid quite a few weeks before the 50th Anniversary aired. I was 99% confident (for reasons of Meta) that Gallifrey was going to return, at least temporarily, and that Clara was going to be instrumental in this. So I already had an inkling of what 'bring you to your birthright' was going to mean in the context of the vid...but I started making it anyway. Then The Day Of The Doctor aired, and it fitted with this song more perfectly than I could have ever imagined, and it undid me a little. Suddenly every line had even more resonance than before, and a lot of sequences I was really proud of had to be ruthlessly deleted from the timeline to fit in the new context. (I am very bad at ruthless. I'm painfully indecisive.) And then....the obsessive in me took over. I couldn't finish this vid until the Christmas ep had aired, and we had ALL of Clara and Eleven's story. It would have bugged me FOREVER if I'd made it without the ending. (dammit, open canon.) And then Christmas came, and the same thing happened! Cue deleting, cue re-interpretation of lyrics, cue much flailing on the sofa and being unable to even.
The vid was also hard to make because of ALL THE META. Seriously, this last season has done terrible things to my brain, to the extent that I almost (almost) wish I didn't care about the Hero's Journey or the World Tree or any of that, because it would be a significantly more relaxing viewing experience. As it is, there was SO MUCH to cram into this vid, I put off making it for a really long time because it was slightly overwhelming. There are already some really fabulous meta vids out there about Clara - the mystery of 'Clara who?' seems to have really inspired them - and I particularly recommend Message and I See The Light by
radiolaires, State Of Dreaming by
niyalune, The New Age by
promethia_tenk and To The Grave by KatrinDepp.
This was a rather daunting backdrop to vid against! (Or it is if you are me, and easily discouraged by everyone else's awesomeness). I wanted to make a vid that summed up the lens through which I watched this last season, and that inevitably meant making some tricky choices - do I go with the pretty, swirly shot, or with the shot that looks slightly less shiny but has more resonance if you are aware of the context? Will most viewers even remember the context? Does it even matter, if the clip is less than half a second long?! Obviously, these are questions that come up when making any vid, but I found them harder than ever this time. It's not just my usual problem of 'which face shot looks cuter?' or 'which shot has more movement?', but more along the lines of 'do I use shot X because it fits more obviously with the lyrics, shot Y because it has layers of meta that about 3 other people will understand, but are really important to how I see the show, or shot Z just because it is so very pretty it seems a shame not to include it?!' (It's really weird, living in my brain). There was no set answer to that one, and some clips kept switching and switching back every time I exported a new draft. (I'm really sorry,
such_heights...) I'm still not sure I'm happy with all of them, but I JUST WANT THIS VID TO BE OVER NOW.
Um. Moving on. At the other end of the clip-choices-spectrum, there was the small matter of Clara's face. Have you seen it? I defy you to look at her face and not swoon over how ridiculously adorable it is. SHE IS THE FACIEST. <3 The same goes for her wonderfully tactile relationship with the Doctor - I seriously could have filled an entire vid just with Clara's perfect facial expressions, her swishy hair, and the endless clips of her and the Doctor flailing at each other. I spent quite a lot of time bemoaning this to
such_heights, who made soothing noises at me. Though I do blame her a little bit - when I started making this vid, it was All Meta All The Time, and had very little in the way of Feelings. She took one look at it and told me in no uncertain terms that it wouldn't do. And obviously she was right (she usually is). So then faces and cuteness happened and it was a slippery downward spiral into wanting to make a completely different vid all about Clara's radiant smile, and screw the meta entirely.
But, you know. Meta. So I compromised.
download: 56MB @ mediafire
password: rycbar123
stream:
Never Look Away from Phoebe on Vimeo.
Lyrics
detect my sudden existence on your sonar
you feel the echo
electrify the resistance in your broken heart
and burn it up, oh
we’re gonna photosynthesize and drink up the sunrise
so do they ever shut up because you said so or
do you overthink ’em all
somebody ought to corrupt you on the dance floor
and take you home
show you all your daemons and desires and dark sides
all of your colonies and continental divides
let me uncover the silver in your dark hair
the weight of your bones
I want to witness the beauty of your repair
the shape you’ve grown
for you are made of nebulas and novas and night sky
you’re made of memories you bury or live by
so if you’re out there in the cold
I’ll cover you in moonlight
if you’re a stranger to your soul
I’ll bring you to your birthright
I want the storm inside you awoken now
I want your warm bright eyes
to never look away
don’t you ever look away
some nights we open up the flood
and some nights we are lost
and some nights we’re choking on the words
but some we light on fire
if you’re out there in the cold…
I want your warm bright eyes
to come back to me
and hold on to me
you know I won’t lie
I will never look away