BtVS vid - Brothers & Sisters - Ben & Glory

[obsessive24]

"You know why I wanted to become a doctor?"
"Flattering drawstring pants?"
"To be close to people. To witness their lives and their deaths, to be there alongside them, a part of everyday humanity."

Brothers & Sisters
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Song/Artist: Brothers & Sisters by Coldplay
Duration: 4:30 minutes

Summary: A study of Ben and Glory.
Spoilers: Season 5.

Click to view

Lyrics:
Brothers and sisters unite
It's the time of your lives, it's the time of your lives
Breakdown, breakdown
Gotta spread love around
Gotta spread it all around

Brothers and sisters feel fine
It's the time of your lives, it's the time of your lives
There's no sound, no sound
Like this feeling you found
Like this feeling you found

But just stay down
Cos sometimes you'll feel
And stay around
And sometimes you'll feel

And it's me they're looking for
And it's me, I will never survive
But we have been around so long

Brothers and sisters unite
It's the time of your lives, it's the time of your lives
Break down breakdowns
Gotta spread love around
Gotta spread it all around


Notes
This song was recorded prior to any of Coldplay's studio albums. The easiest way to get hold of it is via the Roswell soundtrack. I love the lead guitar on this - Jonny Buckland always has an interesting "sparkliness" to his riffs, and this song is a great example.

After Post Blue (post-Post Blue. Hee, so easily amused.) I wanted to go for something that focused more on source movement and pace. (At least until the endgame.) The slide guitars on this song are very distinctive, so I also wanted something that matched visuals to that sort of audio nuance. More of a "vidders' vid" in those respects, though I'm not sure how well that was ultimately achieved or how many people would care.

Ben is an example of how a good, decent man can nevertheless do evil deeds for self-preservation. It's also interesting that, at the end of the arc, Giles served as counterpoint by killing Ben so he could preserve his world from future threat. But that's all lofty stuff that doesn't bear thinking too much about. Mostly I just felt sad that his life was taken from him; the last quarter of the vid was devoted to that idea: fragments of life, beauty in small things, and the fact that he is emphatically human. I thought the scene where Dawn listens to his heartbeat through the stethoscope was especially telling. Although, some of the other clip choices may have been a little too opaque, given their actual lack of connection to Ben in the source. If you're familiar with canon footage, you may need to suspend a bit of that knowledge. As always, best not to read too much into my vids. ;)

Lastly lots of gratitude to astolat and the guide on video encoding. Great picture quality without sacrificing file size? Yayness!