Without Me DVD Commentary
Jan. 26th, 2004 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisabetOkay, this vid commentary meme is fun, fun, fun. Wheee!
I should probably be stopped, once I get started I can't. stop. talking. about vids. I like that so many of us are doing this - it is almost like we are purging out the past vids and regrouping, taking stock of where we are and looking forward and that can only mean one thing: Yet another kickass Premiere show at Vividcon 2004, so I am excited on that front as well.
I'm gonna tackle "Clint Eastwood" and "Peacekeeper" together since one cannot exist without the other - but if you think this is a long entry, wait 'til I post that one. Hee. I might still be writing it by next week. I might be a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tzikeh's house writing it.
_par_avion asked about "Without Me" - Since I just recut it for the DVDs, I am all with the memory on this vid. In fact, in the recut process I was still so happy with the final vid that the only change I made was to slightly tweak the "so the FCC" part for timing. This is way different from "Last Stand" where I had a mini breakdown second-guessing my clip/narrative choices. I was a much more confident vidder when I made Without Me. I cut to discuss.
ETA: Link to vid is here - http://www.headtilt.com/video.htm
1- The opening credits...I'm never sure if you're just playing around with the "two trailer park girls go round the outside" lyric or whether you and drdawn are having a virtual argument over whether she deserves co-vidder credit...so I guess the question is was dawn involved in the vid process?.
Yes and Yes and somewhat. Hee. Good question, no one ever asks about Dawn's involvement - they always just wanna know the tech involved.
To the extent that this is a Lilah vid and Dawn feels proprietory toward anything that has to do with Lilah and that she is fairly involved in at least watching the progression of any vid that I make, yes Dawn was involved in the process - particularly in encouraging me to go ahead and vid this song. If I hadn't had the idea for the opening credits - she probably would not have been given co-vidder credit...Let me explain.
I didn't vid the trailer park girls part until last - all during the vidding process we discussed what/who the trailer park girls were and if I would even be able to pull them off. Dawn thought I should have Wes and Gunn chasing Fred in "Shining Happy People" for the sequence, but that made no sense in the context of my vid at all. It then became a joke that *we* were the trailer park girls, mainly cause it is an inside joke at my house that we are soooo classy. Shut up we are. Shut the hell up, or I will cut you, bitch, we are classy! and so on. There are so many inside jokes in this vid that it just impossible to list them all - there are actually more in "Cowboy" and the first version of Cowboy features a running commentary by Dawn on Angel building his stable of man-whores. When I cut out a scene of Angel kicking Spike (which cued Dawn to say "You're fired!") I broke her narrative and all her fun.
There is also something else that prompted the opening credits. We had made another Lilah vid to "Brass In Pocket" - and I (at my choice) did not take any co-vidder credit, even though I was heavily involved. I think it was mainly due to just needing a break and not wanting the stress of wondering if this vid is better than my previous ones, will it stand up to repeated viewings, yada yada yada. I wanted to sit back and mindlessly vid to someone else's specifications and look at Lilah cause she is pretty and smirks. So, it was Dawn's baby and it remained her baby and I was uncredited. Which was fine.
BUT - it rose to mind a couple of questions - Dawn and I tended to just take credit for each other's work in conversation and I used to even credit her jokingly as "producer" on my vid titles - she likes to pretend to be P. Diddy sometimes. I quit doing it because, well, it is pretentious as hell - but when her involvement was more than armchair beta, I would co-credit her. Once I decided that the trailer park girls were us, well then it was a matter of closing my eyes and seeing in my head cartoon credits of Dawn chasing me around trying to beat me up - much like when we were kids. I then decided to turn the tables and Dawn's credit should be trying to take credit for my vid and I should try to chase her off. I think I saw this in a movie as a small child and it made an impression - not deep enough that I can remember what it was. Remember when movies had intricate credit sequences? I loved Grease's and The Parent Trap's and they just don't do that anymore. Well - Rat Race did. That song got on my nerves, but I do welcome a revival of the wacky animated credit sequence.
So - Dawn being co-vidder and on the credits is almost a meta comment on her involvement in all of my vids. I probably should have give her covidder credit on Cowboy (she was the first person to say "flashback" for the old time piano bit) and she should have credited me for Brass. The fact that we didn't is moot cause we have been stealing each other's stuff for, well, I'll be 29 next week. It works out.
