new vid - Gilmore Girls - "Maybe Tomorrow"
Maybe Tomorrow
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Song/Artist: Maybe Tomorrow by Stereophonics
Duration: 3:32 minutes
Summary: Christopher character, Christopher/Lorelai. Maybe tomorrow he'll find his way home.
Spoilers: Seasons 1 through 5.
Click to viewI've been down and I'm wondering why
These little black clouds keep walking around with me
With me
It wastes time and I'd rather be high
Think I'll walk me outside and buy a rainbow smile
But they're free
They're all free
So maybe tomorrow
I'll find my way home
I look around at a beautiful life
Been the upperside of down, been the inside of out
But we breathe
We breathe
I want a breeze and an open mind
I wanna swim in the ocean
Wanna take my time for me
All me
So maybe tomorrow
I'll find my way home
Notes
On content
I pretty much ship Rory equally with every major (potential) love interest. Rory/Dean is pure sugar, gradually turning dark in later seasons (caramelised?); Rory/Jess is a wonderful gut feeling of attraction and understanding (though late season 3 wasn't particularly fun for anybody); Rory/Logan deals with more mature issues and I find them to be generally more multidimensional and interesting; while Rory/Marty is just cute. I'm equally happy to see her with any of these boys and just get carried along for the ride.
But for Lorelai, it has always been Christopher. I've liked the characters of all her love interests (I even liked Jason, due in no small part to the "a little to the left" dog), but in terms of shipping no one else comes close. Now those who know me can testify that I'm not exactly a supporter of The Big Happy Family, so the only meaty explanation for this OTP is in that I think he fits her. Much more so than anyone else we've ever come across on this show and possibly ever will. I don't want to incur the wrath of any Luke/Lorelai fans, or get into big debates about it, but my feeling has always been that Christopher is capable of understanding her on a much more intuitive level than Luke ever could.
This being a Christopher character study, a lot of the emphasis in the vid is about happy families, which is a concept that grows more important to him as he gets older. It started out as a C/L shipper vid but the focus gradually changed to accommodate Lorelai and Rory in equal amounts. Passage of time is key - the contrast between young!C/L and present!C/L is, of course, self-evident; but I had also intended to show the effect of time on them over the five seasons, which is arguably more contextual and harder to place for non-fandom viewers.
On the character study front it's mostly an expression of regret, based around his continued absence in the Gilmore girls' lives and also the events toward the end of season 2; on the shipper front it is all about the bad timing. The opening quote sums it up. But as a shipper vid I felt it's also important to maintain a sense of hope, ergo the "maybe tomorrow".
Of course, given the current U.S. position (early season 7), we can say that "tomorrow" is effectively now, and I'm very happy about it. But the season keeps rolling on and conflict must remain the heart of drama, so I can't help thinking that it's all going to be downhill from here. (Plus, what are the chances that the writers won't get Luke and Lorelai back together in the end? Pretty slim is my guess.) Maybe in the end it's better to be here, caught between nostalgia and hope, knowing that, despite all that had happened, happiness is just over the horizon.
On vidding
Premiere kept crashing and it took me about ten test exports (in about as many hours) to decide to try exporting in a stupider and more convoluted way. All in all a horrid experience, and only time will tell whether it was because of something wrong with this vid in particular, or whether it's because I need a new computer.
It's not exactly my crowning moment in terms of editing either -GG is definitely the hardest fandom I've ever had to vid to. Some talky face inevitably ended up in there, and a lot of additional motion had to be added to minimise the static camerawork. Because there is a significant lack of both internal and external motion in source, I found that I had to resort back to quite a bit of cutting on the beat, which is not my favourite thing in the world but sometimes it felt like all that was available to tie audio to visuals. Also, it doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out where the music got chopped and changed around.
So a difficult exercise in all respects, not to mention a very rambly set of notes. I'm just glad that I got it done and didn't end up jumping ship, which I had contemplated often. GG is very challenging for vidding, and it felt like a learning curve above all else.