"That Was Another Country" commentary by Kass
Title: That Was Anther Country
Vidder: Kass
Fandom: LOST
Link to vid: here on DW | here on LJ
Warnings: contains oblique spoilers for series to date
Commentary by: Kass
A little bit of background...
I didn't start watching LOST when it first began to air. I started watching it in the summer of 2008, when yaoobruni got hooked on it and mainlined all four seasons over the course of the summer and then said "omg, you have to start watching this show." So I watched all of it with him, and by the end of four seasons I was as desperately hooked as he had become. *wry grin* We watched S5 in realtime. I started making this vid as S5 was ending.
I've known this song for years. The band is called The Innocence Mission, and this was the first of their songs I fell in love with. The lyrics have always seemed more associative than literal, to me. They clearly tell some kind of story about distance, nostalgia, longing -- but that story unfolds in a kind of piecemeal way, through images and references to which I don't entirely have access. Listening to this song feels to me like looking at a watercolor painting -- the lines are a little bit indistinct but the picture moves me. Anyway, one day we were listening to the song and Yao mentioned that it made him think of Hurley.
I was initially skeptical, both because of the female vocalist and because of her ethereal vocal quality (which seemed like an odd fit for a Hurley vid.) But then I listened to the song again, and lyrics started to jump out at me, so we started talking about the vid in big-picture terms.
I had some mild concerns about vidding a song where the lyrics aren't always easy to understand, but I like the soundwash quality/tone of the music so much (and I so like the resonance of the lyrics, inasmuch as I think I kind of understand what they mean) that I decided to just hope that people could run with it.
I wanted this vid to be a bit of a love letter for Hurley, a few minutes of glorifying his awesomeness and his big chunky body and his ginormous heart -- and also to say something about his life on-island and his life off-island and where I understand him to be at home.
This vid doesn't feature any technical tricks. It's pretty basic video editing, clipped shots exactly as I found them onscreen. What (I hope) makes it interesting is the clip selection, the timing of those clips, and their juxtaposition with each other and with the lyrical line -- so those are where I'm going to focus this commentary.
Opening: instrumental
The vid opens with a series of images of Hurley. On-island shots alternate with off-island shots, and that's a pattern I carry through the instrumental interstices between verses/choruses. This was Yao's idea: he suggested alternating between Hurley's two worlds and making use of the different visual palettes of California (which for Hurley usually means one institution or another) and the island (which usually means vivid colors, jungle, people.)
We begin with Hurley in his DHARMA jumpsuit writing in his journal, then Hurley in the bathrobe talking to his therapist, then Hurley finding the rabbit's-foot key to the DHARMA van, then Hurley in another bathrobe at another institution doing watercolors. The temporal shifts there may be confusing, but I like the way they mirror the experience of watching S5 of the show, and I wanted to juxtapose on-island and off-island life.
The clips I chose for these introductory bars highlight a lot of important moments for Hurley, and a lot of his important relationships (though not all of them.) Figuring out how to time these clips was an interesting challenge, because the percussion offers one rhythmic framework and then the guitar line and wordless vocal line come in at an offbeat slant. I wasn't sure which one I should be cutting to. In the end I opted for basically 2-second clips, but cut them kind of intuitively rather than strictly.
That became my guiding principle, actually: because the song feels associative and impressionistic to me, and because I wanted to tell a story about Hurley which is somewhat associative and impressionistic, I aimed for flow rather than for military precision throughout.
Verse one: on-island
Rowing out into the air
I have no idea what that line means in the original context of the song, but it felt like a perfect opportunity to introduce the show from the beginning: the clip of the wing of Oceanic 815, surrounded by clouds. We're rowing out into the air; we're off on an adventure on a plane.
The second clip I put on that line is Hurley, setting off across the beach alone. I wanted to show that he's on a journey -- both literal and metaphoric.
Taking blankets to the bay
When I first started working on the vid I thought I might be able to dig up an actual clip of Hurley taking blankets to the bay -- from the scene where he takes Libby on their one actual date. But of course, Libby's the one who goes to get the blankets...and gets shot for her trouble. Whoops. That said, the clips of Hurley bringing food to the pregnant Claire, from the pilot, turned out to work really well for me -- I like them better than I would have liked the literalism, in the end. This is Hurley as caretaker, and it's a role he takes on from the very first episode.