After I decided what the credits should look like - it only became a matter of learning how to make it happen. The credits took longer to make than the rest of the vid, but I think every minute was worth it because it sets you up right away for who we are and that this is not going to be a typical look at anything. It is the smirking - we smirk all over this vid. It is smirk-drenched.
Finally - Dawn actually lived in a trailer as a toddler. Mom and Dad moved into a house before I was born, so I cannot claim the same street cred. I am a trailer trash poseur. Now you know my secret shame. I sometimes wonder if I was concieved in that trailer, but I haven't figured out a way to work that into conversation yet. Maybe Easter dinner would be the appropriate forum...
2- Also, if you could talk about song choice...when you first heard the song, when did you decide to vid it, is it harder to vid such a lyric heavy, fast paced song
I first heard the song when the video debutted on MTV and I loved it. I remember it being the song that really convinced me that Eminem was more than just a flash in the pan - that he had some real talent. I thought about vidding it then - I was thinking about Spike being in Africa and Sunnydale without him - we were in season 6 hiatus and I would close my eyes and see a scene and then see Spike walk up to the edge of the scene and push it away for his own scene. It worked in my head, but I had no idea how to work the tech, I didn't even have the capabilities of a sliding transition since I was using WMM (original version) at the time. Then season 7 started and there was just no way Spike would fit into that song's attitude. Which made me all kinds of sad for Spike.
But I wanted to vid this song - I did. It is bouncy and it changes and there are cool special effects in the music and I wanted to vid it. I really had no idea that rap would be an unusual song choice. I figured there were a bunch of hip-hop vidders somewhere and I just didn't know them. This wasn't my first attempt at Eminem either - I've got a Farscape vid to "Lose Yourself" that is 3/4 finished and has been since Christmas 2002. I just can't afford the DVDs right now. One day though...
But, it was different - the lyrics. My normal rule of thumb for vidding is that a fast song is easier to vid and keep the vid dynamic, than a slow song. A fast song virtually demands that you keep the pace up-tempo and you keep the vid moving. If you fail - then it is relatively easy to tell where and to fix it. I remember watching a vid during a show at VVC last year and damned if I remember what it was now...but it was well made and interesting - it just could have been better and the reason it wasn't was totally the fault of the editing. The music dictated a cut here and a switch there and when it didn't happen, I felt a bit off. Not a good feeling when watching a vid and one that a really good beta could have made all the difference in the world. The video felt like a first draft. Oh - now I remember the vid. Yeah - it was fast-paced with well-defined musical cues, so as long as the editing was sharp, then it would work. In this case the editing was *good* - just not sharp enough - it was easy to see that it could have been better. I find that editing to the well-defined musical cues is much easier than working changes into a slow song where you are searching for those much more subtle cues. There is more of a freedom in editing with the slower song, but damn - you can feel all lost between guitar chords. Also, how do you know when you have crossed the line between establishing mood and boring your audience? Betas my friend - love, feed and cherish your betas. Also, always pimp them to new fandoms but that is another post.
Since I had already tackled "Lose Yourself" I knew that vidding to the lyrics was going to be a challenge when I started "Without Me" - rap as a genre is fast - you have to move with the beat and the voice becomes another form of percussive with the consonants reacting off of each other - it can be heady listening to it - especially in freestyle because there really is no boundaries and it is totally extemporaneous throw away art. In that sense it is like all improv. The recorded version of Without Me is also much faster lyrically than Lose Yourself - LY tells a story as does WoM, but totally different modes and Eminem gives you a moment to digest what is going on in LY - he does not in WoM - he just keeps hitting you with these rhymes and while you are still considering what that means about the doctor shocking him on the operating table, he has already moved on and is discussing Dick Cheney's wife and the effect of censorship. Looking back, I couldn't have vidded this song to anyone *but* Lilah. I needed to have each lyric make sense in the context of the clip - but I also needed to make certain that I gave the audience enough time to *see* what was happening - to get the -well, not joke. More like smirk. The audience had to have enough time to get the smirk and then move on to the next, well - smirk. And I had to accept that a lot of it would not be immediately *gettable* in the first viewing (unlike Cowboy) - "chopped liver" is my favorite part and I think it takes a couple of times through if you are unfamiliar with the song to catch it. But Lilah - she just worked perfectly for this song. At this point I think it was written about her.
