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Deadwood-vid: Alma - Take me home + 10 icons
Artist/Song Title: Thea Gilmore – Take me home
Subject: Deadwood, Alma PoV
Summary: ‘I heard there's a warrant out for my arrest - ’ Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Format: stream and download at stage6 33 MB, permanent download link 720x400 – 33 MB AVI or watch on imeem
Reasons to vid ‘Take me home’? I love Deadwood fiercely for complex characters and unique relationships, so I didn’t need to search for any specific message for a storyline I wanted to fathom. I just needed a song which sounded right and made me think of a character. ‘Take me home’ had me from the first few notes and instantly Alma came to mind.
Lyrical interpretation: The lyrics are graceful and yet restrained, perfect for Alma on every level. Circumstances and her father pushed her into the position of a spouse and then the dumbness of her husband made her a widow. A beautiful jackdaw - Alma is held down in a time in which she couldn’t be independent and strong on her own without inspiring contempt even in a godless place like Deadwood. She struggled with addiction, overcame her habit with Trixie’s help – still not being able to hold the same power as a man in those pioneer times kept her on her guard. Her need for two marriages of convenience speaks volumes about the limitations of her life as wealthy woman. Again making the best out of circumstances she found in Ellsworth the one of the very few kind and sensible men in Deadwood – okay, maybe the only one. Of course happiness never lasts long – first her miscarriage and then relapse into addiction strained her wedding. She overcame her troubles with Ellsworth’s support and even had the strength to dissent Hearst at first. Alma never wished any harm on her second husband - Deadwood still claimed his life.
The Journey? Again short and exciting. I love vidding with
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xandra_ptv pushing me to get shit done. I didn’t even need to restrain myself from using transitions; they just didn’t feel quite right this time around. Technical notes worth mentioning? I am the first one to admit that Deadwood is beautifully coloured as whole series. But I wanted the final to look very bleach and hard - on the edge of uncomfortable without losing all colour. Not beautiful was the goal, but harsh and unforgiving. So I will make the lack of colour up in the next vid – Hopefully.
Final note: Not a happy vid, so totally up my alley.
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Want? Take, but no hotlinking!
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The song is just the perfect Alma voice, brittle and yet determined. The brittleness is also reflected in the filter/colouring which makes her look almost like a porcelain doll and even more out of place in the dirty grubby world of Deadwood. The shades of red and green that it pulls out have the feeling of a Victorian parlour and the comfortable world Alma came from juxtaposed with the starkness of Deadwood making her alienation seem even stronger. I think what I mean is best seen at 0.34 where Alma is looking out the window at the "cute little puritans."
I love how Ellesworth is featured from early on, how it's clear that Alma out of self preservation will ensnare and use the most decent man in the town. In securing her own position she practically makes a eunuch out of him and his poor face when he looks at her looking at Bullock really shows the pain of that which he bears with such dignity. Even if you haven't seen the show you just know that things won't end well for Ellesworth. Then Hearst has him killed just when she has begun to see that she could be happy with him, it's so painful.
So yeah love this vid so very, very much, I always loved Ellesworth but this vid really gives me more insight into the dilemma Alma faces and how her precarious position forces her to put a decent man in the firing line.
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You got me – Seriously, the emotional reason I was taking this specific colour filter was because Alma looked like a doll. A pretty, ghastly expensive porcelain doll completely out of place without an interested owner or someone to play with, because everybody is too afraid she will break. So she does the damage herself or watches the world move on from her window and this was such effortless and perfect way to show how rich women like Alma were perceived in those times. What was expected from them - dress up and don’t interfere with the power play between men, because the true authority always lay in manly hands and to get freedom as woman you had to be ten times cleverer and still depended on fate and shire luck.
I mean would there been an issue, if the richest man in camp fucked a married woman and got her pregnant? Just pay the husband a fair amount of hush money and the problem would solve itself. This sounds like a ridiculous simple explanation for such an intense colouration, but there.
And the thing is Ellsworth is also afraid to play with her, fearing his dirty hands will get her dress messed up or hairdo undone. She’s not the kind of woman he knows, in a way she is completely out of his league and yet she needs him. She listens to him and she takes him serious enough and that even takes him more by surprise. Bullock and Alma make sense to him, even when it is not morally right and he feels embarrassed that she carries out the affaire in such public display of indiscretion. The two of them figured out a common ground once married in overcoming grief and other troubles thrown their way and I strongly believe that they could have been decently happy, if – If not a man with true power had set his eyes on her claim. It’s in the end always about the gold and how far one is willing to go for it.
I’m so happy you loved the vid and took such a satisfaction from it, knowing full well that simple pleasure looks very differently than this vid. I am also happy you liked the icons, they were an afterthought from me. Needing one for this post and because essentially everybody needs at least one Deadwood icon, so I randomly exported frames from the timeline and used them all, because it seemed like a waste of beautiful pictures otherwise. Heh.