thuvia ptarth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thuviaptarth) wrote2007-02-20 04:32 pm
thuviaptarth) wrote2007-02-20 04:32 pm
Entry tags:
Brief notes on Supernatural vids
Charmax, "Protège-Moi"
I'm leaving this one out of cut tags because I want to recommend that even the non-Supernatural fans check it out, just for the technique. This is ... I'm not even sure what to call it. A sort-of-kind-of constructed-reality neo-noir vision of Supernatural, in which Dean wants Sam and death in equal measure. It's all in black and white except for the occasional lurid red (blankets vacancy signs stained glass flickering candles), and it's even more shocking where you expect to see red and don't (blood blood blood).
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charmax just makes the sexiest vids in all of Creation, doesn't she? I think I want a cigarette. I know I want the fic to go with this.
Fabella
I'm a sucker for the Winchester brothers trying to take care of each other (you'd never have guessed, right?), sowistful_fever's Come On, Angel and Hemorrhage both hit the sweet spot for me, though the latter works a lot better.
"Come On, Angel" has to struggle against a song I know well and think is all wrong for Supernatural: "Angel" is one of my favorite Sarah Slean songs, tender and creepy and ironic and cold, and so completely opposed to the tone of SPN that I had a hard time processing it the first time I watched the vid. The visual narrative is completely serious where the song sometimes is very much not, and that's still a problem for me, on rewatch; and this is, rarely, one of the few vids that falls down for me because the visual logic is so much stronger than the narrative or emotional logic. The flow of image to image is wonderfully well-controlled, and the repeated use of the climb up the elevator shaft (sometimes paralleled to Sam's goddamn long neck as he looks upward) makes a wonderful visual metaphor for the idea of searching for, reaching for, heaven, and it looks great, especially the jerky jump-cuts in time to the odd lugubrious beat, but I keep getting tripped up by the mismatch between image and meaning: that's not what that image means in the show and the recontextualization doesn't quite work for me. Similarly, the use of the fight scene from the pilot a little later seems random.
I also had a lot of trouble with POV in this one: at first I assumed it was a Sam-POV about Dean, switching in the middle and then back again at some point I had trouble identifying precisely, but ... maybe it's all Dean?
The intercutting between the stone angel and the shaken salt lines is gorgeous. And "My pet angel's got a long-lost friend/Says he's coming back when the world ends .../God don't like people that much" for John will never stop making me laugh. In the good way! It's just very John, and John's place in his sons' lives.
"Hemorrhage" is fantastically more accomplished. I don't think I've seen another vid that better captures the sense of Sam's S2 desperation and terror, the way Dean's reaction to John's death is devastating Sam nearly as much as John's death is devastating Dean.
The use of effects and fades and color filters is brilliant, from the first equation of John's death to the sun going down to a hydrogen bomb exploding behind Dean's eyes, blowing Dean's life apart, to the golden-toned past car drive interrupted by the black rainy smash of the truck, to the final sequence with Dean backing off, backing away from Sam, fading into white, fading away. All the images of Dean retreating interwoven through the vid are great, from the camera pulling away from Dean's chest, to Dean's back retreating down hallways, Dean closing doors. I also love the use of internal motion in the clips, the way Fabella holds longer on shots where the focus changes (dead demon's son in the foreground, all too clear; "Was it something you expect to find?" with the focus switching from the grieving child to the turn of Dean's head; the swing of Sam's head from one broken loved one to another on "contagious"); that incredibly quick cut from Dean bashing the Impala to Dean hitting Sam.
Astarte, "Soldiering"
I'd like to have something coherent to say aboutastartexx's "What It Feels Like to Be a Ghost," but I'm still too overwhelmed. So instead I'll talk a little about "Soldiering," a quiet, melancholy look at Dean's grief for John and all the ways in which Dean strives to be his father's son. It has me from the first moments with the heartbeats: Dean's heart starting up again and John's stopping, the rhythm underneath the song and the rhythm underneath Dean's days. "Inhaled till I could not exhale" makes me want to cry every time, and the final repetitions of "keep soldering on" with Dean trying and trying and trying, and the final clip of Dean getting out of the car to speak, so quiet and steady and one more way Dean braces up and soldiers on.