I think though the impetus to vid her to this song was a combination of a giddy-high after the airing of "Home" and seeing an LJ Icon with the text "Guess who's back?" - it just kinda smacked me that the song freaking *sounded* like Lilah - she even walks like the riff.
The ending...could you talk about the last 30 seconds of the vid?
Well, yes I can. I think I should talk about the construction of the vid first though, since that is very, very deliberate. Also - possibly only clear to me.
The set-up is the "Guess who's back, back again" part - which is pretty evident. The music here is agreeably creepy but also strutty and Lilah is nice enough to give us a wobbley Living Dead Girl walk to juxtapose with her dead body (Lum says she walks like her head might fall off, which I think quite nicely describes it) and then Em or Dre was sweet and kind to pop a cold one and Lilah was also thirsty!! I swear sometimes the vid gods smile at you. So Lilah is busy walking and dying and basically informing people what is what - But first - she must smirk! Smirk and smirk and guess who's back? I'll give you a hint: it involves smirking. It is quite possible that I am more than a little in love with her smug ass. The tech here is pretty simple - as far as any tricks employed - at 30 seconds in, when the plastic is removed from her body - that scene is actually horizontally flipped and ran backwards to make it fit with the next few cuts. In the remaster I had my choice of a gorgeous SVCD with a bug in the corner and the wildfeed VCD with no bug - I went with the SVCD for everything but that one clip - when I flipped it the bug was so obvious to me that I decided that it was worth a slight compromise in clip quality to have no bug. Really - in that one part, it is not that noticible.
Then we get to "I created a monster" and this is a straight narration - the lyrics to me describe quite succinctly Lilah's life and death in this part. "Nobody wants to see Marshall no more, they want Shady, I'm chopped liver." - which I interpretted to be the difference between Dead Lilah and Live Lilah. And asking for Shady, or Dead Lilah is really a big freaking mistake.
So now Lilah is telling you (and let go of continuity cause we are going back and forth from the death to the life here) pretty much the story of her death - talented and tough and so unappreciated and you just can't get rid of her - she is persistant - and it would be smart to listen to her. Seriously. Which cracks me up about Fred being Mrs Cheney and then I see Wes's heart problem and I kinda get a little sad. That is just me - Lilah on the other hand gets pissed. She is mad and "So the FCC won't let me be, Let me be me, so let me see, they try to shut me down on MTV, but it feels so empty without me" is the fact that just because she is what she is - strong, determined and a little bit profane (and dear god, but I think it is the profane that attracts me - that and the smirk) she is not getting out of this alive. Out of the cast of characters, Lilah was judged to be the biggest threat and was removed. Which, yay! for being the biggest threat and all...but other than that massive suck.
So now we have her death out of the way and we have introduced Wes (and to an extent Fred)now we talk about Lilah with Wes and give context to his heart problem at "So come on and dip, bum on your lips, Fuck that, Cum on your lips and some on your tits" and really - remember the part about being profane? Lilah is unapologetically a sexual being - it just radiates off of her. Here is radiates just a bit more and in Wes's general direction. Also, way to go Lilah! Other than the Buffybot, most Jossverse females get ignored in this all to important act. But here and thru the end of the verse, Lilah is pretty much tying up her loose personal ends - she is dealing with Wes and to an extent the Angel Investigation Crew as a whole.
It gets a little more complicated from here on out. The hook of the vid - the idea driving the complete thing - is simply: Lilah won. I tried to set up what all happened to her in the first part, but the second half is all about Lilah and all about Angel and all about how even dead, she manages to still win.
Why does she win? "Little hellions, kids feeling rebellious" Connor, Connor, Connor...he offered up Angel on a silver platter but I am getting ahead of myself - this here is all set up. "Til someone comes along on a mission and yells 'BITCH'" - Cordy and the white eyes and Lum is right, Lilah was totally catching on to Cordy being evil. She had to be eliminated.