It's the same, and he was fine
And in the first place was around --
That was another country.
Here we see Hurley unearthing the golf clubs, grinning and disappearing, and then the pan across the gorgeous island and Hurley's golf course.
Again, Hurley's taking care of people: when he sees that everyone's going stircrazy with stress, he does something ridiculous and awesome to lighten the load for everyone. I love his expansive gesture here -- he seems to be introducing everyone to the island they're all already on. Like, dude, have you noticed that it's beautiful here? Live a little! That's so Hurley. And notice the increasing numbers of people in these shots. Hurley's building community around him.
That was another country.
On the second repetition of the refrain line, we get Hurley and Libby's kiss. I loved Libby and I love that they got their moment -- as brief and shining as it was. Interpersonally, that moment in time is "another country" for Hurley.
With the (brief) return of the instrumental bars, I return to alternating on-island and off-island clips. I love the cut from Hurley's manic pouring-out of the DHARMA ranch dressing to Hurley throwing a basketball into the hoop -- the way one motion echoes the other makes me really happy. That might be my favorite cut in the whole vid.
Verse two: off-island
I'm taking these dumb paper lanterns down
Yards -- no, miles -- they strung along
This was one of the first mental images I had when I started thinking about the vid: the paper lanterns would be the paper lanterns at the incredibly ill-conceived luau-themed birthday party that Hurley's parents throw for him after the rescue of the Oceanic Six. Here we see Hurley's paranoia beginning to resurface: he thinks he's hearing voices, he's worried that he's going crazy, and when he throws open the doors: surprise!
The second verse is the off-island verse. I wanted to showcase the incredible difference between Hurley's life on-island and Hurley's life off-island. Granted, on-island isn't always a picnic, but off-island life sure isn't either. Pretty much the only time we see him with a crowd is this ridiculous birthday party, and it's obvious that his parents mean well but don't understand what he's been through at all. (The look on Sayid's face when Hurley's dad, decked out in a lei, tries to start a conversation about hunting boars is priceless.)
And me with them, and how was I supposed to know about that?
That was another country.
And from Sayid at the party, we cut to Sayid unconscious in Hurley's car, Hurley frantically trying to shake him awake. Life off-island is Not Going Well -- and as if to prove that even further, then comes the cut from Hurley's little fender-bender to Hurley in an interrogation room with the police.
I love the darkness of this shot: there's plenty of bright fluorescent light but the light feels unreal, fake somehow in comparison with the abundant natural light of the island. The next cut takes us to Hurley in an institution, sitting at the edge of his bed looking listless. Again, there's a lamp on, but the light in the room (and in the shot) feels insufficient. Things are getting darker.
Yeah, that was another another country.
Here we move into daytime at the institution: Hurley in the gym, Hurley playing connect-4 with Leonard, and of course, his buddy Dave sitting and snarking by his side.
Bridge
Are you all right, are you all right?
With the bridge, we move back to the island: Hurley placing a flower on Libby's grave. I wanted to highlight Hurley's vulnerabilities here, and he has no shortage of them.
He's such a woobie.
Are you all, are you all right?
Hurley holds Dave's shoe, and then Dave mysteriously appears on the island. This is the first real sign we've gotten that something in Hurley's brain may be malfunctioning: how can his buddy from the asylum be here on the island? I love the visual juxtaposition of Dave, in his institutional bathrobe, with the rich greenery of the jungle.
You are my friend, are you all right?
We cut back to Hurley and Dave in the institution; Dr. Brooks taking the Polaroid; and then the photo itself, of Hurley with his arm around empty air. The music reaches a crescendo here, and I wanted a visual which could stand up to the musical crescendo and match it with an emotional one.
