Girl Anachronism: The Making Of

[lierdumoa]

This vid began when someone whose name I can't recall anymore posted the song to vidding. I went to the artist's website and looked at the music video and realized that this song was about a woman falling apart, and falling apart spectacularly.

I immediately thought of Gia. I have a near photographic memory when it comes to movies, and though I hadn't seen the movie since I was 12 (and really not supposed to have been watching lesbians on HBO, I think) I distinctly remembered a character who was outrageous, beautiful, lived fast and died young.

So I bought the DVD. I stuck it in my DVD player. I was happy to find I'd remembered the movie correctly. I was not so happy to find that I cried through the entire thing. Thankfullly I managed to suck it up for the actually editing otherwise I'd never have finished. I can't say the movie was all that great, but Angelina Jolie does probably her best performance in her acting career. I watched the movie and knew I had to make this vid.

The mood, the pacing, the visuals are all drastically different from the movie (I go into detail on this in another post -- see links at bottom of page). This had me doinga lot of flailing both during and after the vid was completed. Even now I look at my vid and ask myself, "Where the hell did that come from?" I didn't actually make sense of this disparity until laurashapiro made the comment that she saw my vid as "A woman's story told from a woman's point of view."

Of course, my choices then made sense to me. The movie is about Gia as seen through the eyes of those who knew her. A good third of the movie is actually faux interview footage from people who knew her, after her death. The instant I heard the song "Girl Anachronism" by The Dresden Dolls I knew I was vidding (my interpretation of) Gia's internal voice. I knew I was not vidding Gia the movie, but Gia the person (or perhaps Gia the character would be a better term). There's no way I could have done that and kept the style of the movie.


The vid pretty much follows the timeline of the movie. I decided to make things simpler by focusing only on her relationship with Linda (pretty blonde significant other) and her mother. There were other people with large influence on her life, but I couldn't cram them all into the vid. I started with her being discovered as a model, moving on to her meeting Linda, but not really being able to hold on to Linda. For a while she tries to cling to her mom, not really knowing how to be independent. She becomes more famous, gets addicted to heroin, finally gets Linda back in her life, but eventually loses Linda to heroin. She goes into rehab and gets off heroin successfully, only to discover she has AIDS. She dies very tragically. I used a few visual motifs throughout the vid. The stylized death scene is used at both the beginning and the end of the vid, as I felt it made for good bookends on the story I was telling. The scene of her in the wedding dress was repeated throughout the vid, first to foreshadow her fame, then as she goes backstage to shoot heroin to show the ugliness behind her fame, then during the finale as a representation of her life -- of Gia at both her best and her worst.

One thing I found particularly interesting about the song "Girl Anachronism" is the way it ends. It's not a conventional way to end a song. It ends on an almost triumphant note, which I find both delightful and unexpected in a song that's entirely about a woman falling apart. In terms of narrative, the ending allowed me to make this vid a celebration of her life. Instead of the finale focusing on her horrible and tragic death, it focuses on what a dynamic person she was. I wouldn't have wanted to end a vid about Gia any other way.


I made a lot of what I can look back now and say were daring choices in this vid. They didn't seem like daring choices at the time because they didn't seem like choices period. I followed my instincts and didn't ask questions. It helps somewhat that I made good chunks of this vid half asleep and in a fugue state.

My goals for this vid started somewhere around Angelina Jolie's tits and ended somewhere inside Gia Marie Carangi's angst. After wibbling a bit over which version of The Dresden Dolls' "Girl Anachronism" I was going to use, I focused my attention on trying out various methods of killing Premiere (loudly) with this song, telling Gia's whole life (mostly) with it's words, and of course more loud Premiere killing.

Which is to say, I didn't have any kind of audience in mind when I made it. I had one beta thanks to my last minute finish, and she shares my brain, so the beta was more like a spellcheck. With the exception of three nitpicks, this vid is pure undiluted me. In fact, there's a little more of me in this vid than I'm entirely comfortable with. I am happy with how the vid turned out because I tailored it to my own personal vidding tastes. Still, I can't help wondering if there's something I didn't think of that could have made it better, because in the past my beta's have always been able to think of things I never considered -- things that hugely improved my vids.


Vid was made in Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0, edited directly from DVD rip via avisynth.

Project Screencap:
[789.08 KB JPEG]


See also:

The Effects

The Funny

Comments

[zoerayne]

This vid is one of my favorites from the con, and I wish we'd had more time to talk while we were there.

I've been fascinated by your recent posts discussing your vidding process with "Girl Anachronism," and was particularly interested to see the screencap of your timeline. Thanks for sharing this stuff with us!

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Oh yay! I'm glad you found the posts interesting. I love to talk about my vids but always feel a bit weird volunteering information without knowing if anyone's interested.

I'll be making similar posts for my other con vids once I get around to it. Taking a screencap of my timeline is usually the last thing I do before clearing all my source off my harddrive.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I wanted to tell you more how much I liked the vid, but I thought maybe I was coming across as a space alien to you, so I stopped. But I did! I loved the way you kept bringing back that kind of emblematic shot of her on the catwalk in the wedding dress -- it's such a pivotal moment in the movie. And it really captured not just the fucked upness of Gia herself, but of the people around her, and their inability to understand what made her tick and thus how to help her.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so glad that worked as a repeated theme. I love that scene. I think it shows her at her peak and at the same time, at her absolute worst. I think what made Gia such an intersting person is that she could be both simultaneously.

I'm so glad you enjoyed the vid! And you weren't coming across as a space alien to me, in case you were worried. I think I felt the same way about Polaroid Millenium. I don't think I really *got* Buffy Summers, got the appeal of Buffy Summers until I saw your vid and you *showed* me.

[dualbunny.livejournal.com]

Very much enjoyed reading the posts about this vid. The vid itself is fantastic. Not one false note to be seen. It's one of my favorites from the convention. :D

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! I'm glad they're worth the read.

I'm working on making of posts for my other two VVC vids, but I'm being lazy about finishing them.