Now we get to the actual without me(Lilah) part of the vid - and I decided just a quick overview of the shit going down while Lilah was gone - "A visionary" is glowing Jasmine behind a rapt Connor, "Vision is scary" -well, duh. What did you think I was gonna use? Angel of course is my "rebel" and then we get to where the shit hits the fan "And it's a disaster such a catastrophe, For you to see so damn much of my ass you ask for me" and basically Angel at this point doesn't know it - but he *needs* Lilah. He tried to fix it, he destroyed world peace and now his son is totally frelled, but never fear "I'm back" and again, how perfect is it that we have Batman music here? I mean, I *love* this song so much. So the Batman music gives us a quick Angel/Lilah/Connor swerve in overview and then she is back and pushing her agenda hard.
Here is where she wins - this is it and she knows it and even when she is pretending to be afraid or intimidated by Angel, you can still see her triumphant smirk under it all. Lilah is back from the dead and she is here and she has something for Angel and he is gonna take it and he is gonna thank her for it and he is gonna do this all of his own free will. "Investing in your kids ears and nesting" - I chose to show Connor/NotConnor and his "family" there because that is the offer - that is the negotiation. Hey Angel - this is what I got. "Testing, attention please" Hey Angel - this is what you gotta do. And by the way Angel, don't get all pissy with me "A nuisance, who sent, you sent for me" which I think is the most telling line in the whole damn section. Angel wanted this and whether or not he knows, he made himself vulnerable and all Lilah really has to do at this point is make the offer.
So we get to the wrap up Connor "Looks like a job for me" so Angel should "just follow me" (well, first Angel gets really pissy and then we get to the Connor stuff. Things learned in vidding 101: Always allow Angel Pissy Time). The last "Feels so empty without me" focuses on Angel because it had to. Lilah is gone. Angel has lost everything and he didn't just lose it - he gave it up and he thanked her. Sorry, I just can't get over that. I think that shot of Angel is far and away more indicative of 'empty' than any dream dissection with Fred.
So broken and bought Angel rides off in the limo, Lilah struts out of the hotel and everyone turns to Angel and Em sums it all up with one word and a shot on Connor/NotConnor "Kids!"
It was my hope to communicate there that the entire reason that Lilah won was cause of kids or a kid and you know - in my head Lilah is the one saying "kids" and it is with one of those shit-eating what-are-ya-gonna-do you guessed it - smirks.
I should probably be stopped, once I get started I can't. stop. talking. about vids. I like that so many of us are doing this - it is almost like we are purging out the past vids and regrouping, taking stock of where we are and looking forward and that can only mean one thing: Yet another kickass Premiere show at Vividcon 2004, so I am excited on that front as well.
I'm gonna tackle "Clint Eastwood" and "Peacekeeper" together since one cannot exist without the other - but if you think this is a long entry, wait 'til I post that one. Hee. I might still be writing it by next week. I might be a
tzikeh's house writing it. _par_avion asked about "Without Me" - Since I just recut it for the DVDs, I am all with the memory on this vid. In fact, in the recut process I was still so happy with the final vid that the only change I made was to slightly tweak the "so the FCC" part for timing. This is way different from "Last Stand" where I had a mini breakdown second-guessing my clip/narrative choices. I was a much more confident vidder when I made Without Me. I cut to discuss. ETA: Link to vid is here - http://www.headtilt.com/video.htm
1- The opening credits...I'm never sure if you're just playing around with the "two trailer park girls go round the outside" lyric or whether you and drdawn are having a virtual argument over whether she deserves co-vidder credit...so I guess the question is was dawn involved in the vid process?.
Yes and Yes and somewhat. Hee. Good question, no one ever asks about Dawn's involvement - they always just wanna know the tech involved.
To the extent that this is a Lilah vid and Dawn feels proprietory toward anything that has to do with Lilah and that she is fairly involved in at least watching the progression of any vid that I make, yes Dawn was involved in the process - particularly in encouraging me to go ahead and vid this song. If I hadn't had the idea for the opening credits - she probably would not have been given co-vidder credit...Let me explain.
