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frayadjacentI made another Xena vid! And sent it to Wiscon!
Title: Become You
Song: "Become You" by the Indigo Girls
Source: Xena: Warrior Princess
Characters: Xena, Lao Ma, M'lila, and Gabrielle. Caesar and Ming Tien also appear.
Length: 3:51
Content notes: Fast and stuttery cutting. Institutional and relationship violence (at the same level as depicted on the show). Spoilers through mid Season 5.
Summary: "I won't stop short for common ground/ that villifies the trodden down"
Thanks tothirdblindmouse for incredible beta feedback.
Download | Youtube | Vimeo
Captions should be available on the youtube and vimeo streams. They are also included in the downloadable zip file. If you don't want captions, just delete the .srt file.
More detailed notes
This vid tries to express my many thoughts and feelings about Lao Ma, M'Lila, their relationships with Xena, and the ethical questions that surround their relationships as well as Xena and Gabrielle's. I wanted a vid that gave Lao Ma and M'Lila a point of view. I had an easier time doing this with Lao Ma than with M'lila, as the former does get her own story and motivations far more than M'Lila. I wanted to celebrate the extreme shippiness of the relationships, especially that of Xena and Ms "I don't eat meat" Lao Ma.
I think that Lao Ma would have agreed that Xena's warlordism ultimately sustains the kind of world where tyrants like Caesar, Ming Tzu, and later Ming Tien can thrive, even if she hates them. Part of me hates that Lao Ma allowed Ming Tien to kill her, whether it was out of motherly love or out of what I would consider a misguided pacifism. Which brings me to the last part of the vid -- even though Xena learned from Lao Ma and later from Gabrielle to discard her warlord past, she never stopped being a warrior. Gabrielle's moral objections to Xena trying to assassinate Ming Tien were ultimately naive, as Xena always knew*.
Gabrielle's naive pacifism (unlike the more complex pacifism she moves toward in S4) ultimately props up tyrants just as Xena's warlordism did.
In retrospect, it might have been a bit much for one vid to handle, but I'm still pretty happy with this vid. Even if most viewers mostly get squishy femslash feels from it, I'll be glad to at least have given some attention to Lao Ma and M'lila, both of whom deserve more than what they got from the show's narrative. (Though I was in many ways pretty happy with Lao Ma's characterization. There are problems with Orientalist gaze and with Lao Ma being a dead WOC mentor to a white woman, but that is in no way ALL of what she is, as this vid tries to show.)
What I learned: How to use After Effects to feather a mask! And I realized that I can use different blend modes when I layer clips and it'll often look much nicer. Also, that moment at 2:56 when Xena is waving Caesar's flag around and it dissolves to Gabrielle's face, and the up-down motion of the clips matches REALLY WELL? That was a total accident, but it finally helped me understand working with motion in vidding on another level. Uh, I'm not sure I have words for that level though. I hope I can repeat that sort of thing in the future but, you know, intentionally.
*This of course leaves off the more fundamental problem that Ming Tien's subjects need to be saved by a white woman, that without her (or Lao Ma) they are incapable of overthrowing a hated tyrant themselves.
Lyrics
I heard you sing a rebel song,
sung it loud and all alone.
We can't afford the things you save,
we can't afford the warranty.
I see you walking in the glare
down the county road we share.
Our southern blood, my heresy,
damn that ol' confederacy.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
I'm sorry for what you have learned,
when you feel the tables turn.
To run so hard in your race,
now you find who set the pace.
The landed aristocracy
exploiting all your enmity.
All your daddies fought in vain,
leave you with the mark of Cain.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
The center holds, so they say.
It never held too well for me.
I won't stop short for common ground
that vilifies the trodden down.
The center held the bonded slave
for the sake of industry.
The center held the bloody hand
of the executioner man.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
Title: Become You
Song: "Become You" by the Indigo Girls
Source: Xena: Warrior Princess
Characters: Xena, Lao Ma, M'lila, and Gabrielle. Caesar and Ming Tien also appear.
Length: 3:51
Content notes: Fast and stuttery cutting. Institutional and relationship violence (at the same level as depicted on the show). Spoilers through mid Season 5.
Summary: "I won't stop short for common ground/ that villifies the trodden down"
Thanks to
thirdblindmouse for incredible beta feedback.Download | Youtube | Vimeo
Captions should be available on the youtube and vimeo streams. They are also included in the downloadable zip file. If you don't want captions, just delete the .srt file.