I'm leaving this one out of cut tags because I want to recommend that even the non-Supernatural fans check it out, just for the technique. This is ... I'm not even sure what to call it. A sort-of-kind-of constructed-reality neo-noir vision of Supernatural, in which Dean wants Sam and death in equal measure. It's all in black and white except for the occasional lurid red (blankets vacancy signs stained glass flickering candles), and it's even more shocking where you expect to see red and don't (blood blood blood).
charmax just makes the sexiest vids in all of Creation, doesn't she? I think I want a cigarette. I know I want the fic to go with this.Fabella
I'm a sucker for the Winchester brothers trying to take care of each other (you'd never have guessed, right?), so
wistful_fever's Come On, Angel and Hemorrhage both hit the sweet spot for me, though the latter works a lot better. "Come On, Angel" has to struggle against a song I know well and think is all wrong for Supernatural: "Angel" is one of my favorite Sarah Slean songs, tender and creepy and ironic and cold, and so completely opposed to the tone of SPN that I had a hard time processing it the first time I watched the vid. The visual narrative is completely serious where the song sometimes is very much not, and that's still a problem for me, on rewatch; and this is, rarely, one of the few vids that falls down for me because the visual logic is so much stronger than the narrative or emotional logic. The flow of image to image is wonderfully well-controlled, and the repeated use of the climb up the elevator shaft (sometimes paralleled to Sam's goddamn long neck as he looks upward) makes a wonderful visual metaphor for the idea of searching for, reaching for, heaven, and it looks great, especially the jerky jump-cuts in time to the odd lugubrious beat, but I keep getting tripped up by the mismatch between image and meaning: that's not what that image means in the show and the recontextualization doesn't quite work for me. Similarly, the use of the fight scene from the pilot a little later seems random.
I also had a lot of trouble with POV in this one: at first I assumed it was a Sam-POV about Dean, switching in the middle and then back again at some point I had trouble identifying precisely, but ... maybe it's all Dean?
The intercutting between the stone angel and the shaken salt lines is gorgeous. And "My pet angel's got a long-lost friend/Says he's coming back when the world ends .../God don't like people that much" for John will never stop making me laugh. In the good way! It's just very John, and John's place in his sons' lives.
"Hemorrhage" is fantastically more accomplished. I don't think I've seen another vid that better captures the sense of Sam's S2 desperation and terror, the way Dean's reaction to John's death is devastating Sam nearly as much as John's death is devastating Dean.
The use of effects and fades and color filters is brilliant, from the first equation of John's death to the sun going down to a hydrogen bomb exploding behind Dean's eyes, blowing Dean's life apart, to the golden-toned past car drive interrupted by the black rainy smash of the truck, to the final sequence with Dean backing off, backing away from Sam, fading into white, fading away. All the images of Dean retreating interwoven through the vid are great, from the camera pulling away from Dean's chest, to Dean's back retreating down hallways, Dean closing doors. I also love the use of internal motion in the clips, the way Fabella holds longer on shots where the focus changes (dead demon's son in the foreground, all too clear; "Was it something you expect to find?" with the focus switching from the grieving child to the turn of Dean's head; the swing of Sam's head from one broken loved one to another on "contagious"); that incredibly quick cut from Dean bashing the Impala to Dean hitting Sam.
Astarte, "Soldiering"
I'd like to have something coherent to say about
astartexx's "What It Feels Like to Be a Ghost," but I'm still too overwhelmed. So instead I'll talk a little about "Soldiering," a quiet, melancholy look at Dean's grief for John and all the ways in which Dean strives to be his father's son. It has me from the first moments with the heartbeats: Dean's heart starting up again and John's stopping, the rhythm underneath the song and the rhythm underneath Dean's days. "Inhaled till I could not exhale" makes me want to cry every time, and the final repetitions of "keep soldering on" with Dean trying and trying and trying, and the final clip of Dean getting out of the car to speak, so quiet and steady and one more way Dean braces up and soldiers on.
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(Yeah, at this point I'm pretty much blithely spoilering myself for anything Supernatural-related.)
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