As a watcher of the show, I find the moment when Hurley discovers (and therefore we discover) that Dave isn't real -- he's a projection, he's some part of Hurley's consciousness, but he isn't actually there -- incredibly chilling. I don't know whether this moment works for people who don't know the show: is it clear that something is seriously amiss because the guy in the bathrobe appears not to actually be in the photo we just saw the doctor take? I hope so, because I wanted that to be one of the emotional climaxes of the vid. This is Hurley at his most vulnerable: when we realize that, as awesome as he is, he's really manifestly not entirely sane.
As the instrumental bars continue, we move from Hurley's realization that Dave isn't real to another moment of serious emotional crisis: he's at the police station and suddenly a vision of the late Charlie Pace swims right up to the window and shatters the glass, pouring an illusory world into the so-called real one for a minute. This is a gorgeous visual, which I take to represent the reality that Hurley's grasp on sanity is coming apart (or, at least, that the "real world" and the world of his visions are colliding.)
Hurley's having trouble trusting his own senses: what's real and what's not? I love that the show remains ambiguous on that point, and I wanted this section of the vid to highlight that.
And then we return to the familiar instrumental motif which precedes each verse. This time I didn't cut between off-island and on-island: instead I chose to show a few seconds of straight narrative, in which the story of Hurley's return to the island on Ajira flight 316 is condensed. (As an aside: how much do I love that he's reading Y: el ultimo hombre before he gets on the plane?) Showing the travel was my way of hopefully cluing the viewer in that we're headed back to the island for the third verse.
Verse three: on-island
Rowing out into the air
To signify the journey back to the island, another plane flight clip -- this time juxtaposed with a clip of Hurley on another kind of journey: finding the DHARMA van and getting it running again.
Those who know the show well probably recognize at this point that we're not moving entirely sequentially through time. (Hey, neither was the island during most of S5, so we're used to that, right?) Hurley building the golf course was a season 1 event, and so is Hurley getting the van moving. The off-island footage happens later in sequential time than either of these -- but I sandwiched it in between them because I wanted the second verse to be the off-island verse.
I struggled a little bit with the decision to return to earlier footage for the third verse, wondering whether verse three should draw on images from the most recent season. But I wanted the two on-island verses to show visual evidence of Hurley in his element, and while Hurley does seem reasonably happy in S5 once they return to the island in 1977 and he gets to work in the kitchen, we mostly only get glimpses of that, or tiny little clues (Hurley being proud of his sandwiches, e.g.) -- nothing as visually rich as the DHARMA van, which is such a great triumphant saga. I decided that the vid is pretty associative anyway -- it's not telling a straight linear narrative -- and therefore the viewer won't have the expectation that everything they see is shown to them in the order in which it appeared on screen.
Driving home, home from the bay
I like the resonance of "driving home" with Hurley and co. getting the van upright for the first time in thirty years. Plus the repetition of "home" drives home for me (er -- as it were) the ways in which the island is "home" for Hurley, and arguably for a lot of these characters. California and Australia were not home. The community is what becomes home, and it becomes a community and a home in no small part thanks to Hurley.
And we sang, and he was fine
And what is more he was around
That was another country.
Jin! How much do I love Jin? (Plus, he's making Paul Gross Arms in this clip -- I could not resist that. \o/) We see Hurley's ebullience, we see Jin's ebullience, we see the van streaking across the meadow, we see Charlie hugging Hurley with an incredibly manic expression of glee on his face. Hurley gets things moving again. This scene is pretty much magic, in its original context, and I hope this series of clips captures that.
I wanted to find some way to show the other moments when the van turns out to be critical, but again, those clips are interesting if you know their context but don't look like anything special if you don't know what Hurley went through to get the van moving (or if you don't know how remarkable it was that he managed to use the van to save the day.) So, once again: I chose clips which I hoped would speak to people who don't know the show well over clips which might have had resonance for insiders but don't look like anything special if you don't know their original context.
Yeah, that was another country.
Yeah, that was another country.
Same goes for the peanut butter scene. Of course, it's probably more resonant if you know what was going on there -- Hurley agonizing over how to handle the DHARMA food and the fact that it was inevitably going to cause discord among the community; him telling Jack his plan, and Jack amazingly recognizing that Hurley was right; Hurley throwing a giant potlatch feast, feeding everyone a full meal, plus giving Charlie the peanut butter so Charlie could give it to Claire (which hearkens back to that gorgeous scene from Claire's pregnancy where she was craving it and there wasn't any and Charlie talked her into imagining it.) But you don't have to know all of that to see the wonder in Charlie's eyes when Hurley hands him the jar.
