Vid review: 'Gravity' (Pirates of the Caribbean) by permetaform

[marycrawford]

permetaform offered to provide vid feedback here, to encourage vid discussion and vid feedback in general. Her extensive and thought-provoking post about my vid Live Till I Die is here, and do read the comments, since a discussion sprang up there that I'm still fascinated by, about narrative and non-narrative vids, audience expectations and the difference between a review and constructive criticism.

This is my return review of her Pirates of the Caribbean vid 'Gravity'. I call it a review, but it's really more of a ramble, me looking at Permetaform's vid and thinking about it and trying to put words to my reactions. I would love it if people would add their own thoughts and comments here.

See, I don't know how to talk about vids. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way, and that's a big reason why it can be hard to get vid discussion off the ground. I can go 'whoa' and 'OMG that was cool' and 'did you see how that thing went over that other thing'? But that's not enough to make up a review, though it would be fine as feedback - I think it's safe to say that no vidder minds getting a one line note saying 'OMG that was cool!' I've had feedback like that and it makes my day.

I think the difficulty is that I'm used to talking story, and when I'm talking about movies or TV I'm still used to talking story, or subtext or characterization, but not about the pure raw feel of the images or the way they were put together. I know it's different for people who studied cinematography and so forth. Me, I'm still training to even notice things like cuts and wipes and colour palettes, and I don't feel qualified to give constructive criticism, but I can at least try to put my own reactions into words.

'Gravity', the vid under discussion, can be downloaded here.

NB: I didn't read permetaform's notes on the making of her vid, because I wanted to give my impressions without being primed, as it were. I did read the lyrics for the song, because I had difficulty hearing what the singer was saying in some of the verses.

General impressions:

Whoa! Dense, rich, fast vid. Not a vid I could easily process in one viewing, but a very cool mood piece that just shines with love for the fandom. Gorgeous timing, and the use of repeated, overlapping or mirror images (coin and compass, face and skull) really struck me.

I think this vid has a very in-depth fannish feel to it - it reminds me of sisabet's Angel vid Two Words, which is very different in subject and tone but has that same dense, fast feeling, with layered images and fast cuts that are almost overwhelming. Like being bombarded with a fandom until you have no choice, either cut off the flow or let yourself be sucked in.

'Two Words' was too much for me, because I haven't seen Angel; I have tried several times to rewatch it, but every time I just felt overwhelmed by images I couldn't track, and the few bits I could follow were too few for me to hold on to.

With 'Gravity' I could manage, just, since I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean, but I still wouldn't call it an easy vid to watch. There's just too much going on, and sometimes I wanted the cutting and effects and motion to be a bit slower so I could stop and catch my breath. The few longer shots felt like coming up for air, and the ending like a much-needed breath, a lifting-up.

After the discussion earlier, it's interesting that I don't think of 'Gravity' as a narrative vid. It strikes me as a mood vid, a character vid - not telling the story of Jack Sparrow so much as showing what his world looks like, his struggle to survive and to get back what he's lost. In fact, I think part of my feeling of being overwhelmed comes from initially trying to distill a story from the vid - pretty much what elynross talks about here.

Mood:

I think the mood is fairly dark, emphasizing the serious side of the movie and of Jack himself, the horror side, even, but always returning to a bright hope in the 'I choose to live' chorus. I think the vid matches the mood of the song well, changing with the music. I especially like the opening, mood-wise, because it has such a beautiful rising tension that matches the guitar, with the shots of the hanged pirates, the coin thumping against the ocean, all expertly timed.

As I said above, I had a bit of a problem with the pace of the vid. Not only did I have trouble taking it all in, but on reviewing, I also think that the vid outstrips the song. Not in terms of mood, not in terms of actual timing, but it just feels to me that there's too much vid for the song to sustain. There were moments that felt far too breathless to me for the pace and sound of the song. If that makes no sense at all, well, ask me questions and I'll try to elaborate.

Bits and pieces:

Here I'm going to talk about particular moments in the vid that struck me.

00:58 I really like the whole sequence on the first chorus, from 'I am surrendering' onwards - this was one of the slower sequences I talked about earlier, that felt like a welcome breath of air. Love the use of the water shots on 'surrendering', because the singer sounds like he's underwater there, so it matches in the context of the lyrics but also on another level, and it just looks beautiful and evocative. I also really like the skeleton hand grabbing Jack on the beat, on to 'the unknown'.

01:10 Here, I had a bit of trouble with 'Catch me/heal me', where we have Jack escaping by dropping the canon and letting himself be hoisted up; and then on the beat, on the 'me' of 'heal me' he thumps his head against a beam. It just seemed inadvertently funny to me. (Speaking of which, I imagine it was difficult to make a serious Jack Sparrow vid, because he is such a manic character with such outrageous body language, but this moment and a moment at the end were the only bits where I was reminded of that.)

