The Boys are Back in Town

[azdak]

Woo-hoo, I've finished my vid! It's Thin Lizzy's The Boys are Back in Town, and of course it's Angel and Spike and Spike and Angel and William and Angelus(with a few brief appearances by other characters). I'm feeling smug about it, because it is SO MUCH BETTER than my first ever effort, and because I got very worried halfway through that the idea

Comments

[cleapet]

Hey, that's pretty nifty. I'm quite impressed.

[azdak]

Gosh, thank you! Coming from someone with an artistic bent like yours, that's quite a compliment :-)

[teenes]

I want to see, but I can't see as I'm at work. Something to download when I get back to my hotel. I wonder how fast the connection is there.

Mainly checking in to whine - how did I get pulled back into posting at TWoP? I kept checking back, reading the posts, getting that tired "oh Lord, not again" feeling, and feeling disinclined to post... and then somehow today, there I am again, posting about S7. In response to a bunch of people I *know* I'm not going to change the mind of. What drives me to do it?! I'm blaming this partly on you, b/c I see you posting there and still valiantly trying to debate with these people, and feel guilty for not doing my part. So =P.

=)

Hold on a moment. I'm at work b/c I'm supposed to be doing work. Why am I here? *disappears*

[azdak]

You know, I had a feeling you’d only come back because I’d been whingeing about your absence ;-) Aren’t they dreadful, though? Sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief (what is it about Xander that he attracts these utterly humourless, obsessive supporters, who can’t seem to understand that a TV show is not real life?). And then every once in a while someone (usually a total newbie) will come up with something that makes it all worth while, like that woman who recently posted the best explanation of the ‘sharing the Slayer power’ metaphor that I’ve ever seen. But it’s a labour of Sisyphus all right, so don’t feel you have to keep putting your shoulder to the boulder just on my behalf. I only join in when I feel like a scrap anyway, because there’s almost never anything I really want to say (and that’s where I miss you on TWOP - because you always used to come up with the most stimulating ideas there. Of course, I still get to be inspired by your lj posts, but just occasionally some TWoP twit would trigger a really interesting

[teenes]

Well...it wasn't just b/c of you. I think I occasionally hit my limit of tolerance and have to reply, but you'll note that I don't have the taste for long, drawn-out debates anymore. And it takes a lot of time! I don't think I realized how much time I wasted on TWoP before until I stopped doing it

[azdak]

How can you be so utterly judgmental about characters in a piece of fiction? It's a story, for cripes sake.

God, yes! And they don't seem to realise how unutterably boring the 'perfect' characters that they seem to want would be to watch. Plus, whoever it was who was saying that Anya had no interest in xander's personal issues because she interrupted him in OMWF to do 'Look at me, I'm dancin' crazy'... well, what can I say? That seems to me to be a borderline candidate for a mental institution.

I had some thoughts the other day about JW not shying away from "and then what", and how he seems to be primarily interested, in fact, in "and then what" and how that's been reflected in BtVS, AtS, and Firefly.

That sounds absolutely fascinating. I haven't seen Firefly yet (I'm downloading the eps, but it's literally taking months, and after my experience of seeing Buffy in a wonky order that's left me with a skewed perspective, I want to do Firefly right

[teenes]

Hee! This was so cute! I liked the correlations you found between the lyrics and the scenes at times, and the way you hit the beats with various Spike/Angel punches. Very nice job!

Quite randomly, it was odd seeing the Spike/William scenes from FFL juxtaposed with the ones from TGIQ. Young Spike in FFL was kinda hot. TGIQ? Not so much...

And my brain is wired weird, b/c while the Destiny scenes you used worked really well in the video, I couldn't help getting pulled to a more sober state of mind watching them, b/c I just thought there was so much raw pain in that fight between Spike and Angel, and those scenes just brought it back to mind. It's been a while since I watched that episode, it's odd that scenes from it have that effect on me.

Don't mind my last post btw, I'm just in an odd mood today. Must be the altitude or that cleaner Colorado air.

[azdak]

Hee! This was so cute! I liked the correlations you found between the lyrics and the scenes at times, and the way you hit the beats with various Spike/Angel punches. Very nice job!

Thank you! I enjoyed doing it, because most of the time the punches hit the beats anyway, without me having to faff about sorting it out, so it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d been expecting. There’s a lot of serendipity involved because I’m far too impatient to do any proper preaparatory work, I just sit down and get on with it, and then it’s often a matter of luck whether things fit or not.

Quite randomly, it was odd seeing the Spike/William scenes from FFL juxtaposed with the ones from TGIQ. Young Spike in FFL was kinda hot. TGIQ? Not so much...It’s partly the lighting on Angel, I think, that doesn’t do JM any favours. But you know, in S5/early S6 he is quite extraordinarily beautiful, and Buffy having a big female audience, I think they really played with that, whereas AtS is more manly, so they focus on prettying up the female characters. And yeah

[teenes]

because most of the time the punches hit the beats anyway

Did they really? That's kind of funny.

