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Now that Buffy and Angel are over, I have nothing to write about, so I've been digging through my now fairly extensive collection of music vids and have decided to make a list of my favourites. It can't be a top ten list, because I'm hopeless at deciding where to draw boundaries. I once tried to make a music video and the experience left me with a huge respect for those who can really do it.
Schism by Vrya.This is my all-time number one favourite, the ultimate Spike vid. It’s just amazing, brilliantly conceived and edited. And if you adopt my directing professor’s definition of art – a creative work whose subject matter is its own medium – then it counts as art as well, because it’s ‘about’ constructing a narrative from an array of images.. I love the visual similarities it manages to find between episodes – Spike on the floor at the Initiative intercut with shots of him lying on top of the elevator in Intervention, or the various getting-up-from-the-floor shots.
My West Hollywood lifestyle.Whatever by Sisabet and Luminosity. Amazingly enough, this one isn’t Spikecentric, but oh boy, is it funny. Beautifully edited and hilariously slashy, I could watch this for hours. I think maybe it adds to the enjoyment that I haven’t seen most of the episodes it culls from – so I have no idea what Wes is, um, up to, when he pulls at his leather trews (if that’s what he’s doing...) It’s Wolfgang’s nomination for Best Vid Ever and I can see why.
Jolene by OutOfMud. Okay, I’m still slightly embarrassed to admit to being so dense, but this was the vid that finally made me understand Harmony. I’d always found her funny in small doses, and seen her relationship with Spike as a precursor of Spike’s one-sided adoration of Buffy, but I’d never really fully grasped how much she loves him. Until I saw this. That was when I first realised it was possible to feel sorry for Harmony, instead of simply sharing Spike’s irritation. Also, I have a weakness for OTT country music, which takes me to –
Drop Kick Me, Jesus by Penny Dreadful. This is one of the first vids I ever saw, and I still love it. The song is fascinatingly awful and the vid itself has more Kick the Spike on it than I ever would have thought possible. I think it’s funny, though it seems to be a bit of a minority taste. The video is currently offline, but you can e-mail Penny at roundpeg@shaw.ca
Unwell by Catatonic242. I love this one, because I love S7 Spike, and I have a particular soft spot for him in his several-sandwiches-short-of-a-picnic-incarnation. Which is rather a trivial reason for liking a vid that is as immaculately put together as this one. The fact that it uses footage that doesn’t often crop up on vids is another bonus, but it’s mostly the weaving of text and imagery to create a haunting little trip through Spike’s damaged psyche that sells it to me.
Take this Waltz, also by Catatonic242. Spike and Dru in their heyday, reeking of decadence and death. Wolfgang can’t stand Drusilla, but he admires this video. And God, of course the two of them would have been in fin-de-siecle Vienna, and maybe in John Irving’s blood-and-Schlagobers early sixties Vienna as well.
Fluffy favourites
There aren’t as many of these as I expected. I guess good fluff is hard to do.
Another One Bites the Dust by Giles Fan. This is really a one-joke vid, but it’s a joke that needed to be made, a really fun trip through the most memorable dustings on Buffy. Besides, I like the song.
The Hat I Got for Christmas by Charmax. This is a piece of total fluff, but sweet, and my kids love it. We all sing along and make the hand gestures. Surprisingly for a vid devoted to awful hats, it doesn’t exclusively feature Willow, and as a bonus it has a nicely timed Spike eyebrow smirk.
Schism by Vrya.This is my all-time number one favourite, the ultimate Spike vid. It’s just amazing, brilliantly conceived and edited. And if you adopt my directing professor’s definition of art – a creative work whose subject matter is its own medium – then it counts as art as well, because it’s ‘about’ constructing a narrative from an array of images.. I love the visual similarities it manages to find between episodes – Spike on the floor at the Initiative intercut with shots of him lying on top of the elevator in Intervention, or the various getting-up-from-the-floor shots.
My West Hollywood lifestyle.Whatever by Sisabet and Luminosity. Amazingly enough, this one isn’t Spikecentric, but oh boy, is it funny. Beautifully edited and hilariously slashy, I could watch this for hours. I think maybe it adds to the enjoyment that I haven’t seen most of the episodes it culls from – so I have no idea what Wes is, um, up to, when he pulls at his leather trews (if that’s what he’s doing...) It’s Wolfgang’s nomination for Best Vid Ever and I can see why.
Jolene by OutOfMud. Okay, I’m still slightly embarrassed to admit to being so dense, but this was the vid that finally made me understand Harmony. I’d always found her funny in small doses, and seen her relationship with Spike as a precursor of Spike’s one-sided adoration of Buffy, but I’d never really fully grasped how much she loves him. Until I saw this. That was when I first realised it was possible to feel sorry for Harmony, instead of simply sharing Spike’s irritation. Also, I have a weakness for OTT country music, which takes me to –
Drop Kick Me, Jesus by Penny Dreadful. This is one of the first vids I ever saw, and I still love it. The song is fascinatingly awful and the vid itself has more Kick the Spike on it than I ever would have thought possible. I think it’s funny, though it seems to be a bit of a minority taste. The video is currently offline, but you can e-mail Penny at roundpeg@shaw.ca
Unwell by Catatonic242. I love this one, because I love S7 Spike, and I have a particular soft spot for him in his several-sandwiches-short-of-a-picnic-incarnation. Which is rather a trivial reason for liking a vid that is as immaculately put together as this one. The fact that it uses footage that doesn’t often crop up on vids is another bonus, but it’s mostly the weaving of text and imagery to create a haunting little trip through Spike’s damaged psyche that sells it to me.
Take this Waltz, also by Catatonic242. Spike and Dru in their heyday, reeking of decadence and death. Wolfgang can’t stand Drusilla, but he admires this video. And God, of course the two of them would have been in fin-de-siecle Vienna, and maybe in John Irving’s blood-and-Schlagobers early sixties Vienna as well.
Fluffy favourites
There aren’t as many of these as I expected. I guess good fluff is hard to do.
Another One Bites the Dust by Giles Fan. This is really a one-joke vid, but it’s a joke that needed to be made, a really fun trip through the most memorable dustings on Buffy. Besides, I like the song.
The Hat I Got for Christmas by Charmax. This is a piece of total fluff, but sweet, and my kids love it. We all sing along and make the hand gestures. Surprisingly for a vid devoted to awful hats, it doesn’t exclusively feature Willow, and as a bonus it has a nicely timed Spike eyebrow smirk.