New Willow vid

[hazelk]

Long time in the making.

Title: Perfect Day

Artist: Lou Reed

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Format: XviD

Size: 40.3 MB

Summary: SuperWillow comes at a price.

Big thanks to yourlibrarian for betaing.

Download from here (Right/control click and Save Target As/Download Linked File).


I’ve always loved this song. It was great to vid because the music builds as if there’s a story but the lyrics don’t seem to insist on a specific narrative. I have to admit that initially the idea of using it for a Willow vid came from the obvious drug connection but I’ve tried to keep that non-explicit. Heroin, love, Tara, magic it’s all the same story really. The one about chasing after happiness, sacrificing innocence and finding there’s a cost. Initialy, I just had Tara pegged for doe-eyed and deer-like but then Wellcome to the Hellmouth was playing and there was Willow caught in the headlights. It all flowed (or mostly trickled) from there.


Feedback is like smack….

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can't wait to see this one...but I'm away from my own computer, and will have to wait 'til tomorrow when I'm home.
FB then.

[yourlibrarian]

I'm so excited this is up now. I love what you did with the title! It goes so well with the vid (and also seems to have taken care of another problem right after). The whole thing looks wonderful.

Off to pimp!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I sort of figured out what I could do with the title (thanks again for pointing out what it needed) while I was on holiday and then had days with no access to the file. Like the vidding equivalent of blue balls. On a less disturbing note thanks for the pimp, people seem to be getting it, which is great.

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness. I'm speechless over the sheer beauty and power of this vid. It's absolutely fantastic. Oh my goodness! The movement of it, the pacing, the way you draw parallels and move seamlessly through the seven seasons' worth of development... oh my lord. Absolutely AMAZING work!

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

I especially love that final shot there. Wow.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Thank you! Your good opinion means so much (and I'm beginning to sound like a character from a Jane Austen novel). But seriously, from the vidder who amongst other things made me care about Ben. This means a lot.

I'm so happy you liked the ending. I was going to finish with Tara's grave but circularity seemed better and then I found I loved the way the fade made Willow's hand seem to drift away down the river.

[bradcpu.livejournal.com]

Here via obsessive24. Very nice! I love the concept for the vid and the narrative, and you carried it out extremely well with the linear progression. You can tell a lot of thought went into it. Visually, it's at the same time gentle and very powerful. Love the Tara-Glory-brainsuck, Willow-Taramindspell parallel and how you presented it.

Nicely executed.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am terribly linear, I really envy people who can make vids like your Spike one that tell stories without being so bound to the chronology. Although I have a very achronological idea for my next vid (and it scares the bejesus out of me) :-)

I'm so glad the gentle came across, it's a deceptively non-violent story and song. And you spotted the brainsuck/mindspell! I was afraid it might just come across as explosions. Not that there's anything wrong with explosions.

[bradcpu.livejournal.com]

Personally, I envy linear vidders. Seems so much more difficult to make comparisons when you can't jump around. Good luck with your next project. I'm sure you'll do wonderfully.

There were lots of other great things about this vid that I didn't mention (the deer-knife-stab-to-Tara's-blood-splash chief among them), but just generally it shows that you have great instincts for pacing and insight. Plus, ooh pretty explosions! Thanks again for sharing it.

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

I will return to give feedback because it's 1:30am my time I have an 8am class, but holy crap that was awesome. I thought I was the only person who thought the dear "was" Tara in a universal balance kinda way.

[ficbyzee.livejournal.com]

This vid gave me chills. You absolutely *nailed* Willow, and I love the way you showed that Willow has *always* been creepy as fuck--that stuff didn't just appear out of nowhere at the beginning of season six. The instrumental where you intercut the scenes of Tara's death, Buffy's resurecction and the death of the fawn was absolute genius. I'm definitely reccing this to anyone I talk to.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Creepy Willow definitely and Alyson Hannigan gives such good creep-face (although she was so cute when she was humble). Speaking of creepy, I really enjoyed making that killing Tara section, I'm so glad it worked. Some great imagery to play with and the music almost seemed to do it for me.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Oh, this was *beautiful*. It captured pretty much everything I loved about S6, and none of what I hated -- to wit, how all of *that* flowed naturally from the things that had come before.

I'm so glad Zee sent me here! Beautiful job, *perfect song choice*.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

On alternate Tuesdays S6 is my favourite, when it's good it's very good and when it's bad it really isn't.