I really loved the parts where Spike was getting thrown around by Illyria to the lyrics about the chick, etc... cracked me the hell up.

It’s partly the lighting on Angel, I think, that doesn’t do JM any favours.

Yeah, there's that, but JM has definitely gotten older. Which isn't to say that older guys can't be hot, but it's changed his look a bit. Not to mention, I just hate the later William wig (TGIQ fixed it a little b/c it was looser) and love the FFL wig (most of the time - every now and then it seemed to sit funny on his head). And I do agree that JM hit some sort of magical peak in his physical beauty in S5/early S6. Or the makeup people did, I dunno =). Then he started losing a bit too much weight, and then magically aged like 10 years in one summer... yeah, maybe that was the lighting.

One of the things I find really interesting about fan vids is how they work on two levels, the story told by the images, and the story

[azdak]

That's an interesting observation. I haven't watched enough fanvids to form any opinions myself, but you've got me curious now.
I think I could get quite boring on the subject. I've come to the conclusion that it's all a matter of sub-text. When you watch a fanvid, the images provide the lyrics with a sub-text, based on what you know about the characters and their story. There are some fanvids which don't aim for that, they just use the imagery to illustrate the text, pure and simple (for instance there was one recc'd on TWoP that was 'The Coward of the County' set to Buffy images. It sort of worked in that the vidder found an image to go with every line, but at the same time you knew that what you were being shown hadn't happened on the show (Buffy being raped by the Trio, for instance), so the imagery only worked as text, not as sub-text). In contrast to that, there's a vid, Jolene, that examines Harmony's love for Spike and her jealousy of Buffy. There, the images function as sub-text, so that you interpret the song as a comment on

[toronto_gal]

Hee! - well, that was a rather delightful fan-vid =) I loved how it showcased a lot of the dorkier Angel and Spike moments, and the scenes were often quite humourously matched with the song. And it was neat how certain scenes would draw visual parallels between the two souled vampires. Plus the cast of characters at the end was an unexpected little touch that I quite liked. All-in-all a very enjoyable piece of work - great job! And knowing this was only your second attempt at vidding? - makes it all the more impressive =)

Anyhoo - due to being busy, I've been somewhat lax in keeping up with Livejournal. But looking back at your entries, I see some really good stuff. I quite enjoyed your list of favorite fan-vids. And your analysis of Seeing Red was a really intelligent and a very good read. But I'd expect nothing less from the ever-talented Azdak =)

Take care!

[azdak]

Ah, LMM is back in town, and, as always, a shining example of how to make people feel good. Thank you! Yeah, that was my second attempt at vidding (we will draw a veil over my first). I might have a go at a third attempt before the summer holidays are over (I have absolutely no time the rest of the year), but as it will be an Andrew vid (shock horror!) I don’t imagine anyone but me will want to see it :-)

I spotted you on TWoP a while back, defending S6 with your usual elan. Are you less busy at the moment? Will you be around more? It’s always a pleasure to read your take on things.

[toronto_gal]

Hee - well, I for one wouldn't mind watching your proposed Andrew vid =) Heck - I think I've even viewed one or two Andrew vids in the past... pretty much because I have a high-speed internet connection, and thus it's easy to download and view a fan-vid whenever it should tickle my fancy. Due to that, I've probably seen vids for just about every character imaginable. So if you were to take the time to compose an Andrew-related video, I'd happily take a peek. I'm sure you'll do a great job with it. In fact, once I'm done writing this post, I'm gonna download and view your first vid =)

Are you less busy at the moment? Will you be around more? It’s always a pleasure to read your take on things.Aww - thank you! Sadly though, I'm still in a pretty busy phase - I'm soon heading into exam season for the summer courses I've been taking. As such, I've been steering clear of the cooler and meatier topics of discussion that have been popping up on the boards. Even so, I do check in on a semi-regular basis to take a peek at what's going

[azdak]

Good luck with the exams! What a horrible way to have to spend the summer... still, at least they'll be over soon. And perhaps then there'll be time for the meatier discussions!

[thedeadlyhook]

Aw, fun! Who knew there were really that many fight scenes there to put together? Not to mention defenestrations.

The thing the really stuck out to me, watching, oddly enough, is how much that damned leather duster really is its own character. It's like a live thing.

[azdak]

Ha! There are way more fight scenes than that. The one thing available in abundance is fight scenes. As for defenestrations, Spike and Dru were in Prague so perhaps he picked up a taste for them there (though Angel is the one with a real affinity for broken glass).

The duster really does swirl about a lot. there would have been even more of it, but in the end I cut the additional duster bits from TGiQ (though it broke my heart to lose Angel's appalling Italian jacket, but I just couldn't justify including it. Sob.)