"Becoming Brothers" by Kass, commentary by here's luck
Title: Becoming Brothers
Vidder:
kass
Fandom: Friday Night Lights
Link to vid: on Dreamwidth / on LiveJournal
Summary: Two boys from the wrong side of the tracks.
Commentary by:
heresluck
I wanted to do a commentary on this vid for two reasons.
The first is simply that I love the vid and I think more people should know about it. Friday Night Lights was, for most of its run, one of the best things on television, and yet there's been surprisingly little fannish activity related to it; I know a lot of fans who love the show, but also a great many who say "Oh, isn't that that show about football? Whatever." To which I can only say: Friday Night Lights is about football in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about vampires -- it's the premise and central metaphor of the show, but the show is so, so much bigger than that in its narrative and emotional scope.
The second is that I think this vid is a masterclass in minimalism and narrative economy. It's a tiny little vid, less than a minute and thirty seconds long, beautiful in its simplicity and devastating in its precision. It's a vid that doesn't rely on contextual knowledge to follow the narrative but that nevertheless rewards fans of the show who can recognize how this one relationship resonates with a core concern of the show: the way that characters manage, sometimes improbably, to connect with each other, the ways in which their lives are ultimately better because of each other.
Music
The minimalism starts with the music: simple, relentless percussion; long, sliding notes on an electric guitar; the low song of a cello joining in at 0:30. And that's it. There's just enough twang to make it a terrific fit for both the setting and the gritty, desaturated visuals of Friday Night Lights:
The net effect is melancholy, haunting, lovely. Brilliant song choice for the show, the theme, everything.
Point of View
Most vids -- not all vids, obviously, but most -- establish or imply a point of view character. This is largely because most pop songs have a narrator or central consciousness, an "I" -- or sometimes a "you" -- whom the vidder maps onto one (or sometimes more) of the characters in the vid. Part of the function of the song, then, is to tell us something about what the vidder thinks is going on inside the head of a character (or characters).
But when the vid is set to an instrumental, as "Becoming Brothers" is, other options open up for the vidder. It's certainly possible for a vidder working without lyrics to establish a point of view character (and indeed there are plenty of vids with lyrics that establish the POV character during an instrumental intro, well before the lyrics kick in). But it's also possible for the vidder to take another approach, to give us a double or multiple or omniscient point of view without having to fight or finesse the song in order to do it.
That's the approach that Kass takes in "Becoming Brothers," and for me, at least, the effect is one of wonderful emotional subtlety. Without lyrics to tell us what to feel, or tell us what a character's feeling, Kass can only show us what they experience. And so the narrative that unfolds is all about what these characters do: how they move, where they stand, when they smile, how they look at each other. This might not work for all shows, but for Friday Night Lights, in which characters frequently suck at articulating their thoughts and feelings but broadcast them in every expression and gesture, it works beautifully.
Narrative
The vid begins with establishing shots of each character, and here we should pause to observe just how much they establish, how much work each clip is doing to establish the ways in which the characters are different from each other but also the ways in which they're alike.
Their difference is marked by race, but also by place: Vince is surrounded by metal and concrete, Luke by cattle and dust.
They're two boys from the wrong side of the tracks, as the summary says, but not the same wrong side of the tracks.
Still, they have some important things in common. They both feel alienated from the adult males in the frame:
They're both sulky:
And they don't like each other very much:
Thirty seconds in, and here's our central conflict.
I think it's worth noting at this point that Kass has held off on including any shots of the boys playing football together. In the show, football's one source of their conflict. But in the vid, football's what's going to bring them together:
So, for the sake of narrative clarity, Kass doesn't stick to the show's chronology; she reorders clips in the service of the story she's telling. Specifically, she waits until after establishing their animosity to show us our first shot of them together in their practice uniforms:
This is the turning point of the vid. And here Kass does something I think is really effective, even though it might seem a bit counterintuitive: she lets go of the focus on these particular characters and spends a good 5-6 seconds on clips of the team -- not Vince and Luke specifically -- in the locker room, united by their pre-game jitters.
Then, and only then, she shows us Vince and Luke making eye contact, connecting, in the locker room...
...and on the field, first in close up:
...and then in action, as Luke (44) tosses the ball to Vince (5):
Thirty seconds after punching each other, they're shaking hands:
Here's where I go into smitten fangirl mode for a moment and observe that their happy little nods at each other just kill me:
They are so adorable. Seriously. Also, while I personally do not go to a slashy place with these two, based on these shots? You totally could. I'm just saying.
And once they're in tune with each other, part of a team, Kass can use this long pan shot, which includes several of the other players; she can trust that we'll immediately pick out Vince and that, as the camera moves away from Vince, we're just waiting for Luke to appear: we know he'll be there.
They're teammates now; they're family. (Kass and I are both suckers for the found family theme, which is one reason we love this show so much.) And now that they're brothers, they can achieve anything together.
This is what I mean by narrative economy. Within twenty seconds, Kass establishes both the differences that bring the boys into conflict and the similarities that will ultimately let them understand each other; by the thirty-second mark, she's shown their conflict; within another thirty seconds, she's shown them overcoming their animosity to work together; and thirty seconds later, they're brothers. It looks like a tiny vid, but it tells a big emotional story with perfect clarity.