01:12 The small jumpcuts on the beat here didn't work for me. I think this is an area where permetaform and I differ: I like cuts being timed on the beat, but I like internal motion more. This is external motion, and the busy, chopped-up feel of the jump cuts didn't work for me here, and seemed to work against the feel of the song, especially in this fairly slow chorus. This is an example of what I meant above, about there being more vid than song sometimes.

01:13 But those jump cuts are immediately followed by a sequence chock full of internal motion, all circular and overlapping: Anamaria letting the steering wheel spin, the ship turning, Jack flying, and the fish circling overhead, all in one continued movement. GORGEOUS. This is probably my favorite moment in the vid.

01:25 Jack eating the apple, overlaid with his skeletal self. Very striking image.

02:49 The sun flashing to the beat, on the word 'sun' - yes, it's literal, but it works for me - Jack's about to die, and to me, the sun represents hope.

03:50 The cut from a wall of advancing skeletal soldiers to a wall of advancing Marines works for me on a visual level, it's just really cool.

04:18 I like the ending sequence, which feels very right: Jack back where he belongs, on his ship, his life returned to him. But I have one problem: the shot from 4:34 onwards, where he strides forward and lays his hand on the steering wheel and then starts to fondle it...I can't help it, it makes me laugh, and takes me out of the mood of the vid. And I can see that the shot is slowed down, which does work, but not quite enough to take the laugh out of it, for me.

04:40 I'm in two minds about the closeup of Jack saying 'Bring me that horizon'. I loved the moment in the movie, and so it does resonate with me, but the fact remains that you either have to know he's saying it, or be able to lipread, otherwise it's just lost and you are left wondering what was so important there. There aren't many other shots of talking faces in the vid, so it really stands out.

Exit left, pursued by a bear:

I think this vid is aimed at the POTC fandom, but it might still work very well for non-fans, simply because it's so shiny and rich. I think it's a very cool vid, but I do feel overwhelmed by it. It works better for me after rewatching, so I can break it down and notice things more.

Now. What do you think? :-)

Comments

[permetaform]

It strikes me as a mood vid, a character vid - not telling the story of Jack Sparrow so much as showing what his world looks like, his struggle to survive and to get back what he's lost.

YES!!! ::GLOMPS YOU:: exactly! =D It's the fannish Jack Sparrow, the Jack that fans see!

There were moments that felt far too breathless to me for the pace and sound of the song.

This surprised me a bit, but in hindsight I think it's possibly because I was shooting for the frantic-ness: in the end it's a song and a vid about addiction and letting go of unnecessary things for that which truly makes you live. In that regard I was going for the feeling that the more he'd reached for petty things (like the treasure), the more things were falling apart for him...and on a personal note, it's more a vid, in the end, for me and perhaps my micro-fandom than anyone else, because of how PotC completely changed my fannish experience and from there, slowly changed my life. Before then I was pretty much an introvert and an almost complete lurker and *then* PotC came along, and I just...had to share my love of it and just---it's the first thing I'd vidded actually, I need to remaster the original vid that I'd only showed 2 people, and now. I mean, *wow*, I'm just thinking of how I was before and just being utterly amazed.

...oy.

sorry for completely spazzing out. ::blinks::

on the 'me' of 'heal me' he thumps his head against a beam.

....OH. I didn't realize it looked like that! See, what I was seeing is that he's hoisted up, and at the zenith of it, there's that floaty moment when you're not falling and he catches the horizontal beam's rope. Sorta like a trapeze artist who flips from one bar, hangs in midair for a bit, and then catches the next one. I didn't realize that was comical.

02:49 The sun flashing to the beat, on the word 'sun' - yes, it's literal, but it works for me - Jack's about to die, and to me, the sun represents hope.

::giggles:: hee...um, that's a fake sun. There's another fake sun in this vid...

then starts to fondle it.

::covers eyes and giggles:: yeah, Jack tends to do that. I think when I remaster this I'll make that bit cut more cleanly.

. There aren't many other shots of talking faces in the vid, so it really stands out.

yay!

::GLOMPS:: THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is a lovely review! =D

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

:beams: Yay!

sorry for completely spazzing out. ::blinks::

Hee. No, not at all - this comment, and your subsequent LJ post, were a lovely evocation of falling hard for a fandom and into a fandom.

Quick question: can you elaborate on the fake sun? I thought it was a sun flare (either direct sunlight or reflected light) from the source that you cleverly timed to the beat, but 'fake sun' sounds like you created it entirely, and now I want to know more, because hey, cool. :-)

[permetaform]

=) the fake sun is just a "lens flare", I think it's called that in both FCP and Premiere. It's under...I think 'rendered effects'.

That sun when Jack is getting yanked up into the air onto the Pearl? That one's fake too.