ext_12542: My default bat icon (Default)
batwrangler.livejournal.com ([identity profile] batwrangler.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] sisabet 2005-02-26 04:32 am (UTC)

I love your posts on the theory and practice of vidding. The first time I saw an anime music video (my introduction to the concept of vidding), I thought: "That's brilliant. How do they do it?" So I love your insights.

How abstract do you need to get to have a rewatchable vid?

For example, if someone were to take Stephin Merritt's All My Little Words, a simple, literal interpretation would be that it is a really straight-forward and very apt "Spike" song. He loves Buffy, their relationship is impossible from the start, he *does* make her regret it, William's poems (all his little words) are rebuffed. One could easliy map his relationship with Buffy to the lyrics with just a touch irony.

But Buffy has also has impossible relationships with Angel and Riley, so a more sophisticated use could start at the same place and add Angel (Angelus tattoo) and Riley (with the vampire) into the mix, associating the singer not simply with Spike, but with Buffy. Then it could explore the images related to Buffy continually loosing people (Angel to Angelus, again when she sends him to hell, again when he leaves for LA), Riley (leaving in the helicopter), Giles when he goes to England, Joyce dying -- even Spike leaves (albeit in a blaze of self-sacrificing glory). Plus there's the irony arising from Merritt's performance implying the singer doesn't want his beloved to suffer and the fact that in BtVS *everyone* ends up rueful and paying.

So if the vid begins with Buffy's swan dive and ends with Spike's immolation and manages all that other stuff in between, is it destined to be just two overlapping literal interpretations or can it achieve something more interesting?



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