More detailed notes
This vid tries to express my many thoughts and feelings about Lao Ma, M'Lila, their relationships with Xena, and the ethical questions that surround their relationships as well as Xena and Gabrielle's. I wanted a vid that gave Lao Ma and M'Lila a point of view. I had an easier time doing this with Lao Ma than with M'lila, as the former does get her own story and motivations far more than M'Lila. I wanted to celebrate the extreme shippiness of the relationships, especially that of Xena and Ms "I don't eat meat" Lao Ma.
I think that Lao Ma would have agreed that Xena's warlordism ultimately sustains the kind of world where tyrants like Caesar, Ming Tzu, and later Ming Tien can thrive, even if she hates them. Part of me hates that Lao Ma allowed Ming Tien to kill her, whether it was out of motherly love or out of what I would consider a misguided pacifism. Which brings me to the last part of the vid -- even though Xena learned from Lao Ma and later from Gabrielle to discard her warlord past, she never stopped being a warrior. Gabrielle's moral objections to Xena trying to assassinate Ming Tien were ultimately naive, as Xena always knew*.
Gabrielle's naive pacifism (unlike the more complex pacifism she moves toward in S4) ultimately props up tyrants just as Xena's warlordism did.
In retrospect, it might have been a bit much for one vid to handle, but I'm still pretty happy with this vid. Even if most viewers mostly get squishy femslash feels from it, I'll be glad to at least have given some attention to Lao Ma and M'lila, both of whom deserve more than what they got from the show's narrative. (Though I was in many ways pretty happy with Lao Ma's characterization. There are problems with Orientalist gaze and with Lao Ma being a dead WOC mentor to a white woman, but that is in no way ALL of what she is, as this vid tries to show.)
What I learned: How to use After Effects to feather a mask! And I realized that I can use different blend modes when I layer clips and it'll often look much nicer. Also, that moment at 2:56 when Xena is waving Caesar's flag around and it dissolves to Gabrielle's face, and the up-down motion of the clips matches REALLY WELL? That was a total accident, but it finally helped me understand working with motion in vidding on another level. Uh, I'm not sure I have words for that level though. I hope I can repeat that sort of thing in the future but, you know, intentionally.
*This of course leaves off the more fundamental problem that Ming Tien's subjects need to be saved by a white woman, that without her (or Lao Ma) they are incapable of overthrowing a hated tyrant themselves.
Lyrics
I heard you sing a rebel song,
sung it loud and all alone.
We can't afford the things you save,
we can't afford the warranty.
I see you walking in the glare
down the county road we share.
Our southern blood, my heresy,
damn that ol' confederacy.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
I'm sorry for what you have learned,
when you feel the tables turn.
To run so hard in your race,
now you find who set the pace.
The landed aristocracy
exploiting all your enmity.
All your daddies fought in vain,
leave you with the mark of Cain.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
The center holds, so they say.
It never held too well for me.
I won't stop short for common ground
that vilifies the trodden down.
The center held the bonded slave
for the sake of industry.
The center held the bloody hand
of the executioner man.
It took a long time to
become the thing I am to you.
And you won't tear it apart
without a fight, without a heart.
It took a long time to
become you, become you.
Re: Off Latest Things page
I hope you keep working at vidding! This is my 12th vid (not counting two I basically completed but never posted publicly) and it's definitely taken some time to figure out editing. And I feel like I still have tons of room for improvement!
I know you didn't ask for suggestions, but if you're interested:
- some basics for getting stuff to flow: match the motion, either of the characters or of the camera itself, to the music, rather than the cutting. If possible, try to have adjacent clips be somewhat similar to each other in terms of blocking, light levels, and the ways that the characters/camera are moving. (E.g., left-right camera motion that is continuous over several clips.) Of course sometimes you *want* contrast between clips, and sometimes the narrative you're going for takes precedent over that stuff in terms of what clips you choose.
- study vids you like! Download them if possible and watch them repeatedly, and try to figure out why they work for you.
- also: this vidding workshop is super useful: http://wiscon-vidparty.dreamwidth.org/9253.html
Re: Off Latest Things page
I'd really like to muck about with vidding, especially where I argue with direction/editing of whichever material. It was based on my comments about why I hated several scene transitions in a movie, and how it would've been better and made more sense *this* way, that someone said I should try vidding.
I think this first one that I'm meddling with will probably end up as one of those fan-edited overtures (cos I'm not throwing away the 15+ hours of music editing), with a few stills chucked in. Using song lyrics—as you did with "Become You"—is something that I think would help to propel the vid and suggest scene changes. Lyrics plus moving pictures Next!
(we will ignore my wife, who cheekily suggested that I should write lyrics to the LotR music. And she calls *me* a brat)
Thanks again.
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