(Vid) It's Not
I've created a new vid! Or rather technically, I've completed a vid I actually began back in February of last year, and which sat uncompleted on my harddrive for months until I finally kicked myself into finishing it. :-)
Credit goes to
elisi for originally suggesting this song. Well, either this one or 'The Moth', anyway.
Music: 'It's Not' by Aimee Mann
Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6
Rating: 12 (Warnings for angst, depression and general season-6iness)
Length: 3.25
Format: WMV, 640 x 352, 31.2MB
Characters/Pairings: Buffy, Buffy/Spike
Summary: A look at Buffy's mindset in Season Six: the world is moving on around her, but she's still stuck in the same old spot.
"And I believe it's you who can make it better... But it's not."
Download Link - Right-Click and 'Save As'
Lyrics and comments below the cut.
The main challenge in vidding this song was that it has a very slow tempo, which didn't fit many of the clips. I came up with a couple of solutions: some clips were deliberately slowed down by as much as 50%, so the people seem to float across the screen. With others, I stopped the clip on a freeze-frame then zoomed slowly in on a key element of the picture - usually Buffy's eyes. The idea was to show how the world feels to her in Season 6: every action takes effort, and she feels frozen there and unable to affect or respond to what's going on around her.
The three verses are each based on Buffy trying to work her way out of depression - with her friends, by getting a job, and through her relationship with Spike, respectively. None of them work.
I keep going round and round on the same old circuit;
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot,
Where something I can't see interrupts the current
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot.
And from behind the screen it can look so perfect:
But it's not.
The image of water circling down the drain was chosen to fit the lyrics 'going round and round', and there's also an attempted parallel there between underground wires and underground pipes. :-) The scene where Buffy and Willow simultaneously turn away from each other on "something I can't see" was a lucky find; I think it's a very symbolic image. This verse ends on a device I'll use again: using a lens-flare effect on the scene of Buffy being hugged by Willow, to give it a false air of glamour. This is Buffy as her friends see her; then we cut to the reality.
So here I'm sitting in my car at the same old stoplight;
I keep waiting for a change but I don't know what.
So red turns into green turning into yellow,
But I'm just frozen here on the same old spot;
And all I have to do is to press the pedal:
But I'm not.
The line about the traffic lights changing is one of my favourite bits. Although confusingly, Amber is wearing green not yellow. :-)
People are tricky; you can't afford to show
Anything risky, anything they don't know.
The moment you try - well kiss it goodbye.
Poor Buffy. The moment she opens her mouth to tell Tara her secret, she can kiss goodbye to all her friends. I know, it didn't actually work that way on the show itself. :-)
So baby, kiss me like a drug, like a respirator;
And let me fall into the dream of the astronaut,
Where I get lost in space that goes on forever,
And you make all the rest just an afterthought;
And I believe it's you who could make it better:
Though it's not.
No it's not...
No it's not...
So Buffy seeks solace with Spike. I rearranged the video just before I finished it to make the two of them fall through the floor just as the lyric says "fall into the dream" - also, the grey, dusty background of the scene after that does look dream-like. The following scene really is Buffy's dream (from Dead Things), of course - I did consider putting some sort of effect on it to emphasise that, but I think it works better without. And that's Dawn's dinner she's dropping when the song says "you make all the rest just an afterthought".
Finally the song ends with a triple repetition of 'It's not', during which I put Buffy through more and more mounting misery until by the end the poor girl's catatonic. I almost felt like adding some text to the final screen saying "Don't worry, she gets better!!" but I thought that would spoil the mood. :-)
So there we go. Feeback and criticism welcome!
Credit goes to
elisi for originally suggesting this song. Well, either this one or 'The Moth', anyway.
Music: 'It's Not' by Aimee Mann
Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6
Rating: 12 (Warnings for angst, depression and general season-6iness)
Length: 3.25
Format: WMV, 640 x 352, 31.2MB
Characters/Pairings: Buffy, Buffy/Spike
Summary: A look at Buffy's mindset in Season Six: the world is moving on around her, but she's still stuck in the same old spot.
"And I believe it's you who can make it better... But it's not."
Download Link - Right-Click and 'Save As'
Lyrics and comments below the cut.
The main challenge in vidding this song was that it has a very slow tempo, which didn't fit many of the clips. I came up with a couple of solutions: some clips were deliberately slowed down by as much as 50%, so the people seem to float across the screen. With others, I stopped the clip on a freeze-frame then zoomed slowly in on a key element of the picture - usually Buffy's eyes. The idea was to show how the world feels to her in Season 6: every action takes effort, and she feels frozen there and unable to affect or respond to what's going on around her.
The three verses are each based on Buffy trying to work her way out of depression - with her friends, by getting a job, and through her relationship with Spike, respectively. None of them work.
I keep going round and round on the same old circuit;
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot,
Where something I can't see interrupts the current
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot.
And from behind the screen it can look so perfect:
But it's not.
The image of water circling down the drain was chosen to fit the lyrics 'going round and round', and there's also an attempted parallel there between underground wires and underground pipes. :-) The scene where Buffy and Willow simultaneously turn away from each other on "something I can't see" was a lucky find; I think it's a very symbolic image. This verse ends on a device I'll use again: using a lens-flare effect on the scene of Buffy being hugged by Willow, to give it a false air of glamour. This is Buffy as her friends see her; then we cut to the reality.
So here I'm sitting in my car at the same old stoplight;
I keep waiting for a change but I don't know what.
So red turns into green turning into yellow,
But I'm just frozen here on the same old spot;
And all I have to do is to press the pedal:
But I'm not.
The line about the traffic lights changing is one of my favourite bits. Although confusingly, Amber is wearing green not yellow. :-)
People are tricky; you can't afford to show
Anything risky, anything they don't know.
The moment you try - well kiss it goodbye.
Poor Buffy. The moment she opens her mouth to tell Tara her secret, she can kiss goodbye to all her friends. I know, it didn't actually work that way on the show itself. :-)
So baby, kiss me like a drug, like a respirator;
And let me fall into the dream of the astronaut,
Where I get lost in space that goes on forever,
And you make all the rest just an afterthought;
And I believe it's you who could make it better:
Though it's not.
No it's not...
No it's not...
So Buffy seeks solace with Spike. I rearranged the video just before I finished it to make the two of them fall through the floor just as the lyric says "fall into the dream" - also, the grey, dusty background of the scene after that does look dream-like. The following scene really is Buffy's dream (from Dead Things), of course - I did consider putting some sort of effect on it to emphasise that, but I think it works better without. And that's Dawn's dinner she's dropping when the song says "you make all the rest just an afterthought".
Finally the song ends with a triple repetition of 'It's not', during which I put Buffy through more and more mounting misery until by the end the poor girl's catatonic. I almost felt like adding some text to the final screen saying "Don't worry, she gets better!!" but I thought that would spoil the mood. :-)
So there we go. Feeback and criticism welcome!