a disproportionate amount of time is spent on us
So in addition to working my way through the WIP fic of doom, I've also been trying to slog through my vidding WIP folder of late. I've blathered a bit about the Ponds vid. That's still in progress. But I did finally finish up a Hunger Games vid that I've been storyboarding since, oh, five seconds after seeing the movie for the first time.
Caesar Flickerman makes a few more jokes, and then it's time for the show. This will last exactly three hours and is required viewing for all of Panem. As the lights dim and the seal appears on the screen, I realize I'm unprepared for this. I do not want to watch my twenty-two fellow tributes die. I saw enough of them die the first time. My heart starts pounding and I have a strong impulse to run. How have the other victors faced this alone? During the highlights, they periodically show the winner's reaction up on a box in the corner of the screen. I think back to earlier years. some are triumphant, pumping their fists in the air, beating their chests. Most just seem stunned. All I know is that the only thing keeping me on this love seat is Peeta - his arm around my shoulder, his other hand claimed by both of mine. Of course, the previous victors didn't have the Capitol looking for a way to destroy them.
Condensing several weeks into three hours is quite a feat, especially when you consider how many cameras were going at once. Whoever puts together the highlights has to choose what sort of story to tell. This year, for the first time, they tell a love story. I know Peeta and I won, but a disproportionate amount of time is spent on us, right from the beginning. I'm glad though, because it supports the whole crazy-in-love thing that's my defense for defying the Capitol, plus it means we won't have as much time to linger over the deaths.
-excerpt from The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Tribute: Highlights of the 74th Annual Hunger Games
edited by
kaydeefalls
fandom: The Hunger Games
characters: Katniss/Peeta
music: various artists (see below)
watch: embed below, or on Vimeo
download: Mediafire (.mov, 65 MB)
disclaimer: not mine, no profit, don't sue.
Playlist:
"New Religion", Zakk Wylde
"Horn of Plenty", Arcade Fire / James Newton Howard
"Battle Royale", Does It Offend You, Yeah?
"Tempus Vernum", Enya
"Suspension", Jeff Beck
"Millionaire", A R Rahman
I really love the passage in the book about how surreal watching the "highlight reel" is for Katniss, and the detached sort of objectivity she maintains even with all her anxieties about the Capitol and the role she now has to play. I completely understand why they didn't include that in the film, but the level of meta engagement really intrigues me. Because yes, the people who create the reel have their own story to tell and agenda to push forward, and I'm fascinated by the ways in which the media is able to manipulate reality. I'm also an unabashed Katniss/Peeta shipper, and part of what draws me to the pairing is all the messiness and ambiguity surrounding their relationship. Real or not real, how Katniss is completely constrained from actually exploring her own feelings, the resentment she feels for the role she has to play twisting up the genuine affection she's developing for Peeta, being sixteen and starving and terrified and with romance being the absolute last thing on her mind. And how Peeta is unintentionally pressuring her -- I mean, he genuinely only wants to keep her alive, and declaring his love on television is the best way he can think of to do it, and that puts Katniss into a really shitty situation emotionally, but what else was he supposed to do? He doesn't actually expect her to play along -- he's completely confused when she does, and half out of his mind with illness/starvation/stress by that point in the Games, and there are all kinds of assumptions on both sides but dammit, I just want those two kids to be happy.
And does that make me just as complicit as the Capitol audience?
Anyway, I made a thing. It's trying to look like Capitol propaganda, which is not quite my usual style -- I went for a lot more sappiness than I'm normally inclined. I tried to limit myself to only footage that the gamemakers would have had -- public appearances like the Reaping or the TV interviews, the games themselves, no private conversations or anything from the training period, which wasn't televised. (I did cheat a little at the end, using post-Games footage, but still used only public appearances.) Where possible, I tried to be true to that passage from the book (though obviously I'm making a 5-min video, not a 3-hour recap) -- no flowers for Rue, no overt hints of the rebellion to come, and the story is told in a strictly linear fashion for the most part. I omitted a lot of moments that I think are personally significant to Katniss's character arc, because they didn't further the "love story" that the gamemakers wanted to push.
And man, editing the music was a project in and of itself -- I didn't want anything with lyrics, or anything strongly recognizable outside of the Panem national anthem. Picking the songs to use, and then editing them down -- ugh, I am not a sound editor, this shit doesn't come instinctively to me. That was the first phase of the vid. I did all the music editing shortly after seeing the movie, last May or thereabouts. Then I couldn't find any good video source until the DVD came out, and by then I was already in the black pit of fannish despair that wasted much of last fall, so I never actually came back to edit the vid itself until very recently. So here it is.
