NEW VID: About Schroeder
This vid has a very long story behind it, which I've posted here. I highly recommend reading that before watching for the full experience. The short version: I watched Farscape in sekrit and made chickwithmonkey a birthday present. Because she's my favorite.
"About Schroeder"
Music: No More Kings
Source: Farscape, John/Chiana
Summary: Chiana tries to understand John, but he isn't reaching back.
Song and concept provided by chickwithmonkey, I just fell in love with it and did the dirty work.
Download: [here] (39 MB, xvid)
This vid would not exist were it not for the help of sweetestdrain, sdwolfpup, and la_cspan. Period. There are no words to encapsulate the full extent of my gratitude and their patience with me.
password: farscape
Lyrics
Sally Brown sits down by his piano
He doesn't see her there, he plays his heart out
She's mesmerized by his concentration
Closes her eyes and tries to see what he sees
This is love, oh yes, at its finest
This is love how it needs to be
And it's enough to break through the shyness
She knows it'd be love if he'd hold her
She can't stop thinking about Schroeder
I'm trying to think of what I can say here that I didn't already say in the explanation post. More than anything, doing this vid scared the shit out of me. Most of my vidder friends are big Farscape fans, so I was really nervous about playing in their sandbox. Not that I felt they'd be territorial, far from it, I just didn't want to mess up. Unlike the other vids I've done, I couldn't remember the context of many of the clips I used. I was able to piece together a visual narrative on a mostly surface level for a basic/new viewer like myself to understand. I worried that hardcore fans would immediately recognize that I flipped clips, reversed clips, constructed scenes, and said to hell with context in most cases. If you can't move past that, then you probably won't enjoy this vid. I'm at peace with that. I love it enough for the both of us, don't worry.
Here are excerpts from the meta/concept email I sent to sweetestdrain and la_cspan along with the first draft. Mostly I was just talking through the concept myself because I'm an extrovert and that's what we DO. But I think these thoughts from early on in the process still summarize what I was trying to say when it was done.
Rachael's concept for the vid was that he never really "sees" her, which gave me VERY limited clip choice. And damnit, I have some awesome clips of them interacting. GRR. It's very hard to find clips where they're both sitting there contently not talking OR touching. Like it would've killed the writers to put more of that in? If you know of some clips that would work here that I don't have, PLEASE speak up. No, really. I need to flesh out the "this is love how it needs to be" section, because right now it's full of sad stuff instead of mostly content stuff. This vid is SO EMO right now. But the song is heartbreakingly beautiful, and I'm trying to follow the tone and flow of it. Sometimes I'm editing to the piano and other times, the vocals. The song has two climaxes (heh, climax), and I'm trying very specifically to accompany that visually.
I really like bookending the vid with Moya and the empty hallways, and I hope you like it, too. From a practical standpoint, it gives me some interesting visuals over the basic piano while I'm introducing the characters and setting the scene. Also, the piano riff bookends the song itself, so it makes sense to me to do some mirroring with the visuals over that. And it's literally a quarter of the song's running time taken up by "easy" clips, which is both helpful and a cop-out, admittedly, but I think establishing shots are helpful since I've opted not to do an opening title sequence. From a meta perspective, it's all about *space*. Space is a very big place and Moya is a very big ship, and even though John and Chiana are in such relatively close proximity, there is still so very much space between them. Being on the same ship doesn't mean they're close. The tracking shots in the hall are to enunciate that distance.
The wormhole becomes the big metaphor of the vid. It's the music Schroeder hears, yes, in that literal sense. But to Chiana, it's what she's trying to offer him. WORMHOLES ARE LOVE. He spends all this time looking for something 'out there' when something wonderful is right in front of him if he'd just look at her. Both of them are chasing things they can't have. The first half of the vid is Chiana trying to understand his obsession, like if she could understand it then she could make it happen for him and give him that, and then they'd be happy together in love because he'd be able to move past it. And of course, she can't, so she has to resign herself to not ever really being able to have him, not completely, because the most she can get is zonedout!John who asks her to leave him alone if she pushes. He's not even TRYING to meet her halfway. So, there are tears and stuff.
(GOD. SO EMO.)
It's also important to me to end the vid with Chiana seeing a wormhole while John doesn't see either it OR her. Such is the price he pays for having a closed heart! (Stupid MAN.) Really I just like the idea that Chiana is open to him and really TRIED, so right when she's about to give up completely, she gets to see this beautiful thing while he's too busy off being all self-absorbed and emo. And again, it's the metaphor, because she sees the full glory of what's possible between them and he doesn't see it at all. She sees what he's after, but he can't see what she's after. And the vid ends on the depressing note of no resolution, which is always good times. Moya flies on, their lives go on, and Chiana has to decide what to do for herself because apparently, John's not changing.
Hopefully that makes some kind of sense. But hey, it's vidding, so who knows. Sense: optional. [end]
Because the lyrics are a narrative but it's a very specific and short span of time that's described, I wanted the vid to reflect that. This is a deeper look at a particular moment in time. Maybe Chiana's having a bad night and we're going in all Discovery Channel to get it on tape. It was a challenge playing with clips that needed to say mostly the same thing repeatedly in different ways while remaining interesting. Also, I never thought I'd have one, let alone three clips over six seconds long in a vid. Crazytown.
This was a six-draft vid. I made it in five days (of purely editing time). That's kind of INSANE. But also really intense and mostly fun. I got to dig as deep into a concept as my brain could stand without exploding and come out the other side with, hey, a vid! I hope you enjoy it. And to avoid any confusion in the credits, Corde is Rachael's old screenname that she used with the Scapers, so it's kind of an homage.
