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Vid chatty
Nov. 15th, 2008 07:07 pmSome thoughts, very late thoughts, in response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bop_radar’s excellent vid chat on lyrics and literalism. Most of what can be said has been but one thing I don’t think I saw mentioned was using lyrics for the physical sound of the words as well as their meanings. There’s a line in “Scarlet ribbons”
All the stores were closed and shuttered
Sinead does a sort of staccato thing on the word “shuttered” that made me think of the clack, clack, clack of someone going down stairs so I used that. The image fits thematically as well – onomatopoeia like pure literalism isn’t sufficient to make a clip work but I think it can add something to a sequence.
The most recent vid I made was to a song with almost no lyrics and it was interesting to find that it didn’t feel a radically different process to the previous ones. Being musically somewhat illiterate it took longer to work out the structure of the track but that done it was still very much a matter of deciding what each section was going to focus on and using the musical accents and ornamentation the way I’d usually use words to guide the specifics. It was freeing in many ways.
I do thinklaurashapiro had a very good point calling lyrics the enemy. They’re like the serpent in the garden, endlessly tempting with their “look at me, ignore all the other stuff going on, make it about me!” But if the song is good, or at least coherent, and supports the story you’re trying to tell words can be just as flexible as music in their interpretation. One exception maybe, lyrics (if audible) can specify a POV in a way that music alone cannot. If it’s a first person lyric it’s possible to shift the ‘I’ of the song from one protagonist to another, it can be the making of a vid, but it’s not a trivial matter. For instance, I know it’s not exactly a vid but I really like the way the opening sequence of the T:SCC second season premiere plays with the identities of its Samson and its Delilah but the song is third person omniscient. If instead of Manson-out-of-Springsteen they’d decided to use the Tom Jones version of “Delilah” such a fluid approach would likely have been impossible, although there are probably other reasons they didn't go that route.
bop_radar’s excellent vid chat on lyrics and literalism. Most of what can be said has been but one thing I don’t think I saw mentioned was using lyrics for the physical sound of the words as well as their meanings. There’s a line in “Scarlet ribbons”All the stores were closed and shuttered
Sinead does a sort of staccato thing on the word “shuttered” that made me think of the clack, clack, clack of someone going down stairs so I used that. The image fits thematically as well – onomatopoeia like pure literalism isn’t sufficient to make a clip work but I think it can add something to a sequence.
The most recent vid I made was to a song with almost no lyrics and it was interesting to find that it didn’t feel a radically different process to the previous ones. Being musically somewhat illiterate it took longer to work out the structure of the track but that done it was still very much a matter of deciding what each section was going to focus on and using the musical accents and ornamentation the way I’d usually use words to guide the specifics. It was freeing in many ways.
I do think
laurashapiro had a very good point calling lyrics the enemy. They’re like the serpent in the garden, endlessly tempting with their “look at me, ignore all the other stuff going on, make it about me!” But if the song is good, or at least coherent, and supports the story you’re trying to tell words can be just as flexible as music in their interpretation. One exception maybe, lyrics (if audible) can specify a POV in a way that music alone cannot. If it’s a first person lyric it’s possible to shift the ‘I’ of the song from one protagonist to another, it can be the making of a vid, but it’s not a trivial matter. For instance, I know it’s not exactly a vid but I really like the way the opening sequence of the T:SCC second season premiere plays with the identities of its Samson and its Delilah but the song is third person omniscient. If instead of Manson-out-of-Springsteen they’d decided to use the Tom Jones version of “Delilah” such a fluid approach would likely have been impossible, although there are probably other reasons they didn't go that route.