*Thank you*

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

Great, quietly understated opening and great titles too. I love 1:08-1:11 with Willow in "Fear, Itself" (?) going back and forth with her in "Restless". And then at 1:19, the dear and Tara. Good clip slection all around. Amazing and thoughtful interpretation of the lyrics and such interesting parallels. 2:10 - Love the snare beats. Where the music picks up in the early 2:00's works wonderfully. And the way it all wraps back in on itself with Xander and Willow walking and Willow and Buffy sitting.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for coming back. And with time stamps! And someone else who thought Tara was the deer :-)

The Fear Itself/Restless section was something I knew I had to do for the first "Keep me hanging on" but it took a lot of tweakng the motion and the lighting to get right. Thoes snare beats were a gift though. And yes I like the description wraps back on itself. At one point I was going to make it much harsher on Willow but the strings start up again towards the end and that gave me the idea that "reap what you sow" can mean good karma as well as bad. She did make good friends.

[sharpest_rose.livejournal.com]

Stunning work. I love the way you juxtaposed everything in such a way that it became a perfect coherent whole.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm so glad it made sense. I've been thinking about Willow's story for a long time and this was so much shinier than writing an essay.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

This is *wonderful*. In the way that wonderful still means it really really hurts. ;)

I'm in love with how you've structured it. How you've tied together so many seasons so deftly. Tara is the deer! How her vamp counterpart shows up when the music changes tempo before coming back to the deer. The way you've matched acts of magic with the song accents and dips and swoops is absolutely fantastic. And what a *beautiful* ending.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

::Glows:: Thank you for these wonderful comments :-)

[voleuse.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for commenting!

[shamoogity.livejournal.com]

This is gorgeous. One of the best Willow vids I've seen. I've always thought Willow's central flaw was a desire to make everything perfect. And the imagery of the deer scene intercut with the rest of the vid worked so perfectly.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And yes, exactly to the perfectionism :-)

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

oh Willow who was just all sorts of awesome creepiness. Absolutely perfect character study. Gorgeous and haunting.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Willow has so many layers, I hope I did her justice.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

What an extraordinary idea. What a great song. What a wonderful vid!

The blood spatter *alone*...::flails::

The notion of a perfect day is ideal for Willow, because she's always got that sense that everything will work out for the best, that "we're the good guys and therefore everything we do is right" thing that I tried to tap into a little in "Transparent". And then there's the gorgeous Whedonian irony of it. Just...yeah. ::flails some more::

You win at life.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Hi! and ::basks:: It means a great deal that you liked this, I love "Transparent" so much and yes that sense Willow never really gets over, until it's too late, of still being the innocent, the good guy.

I see you're reviewing BSG episodes!
I'd just caught up with the series on DVD as the third season started, it's the first live fandom I've ever been in. Quite a rush.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Oooh, first live fandom! Many are the joys, many are the sorrows. (: Hope you enjoy the rush, though. I know I am. Such a good show! ::clings to it::

P.S.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I've just friended you, and now I see you're reviewing BSG episodes! Excellent. I always enjoy good commentary. ::settles in to read::

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I've just seen this (courtesy of the new & improved BMVD) and I'm stunned. Really, really powerful stuff, and I loved the huge variety of source that you were able to work in, too. The Bambi-killing knife followed by Tara's death scene was obviously really effective, but I liked the 'Killer In Me' transition just as much.

Mind you, we do know now that Willow blames Buffy for Tara's death, not herself. ;-)

I did like the cute little lyric-image correspondences, "feed animals in the zoo" against Oz (poor guy), and "you made me forget myself" against the scene from Tabula Rasa...

At 1.11 was that supposed to be S1 Willow being upset by premonitions of what she was going to become later? (Assuming you can remember your intentions, over a year after making the vid...)


And watching 3 minutes 19 seconds of concentrated Willowy goodness problematicness (if that's a word) didn't exactly hurt...

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I think Willow blames her own attachment to Buffy/Slayer glamour for Tara's death but Buffy interprets that as blaming Buffy. I think you were right about her Beautiful Sunset lament being triggered mostly by Willow leaving :-)

I'm not sure why I never put this on the BMVD when it came out - maybe it was already down then, the new version is much improved. Making it was a bit of a journey of Willow discovery for me, there are parts I had planned (mostly to do with the deer) but other parts like the 'Killer In Me' thing that emerged from prolonged battling with the ending. Or the Oz/zoo reference (which I love you for noticing), originally I'd included more of the werewolf arc (because why be subtle), added the scene from the end of WML just because Willow's smile was so shiny and fitted the upturn in the music and only remembered what their conversation was about afterwards.

At 1.11 was that supposed to be S1 Willow being upset by premonitions of what she was going to become later?
I really like that interpretation because it fits with the reaction to Vamp!Willow that precedes it. I don't think I had things so clear in my mind when I was making the vid though. The general idea with that chorus was that having brought Willow from mousy Sears girl to confident sexy vampire hunter I wanted to show the splits emerging between who she used to be and who she was now and how she was beginning to learn new things about herself not all of them good. I mean that was the reasoning behind using various alternate Willow personas in that section but with the "you just keep me hanging on" lyric I think I was thinking more specifically of the sidekick argument she had with Buffy and the determination to reject her old self driving her to ever more magical experiment.