New (old) vid for Firefly

[gwyn]

I have been trying to work on this Giles vid for a while, but I can't seem to get started, so I decided to remaster an older vid instead. I'd been in a big Springsteen mood lately (probably because of his new album release), so I wanted to fix up My Beautiful Reward real nice and shiny. This was originally made on VCRs right when the series was cancelled and they aired the original pilot movie. It was the last vid I made on VCRs, in fact.

My Beautiful Reward *
Fandom: Firefly
Artist: Bruce Springsteen
File: 35MB QT avi at the link above, streaming on Imeem here
Mal keeps searching for his reward, but finds it in unexpected places.


Remastering this was maybe a little odder than even There's No Way Out of Here, when I found out that S5 X-Files was widescreen. When Fox originally aired Firefly, they put up a couple eps in widescreen, but the rest were all in full-screen pan and scan. I didn't think that would make much of a difference, but it turned out that it changes the tone of the vid somewhat. I remember astolat saying something about that when she remastered Kid Fears, her Star Wars vid, because without the extreme closeups of full-screen, you get more of a ... distance, for lack of a better word, I guess, where the previous footage seemed closer, more intent. There are shots now where Mal is much farther away in distance in those clips, so I think it changes the emotional aspect. But that's because I'm the vidder; I'd be interested to hear if anyone else notices that. (BTW, it's down at the bottom of the vids page list, where the VCR version used to be.)

The other thing that was a big problem, actually, was that I couldn't match a couple clips because they weren't in the finished product of the episode. Back on VCRs, we couldn't do things like dissolves or fades, so we usually looked for montages they did in the show, or fadeouts before commercial breaks or the end of a show that we could appropriate for the right effect. And at the end of the vid, I used a montage that Fox had created, the stupid bastards, to "explain" the show in a short introduction that ran before the eps. There were two of these, one narrated by Mal, one by Book, and I picked one of them to use in my vid ending so I could get the faces of Mal's crew dissolving into each other, and that lovely end shot of Serenity with a fade out.

Unfortunately, the clip they used of Jayne isn't in the final cut of Bushwhacked, and I had this idea that they had put those intros in the supplemental materials, but it turned out that was my imagination. The best I could do was a more static shot of him in that same scene, but it bothers me. And of course, there are always those moments when remastering where you go, what the hell was I thinking? and wish you could change a bunch of things.

This was the last vid I made on VCRs. I didn't vid again for a long time after this, because I couldn't afford a new computer, but I had just gotten an HDTV (which was why I couldn't afford the computer!), and I had like three clips to add before this was finished, when the TV was delivered (I was actually in the process of editing and stopped long enough for them to hook the TV up). It looked so unbelievably horrible, so grainy and blurry, that I knew once I finished, I could never use that setup again. Fortunately, I was able to abuse merryish's discount at the UW for a computer about six months later, and also abuse her Mac knowledge to help get set up, so it wasn't a total loss.

I like seeing it recut, but it does have a different feeling to me. I was always proud of the fact that it tells a story that isn't like most other vids -- I think sherrold pointed out in the Escapade vid review that we usually get these songs with repeating choruses all the time, and we just kind of put the same sorts of clips in, but this told a progressive story on those repeating lines. Mal is searching for something, and he tests each thing out (cargo, money, Inara...) until he finally sees what his reward truly is. So it still holds up pretty well for me because of that, even though it suffers from some of the things that make people dislike VCR vids.


A big thanks to mlyn for using her mad Photoshop skilz to make the title card. Originally, this vid was made to include in the first DVD collection Jo and I had put out, which killabeez did for us -- and she also made title cards for each vid (so above and beyond the call of duty I still can't believe our good fortune). M'lyn re-created it for me for this vid. Pimpage, linkage, recs, feedback -- it's all really really good.

*Password and username are still the same: User: gwyn PW: cymru

Comments

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Am I blind or is the remastered version not on your site only the 19 MB one? Where is it?

Yay remastering! That sucks about losing the shot and the widescreen/full screen difference.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

No, you're not blind, I'm dumb. I uploaded the file and changed the URL, but forgot to fix the text. I'll go do that now. Thanks for noticing!

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is beautiful. Somehow I hadn't seen the original, so I can't compare the two, but this is really gorgeous. I love the way we get to see Mal searching, and all of the different kinds of rewards he's searched for -- and, in the end, the reward I think he finds in Serenity (the ship and her crew) and in the kind of chosen family they create together.