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askye at 10:31pm on 29/02/2004
askye at 10:31pm on 29/02/2004I've been reading everyone's reactions to the vids that premiered at Escapade. I dind't go to the con but I have seen many of the vids already (I'm a vid downloading fool). One of the vids that I've watched several times is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
przed's One of God's Better People, There's been a lot of discussion about this and the song choice and I had a question about song choice.
The thing that I've heard is that the song doesn't fit the fandom because it's anachronistic. Maybe I'm just weird but because LoTR is a fantasy I can't really say that any song is going to be anachronstic. I know that I've seen a vid about the orcs set to a more industrial song, I can't remember the vid or seem to find it on my computer. However the song worked for what the vid was about. I'm new to vids so I don't really understand the whole "the song doesn't fit the time frame so it can't be used" idea.
Is that just for historical fandoms? Or does that work for shows like Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals? Do people feel that it's not a good idea to use recent songs when making vids in those fandoms? I'm not quite sure what kind of lines are being drawn. And it seems extremely limiting to me, especially for something like Lord of the Rings, or well anything. And if someone would feel thrown out of a vid because a new song was used for S&H or The Pros, then what about Due South? Where are the lines drawn for this kind of thing?
My own opinon of One of God's Better People is this:
It took me a bit to get into the vid because of the initial relationship of Aragorn/Boromir. I don't see the slash in LotR at all and so I couldn't quite "get" what was trying to brought across. If it was a slash vid or just "really really good friends" or how I should view but as the vid went on I stopped thinking about what I should be thinking and just watched it. Once I let go of that I really got into the vid and enjoyed it. I can go back and enjoy it from my own perspective of Aragorn and Boromir having a complicated platonic relationship and also see the vid from the viewpoint of them as a pairing (although Ihave to push myself with that). But the problem was never with the song, probably because I really didn't know that there were "rules" when it came to this sort of thing.
przed's One of God's Better People, There's been a lot of discussion about this and the song choice and I had a question about song choice.The thing that I've heard is that the song doesn't fit the fandom because it's anachronistic. Maybe I'm just weird but because LoTR is a fantasy I can't really say that any song is going to be anachronstic. I know that I've seen a vid about the orcs set to a more industrial song, I can't remember the vid or seem to find it on my computer. However the song worked for what the vid was about. I'm new to vids so I don't really understand the whole "the song doesn't fit the time frame so it can't be used" idea.
Is that just for historical fandoms? Or does that work for shows like Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals? Do people feel that it's not a good idea to use recent songs when making vids in those fandoms? I'm not quite sure what kind of lines are being drawn. And it seems extremely limiting to me, especially for something like Lord of the Rings, or well anything. And if someone would feel thrown out of a vid because a new song was used for S&H or The Pros, then what about Due South? Where are the lines drawn for this kind of thing?
My own opinon of One of God's Better People is this:
It took me a bit to get into the vid because of the initial relationship of Aragorn/Boromir. I don't see the slash in LotR at all and so I couldn't quite "get" what was trying to brought across. If it was a slash vid or just "really really good friends" or how I should view but as the vid went on I stopped thinking about what I should be thinking and just watched it. Once I let go of that I really got into the vid and enjoyed it. I can go back and enjoy it from my own perspective of Aragorn and Boromir having a complicated platonic relationship and also see the vid from the viewpoint of them as a pairing (although Ihave to push myself with that). But the problem was never with the song, probably because I really didn't know that there were "rules" when it came to this sort of thing.
curious
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I've only seen, oh, three or so LotR vids. All were to modern popular music; none of them worked for me. I bounced off hard, and it certainly felt at the time like it was because of song choice; I'd think "well, that was technically well-done, but man, I can't look at Boromir and listen to a song from 2003, it feels incredibly silly." At the same time, I can totally see an orc-vid set to something really modern and hard.
So it's not a rule, the way Thou Shalt Use Your Spellcheck is (almost always) a rule for fanfic. It does have a real impact on how likely I am to enjoy a vid, though, and that seems like a pretty common reaction. Some fandoms are more flexible than others; for instance, I find Buffy pretty flexible, whereas with non-humor Stargate it's pretty rare for something top-40 to work for me.
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It's going to be easiest to get me with folky or orchestra, I suspect. Foreign-language might work too, if it's not too poppy.
Also with Stargate what kind of music do you perfer. By Top 40 do you mean most things played on the radio or just typical pop songs?
With Stargate I'm more flexible; I mostly just need not to bounce off of the song thinking "uh, you know the characters are in their thirties and forties, right?" I'm pretty sure this is, to some extent, as much a function of familiarity as age, though. I'm sure there are plenty of songs from the 90s that, because I'm not familiar with them, would work for me. Something that was a big hit in my lifetime is going to have strong associations for me, though, and that can get in the way of my enjoying a vid if those associations don't fit what I'm seeing on the screen.
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I don't know if any of the stuff that's categorized in the recesses of my brain as "Tolkien-influenced" would work, because a lot of it may sound too dated, now. But, I tend to think of early Queen; and epic, early '70s prog rock, like Yes. Rush's earlier stuff, as well. And Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin is known for his lyrical references to Tolkien.
A guy named Bo Hansson put out an album called "Music Inspired By Lord Of The Rings" back in 1972. It's prog rock, definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but you can listen to samples on Amazon.
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The era of the source: well I think that there is some real flexibility with that in ROTK, but because it has a medieval feel that's going to be the era that you're either reflecting or departing from. This song departs from it, if less radically than some song choices I've heard.
The voice of the singer doesn't work for me; he's too young both physically and emotionally. The vocabulary of the song writer which sounds like a slightly whiny twenty-something in the last dozen years. Also, with LoTR I think it is hard to bring in any song with a direct reference, especially repeated, to God (and if it mentions' Christ anywhere, the song is doomed for LoTR. Narnia will be a very different story on this point).
LOTR is a very complex world and the character relationships are complex. This song isn't, not in the music (single very straight-forward guitar), not in the language (the shape of they lyrics and the word choice are both very simple which plays against Tolkien's use of language). Related to this is the size of the song. I wish I had a better term for it, but as the movie is epic there's a desire for the song to be similarly scaled. Movies often need bigger songs and TV shows often can't handle them. Queen, as rule, really shouldn't be used for TV shows . The clarity of the lyrics wasn't an issue in this case, for which I'm glad since it made the narrative clearer to be able to identify the "I" and "you" for each verse.
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Movies often need bigger songs and TV shows often can't handle them. Queen, as rule, really shouldn't be used for TV shows.
I think it's tough to lay down absolutes like that, because there are always exceptions. Queen was a very diverse band, and their later and/or poppier stuff, is certainly suitable for TV shows. One of the local PBS stations put together a Dr. Who promo to Another One Bites the Dust, and the song worked fine, but, well, the cutting sucked; any vidder I know could've done *far* better.
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I understand what you are saying about the size of the song matching the size of the movie. I haven't seen too many vids for movies so I haven't seen the differences there, but I can think of a few songs that seem too "big" for tv show.
Because of my background the God thing just never registered as being out of place for the movies, not because I was thinking in terms of Tolkien's religon but because Christianity is so engrained into my upbringing and surroundings.