Feedback, as always, is treasured and appreciated, whether it be one word or one hundred. Thank you for watching!
"About Schroeder"
Music: No More Kings
Source: Farscape, John/Chiana
Summary: Chiana tries to understand John, but he isn't reaching back.
Song and concept provided by chickwithmonkey, I just fell in love with it and did the dirty work.
Download: [here] (39 MB, xvid)
This vid would not exist were it not for the help of sweetestdrain, sdwolfpup, and la_cspan. Period. There are no words to encapsulate the full extent of my gratitude and their patience with me.
password: farscape
Lyrics
Sally Brown sits down by his piano
He doesn't see her there, he plays his heart out
She's mesmerized by his concentration
Closes her eyes and tries to see what he sees
This is love, oh yes, at its finest
This is love how it needs to be
And it's enough to break through the shyness
She knows it'd be love if he'd hold her
She can't stop thinking about Schroeder
I'm trying to think of what I can say here that I didn't already say in the explanation post. More than anything, doing this vid scared the shit out of me. Most of my vidder friends are big Farscape fans, so I was really nervous about playing in their sandbox. Not that I felt they'd be territorial, far from it, I just didn't want to mess up. Unlike the other vids I've done, I couldn't remember the context of many of the clips I used. I was able to piece together a visual narrative on a mostly surface level for a basic/new viewer like myself to understand. I worried that hardcore fans would immediately recognize that I flipped clips, reversed clips, constructed scenes, and said to hell with context in most cases. If you can't move past that, then you probably won't enjoy this vid. I'm at peace with that. I love it enough for the both of us, don't worry.
Here are excerpts from the meta/concept email I sent to sweetestdrain and la_cspan along with the first draft. Mostly I was just talking through the concept myself because I'm an extrovert and that's what we DO. But I think these thoughts from early on in the process still summarize what I was trying to say when it was done.
Rachael's concept for the vid was that he never really "sees" her, which gave me VERY limited clip choice. And damnit, I have some awesome clips of them interacting. GRR. It's very hard to find clips where they're both sitting there contently not talking OR touching. Like it would've killed the writers to put more of that in? If you know of some clips that would work here that I don't have, PLEASE speak up. No, really. I need to flesh out the "this is love how it needs to be" section, because right now it's full of sad stuff instead of mostly content stuff. This vid is SO EMO right now. But the song is heartbreakingly beautiful, and I'm trying to follow the tone and flow of it. Sometimes I'm editing to the piano and other times, the vocals. The song has two climaxes (heh, climax), and I'm trying very specifically to accompany that visually.
I really like bookending the vid with Moya and the empty hallways, and I hope you like it, too. From a practical standpoint, it gives me some interesting visuals over the basic piano while I'm introducing the characters and setting the scene. Also, the piano riff bookends the song itself, so it makes sense to me to do some mirroring with the visuals over that. And it's literally a quarter of the song's running time taken up by "easy" clips, which is both helpful and a cop-out, admittedly, but I think establishing shots are helpful since I've opted not to do an opening title sequence. From a meta perspective, it's all about *space*. Space is a very big place and Moya is a very big ship, and even though John and Chiana are in such relatively close proximity, there is still so very much space between them. Being on the same ship doesn't mean they're close. The tracking shots in the hall are to enunciate that distance.
The wormhole becomes the big metaphor of the vid. It's the music Schroeder hears, yes, in that literal sense. But to Chiana, it's what she's trying to offer him. WORMHOLES ARE LOVE. He spends all this time looking for something 'out there' when something wonderful is right in front of him if he'd just look at her. Both of them are chasing things they can't have. The first half of the vid is Chiana trying to understand his obsession, like if she could understand it then she could make it happen for him and give him that, and then they'd be happy together in love because he'd be able to move past it. And of course, she can't, so she has to resign herself to not ever really being able to have him, not completely, because the most she can get is zonedout!John who asks her to leave him alone if she pushes. He's not even TRYING to meet her halfway. So, there are tears and stuff.
(GOD. SO EMO.)
It's also important to me to end the vid with Chiana seeing a wormhole while John doesn't see either it OR her. Such is the price he pays for having a closed heart! (Stupid MAN.) Really I just like the idea that Chiana is open to him and really TRIED, so right when she's about to give up completely, she gets to see this beautiful thing while he's too busy off being all self-absorbed and emo. And again, it's the metaphor, because she sees the full glory of what's possible between them and he doesn't see it at all. She sees what he's after, but he can't see what she's after. And the vid ends on the depressing note of no resolution, which is always good times. Moya flies on, their lives go on, and Chiana has to decide what to do for herself because apparently, John's not changing.
Hopefully that makes some kind of sense. But hey, it's vidding, so who knows. Sense: optional. [end]
Because the lyrics are a narrative but it's a very specific and short span of time that's described, I wanted the vid to reflect that. This is a deeper look at a particular moment in time. Maybe Chiana's having a bad night and we're going in all Discovery Channel to get it on tape. It was a challenge playing with clips that needed to say mostly the same thing repeatedly in different ways while remaining interesting. Also, I never thought I'd have one, let alone three clips over six seconds long in a vid. Crazytown.
This was a six-draft vid. I made it in five days (of purely editing time). That's kind of INSANE. But also really intense and mostly fun. I got to dig as deep into a concept as my brain could stand without exploding and come out the other side with, hey, a vid! I hope you enjoy it. And to avoid any confusion in the credits, Corde is Rachael's old screenname that she used with the Scapers, so it's kind of an homage.
Feedback, as always, is treasured and appreciated, whether it be one word or one hundred. Thank you for watching!