New vid: "Living Dead Girl" - Faith study - BtVS/AtS
Vid Title: Living Dead Girl
Fandom: BtVS/AtS - Action-heavy Faith study
Artist/Song: Rob Zombie/Charlie Clouser - Living Dead Girl (Subliminal Seduction Mix)
Duration: 4:25 (xvid, wmv)
Summary: Only one sure way to bring the giant down
Warnings: Violence and intense imagery; Spoilers for a wide range of things Faith-related (direct or otherwise) for both series, including episodes in which she does not appear.
Download the M4V
Not the most original idea, I know, but sometimes you just have to scratch the itch. And this one's been itching for a long, long time.
The first time I ever felt the urge to do a music video was when the AtS S1 episode "Five By Five" rolled into the scene that's set to this song. That was years and years before I knew what "vidding" was. But that scene is a big reason why I (eventually) got into vidding.
In sourcing, I went through each episode of BtVS - from Welcome To The Hellmouth to Chosen - scene by scene, looking at it all from the perspective of Faith and her arc. What I found was that Buffy's arc was filled with parallels to Faith's... in many ways they're the same character. I really feel like I could have made the same vid - more or less shot for shot - but as a Buffy vid instead (pulled from different eps, obviously). But I made a conscious effort to show very little of Buffy here, otherwise the lines between the characters become too muddled and it's no longer a Faith study.
Mental note: Faith's the brunette.
For the presentation, I had the same general goal as I did with my Spike vid, Bullet With Butterfly Wings: make the vid feel as much like the character as I can while keeping an emphasis on a mechanical kind of musicality.
A lot of the inspiration for the look came from the song (more on that below), which led me toward a horror-movie analogy that I tried to sort of meld with the character's personality. I created a few overlays by layering detail shots and keyframing them over a scene. Also used music-cued time toggle, reversed footage, out-of-sequence frames, and tv "static" to try to create a disjointed, fractured feel. I wanted it to sort of lurch forward in fits and starts.
For the opening, I grabbed Buffy and Faith lines that I thought cut to the heart of what I wanted to say about the character, then layered them on top of one another in a separate sound file. The objective was to create a feeling of building tension while staying on point with the narrative.
Decided pretty early on to use as many secondary sources as I wanted/needed in order to create the proper mood. Ended up using a handful of non-fandom sources, mostly for detail shots. The most prominent are probably the three club clips from "Soul Survivors." I also used text/title screens from Zombie's original music video for the song.
Zombie's song is a tribute to low-budget horror movies. The bizarre-sounding lyrics are actually just a string of references to cult favs. Without that context, it sounds a bit like word soup.
For instance, the line "Goldfoot's machine creates another fiend/so beautiful it'll make you kill" is a reference to the 1960s Vincent Price "Dr. Goldfoot" flicks about a mad scientist who builds a gang of alluring female robots to do his bidding.
Also, Zombie's original opening for the song is from the trailer for the film "Lady Frankenstein."
The more research I did about the song, the more I felt like it connected with Faith's story and what I was trying to say. I guess that fact says as much about the nature of the character as anything. So the song became a real focal point for the visual identity and the narrative.
Lyrics:
Living Dead Girl - Rob Zombie
what are you thinking about?
same thing you are
rage in the cage and piss upon the stage
there's only one sure way to bring the giant down
defunct the strings of cemetery things
with a one flat foot on a devil's wing
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
raping the geek and hustling the freak
like a hunchback juice on a sentimental noose
operation filth they love to love the wealth
of an SS whore making scary sounds
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
cyclone jack, hallucinating hack
thinks a donna reed eats dollar bills
goldfoot's machine creates another fiend
so beautiful it'll make you kill
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
blood on her skin
dripping with sin
do it again
living dead girl
Hope you enjoy the vid. Please share your thoughts.
Fandom: BtVS/AtS - Action-heavy Faith study
Artist/Song: Rob Zombie/Charlie Clouser - Living Dead Girl (Subliminal Seduction Mix)
Duration: 4:25 (xvid, wmv)
Summary: Only one sure way to bring the giant down
Warnings: Violence and intense imagery; Spoilers for a wide range of things Faith-related (direct or otherwise) for both series, including episodes in which she does not appear.
Download the M4V
Click to viewNot the most original idea, I know, but sometimes you just have to scratch the itch. And this one's been itching for a long, long time.
The first time I ever felt the urge to do a music video was when the AtS S1 episode "Five By Five" rolled into the scene that's set to this song. That was years and years before I knew what "vidding" was. But that scene is a big reason why I (eventually) got into vidding.
In sourcing, I went through each episode of BtVS - from Welcome To The Hellmouth to Chosen - scene by scene, looking at it all from the perspective of Faith and her arc. What I found was that Buffy's arc was filled with parallels to Faith's... in many ways they're the same character. I really feel like I could have made the same vid - more or less shot for shot - but as a Buffy vid instead (pulled from different eps, obviously). But I made a conscious effort to show very little of Buffy here, otherwise the lines between the characters become too muddled and it's no longer a Faith study.
Mental note: Faith's the brunette.
For the presentation, I had the same general goal as I did with my Spike vid, Bullet With Butterfly Wings: make the vid feel as much like the character as I can while keeping an emphasis on a mechanical kind of musicality.
A lot of the inspiration for the look came from the song (more on that below), which led me toward a horror-movie analogy that I tried to sort of meld with the character's personality. I created a few overlays by layering detail shots and keyframing them over a scene. Also used music-cued time toggle, reversed footage, out-of-sequence frames, and tv "static" to try to create a disjointed, fractured feel. I wanted it to sort of lurch forward in fits and starts.
For the opening, I grabbed Buffy and Faith lines that I thought cut to the heart of what I wanted to say about the character, then layered them on top of one another in a separate sound file. The objective was to create a feeling of building tension while staying on point with the narrative.
Decided pretty early on to use as many secondary sources as I wanted/needed in order to create the proper mood. Ended up using a handful of non-fandom sources, mostly for detail shots. The most prominent are probably the three club clips from "Soul Survivors." I also used text/title screens from Zombie's original music video for the song.
Zombie's song is a tribute to low-budget horror movies. The bizarre-sounding lyrics are actually just a string of references to cult favs. Without that context, it sounds a bit like word soup.
For instance, the line "Goldfoot's machine creates another fiend/so beautiful it'll make you kill" is a reference to the 1960s Vincent Price "Dr. Goldfoot" flicks about a mad scientist who builds a gang of alluring female robots to do his bidding.
Also, Zombie's original opening for the song is from the trailer for the film "Lady Frankenstein."
The more research I did about the song, the more I felt like it connected with Faith's story and what I was trying to say. I guess that fact says as much about the nature of the character as anything. So the song became a real focal point for the visual identity and the narrative.
Lyrics:
Living Dead Girl - Rob Zombie
what are you thinking about?
same thing you are
rage in the cage and piss upon the stage
there's only one sure way to bring the giant down
defunct the strings of cemetery things
with a one flat foot on a devil's wing
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
raping the geek and hustling the freak
like a hunchback juice on a sentimental noose
operation filth they love to love the wealth
of an SS whore making scary sounds
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
cyclone jack, hallucinating hack
thinks a donna reed eats dollar bills
goldfoot's machine creates another fiend
so beautiful it'll make you kill
crawl on me
sink into me
die for me
living dead girl
blood on her skin
dripping with sin
do it again
living dead girl
Hope you enjoy the vid. Please share your thoughts.