I didn't vid the trailer park girls part until last - all during the vidding process we discussed what/who the trailer park girls were and if I would even be able to pull them off. Dawn thought I should have Wes and Gunn chasing Fred in "Shining Happy People" for the sequence, but that made no sense in the context of my vid at all. It then became a joke that *we* were the trailer park girls, mainly cause it is an inside joke at my house that we are soooo classy. Shut up we are. Shut the hell up, or I will cut you, bitch, we are classy! and so on. There are so many inside jokes in this vid that it just impossible to list them all - there are actually more in "Cowboy" and the first version of Cowboy features a running commentary by Dawn on Angel building his stable of man-whores. When I cut out a scene of Angel kicking Spike (which cued Dawn to say "You're fired!") I broke her narrative and all her fun.
There is also something else that prompted the opening credits. We had made another Lilah vid to "Brass In Pocket" - and I (at my choice) did not take any co-vidder credit, even though I was heavily involved. I think it was mainly due to just needing a break and not wanting the stress of wondering if this vid is better than my previous ones, will it stand up to repeated viewings, yada yada yada. I wanted to sit back and mindlessly vid to someone else's specifications and look at Lilah cause she is pretty and smirks. So, it was Dawn's baby and it remained her baby and I was uncredited. Which was fine.
BUT - it rose to mind a couple of questions - Dawn and I tended to just take credit for each other's work in conversation and I used to even credit her jokingly as "producer" on my vid titles - she likes to pretend to be P. Diddy sometimes. I quit doing it because, well, it is pretentious as hell - but when her involvement was more than armchair beta, I would co-credit her. Once I decided that the trailer park girls were us, well then it was a matter of closing my eyes and seeing in my head cartoon credits of Dawn chasing me around trying to beat me up - much like when we were kids. I then decided to turn the tables and Dawn's credit should be trying to take credit for my vid and I should try to chase her off. I think I saw this in a movie as a small child and it made an impression - not deep enough that I can remember what it was. Remember when movies had intricate credit sequences? I loved Grease's and The Parent Trap's and they just don't do that anymore. Well - Rat Race did. That song got on my nerves, but I do welcome a revival of the wacky animated credit sequence.
So - Dawn being co-vidder and on the credits is almost a meta comment on her involvement in all of my vids. I probably should have give her covidder credit on Cowboy (she was the first person to say "flashback" for the old time piano bit) and she should have credited me for Brass. The fact that we didn't is moot cause we have been stealing each other's stuff for, well, I'll be 29 next week. It works out.
After I decided what the credits should look like - it only became a matter of learning how to make it happen. The credits took longer to make than the rest of the vid, but I think every minute was worth it because it sets you up right away for who we are and that this is not going to be a typical look at anything. It is the smirking - we smirk all over this vid. It is smirk-drenched.
Finally - Dawn actually lived in a trailer as a toddler. Mom and Dad moved into a house before I was born, so I cannot claim the same street cred. I am a trailer trash poseur. Now you know my secret shame. I sometimes wonder if I was concieved in that trailer, but I haven't figured out a way to work that into conversation yet. Maybe Easter dinner would be the appropriate forum...
2- Also, if you could talk about song choice...when you first heard the song, when did you decide to vid it, is it harder to vid such a lyric heavy, fast paced song
I first heard the song when the video debutted on MTV and I loved it. I remember it being the song that really convinced me that Eminem was more than just a flash in the pan - that he had some real talent. I thought about vidding it then - I was thinking about Spike being in Africa and Sunnydale without him - we were in season 6 hiatus and I would close my eyes and see a scene and then see Spike walk up to the edge of the scene and push it away for his own scene. It worked in my head, but I had no idea how to work the tech, I didn't even have the capabilities of a sliding transition since I was using WMM (original version) at the time. Then season 7 started and there was just no way Spike would fit into that song's attitude. Which made me all kinds of sad for Spike.
But I wanted to vid this song - I did. It is bouncy and it changes and there are cool special effects in the music and I wanted to vid it. I really had no idea that rap would be an unusual song choice. I figured there were a bunch of hip-hop vidders somewhere and I just didn't know them. This wasn't my first attempt at Eminem either - I've got a Farscape vid to "Lose Yourself" that is 3/4 finished and has been since Christmas 2002. I just can't afford the DVDs right now. One day though...
