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This is this first video that made me see vidding as an art form capable of transcending the source material in the same way really good fanfic does. It’s largely an exploration of season 6, focusing on Spike. I love it because it seems to capture the mood of the season, at least from my perspecitive. Everything is falling apart and nothing makes any sense. “I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I ever had.” Yea, that sums it up pretty well for me.
Visceral reaction: I wasn’t really sucked in at the beginning of this vid. I’m not so into William and the source isn’t crystal clear nor were the beginning images particularly beautiful ones to me. However, my attention was caught by that scene of William the bloody striding toward us (I believe during the Boxer rebellion). Anyway, at ‘worn out places’ I started getting into it. I love that shot with the red, red dress and the trashed room and then the cut to Giles on ‘worn out faces’ and then to Buffy and the ‘races’- an oddly literal series of shots and I’m not totally clear on the POV at this stage. At this stage, I’m really starting to get into the mood of the vid, and the lyrics are starting to resonate. Note- I love that sequence with Buffy doing backflips to the beat. And damn, this vid is just setting a nice mood for me. The ‘children’ sequences are great- feels kinda sureal/dreamlike. I’m also digging the ‘William’ shots now- ‘went to school’, ‘no one knew me’- it’s coming together for me as a character study. Also- my favorite bits are the two ‘find it kind of funny, find it kind of sad’ bits- because I kind of see that as a ‘Spike philosophy’. He understands and accepts the fucked-upness of life and chooses to laugh rather than go completely insane. Or at least, he manages to laugh when he does go insane. Love the way it all builds up to the attempted rape and Spike’s realization of how very wrong things are and that they can’t go on they way they have been. All of it just hangs together beautifully as a character study of Spike during season 6- and gives us hints of how he got to that place.
Note- on multiple viewings, the beginning of this vid does work better for me. I kind of see it as a quick sum of his backstory and I particularly like when we get to the present and Spike throws the blanket off- it feels like he’s revealing himself to Buffy. I also like the occassional bits of William in the body of the vid- a la ‘went to school and I was very nervous’- feels like it kind of completes the study of Spike’s personality, that inner uncertainty beneath the bravado.
To sum, I think what really struck me about this vid was that it was so layered. Many of the clips were a literal fit for the lyrics, but they also seemed to have a deeper meaning, tell us more about Spike than they seem to on the surface. That’s what I mean by transcendent- it’s not JUST pairing clips to lyrics. It’s not even just telling a single narrative. It’s an entire mood, a feeling, a sense of the character and events set to music and illustrated with pictures but it strikes a deeper chord. A good vid- yea, that’s art.
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