New Vid: Flickers
New Vid: Flickers
Fandoms/sources: Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Revenge
Description: Girls + technology = ? "And with my opened mouth, I join the singing lights."
Thanks to rhiannonhero, mresundance, coffeejunkii, and outlawradio for your thoughtful feedback.
Music: Son Lux "Flickers"
download 70mb mp4 here
A meta note: This vid is meant to be a counterpart to You. On the surface, You presents this more hopeful vision of how media and media figures inspire us and give us tools to create ourselves and keep putting ourselves out there in the world. This video instead starts out by looking at media and digital technologies as surveillance and as tools for trapping young women in particular, limiting/punitive narratives, and as objects, as visual spectacle. Except that all of the shows I draw on here--Revenge, Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars--present the entrapment of young women in media technologies as the problem, and pose the answer precisely in young women's *use* of technology as a tool of power, as a weapon, and as a tool of connectivity. So in the end, where "You" introduces that bitter note of how media can fail you, how you might want to "leave this show" (and I certainly wanted to at the least throw things at the screen in that scene where Kurt stood there on the sidelines cheerful as Rachel headed off to her dreams in NYC, never mind Kurt's dreams...), I mean for "Flickers," though a seemingly darker video, to offer a vision of the hope of female networked power through digital technologies, digital social networks. The fact that Emily Thorne emerges as the figure who can stand for this collective power surprised me; out of the four shows included here, Revenge is my least favorite, and one of my gripes with it is its obsession with keeping Emily in power at the expense of developing Nolan (who lets face it, is an awesome character with so much potential). But in the context of this vid, I realized how rare it is that Emily is *always* in charge, even when we don't realize it. She's never locked in a fridge, she's never cowed by a terrorizing email. She's the one sending those emails. And while this might make for a less compelling narrative give and take, it's significant to me that we even *have* this representation of an unremittingly strong young female character.
A personal note: I feel like VVC really helped channel my creative energy right now; I actually had the idea for this vid while sitting in a panel in VVC, and I hope that I continue to enter into vidding projects with an increased sense of clarity.
It's partially because with You and the aftermath of You, I broke down the dams I had constructed between my aca-work and my vidding. This is not to say that I'm not going to make fluffy (well, have I ever really done fluffy?) or shall we say emotive (ok emo) Cas/Sufjan vids and Kurt-love vids and the like (I totally am) but I just feel more like I'm bringing my full self to my vidding, and it feels pretty damn good.
This entry was originally posted at http://lola.dreamwidth.org/93551.html. Comments welcome here or there.
Fandoms/sources: Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Revenge
Description: Girls + technology = ? "And with my opened mouth, I join the singing lights."
Thanks to rhiannonhero, mresundance, coffeejunkii, and outlawradio for your thoughtful feedback.
Music: Son Lux "Flickers"
Click to viewdownload 70mb mp4 here
A meta note: This vid is meant to be a counterpart to You. On the surface, You presents this more hopeful vision of how media and media figures inspire us and give us tools to create ourselves and keep putting ourselves out there in the world. This video instead starts out by looking at media and digital technologies as surveillance and as tools for trapping young women in particular, limiting/punitive narratives, and as objects, as visual spectacle. Except that all of the shows I draw on here--Revenge, Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars--present the entrapment of young women in media technologies as the problem, and pose the answer precisely in young women's *use* of technology as a tool of power, as a weapon, and as a tool of connectivity. So in the end, where "You" introduces that bitter note of how media can fail you, how you might want to "leave this show" (and I certainly wanted to at the least throw things at the screen in that scene where Kurt stood there on the sidelines cheerful as Rachel headed off to her dreams in NYC, never mind Kurt's dreams...), I mean for "Flickers," though a seemingly darker video, to offer a vision of the hope of female networked power through digital technologies, digital social networks. The fact that Emily Thorne emerges as the figure who can stand for this collective power surprised me; out of the four shows included here, Revenge is my least favorite, and one of my gripes with it is its obsession with keeping Emily in power at the expense of developing Nolan (who lets face it, is an awesome character with so much potential). But in the context of this vid, I realized how rare it is that Emily is *always* in charge, even when we don't realize it. She's never locked in a fridge, she's never cowed by a terrorizing email. She's the one sending those emails. And while this might make for a less compelling narrative give and take, it's significant to me that we even *have* this representation of an unremittingly strong young female character.
A personal note: I feel like VVC really helped channel my creative energy right now; I actually had the idea for this vid while sitting in a panel in VVC, and I hope that I continue to enter into vidding projects with an increased sense of clarity.
It's partially because with You and the aftermath of You, I broke down the dams I had constructed between my aca-work and my vidding. This is not to say that I'm not going to make fluffy (well, have I ever really done fluffy?) or shall we say emotive (ok emo) Cas/Sufjan vids and Kurt-love vids and the like (I totally am) but I just feel more like I'm bringing my full self to my vidding, and it feels pretty damn good.
This entry was originally posted at http://lola.dreamwidth.org/93551.html. Comments welcome here or there.