But, it was different - the lyrics. My normal rule of thumb for vidding is that a fast song is easier to vid and keep the vid dynamic, than a slow song. A fast song virtually demands that you keep the pace up-tempo and you keep the vid moving. If you fail - then it is relatively easy to tell where and to fix it. I remember watching a vid during a show at VVC last year and damned if I remember what it was now...but it was well made and interesting - it just could have been better and the reason it wasn't was totally the fault of the editing. The music dictated a cut here and a switch there and when it didn't happen, I felt a bit off. Not a good feeling when watching a vid and one that a really good beta could have made all the difference in the world. The video felt like a first draft. Oh - now I remember the vid. Yeah - it was fast-paced with well-defined musical cues, so as long as the editing was sharp, then it would work. In this case the editing was *good* - just not sharp enough - it was easy to see that it could have been better. I find that editing to the well-defined musical cues is much easier than working changes into a slow song where you are searching for those much more subtle cues. There is more of a freedom in editing with the slower song, but damn - you can feel all lost between guitar chords. Also, how do you know when you have crossed the line between establishing mood and boring your audience? Betas my friend - love, feed and cherish your betas. Also, always pimp them to new fandoms but that is another post.
Since I had already tackled "Lose Yourself" I knew that vidding to the lyrics was going to be a challenge when I started "Without Me" - rap as a genre is fast - you have to move with the beat and the voice becomes another form of percussive with the consonants reacting off of each other - it can be heady listening to it - especially in freestyle because there really is no boundaries and it is totally extemporaneous throw away art. In that sense it is like all improv. The recorded version of Without Me is also much faster lyrically than Lose Yourself - LY tells a story as does WoM, but totally different modes and Eminem gives you a moment to digest what is going on in LY - he does not in WoM - he just keeps hitting you with these rhymes and while you are still considering what that means about the doctor shocking him on the operating table, he has already moved on and is discussing Dick Cheney's wife and the effect of censorship. Looking back, I couldn't have vidded this song to anyone *but* Lilah. I needed to have each lyric make sense in the context of the clip - but I also needed to make certain that I gave the audience enough time to *see* what was happening - to get the -well, not joke. More like smirk. The audience had to have enough time to get the smirk and then move on to the next, well - smirk. And I had to accept that a lot of it would not be immediately *gettable* in the first viewing (unlike Cowboy) - "chopped liver" is my favorite part and I think it takes a couple of times through if you are unfamiliar with the song to catch it. But Lilah - she just worked perfectly for this song. At this point I think it was written about her.
I think though the impetus to vid her to this song was a combination of a giddy-high after the airing of "Home" and seeing an LJ Icon with the text "Guess who's back?" - it just kinda smacked me that the song freaking *sounded* like Lilah - she even walks like the riff.
The ending...could you talk about the last 30 seconds of the vid?
Well, yes I can. I think I should talk about the construction of the vid first though, since that is very, very deliberate. Also - possibly only clear to me.
The set-up is the "Guess who's back, back again" part - which is pretty evident. The music here is agreeably creepy but also strutty and Lilah is nice enough to give us a wobbley Living Dead Girl walk to juxtapose with her dead body (Lum says she walks like her head might fall off, which I think quite nicely describes it) and then Em or Dre was sweet and kind to pop a cold one and Lilah was also thirsty!! I swear sometimes the vid gods smile at you. So Lilah is busy walking and dying and basically informing people what is what - But first - she must smirk! Smirk and smirk and guess who's back? I'll give you a hint: it involves smirking. It is quite possible that I am more than a little in love with her smug ass. The tech here is pretty simple - as far as any tricks employed - at 30 seconds in, when the plastic is removed from her body - that scene is actually horizontally flipped and ran backwards to make it fit with the next few cuts. In the remaster I had my choice of a gorgeous SVCD with a bug in the corner and the wildfeed VCD with no bug - I went with the SVCD for everything but that one clip - when I flipped it the bug was so obvious to me that I decided that it was worth a slight compromise in clip quality to have no bug. Really - in that one part, it is not that noticible.
Then we get to "I created a monster" and this is a straight narration - the lyrics to me describe quite succinctly Lilah's life and death in this part. "Nobody wants to see Marshall no more, they want Shady, I'm chopped liver." - which I interpretted to be the difference between Dead Lilah and Live Lilah. And asking for Shady, or Dead Lilah is really a big freaking mistake.
