AtS-vid: Cordelia - My Skin (remastered)

[astarte]

Artist/Song Title: Natalie Merchant - My Skin
Subject: AtS, Cordelia PoV, Cordelia/Angel
Original Date: 2003-04-23
Remastered: 2008-05-22
Summary: ‘Well, contempt loves the silence - It thrives in the dark with fine winding tendrils that strangle the heart. They say that promises sweeten the blow. But I don't need them.’ Cordelia has been through a lot - The vision pain made her slowly untouchable and Angel realizing the truths and changes much too late to save her.
Format: 720x400 56 MB AVI, mediafire, megaupload, sendspace, permanent download link, watch on imeem
or watch the original on imeem

Yay for resolutions and new hard drives. The original vid is five years old and it shows in all the wrong places. There were a lot of unnecessary talking heads, good shots I avoided because they were in every single C/A-vid at that time. So the remaster was more elaborate compared to ‘Watch the Sky’ which was basically plain clip replacing with DVD source.

Reasons to vid ‘My Skin’ back then? Well, to be honest I was bitter. And pretty disappointed by season 4 and how the big arcs played out. The source of my frustration wasn’t even that Cordelia’s body got hijacked and all hell broke loose. It was the way they handled Cordelia/Angel since season 3 toying with the possibility and not committing to anything, which for me sucked the fun right out of it. They were so entertaining before and had an unlikely friendship and trust in each other established and then all of the sudden the complex layers got ripped off, when Angel realized that he could be in love with her. Duh! Or should I go dun-dun-dun?

I mean Cordelia’s heart was always as big as her smile and in the right place – It made Angel look dumb and Cordelia look dumber for creating not intentionally an Angel clone with Groo. Would have telling Angel straight to the face that he has a curse and she has a life and just one of these two things has an expiring date hurt the sainthood they were aiming for at the end of season 3? Doubtless, but I didn’t like the road they were travelling at that point anyway and it would have been more fun than the clumsy denial dance.

I was frustrated by the writers and their poor handling of that relationship. They didn’t seem to grasp why people were shipping these two since the beginning. Or notice that these two had an easy and charming chemistry when romantic love wasn’t forced on them. That they worked in their established patters and that the conventional way of romance wasn’t something a fan of the series was interested. Or maybe that was just me, but c’mon Lilah/Wesley, Darla/Angel or Faith/Wesley compared to the sugar-coated Fred/Gunn, Fred/Wesley of Cordelia/Groo? I didn’t want to see fairy tales – I wanted some inner conflict and not outside forces tearing up the tru luv or keeping them apart by all means. For me this seemed always a lazy way to tell a story. I still think so and the darkness they applied to them in season 4 was once again an outside force and so it was dissatisfying for me. Because I loved their dark undertones beneath the family dynamic of AI and that Cordelia could always be a bitch and Angel could sometimes be an asshole and they still made it work at the end of the night. But –

This is still my favourite Buffyverse ship and canon has plenty of remarkable couples. But this is the one that inspires most of my fics and I tried to capture with ‘My Skin’ what I love about them and why these two fascinated me from the pilot without knowing anything about BtVS or even their history. They just work for me in their endless possibilities and changes. Partly because I prefer friends to lovers and their dynamic is appealing. Cordelia/Angel are the only pairing I can write at any point on the timeline and they still make perfect sense for me.

So indeed very flawed, funny, flirty, fierce and furious and therefore inspiring.

So back to the video - My announcement back then was that this was my goodbye to my favourite ship and this time around I had ‘You’re welcome’ to include which in itself was a beautiful exit and reminder what Cordelia added to the whole team. I think all seasons are equally represented in this vid and like I said, I can find something interesting about these two at any time. Probably one reason why I didn’t cut off the song at the four minute mark and let it have its run with almost five and half minutes. This is as xandra_ptv mildly put it ‘a very long vid’ for someone who hates this pairing with passion and she is right. But she will be the only one who had no choice and was blackmailed in watching the vid.

Lyrical interpretation: I don’t even know how I found ‘My Skin’ - It was before the song was used in Alias and I really have no clue how I stumbled upon this gem. I just know that my mind immediately declared it as fucking perfect song for the emotions I wanted to express about these two. You can’t beat, ‘Angel, sweet love of my life’, if you are doing a shipper vid.