The third verse was really fun to make because I got to focus on Hurley in his element. Hurley restarting the van, Hurley getting Jin and Sawyer to work with him, Hurley and Charlie, Hurley giving everyone a feast. This is Hurley at his healthiest and happiest: when he's doing something for other people.
Bridge reprise: seeing dead people
But are you all, are you all right?
Here things start to unravel again. As the refrain of "are you all right" re-enters the vocal line, we see Hurley off-island confronted with a vision of Ana Lucia, who is dead.
Are you all, are you all right?
Here we get Hurley painting watercolors under a tree in the asylum, and then a visit from Locke. Filing this under "seeing dead people" is kind of cheating a little bit -- John Locke is alive at the time when he visits Hurley -- but Hurley thinks he's a ghost, and reacts as though he were a ghost, so I figure it more-or-less counts.
You're still my friend.
Continuing with the theme of Hurley hanging out with dead people: here he's playing chess with an empty chair, which we later learn is a sign that he's been hanging out with the ghost of Mr. Eko. (Or at least, he thinks he is. Other ghosts are visible to we, the viewers; Mr. Eko isn't, which makes me wonder whether the other ghosts are real and Mr. Eko is a delusion. Though what do those terms even mean, really?)
Also on this line we get Hurley embracing Libby, who was alive at the time of their hug, but is dead now. With this series of clips I wanted to suggest the way in which Hurley's life is filled with his beloved dead. I find this actually kind of cheering; it's possible others might find it morbid. Cut to Hurley's final chess move with the invisible Eko, and then to Hurley freaking out about his vision of Charlie and going "la la la I can't hear you."
You didn't go out of my life.
And Hurley counts to five, looks around frantically, and Charlie has disappeared.
And that's where the vid ends: Hurley, alone, under the tree at the asylum.
So what's real, and what's illusory? Does the vid end with Hurley off the island -- did he ever in fact make it back to the island? I know what I think *g* but I tried to leave it ambiguous.
One thing that does seem certain to me is that Hurley is more himself, more healthy and whole, on the island where he's part of a community than at any other time or place in his life. But beyond that, I wanted to leave the vid open to interpretation. One of my betas came up with a gorgeous constructed-reality narrative -- about how Hurley hallucinated the whole island experience, or maybe he killed all of his friends with that van and now he's snapped and he's hallucinating everything -- which I thought was awesome: not remotely what I was trying to say, but I love that the footage supports that!
I think this vid was a giant leap forward for me, in terms of my ability to think creatively about how visuals and lyrics might work together and in terms of my willingness to muck around with the in-show timeline and tell a story which is intentionally a little bit unclear. A lot of that is thanks to Yao, who -- though he never sat down with me in front of my computer and my vidding software; the actual ripping and clipping and setting-down of clips on the timeline was all me -- talked with me about the vid idea endlessly.
We spent long hours at a coffee shop on our vacation in March talking about how the vid might work: would it be possible to alternate clips between on-island and off? Surely on-island and off-island have different color palettes: could we work with that somehow? Could we make a vid which was somewhat associative, rather than a straight and simple narrative, to match the associative qualities of the song? His input helped me envision more creative ways of dealing with narrative, and I'm really glad of that.
In the end: of course, the vid doesn't entirely live up to what I was imagining when I was imagining it. There were a few clips where I wanted to reverse the direction of what's happening on-screen, to preserve the direction of motion from one clip to the next, but it turns out that there's no way to do that using HyperEngine AV. (Someday I will have a computer which is capable of running FinalCut, dammit.)
There are some places where the vid feels a little bit clunky to me, when I wanted pure gracefulness. But it does seem that I/we succeeded in telling a story about Hurley in such a way that the emotions come through even for people who aren't already emotionally invested in him, and that makes me really happy.
In sum: Hurley &hearts &hearts &hearts!
And thank you for reading this long excursus into my thoughts on this vid. Questions/comments welcome!
