House of Leaves

Artist/Song Title: Imogen Heap - Clear The Area
Subject: TXF, Scully PoV
Summary: ‘You find your way back down and I'll keep the area clear.’ Trust one who has gone through it - Scully isn’t looking at the sky for answers.
Format: 720x400 – 31.5 MB AVI, mediafire, megaupload, sendspace, permanent download link or watch on imeem



It doesn’t feel like just the second full length XF vid. Maybe because I vidded this show for so long in my head, you know, before I actually started vidding. But onto the vid notes:

Reasons to vid ‘Clear the Area’? My XF vids are at their core with all the layers ripped off about the plain fact that Scully is beyond awesome and this one is no exception to that particular rule – more reinforcement actually. What drawn me into the song was how the lyrics touched on so many aspects of her character without musically sounding like a typical song you would vid for Scully. There is almost a dreamlike quality to it and that worked great with the visuals of the alien technology and of course the UFOs. I loved to include these tiny bits and pieces of the mythology throughout the vid. Sure, a bigger picture is going on, but in the end for me the show always came down to Scully and Mulder and their relationship. The two simply shined together and completed each other.

I think one of the most difficult things regarding vidding ‘The X Files’ is simply the nine seasons and the movie – I will restrain my squee for the second one here, but I'm excited. Anyway, the endless possibilities to choose from are hard to take and the complexity of their relationship can't be shown in three minutes. You just can’t include every layer and yet you always try. You want to use fresh clips, yet you don’t want to lose your audience in the ‘Guess what ep?’-game. It’s the beauty of the source that you can hint at whole arcs with a seven frame shot, if you drag the right scene on your timeline. I’m not sure how successful ‘Clear the area’ converts the epic MSR, but for me it brings out Scullys strong protection of Mulder. He will get into trouble - She will give him a verbal smack down or a shoulder to lean on depending on how fucked up his state of mind is – And everything is right in the world again.

Lyrical interpretation: When I first considered this song for vidding Scully Mulders abduction immediately came to mind. But I didn’t want to construct a video around the absence of Mulder in Season 8 and 9. Even with all my love for the show, I couldn’t bring myself to get too deep into that particular mess. So I thought, why not start with the beginning? And we open on Scully in the pilot staring into the white light and we end with her staring into the black void of having cancer and just having seen a death omen and Mulder isn’t really of use solving these two problems for her. Which is at least true for one of the two.

So full circle again – I tend to do that in my vids - , Scully is facing her fears alone, because she can. She is capable and in the three minutes in between we see a lot of her confronting obstructions head-on. I couldn’t resist a voiceover at the beginning and while I was tempted to use their first exchange after Mulder regained consciousness and her, ‘Do you know – Do you have any idea what you’ve been through?’ My choice fell on a more ironic statement in hindsight. The quote at the end sums up the question she must have asked herself silently at least a hundred times over the curse of the series and after every stunt Mulder pulled.

There is spreading paranoia. There is Scully accepting the paranormal possibility and still holding onto her beliefs. There is Mulder in need of saving, because of his impulsive ways of getting into danger. There is some sort of understanding - light-hearted and complex.

There are parallels and opposites and there is unconditional love. It’s rather simple.

The Journey? Well I started this project back in January as a birthday present for charmax and the first two minutes came together fast, then I hit the vidder block and let my writing muse reign for a while. After three months passing coming back to the vid let me solve the difficulties I had with the end and generally tiding things over. Which means I’m just two months late for the birthday party. Uhm, okay then, I don’t need any reason to dedicate a vid to my darling angel.

Technical notes worth mentioning? Nothing fancy – some filtering in Avisynth. There are fast cuts, a bit of black/white to emphasis these and enjoying the improvement of the special effect department during the show run and getting nostalgic for the dark lightning in the first seasons. Oh, and that I really, really love to vid in 16:9 – I had a flashback to ‘Crazy beautiful’ in the middle of this and it’s hard to explain to non-vidders the freedom you get from widescreen. It doesn’t feel like you are focussed strictly on the middle of the screen, you just get room on the left and right to free the eye.

Final note: This was fun and I have no idea why I force charmax to endure videos in fandoms she isn’t fully invested, when she drops hints with the ones she vids, but I guess that what makes our bond special. And once again so much thanks for xandra_ptv and her mad betaing skills that pretty much come down to verbally kicking my ass and that means that I’m the Mulder in our relationship and that is all sorts of wrong, which makes it right again.

‘Nuff said, hope you enjoy the video.

I will probably be a bit late in answering the comments, this week is insanely busy - Just a fair warning.