dS vid: Fallen Leaves

[keerawa]

Fandom, Character: due South, Fraser
Summary: Maybe one man can't save them all, but that won't stop Fraser from trying.
Song: "Fallen Leaves" by Billy Talent
Rated: PG
Thanks to: My beta, annieb1955 for helping me get this posted in 2007.
Feedback: Pretty please? Any and all feedback will be welcomed with heartfelt cries of joy, including concrit.

Comments

[univacgrl]

Yay! Very nice work. I just rewatched the first disc of DS and the context of all the clips was fresh in my mind. Wonderfully done. (:

And as a side note, a personal project has had me wondering what CKR would sound like singing, and you just dropped the answer in my lap. Thanks!

[keerawa]

Thank you univacgrl! This is a very context-heavy vid, so I'm sure having just watched the episodes enriched it.

Just so you know, "Billy Talent" is a Canadian band named after CKR's character in Hard Core Logo, but that's not his voice. I still think it kinda sounds like him, though!

[nos4a2no9]

Wow! I cannot wait to see this vid! zabira and I were watching our favourite dS vids in the hotel room on Saturday and she was shocked to learn I hadn't seen "Train to Jackson," which shocked me as well. I always forget that you do vids in addition to all the incredible writing, and "Train" was an instant favourite. You've got such a gift for marrying image and lyric, tone and mood - it works just like your fiction to evoke strong emotional response from the reader/viewer, and I know "Leaves" will be brilliant. (I have to watch it when I have good earphones handy, so I have to wait for the opportune moment).

[keerawa]

Thanks Nos! I'm glad zabira got you to watch "Train to Jackson", and that you FELT it. I can't wait to hear what you think of "Fallen Leaves"!

[nos4a2no9]

Okay, I'm back! Only a couple of days late :-) I've got to preface my feedback by saying that I don't really like the song: Billy Talent is played constantly here thanks to the can con laws and that song was on constant rotation on the radio station at work. So...I don't like the song. But! I loved the vid, so I hope it comes as a compliment when I say that I liked the vid in spite of the song

[keerawa]

Billy Talent is played constantly here thanks to the can con laws and that song was on constant rotation on the radio station at work.
You know, I hadn't even heard of the band until omphale23 uploaded this song. Billy Talent and Jim Byrnes - apparently famous Candian music bands I never would have heard of if it weren't for fandom.

I worked hard on synching internal movement with the beats here, to give it forward momentum, so I'm delighted that you commented on that. At first I thought the vid would have an angsty ending (Fraser trying to find refuge from the city in the wilderness but pulling a corpse out of the water instead), so I was so glad to find that actually the Muse led me to that happy ending.

Thank you for the feedback, Nos!

[tearful_eye]

i really like this! i just recently started to watch due south & so i'm still very much in the *squee*-omg-i-love-it phase, *g* good for you & your vid ;)

i love the way you made the vid about fraser, but so much of the vid was actually clips of other people, that already says so much about his character. & the bittersweet tone of the vid is also beautiful - on one side it's kind of upbeat, fast music & fraser, who always looks unflappable; but on the other hand the lyrics are kinda dark & the vid shows very well what an effect all the events have on fraser... 'run away before you drown' - the city drags him down.

*sigh* i really love fraser, you know? *g* - lovely vid!

[keerawa]

I do love that first blush of fannish excitement with a show. You're the first person to comment on that aspect of the vid, with the city dragging Fraser down at the end, so that he needs other people to save HIM.

Thank you for the comment, tearful_eye!

[mlyn]

I like the idea behind this very much; it's not just another relationship vid. It's a fresh look at secondary characters and how crime beats down everyone in Chicago without someone to battle it. Using a Billy Talent song is also interesting, in the six degrees sense. I think your cutting and timing all work well.

I just can't get past the song's inappropriateness for Fraser, though. I don't think it works for him at all; it's not his kind of music, but more than that, Billy Talent's voice isn't right to speak for him, as an internal voice or narrator. When the song is first-person POV, it really has to mesh with the character. I also think you worked in some literalism that didn't quite work, like "can you spare a dime"-the line is about the speaker asking for money, but the clip is about others asking for money from Fraser.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I'm glad to see you doing new vids.

[keerawa]

Thanks for watching and commenting, m'lyn, especially the concrit. You're absolutely right that the music style and voice of the song doesn't fit Fraser.

When the idea first occurred to me, it threw me for a loop for just that reason. Fraser ≠ post-punk. But, even though the song lyrics say, "I", I don't see this as a first-person Fraser vid. It's an outside narrator, speaking for different characters in the story. In the section you called out, "can you spare a dime", we hear the people calling for help. At the end "run away before you drown", 'you' is Fraser.

In my head, it all makes perfect sense. To other people? Apparently not so much, and I'm really grateful to you for pointing that out.

[mlyn]

In my head, it all makes perfect sense. To other people? Apparently not so much, and I'm really grateful to you for pointing that out.

Sure. I see how you tried that. I think part of why I assumed "I" = Fraser was the beginning of the song, talking about hitching "a ride to the coast", and showing Fraser traveling to Chicago. Also coming to mind is when Fraser throws his blade toward Gerard in response to the line about voices in "my" head. I think there may be some POV confusion in terms of clip choice for the lyrics. It's extremely difficult and rare to find a song that will achieve the POV you were hoping for.

The only time I can recall this being done (and we remarked on the rarity of the POV while the vid was being made) was for gwyn_r & feochadn's Deadwood vid, "Come to Jesus." The lyrics could be interpreted as an angel or heavenly being speaking to the whole town of Deadwood, but that meant that the clips could not be shown as acting out the lyrics (e.g. anybody "coming to" anyone else).

In short: yay, vid!

[aethel]

Having watched this vid several times before reading the comments on this post, I feel like I'm sneaking a look at the answer key. One of the things I like about the vid is that I wasn't entirely sure what it was saying, so it still kept my interest through repeat viewings. I immediately loved the song choice (which I'd never heard before) and the focus on minor Chicago characters. Underused clips--what a relief! What I really like is the implication that although Fraser appears to be a bright light amid all the dingy "fallen leaves," he himself is also a fallen leaf. The fact that he chooses to be in this environment suggests to me that the environment is somehow a reflection of himself. But I've been spending a lot of my free time puzzling over Fraser's rather inscrutable motives and may have superimposed my thoughts on the narrative here; another commenter said that it was the city that dragged Fraser down in the vid, which I completely missed, so I'm going to have to rewatch it. In either case, this vid does an excellent job of

Re: In short: yay, vid!

[keerawa]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this, aethel. You are absolutely right - Fraser is also a fallen leaf, and he needs the people that he is out there fighting to save to save him in return. That's where I was trying to go with the ending. I think that Fraser blames the city for the corruption he sees, but I start off the vid with the primary example of corruption, betrayal, and murder - Gerard murdering Bob Fraser in Canada.

Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback!