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Vividcon challenge vid (Children of Men)
Artist: Jarvis Cocker
Fandom: Children of Men
Format: DivX
Size: 49.3 MB
Summary: “Just as in a stormy sea that unbounded in all directions, raises and drops mountainous waves, howling, a sailor sits in a boat and trusts in his frail bark.”
Download from shiny new website here
Feedback gives me hope
You were alive and happy
Our children played in trees
were strong and wise
and knew no fear
We watched them play together
Somewhere everyone is happy
Somewhere fish do not have bones
Somewhere gravity cannot reach us any more
Somewhere you are not alone
This morning, when I awoke
God was dead but I lived on
I cannot move
but I am free
I found the source of gravity
Somewhere everyone is happy
Somewhere fish do not have bones
Somewhere gravity cannot reach us any more
Somewhere you are not alone
Somewhere in a parallel dimension
Happening now but not within your sight
The force that binds the universe together
Everything is gonna be alright
Everything is gonna be alright
This one came about by a rather tortuous route. It began with downloading the Jarvis album and falling instantly in love with Quantum Theory, the final track. Around the same time I also happened to be re-reading Phillip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darklyand finding it hitting the same post-apocalyptic kink (it runs deep, I think it all began when I was six years old with The Death of Robin Hood). Dick is a visual enough writer that I began viding the book in my head and planning to acquire the Linklater adaptation in the vain hope that it might look the same (I hadn’t watched the film). Then when the dvd came out it was on special offer with Children of Men, which I’d also read good reviews of, so I ordered that as well. A Scanner Darkly-the movie sadly didn’t work out, it was at once too close to the book and too different from my brain vid, too brown. But I was blown away by Children of Men (I still am) and it had exactly that “hope amidst the ruins” quality that had hit me about the song in the first place. So the solution was obvious really.
It took long enough to put this vid together that at some point I realized it might be finished around the time of the Vividcon deadline. I thought about putting in for the premieres show but changed my mind when I realized that the challenge theme was “Faith.” It's an atheist’s vision of faith, ephemeral and probably illusory - the one thing I knew starting out was that the song had to end on the doubting reprise of the climatic “Everything is gonna be all right” and the vid had to end with the rescue ship and signal fading away leaving nothing but a small boat alone in choppy seas. For the rest it follows the movie, I hope not too literally, but I wanted to celebrate it not re-write it.
ETA: The online version has a slightly different beginning to the con vid. I’d reworked that part so much it needed time away to see what wasn’t right and by that time the deadline was past.
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Because it was everything I think of with your vids -- an original, deeply thinky way of looking at something, beautiful to look at. When it played, I was just "whoa" throughout. This was one of those vids that made me wonder why I even try, it was so good.
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I even have an appropriate icon! *squees*
Aha! That was you!
This vid is wonderful. I haven't seen the film, but I was able to follow what was going on and to be moved by the imagery. Lovely work as always.
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Re: Aha! That was you!
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Re: Aha! That was you!
You must come next year!
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Somewhere fish do not have bones
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Re: Somewhere fish do not have bones
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Purely in terms of visuals Children of Men is one of my favourite films. It just seems crying out to be pulled closer, cut into pieces, reassembled -- you really distill its essence. I especially loved the way you used the school footage to set it up, and the emotional punch of the scenes with theo and Julian. But all of it, really -- the song and your editing capture the film's mood perfectly.
Also, the titles are beautiful.
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It just seems crying out to be pulled closer, cut into pieces, reassembled
It's interesting, I love this movie but vidder-love is a little Frankensteinian, expressed through dismemberment. Still a mutual thing, you learn *why* you love a movie by vidding it (if it's a good movie), why you remember particular scenes, how they fit into the structure. Like that school scene, initially I thought of putting it with the opening bomb going off mostly because the movement matched so well. Plotwise it's quite incidental but then if you think about it, it encapsulates the whole story, the empty playgrounds and then the deer suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
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*nods hard* -- I'm deep in making my first vid (of Children of Men plus V for Vendetta and 28 Days Later -- I have a thing for dystopias and apocalypses) right now and I'm having an amazing time discovering those monster-creating pleasures.
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