Vidder:
kass
Fandom: Friday Night Lights
Link to vid: on Dreamwidth / on LiveJournal
Summary: Two boys from the wrong side of the tracks.
Commentary by:
heresluck
I wanted to do a commentary on this vid for two reasons.
The first is simply that I love the vid and I think more people should know about it. Friday Night Lights was, for most of its run, one of the best things on television, and yet there's been surprisingly little fannish activity related to it; I know a lot of fans who love the show, but also a great many who say "Oh, isn't that that show about football? Whatever." To which I can only say: Friday Night Lights is about football in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about vampires -- it's the premise and central metaphor of the show, but the show is so, so much bigger than that in its narrative and emotional scope.
The second is that I think this vid is a masterclass in minimalism and narrative economy. It's a tiny little vid, less than a minute and thirty seconds long, beautiful in its simplicity and devastating in its precision. It's a vid that doesn't rely on contextual knowledge to follow the narrative but that nevertheless rewards fans of the show who can recognize how this one relationship resonates with a core concern of the show: the way that characters manage, sometimes improbably, to connect with each other, the ways in which their lives are ultimately better because of each other.
Music
The minimalism starts with the music: simple, relentless percussion; long, sliding notes on an electric guitar; the low song of a cello joining in at 0:30. And that's it. There's just enough twang to make it a terrific fit for both the setting and the gritty, desaturated visuals of Friday Night Lights:
The net effect is melancholy, haunting, lovely. Brilliant song choice for the show, the theme, everything.
Point of View
Most vids -- not all vids, obviously, but most -- establish or imply a point of view character. This is largely because most pop songs have a narrator or central consciousness, an "I" -- or sometimes a "you" -- whom the vidder maps onto one (or sometimes more) of the characters in the vid. Part of the function of the song, then, is to tell us something about what the vidder thinks is going on inside the head of a character (or characters).
But when the vid is set to an instrumental, as "Becoming Brothers" is, other options open up for the vidder. It's certainly possible for a vidder working without lyrics to establish a point of view character (and indeed there are plenty of vids with lyrics that establish the POV character during an instrumental intro, well before the lyrics kick in). But it's also possible for the vidder to take another approach, to give us a double or multiple or omniscient point of view without having to fight or finesse the song in order to do it.
That's the approach that Kass takes in "Becoming Brothers," and for me, at least, the effect is one of wonderful emotional subtlety. Without lyrics to tell us what to feel, or tell us what a character's feeling, Kass can only show us what they experience. And so the narrative that unfolds is all about what these characters do: how they move, where they stand, when they smile, how they look at each other. This might not work for all shows, but for Friday Night Lights, in which characters frequently suck at articulating their thoughts and feelings but broadcast them in every expression and gesture, it works beautifully.
Narrative
The vid begins with establishing shots of each character, and here we should pause to observe just how much they establish, how much work each clip is doing to establish the ways in which the characters are different from each other but also the ways in which they're alike.
Their difference is marked by race, but also by place: Vince is surrounded by metal and concrete, Luke by cattle and dust.
They're two boys from the wrong side of the tracks, as the summary says, but not the same wrong side of the tracks.
Still, they have some important things in common. They both feel alienated from the adult males in the frame:
They're both sulky:
And they don't like each other very much:
Thirty seconds in, and here's our central conflict.
I think it's worth noting at this point that Kass has held off on including any shots of the boys playing football together. In the show, football's one source of their conflict. But in the vid, football's what's going to bring them together:
So, for the sake of narrative clarity, Kass doesn't stick to the show's chronology; she reorders clips in the service of the story she's telling. Specifically, she waits until after establishing their animosity to show us our first shot of them together in their practice uniforms:
This is the turning point of the vid. And here Kass does something I think is really effective, even though it might seem a bit counterintuitive: she lets go of the focus on these particular characters and spends a good 5-6 seconds on clips of the team -- not Vince and Luke specifically -- in the locker room, united by their pre-game jitters.
Then, and only then, she shows us Vince and Luke making eye contact, connecting, in the locker room...
...and on the field, first in close up:
...and then in action, as Luke (44) tosses the ball to Vince (5):
Thirty seconds after punching each other, they're shaking hands:
Here's where I go into smitten fangirl mode for a moment and observe that their happy little nods at each other just kill me:
They are so adorable. Seriously. Also, while I personally do not go to a slashy place with these two, based on these shots? You totally could. I'm just saying.
And once they're in tune with each other, part of a team, Kass can use this long pan shot, which includes several of the other players; she can trust that we'll immediately pick out Vince and that, as the camera moves away from Vince, we're just waiting for Luke to appear: we know he'll be there.
They're teammates now; they're family. (Kass and I are both suckers for the found family theme, which is one reason we love this show so much.) And now that they're brothers, they can achieve anything together.
This is what I mean by narrative economy. Within twenty seconds, Kass establishes both the differences that bring the boys into conflict and the similarities that will ultimately let them understand each other; by the thirty-second mark, she's shown their conflict; within another thirty seconds, she's shown them overcoming their animosity to work together; and thirty seconds later, they're brothers. It looks like a tiny vid, but it tells a big emotional story with perfect clarity.