Vidder: Kass
Fandom: LOST
Link to vid: here on DW | here on LJ
Warnings: contains oblique spoilers for series to date
Commentary by: Kass
A little bit of background...
I didn't start watching LOST when it first began to air. I started watching it in the summer of 2008, when yaoobruni got hooked on it and mainlined all four seasons over the course of the summer and then said "omg, you have to start watching this show." So I watched all of it with him, and by the end of four seasons I was as desperately hooked as he had become. *wry grin* We watched S5 in realtime. I started making this vid as S5 was ending.
I've known this song for years. The band is called The Innocence Mission, and this was the first of their songs I fell in love with. The lyrics have always seemed more associative than literal, to me. They clearly tell some kind of story about distance, nostalgia, longing -- but that story unfolds in a kind of piecemeal way, through images and references to which I don't entirely have access. Listening to this song feels to me like looking at a watercolor painting -- the lines are a little bit indistinct but the picture moves me. Anyway, one day we were listening to the song and Yao mentioned that it made him think of Hurley.
I was initially skeptical, both because of the female vocalist and because of her ethereal vocal quality (which seemed like an odd fit for a Hurley vid.) But then I listened to the song again, and lyrics started to jump out at me, so we started talking about the vid in big-picture terms.
I had some mild concerns about vidding a song where the lyrics aren't always easy to understand, but I like the soundwash quality/tone of the music so much (and I so like the resonance of the lyrics, inasmuch as I think I kind of understand what they mean) that I decided to just hope that people could run with it.
I wanted this vid to be a bit of a love letter for Hurley, a few minutes of glorifying his awesomeness and his big chunky body and his ginormous heart -- and also to say something about his life on-island and his life off-island and where I understand him to be at home.
This vid doesn't feature any technical tricks. It's pretty basic video editing, clipped shots exactly as I found them onscreen. What (I hope) makes it interesting is the clip selection, the timing of those clips, and their juxtaposition with each other and with the lyrical line -- so those are where I'm going to focus this commentary.
Opening: instrumental
The vid opens with a series of images of Hurley. On-island shots alternate with off-island shots, and that's a pattern I carry through the instrumental interstices between verses/choruses. This was Yao's idea: he suggested alternating between Hurley's two worlds and making use of the different visual palettes of California (which for Hurley usually means one institution or another) and the island (which usually means vivid colors, jungle, people.)
We begin with Hurley in his DHARMA jumpsuit writing in his journal, then Hurley in the bathrobe talking to his therapist, then Hurley finding the rabbit's-foot key to the DHARMA van, then Hurley in another bathrobe at another institution doing watercolors. The temporal shifts there may be confusing, but I like the way they mirror the experience of watching S5 of the show, and I wanted to juxtapose on-island and off-island life.
The clips I chose for these introductory bars highlight a lot of important moments for Hurley, and a lot of his important relationships (though not all of them.) Figuring out how to time these clips was an interesting challenge, because the percussion offers one rhythmic framework and then the guitar line and wordless vocal line come in at an offbeat slant. I wasn't sure which one I should be cutting to. In the end I opted for basically 2-second clips, but cut them kind of intuitively rather than strictly.
That became my guiding principle, actually: because the song feels associative and impressionistic to me, and because I wanted to tell a story about Hurley which is somewhat associative and impressionistic, I aimed for flow rather than for military precision throughout.
Verse one: on-island
Rowing out into the air
I have no idea what that line means in the original context of the song, but it felt like a perfect opportunity to introduce the show from the beginning: the clip of the wing of Oceanic 815, surrounded by clouds. We're rowing out into the air; we're off on an adventure on a plane.
The second clip I put on that line is Hurley, setting off across the beach alone. I wanted to show that he's on a journey -- both literal and metaphoric.
Taking blankets to the bay
When I first started working on the vid I thought I might be able to dig up an actual clip of Hurley taking blankets to the bay -- from the scene where he takes Libby on their one actual date. But of course, Libby's the one who goes to get the blankets...and gets shot for her trouble. Whoops. That said, the clips of Hurley bringing food to the pregnant Claire, from the pilot, turned out to work really well for me -- I like them better than I would have liked the literalism, in the end. This is Hurley as caretaker, and it's a role he takes on from the very first episode.
