Mini-DVD Meme

[thuviaptarth]

Lifted from chaila and nicole_anell:

Pick any section of a vid or a paragraph or any passage less than 500 words from any fanfic I've written and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet of what I was thinking when I made or wrote it, why I wrote it, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the vid or fic, and anything else you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Comments

[chaila]

I will shock you and pick the section of "Riot Act" that starts around 1:35.

[thuviaptarth]

I am shocked by the section! Which for most of the vid was "the blank space between Riley's suicide attempt at 1:34 and Jesse's kiss-slap at 1:54 that I need to fill." It's not that what's there is random, it's just that it tended to be the place in the timeline where I put things that I wanted in the vid but didn't know where.

Starting off with John's kiss to the forehead is supposed to parallel Jesse's kiss at 1:54: they're both Judas kisses, I'll take care of you from people who already know they're going to use her. (The clips are probably too far apart for the parallelism to work -- astolat told me when we were working on "Black, Black Heart" that visual parallels don't tend to work unless the clips are next to each other. They also work well when they're placed in conjunction with repeating lyrics, I think, but I haven't gotten that kind of consistent lyrical-visual structure down yet. Someday!)

There's a lot of Jesse beckoning Riley in the cave -- I wanted to emphasize that this is what led Riley here, the girl in the hospital bed was beckoned there by Jesse in the tunnels, the girl whose face Jesse lifted up was set on John Connor in the car "ready or not" (not). "So loud it's quiet" -- it took me a long time to figure out this bit, and I'm not sure it gives the viewer enough context to identify the scenes, but it's John leaving Riley's bedroom after the discussion about the bear poster, when he realizes she's from the future, and then Jesse drawing a curtain to hide Riley from possible watchers when Riley visits her on her own. Again, it's the betrayal by both John and Jesse -- they are focused on their plans and reactions, not her. John abandons her, Jesse hides her. And they're the friendly ones, not the ones Riley didn't even know to prepare for: Cameron, Sarah. Indifferent nurse flipping a clipboard closed, Jesse in disguise doing the same. Then Riley fighting back, but against the wrong mother -- and of course it's a stand-in for Jesse, it's a precursor to Riley's attack on Jesse. It's desperate and it's stupid and she wants to survive. It's another suicide attempt and she wants to die. It's a demand for truth and she wants Jesse to be for real. She's fighting for something.

I didn't have a really clear idea of what this section should be; the thematic stuff above is true, but hindsight. I mean, it's stuff I felt, but mostly stuff I hadn't verbalized. I was mostly focused on the physical movement, I was trying to figure out how to get the viewer's eye to go where I wanted, and on the emotional movement from suicide to fighting. And throughout the vid I had the background sense of wanting to parallel Jesse and John and to show how Riley's past as a tunnel rat shadowed her entire life in the pre-nuclear "present" day.

It's odd, when I started the vid I thought Jesse was more responsible for Riley's death than John was and when I finished it I thought they were equally responsible, and now I'm back to blaming Jesse more again. I'll have to see how I feel on rewatching the show.

[chaila]

What I find really interesting about this is that focus on physical movement and visuals leads, even if somewhat unintentionally or subconsciously, to some really great meta. Because for me, 1:35 to 1:40 or so is absolutely STARTLING in the clarity of its indictment of John. Because the focus on physical movement is intercut between Jesse and John, so the effect is that John kisses her on the forehead and then not just leaves, but leaves her to Jesse and Jesse's plan, through his refusal to reach out, he leaves her vulnerable to Jesse's reaching out, because Jesse's the only one who is. And John doesn't just abandon her in her bedroom with the bear poster, he walks away and leaves her alone in a hotel room with Jesse, who walls her in. The context is important too, if you know that's the scene with the bear poster when he figures it out, but I think the startling bit of it is the physical movement itself, and the way that physical movement very directly connects John's abandonment of Riley and Jesse's penning her in. To me, it just seems so visually clear that Jesse's plan resulted in Riley's death only because of John's enabling; John could have stopped it any time but he didn't, he walked away and didn't just leave her, but specifically left her to Jesse, multiple times. (Which isn't to say John is more responsible than Jesse, but I think it's an indictment to say that he's even equally responsible).

Which, okay, is a lot of words for what's about five seconds of vid but the effect of it is a really powerful meta point, and I think it's pretty fascinating that it sounds like maybe that wasn't exactly where your specific intention was? Vidding ftw.