So now Lilah is telling you (and let go of continuity cause we are going back and forth from the death to the life here) pretty much the story of her death - talented and tough and so unappreciated and you just can't get rid of her - she is persistant - and it would be smart to listen to her. Seriously. Which cracks me up about Fred being Mrs Cheney and then I see Wes's heart problem and I kinda get a little sad. That is just me - Lilah on the other hand gets pissed. She is mad and "So the FCC won't let me be, Let me be me, so let me see, they try to shut me down on MTV, but it feels so empty without me" is the fact that just because she is what she is - strong, determined and a little bit profane (and dear god, but I think it is the profane that attracts me - that and the smirk) she is not getting out of this alive. Out of the cast of characters, Lilah was judged to be the biggest threat and was removed. Which, yay! for being the biggest threat and all...but other than that massive suck.
So now we have her death out of the way and we have introduced Wes (and to an extent Fred)now we talk about Lilah with Wes and give context to his heart problem at "So come on and dip, bum on your lips, Fuck that, Cum on your lips and some on your tits" and really - remember the part about being profane? Lilah is unapologetically a sexual being - it just radiates off of her. Here is radiates just a bit more and in Wes's general direction. Also, way to go Lilah! Other than the Buffybot, most Jossverse females get ignored in this all to important act. But here and thru the end of the verse, Lilah is pretty much tying up her loose personal ends - she is dealing with Wes and to an extent the Angel Investigation Crew as a whole.
It gets a little more complicated from here on out. The hook of the vid - the idea driving the complete thing - is simply: Lilah won. I tried to set up what all happened to her in the first part, but the second half is all about Lilah and all about Angel and all about how even dead, she manages to still win.
Why does she win? "Little hellions, kids feeling rebellious" Connor, Connor, Connor...he offered up Angel on a silver platter but I am getting ahead of myself - this here is all set up. "Til someone comes along on a mission and yells 'BITCH'" - Cordy and the white eyes and Lum is right, Lilah was totally catching on to Cordy being evil. She had to be eliminated.
Now we get to the actual without me(Lilah) part of the vid - and I decided just a quick overview of the shit going down while Lilah was gone - "A visionary" is glowing Jasmine behind a rapt Connor, "Vision is scary" -well, duh. What did you think I was gonna use? Angel of course is my "rebel" and then we get to where the shit hits the fan "And it's a disaster such a catastrophe, For you to see so damn much of my ass you ask for me" and basically Angel at this point doesn't know it - but he *needs* Lilah. He tried to fix it, he destroyed world peace and now his son is totally frelled, but never fear "I'm back" and again, how perfect is it that we have Batman music here? I mean, I *love* this song so much. So the Batman music gives us a quick Angel/Lilah/Connor swerve in overview and then she is back and pushing her agenda hard.
Here is where she wins - this is it and she knows it and even when she is pretending to be afraid or intimidated by Angel, you can still see her triumphant smirk under it all. Lilah is back from the dead and she is here and she has something for Angel and he is gonna take it and he is gonna thank her for it and he is gonna do this all of his own free will. "Investing in your kids ears and nesting" - I chose to show Connor/NotConnor and his "family" there because that is the offer - that is the negotiation. Hey Angel - this is what I got. "Testing, attention please" Hey Angel - this is what you gotta do. And by the way Angel, don't get all pissy with me "A nuisance, who sent, you sent for me" which I think is the most telling line in the whole damn section. Angel wanted this and whether or not he knows, he made himself vulnerable and all Lilah really has to do at this point is make the offer.
So we get to the wrap up Connor "Looks like a job for me" so Angel should "just follow me" (well, first Angel gets really pissy and then we get to the Connor stuff. Things learned in vidding 101: Always allow Angel Pissy Time). The last "Feels so empty without me" focuses on Angel because it had to. Lilah is gone. Angel has lost everything and he didn't just lose it - he gave it up and he thanked her. Sorry, I just can't get over that. I think that shot of Angel is far and away more indicative of 'empty' than any dream dissection with Fred.
So broken and bought Angel rides off in the limo, Lilah struts out of the hotel and everyone turns to Angel and Em sums it all up with one word and a shot on Connor/NotConnor "Kids!"
It was my hope to communicate there that the entire reason that Lilah won was cause of kids or a kid and you know - in my head Lilah is the one saying "kids" and it is with one of those shit-eating what-are-ya-gonna-do you guessed it - smirks.