It's the same, and he was fine
And in the first place was around --
That was another country.
Here we see Hurley unearthing the golf clubs, grinning and disappearing, and then the pan across the gorgeous island and Hurley's golf course.
Again, Hurley's taking care of people: when he sees that everyone's going stircrazy with stress, he does something ridiculous and awesome to lighten the load for everyone. I love his expansive gesture here -- he seems to be introducing everyone to the island they're all already on. Like, dude, have you noticed that it's beautiful here? Live a little! That's so Hurley. And notice the increasing numbers of people in these shots. Hurley's building community around him.
That was another country.
On the second repetition of the refrain line, we get Hurley and Libby's kiss. I loved Libby and I love that they got their moment -- as brief and shining as it was. Interpersonally, that moment in time is "another country" for Hurley.
With the (brief) return of the instrumental bars, I return to alternating on-island and off-island clips. I love the cut from Hurley's manic pouring-out of the DHARMA ranch dressing to Hurley throwing a basketball into the hoop -- the way one motion echoes the other makes me really happy. That might be my favorite cut in the whole vid.
Verse two: off-island
I'm taking these dumb paper lanterns down
Yards -- no, miles -- they strung along
This was one of the first mental images I had when I started thinking about the vid: the paper lanterns would be the paper lanterns at the incredibly ill-conceived luau-themed birthday party that Hurley's parents throw for him after the rescue of the Oceanic Six. Here we see Hurley's paranoia beginning to resurface: he thinks he's hearing voices, he's worried that he's going crazy, and when he throws open the doors: surprise!
The second verse is the off-island verse. I wanted to showcase the incredible difference between Hurley's life on-island and Hurley's life off-island. Granted, on-island isn't always a picnic, but off-island life sure isn't either. Pretty much the only time we see him with a crowd is this ridiculous birthday party, and it's obvious that his parents mean well but don't understand what he's been through at all. (The look on Sayid's face when Hurley's dad, decked out in a lei, tries to start a conversation about hunting boars is priceless.)
And me with them, and how was I supposed to know about that?
That was another country.
And from Sayid at the party, we cut to Sayid unconscious in Hurley's car, Hurley frantically trying to shake him awake. Life off-island is Not Going Well -- and as if to prove that even further, then comes the cut from Hurley's little fender-bender to Hurley in an interrogation room with the police.
I love the darkness of this shot: there's plenty of bright fluorescent light but the light feels unreal, fake somehow in comparison with the abundant natural light of the island. The next cut takes us to Hurley in an institution, sitting at the edge of his bed looking listless. Again, there's a lamp on, but the light in the room (and in the shot) feels insufficient. Things are getting darker.
Yeah, that was another another country.
Here we move into daytime at the institution: Hurley in the gym, Hurley playing connect-4 with Leonard, and of course, his buddy Dave sitting and snarking by his side.
Bridge
Are you all right, are you all right?
With the bridge, we move back to the island: Hurley placing a flower on Libby's grave. I wanted to highlight Hurley's vulnerabilities here, and he has no shortage of them.
He's such a woobie.
Are you all, are you all right?
Hurley holds Dave's shoe, and then Dave mysteriously appears on the island. This is the first real sign we've gotten that something in Hurley's brain may be malfunctioning: how can his buddy from the asylum be here on the island? I love the visual juxtaposition of Dave, in his institutional bathrobe, with the rich greenery of the jungle.
You are my friend, are you all right?
We cut back to Hurley and Dave in the institution; Dr. Brooks taking the Polaroid; and then the photo itself, of Hurley with his arm around empty air. The music reaches a crescendo here, and I wanted a visual which could stand up to the musical crescendo and match it with an emotional one.
As a watcher of the show, I find the moment when Hurley discovers (and therefore we discover) that Dave isn't real -- he's a projection, he's some part of Hurley's consciousness, but he isn't actually there -- incredibly chilling. I don't know whether this moment works for people who don't know the show: is it clear that something is seriously amiss because the guy in the bathrobe appears not to actually be in the photo we just saw the doctor take? I hope so, because I wanted that to be one of the emotional climaxes of the vid. This is Hurley at his most vulnerable: when we realize that, as awesome as he is, he's really manifestly not entirely sane.
