New movie vid!

[hazelk]

Title: Rock Steady

Artist: All Saints

Movie: Gilda

Format: DivX

Size: 36.8 MB

Summary: Rita Hayworth gave good face

Download here (Right/control click and save target as)

Feedback is a very exciting emotion.



Notes
Gilda is an odd movie. It’s also a queer one but the oddity comes more from the different types of film at war within it than the big gay love-hate triangle. The whole thing is shot and narrated like a noir but climaxes with a musical number that would make Minnelli proud and oozes melodrama like a classic woman’s movie. The eponymous Gilda has a lot in common with the anti-heroines featured in that much maligned genre, the women played by Joan Crawford, Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck who would spend most of the movie having a ball, ruling roughshod over the men-folk in fabulous frocks before unaccountably dying of cancer or otherwise seeing the error of their ways in the final reel. Rita Hayworth’s Gilda survives but isn’t even allowed the dignity of repentance, the movie ends with one of the male characters finally telling the hero that she was never really bad after all, that it was all an act.

I guess my main aim with this vid was to re-write that final reel and give Gilda the last word. At first the thought of vidding in black-and-white was scary but the movie does such wonderful things with light and shadow, the soft blur of the bedroom scenes contrasted with the harsh party-light of the casino, the way the slippery-when-wet sheen of Ballin’s sword stick matches that of the satin sheath dress Gilda dons for her performance of “Put the Blame on Mame.” The camerawork is quite traditional, no steadicam trickery, but the way it creates movement by blocking and lingers on the actors faces is to die for. Finally there’s the hair, this vid has the best hair of any I’ve ever made and has probably been worth making for that reason alone.



Rock Steady Lyrics

Years on the run
Boy I know I can take it
And now that I'm here
I know you can't stand the waiting, boy
Lets say no more games
No messing with the mind
Always room for change
Let's give it one more try
(Come on lets give it a try)

I got my bags packed baby and i'm ready to go
Look at my eyes rock steady and I promise you more
I got My heart back baby and it's skipping a beat
I got my ass in check, checkin' out, I'm ready to feel

It's all good to go
I'm right here for the taking
(oooh ticky ticky ticky)
Don't cross the line
I'll promise you no fakin', boy
(no no no no)
Its all understood
No messing with the rules
(the rules, the rules)
If I let you go
Boy I will be a fool
(What kind of girl wants to be a fool?)

I got my bags packed baby and i'm ready to go
Look at my eyes rock steady and I promise you more
I got My heart back baby and it's skipping a beat
I got my ass in check, checkin' out, I'm ready to feel

Tell me why we act so stupid, the games we're playing (oooh)
If life is the rule then we're heading towards the same thing
You are not worthless with love instead of the fighting (oooh)
Let's get together forever with no more hiding

I got my bags packed baby and i'm ready to go
Look at my eyes rock steady and I promise you more
I got My heart back baby and it's skipping a beat
I got my ass in check, checkin' out, I'm ready to feel

I got my bags packed baby and i'm ready to go
Look at my eyes rock steady and I promise you more
I got My heart back baby and it's skipping a beat
I got my ass in check, checkin' out, I'm ready to feel

Comments

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I love that you decided to do a vid with an older movie--it is great to see something other than the hottest three shows of the year given some screentime. It is lovely to look at, and you're right... the hair is gorgeous.

The one thing that I had trouble with, I'll admit, is the choice of song. It just seems too aggressively modern to fit with the source material---unless you're doing something like AbsoluteDestiny did with his "Gone With the Wind" vid and really aiming to recontextualise the text. Still, this is just personal preference on my part so I apologise for being picky.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I actually put off trying to make this for ages having similar reservations about the song. I think I connected it with the movie originally because they both have a slightly comic book feel - Gilda is all about iconic imagery and the dialogue definitely belongs in speech bubbles (but I still love it) and the song has those squashy beats that feel like they need to be marked with a splash page coming up screaming KAWOOSH! My original idea (sadly not technically feasible) was to make that explicit with Sin City type colour effects and dilague pop-ups. When I figured I couldn't do that I put the idea on hold. Seeing AbsoluteDestiny's Gone With the Wind vid was one thing that made me change my mind, I was quite fascinated by how different the movement was from what you'd find in contempory source, but the thing that finally got the project back on the drawing board was coming across the All Saints video for the song on YouTube. They made a black and white faux-noir mini-movie to the song and it made me think that maybe it could work with the real thing. And sorry for babbling at such length.