So this is my take on Cordelia/Angel and the lyrics are beautiful and so painfully right, I don’t think they need explaining. So we can skip to the next step on my posting formula:

The Journey? I got a new hard drive back in April and started ripping AtS/BtVS the same evening. I wanted to do several remasters of my old vids for some time now and ‘My Skin’ was on top of that particular list for the reasons mentioned above. It was the one most dearly to me and in so profound need of redoing, so once everything was set for vidding I started straight away and pretty much did the first four minutes of timeline in one week, before I went back to finish ‘Clear the Area’ and getting awfully distracted by Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ and real life once again. So last week I grabbed the final audio quotes I wanted to use and redid some of the final minute and I think now everything holds tightly together in the way I imagined it back then and couldn’t pull off at that time.

Technical notes worth mentioning? I chose simple editing to tell this story and pretty much let my cutting freak run free in the last minute to avoid the audience dozing off. I think that the audio overlays focus the fast-floating images even when some people disapprove of (extensive) audio overlay. The quotes hold the end together here like in the original vid. Again the colouring was done with Avisynth and in my opinion it adds to the overall mood.

Final note: I won’t give into the temptation of remastering every single AtS-vid – I hope, but there might be more remasters in store. It is fun, it is faster than doing a new one and I had some years to think about slight changes for these vids. Even when I fear that ‘Haunted’ will kick my ass in that department. I’m not even sure I will be able to find every Spike scene I used there. Damn. It’s the same reason I was backing away of remastering ‘Hey Pretty’… for the time being. I dearly hope everybody enjoys this new version and now I will be a good little girl and finally do the replies for ‘Clear the Area’, because I sucked so hard at online communication for the past weeks…

Comments

[millylicious.livejournal.com]

You're the only one that can make me happy this easily *hugs* By being awesome and you :D

When I started vidding, I wasn't aware of the whole community and all, the concept of other people who were doing what I was doing? Ah! Impossible. But one day I ventured, and that day I found Touch My Soul and through it I found your vids. And 'My Skin' was like...whoa, revelation, that vids could be so much more than the simple things I was doing at the time. Even today, that 'old version' is still one of my favorite vids ever.

And this new version, I adore just as much. It's still got the same spirit, the same heart, it's just...more polished? Comparing the two versions, you definitely see your evolution as a vidder, but you also see that your heart is a fixed point. What comes to mind the most is the last portion, in which you have the multiple quotes over the instrumental part - that part in the original video was overly layered, but it worked - now, it works even more, because it still has the same effect while being more harmonious, more visually stunning (but I still love that section in the old version too ;) ).

And I love your placing, your timing with everything. Hell, I don't know how many times I've watched every single episodes and some shots made me gasp! And that's truly your biggest talent, you make everything yours, and this is most definitely you.

[astartexx.livejournal.com]

WOW – you did make me blush and speechless on purpose, Milly. Bad girl. So damn, what do I respond to such a breathtaking compliment?

First of all: Merci beaucoup.

Second: I think it is so damn easy to forget all the technical difficulties you had to fight in the dark ages of newbie vidding. The hair pulling, the lack of understanding why Premiere refused certain video-files and eat up others. The disheartening effect Premiere could have on you, when it refused to cooperate. Being proud of the result no matter how crappy it is compared to your new stuff, because wow your favourite song and your favourite TV show are coming together and isn’t it awesome? And then discovering the community, actually getting to know some people you only admired from afar and I especially think back nostalgic to Midnight Lair. I mean otherwise were would I be without Xandra and Charmax on my flist?

Like you said for every vidder there is an evolution going on and I hopefully never run out of the learning curve even when I have my technical cornerstones by now. The way every project is set up and I follow my own by trial and error patented patter. I think I said in the 2007 vid meme that vidding today for me is much more fun, because I know my way around blind in Premiere and in preparing the footage for it. I have a lot less fights with Premiere than I use to have and sometimes it feels a bit like cheating, because it is easy nowadays to vid.

To actually spend your time on cutting, editing, searching for your clips and telling a story with them, when back then half of your time was used figuring something out. So you have time to polish and to go the subtle road and try different approaches to your style, but in the end all that counts is the heart you put into your project. The thing that drives you to spend hours and days and weeks on a project, going over every single frame time and time again, because the imperfections bug your vision. Because that facial expression isn’t strong enough and why not try the other one then and see if it sticks this time and well, even when you know damn well that nobody else will notice these two frames over there and five there.

You want to capture an emotion, make it shine and sparkle - plain to see for everybody watching your vid where you, your love and your obsession are coming from. That’s vidding for me. And you made me babble incoherently. Thanks. Heh.