As the instrumental bars continue, we move from Hurley's realization that Dave isn't real to another moment of serious emotional crisis: he's at the police station and suddenly a vision of the late Charlie Pace swims right up to the window and shatters the glass, pouring an illusory world into the so-called real one for a minute. This is a gorgeous visual, which I take to represent the reality that Hurley's grasp on sanity is coming apart (or, at least, that the "real world" and the world of his visions are colliding.)
Hurley's having trouble trusting his own senses: what's real and what's not? I love that the show remains ambiguous on that point, and I wanted this section of the vid to highlight that.
And then we return to the familiar instrumental motif which precedes each verse. This time I didn't cut between off-island and on-island: instead I chose to show a few seconds of straight narrative, in which the story of Hurley's return to the island on Ajira flight 316 is condensed. (As an aside: how much do I love that he's reading Y: el ultimo hombre before he gets on the plane?) Showing the travel was my way of hopefully cluing the viewer in that we're headed back to the island for the third verse.
Verse three: on-island
Rowing out into the air
To signify the journey back to the island, another plane flight clip -- this time juxtaposed with a clip of Hurley on another kind of journey: finding the DHARMA van and getting it running again.
Those who know the show well probably recognize at this point that we're not moving entirely sequentially through time. (Hey, neither was the island during most of S5, so we're used to that, right?) Hurley building the golf course was a season 1 event, and so is Hurley getting the van moving. The off-island footage happens later in sequential time than either of these -- but I sandwiched it in between them because I wanted the second verse to be the off-island verse.
I struggled a little bit with the decision to return to earlier footage for the third verse, wondering whether verse three should draw on images from the most recent season. But I wanted the two on-island verses to show visual evidence of Hurley in his element, and while Hurley does seem reasonably happy in S5 once they return to the island in 1977 and he gets to work in the kitchen, we mostly only get glimpses of that, or tiny little clues (Hurley being proud of his sandwiches, e.g.) -- nothing as visually rich as the DHARMA van, which is such a great triumphant saga. I decided that the vid is pretty associative anyway -- it's not telling a straight linear narrative -- and therefore the viewer won't have the expectation that everything they see is shown to them in the order in which it appeared on screen.
Driving home, home from the bay
I like the resonance of "driving home" with Hurley and co. getting the van upright for the first time in thirty years. Plus the repetition of "home" drives home for me (er -- as it were) the ways in which the island is "home" for Hurley, and arguably for a lot of these characters. California and Australia were not home. The community is what becomes home, and it becomes a community and a home in no small part thanks to Hurley.
And we sang, and he was fine
And what is more he was around
That was another country.
Jin! How much do I love Jin? (Plus, he's making Paul Gross Arms in this clip -- I could not resist that. \o/) We see Hurley's ebullience, we see Jin's ebullience, we see the van streaking across the meadow, we see Charlie hugging Hurley with an incredibly manic expression of glee on his face. Hurley gets things moving again. This scene is pretty much magic, in its original context, and I hope this series of clips captures that.
I wanted to find some way to show the other moments when the van turns out to be critical, but again, those clips are interesting if you know their context but don't look like anything special if you don't know what Hurley went through to get the van moving (or if you don't know how remarkable it was that he managed to use the van to save the day.) So, once again: I chose clips which I hoped would speak to people who don't know the show well over clips which might have had resonance for insiders but don't look like anything special if you don't know their original context.
Yeah, that was another country.
Yeah, that was another country.
Same goes for the peanut butter scene. Of course, it's probably more resonant if you know what was going on there -- Hurley agonizing over how to handle the DHARMA food and the fact that it was inevitably going to cause discord among the community; him telling Jack his plan, and Jack amazingly recognizing that Hurley was right; Hurley throwing a giant potlatch feast, feeding everyone a full meal, plus giving Charlie the peanut butter so Charlie could give it to Claire (which hearkens back to that gorgeous scene from Claire's pregnancy where she was craving it and there wasn't any and Charlie talked her into imagining it.) But you don't have to know all of that to see the wonder in Charlie's eyes when Hurley hands him the jar.