That was probably way more blather than this vid warranted, especially since I doubt very many people will be interested in even the vid itself, let alone my late-night meta ramblings about it. WHATEVER, it's my journal and I do what I like.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.
Caesar Flickerman makes a few more jokes, and then it's time for the show. This will last exactly three hours and is required viewing for all of Panem. As the lights dim and the seal appears on the screen, I realize I'm unprepared for this. I do not want to watch my twenty-two fellow tributes die. I saw enough of them die the first time. My heart starts pounding and I have a strong impulse to run. How have the other victors faced this alone? During the highlights, they periodically show the winner's reaction up on a box in the corner of the screen. I think back to earlier years. some are triumphant, pumping their fists in the air, beating their chests. Most just seem stunned. All I know is that the only thing keeping me on this love seat is Peeta - his arm around my shoulder, his other hand claimed by both of mine. Of course, the previous victors didn't have the Capitol looking for a way to destroy them.
Condensing several weeks into three hours is quite a feat, especially when you consider how many cameras were going at once. Whoever puts together the highlights has to choose what sort of story to tell. This year, for the first time, they tell a love story. I know Peeta and I won, but a disproportionate amount of time is spent on us, right from the beginning. I'm glad though, because it supports the whole crazy-in-love thing that's my defense for defying the Capitol, plus it means we won't have as much time to linger over the deaths.
-excerpt from The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Tribute: Highlights of the 74th Annual Hunger Games
edited by
kaydeefalls
fandom: The Hunger Games
characters: Katniss/Peeta
music: various artists (see below)
watch: embed below, or on Vimeo
download: Mediafire (.mov, 65 MB)
disclaimer: not mine, no profit, don't sue.
Playlist:
"New Religion", Zakk Wylde
"Horn of Plenty", Arcade Fire / James Newton Howard
"Battle Royale", Does It Offend You, Yeah?
"Tempus Vernum", Enya
"Suspension", Jeff Beck
"Millionaire", A R Rahman
I really love the passage in the book about how surreal watching the "highlight reel" is for Katniss, and the detached sort of objectivity she maintains even with all her anxieties about the Capitol and the role she now has to play. I completely understand why they didn't include that in the film, but the level of meta engagement really intrigues me. Because yes, the people who create the reel have their own story to tell and agenda to push forward, and I'm fascinated by the ways in which the media is able to manipulate reality. I'm also an unabashed Katniss/Peeta shipper, and part of what draws me to the pairing is all the messiness and ambiguity surrounding their relationship. Real or not real, how Katniss is completely constrained from actually exploring her own feelings, the resentment she feels for the role she has to play twisting up the genuine affection she's developing for Peeta, being sixteen and starving and terrified and with romance being the absolute last thing on her mind. And how Peeta is unintentionally pressuring her -- I mean, he genuinely only wants to keep her alive, and declaring his love on television is the best way he can think of to do it, and that puts Katniss into a really shitty situation emotionally, but what else was he supposed to do? He doesn't actually expect her to play along -- he's completely confused when she does, and half out of his mind with illness/starvation/stress by that point in the Games, and there are all kinds of assumptions on both sides but dammit, I just want those two kids to be happy.
And does that make me just as complicit as the Capitol audience?
Anyway, I made a thing. It's trying to look like Capitol propaganda, which is not quite my usual style -- I went for a lot more sappiness than I'm normally inclined. I tried to limit myself to only footage that the gamemakers would have had -- public appearances like the Reaping or the TV interviews, the games themselves, no private conversations or anything from the training period, which wasn't televised. (I did cheat a little at the end, using post-Games footage, but still used only public appearances.) Where possible, I tried to be true to that passage from the book (though obviously I'm making a 5-min video, not a 3-hour recap) -- no flowers for Rue, no overt hints of the rebellion to come, and the story is told in a strictly linear fashion for the most part. I omitted a lot of moments that I think are personally significant to Katniss's character arc, because they didn't further the "love story" that the gamemakers wanted to push.
And man, editing the music was a project in and of itself -- I didn't want anything with lyrics, or anything strongly recognizable outside of the Panem national anthem. Picking the songs to use, and then editing them down -- ugh, I am not a sound editor, this shit doesn't come instinctively to me. That was the first phase of the vid. I did all the music editing shortly after seeing the movie, last May or thereabouts. Then I couldn't find any good video source until the DVD came out, and by then I was already in the black pit of fannish despair that wasted much of last fall, so I never actually came back to edit the vid itself until very recently. So here it is.
That was probably way more blather than this vid warranted, especially since I doubt very many people will be interested in even the vid itself, let alone my late-night meta ramblings about it. WHATEVER, it's my journal and I do what I like.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.