The third verse was really fun to make because I got to focus on Hurley in his element. Hurley restarting the van, Hurley getting Jin and Sawyer to work with him, Hurley and Charlie, Hurley giving everyone a feast. This is Hurley at his healthiest and happiest: when he's doing something for other people.
Bridge reprise: seeing dead people
But are you all, are you all right?
Here things start to unravel again. As the refrain of "are you all right" re-enters the vocal line, we see Hurley off-island confronted with a vision of Ana Lucia, who is dead.
Are you all, are you all right?
Here we get Hurley painting watercolors under a tree in the asylum, and then a visit from Locke. Filing this under "seeing dead people" is kind of cheating a little bit -- John Locke is alive at the time when he visits Hurley -- but Hurley thinks he's a ghost, and reacts as though he were a ghost, so I figure it more-or-less counts.
You're still my friend.
Continuing with the theme of Hurley hanging out with dead people: here he's playing chess with an empty chair, which we later learn is a sign that he's been hanging out with the ghost of Mr. Eko. (Or at least, he thinks he is. Other ghosts are visible to we, the viewers; Mr. Eko isn't, which makes me wonder whether the other ghosts are real and Mr. Eko is a delusion. Though what do those terms even mean, really?)
Also on this line we get Hurley embracing Libby, who was alive at the time of their hug, but is dead now. With this series of clips I wanted to suggest the way in which Hurley's life is filled with his beloved dead. I find this actually kind of cheering; it's possible others might find it morbid. Cut to Hurley's final chess move with the invisible Eko, and then to Hurley freaking out about his vision of Charlie and going "la la la I can't hear you."
You didn't go out of my life.
And Hurley counts to five, looks around frantically, and Charlie has disappeared.
And that's where the vid ends: Hurley, alone, under the tree at the asylum.
So what's real, and what's illusory? Does the vid end with Hurley off the island -- did he ever in fact make it back to the island? I know what I think *g* but I tried to leave it ambiguous.
One thing that does seem certain to me is that Hurley is more himself, more healthy and whole, on the island where he's part of a community than at any other time or place in his life. But beyond that, I wanted to leave the vid open to interpretation. One of my betas came up with a gorgeous constructed-reality narrative -- about how Hurley hallucinated the whole island experience, or maybe he killed all of his friends with that van and now he's snapped and he's hallucinating everything -- which I thought was awesome: not remotely what I was trying to say, but I love that the footage supports that!
I think this vid was a giant leap forward for me, in terms of my ability to think creatively about how visuals and lyrics might work together and in terms of my willingness to muck around with the in-show timeline and tell a story which is intentionally a little bit unclear. A lot of that is thanks to Yao, who -- though he never sat down with me in front of my computer and my vidding software; the actual ripping and clipping and setting-down of clips on the timeline was all me -- talked with me about the vid idea endlessly.
We spent long hours at a coffee shop on our vacation in March talking about how the vid might work: would it be possible to alternate clips between on-island and off? Surely on-island and off-island have different color palettes: could we work with that somehow? Could we make a vid which was somewhat associative, rather than a straight and simple narrative, to match the associative qualities of the song? His input helped me envision more creative ways of dealing with narrative, and I'm really glad of that.
In the end: of course, the vid doesn't entirely live up to what I was imagining when I was imagining it. There were a few clips where I wanted to reverse the direction of what's happening on-screen, to preserve the direction of motion from one clip to the next, but it turns out that there's no way to do that using HyperEngine AV. (Someday I will have a computer which is capable of running FinalCut, dammit.)
There are some places where the vid feels a little bit clunky to me, when I wanted pure gracefulness. But it does seem that I/we succeeded in telling a story about Hurley in such a way that the emotions come through even for people who aren't already emotionally invested in him, and that makes me really happy.
In sum: Hurley &hearts &hearts &hearts!
And thank you for reading this long excursus into my thoughts on this vid. Questions/comments welcome!