"My Kind of Love" Dollhouse fanvid

[1ofgloriasjudys]

My first fanvid premiered this weekend at WisCon 37!

Here is the link to the vid for those who missed it and those who would like to watch it again and/or share it with others (password: Echo).

Song: My Kind of Love by Emeli Sandé
Fandom: Dollhouse

Download file here (96MB, zipped)

"My Kind of Love" Dollhouse Vid from Roxanne Samer on Vimeo.

Comments

[chaila]

This was really interesting to see at the show! And I've rewatched it a couple times because this take on the source is different than any I've seen. I never watched Dollhouse so I'm sure I'm missing a ton; though I obviously did see lots of discussions about it, so I think I kind of get where you're jumping off from. Coming from the perspective of Echo's awareness/agency adds a different perspective that I hadn't seen before. It seemed like Echo was slowly becoming aware of the reality of what's going on, both through her own experiences and through connections with and observations of other dolls or potential allies, which added a really interesting sort of collective awareness/action to this.

I was kind of curious about one thing, if you don't mind a question. How were you using the Dollhouse people here, like Adele (sp?) and the people working for her or she's working for? I couldn't figure out if and how they might be potential allies or if they were straight-up villains?

[1ofgloriasjudys]

Thank you for the feedback! You definitely took away a number of the ideas that I hoped viewers to take away (especially re: collective action). I am impressed considering your unfamiliarity with the show. And I'm glad you asked about Adele, Topher, and the others. Though each has a unique and complicated relationship to the dolls and their eventual resistance, generally they grow to become allies and recognize and regret their contribution to the development of doll technology and its implementation. I think the show does a great job of slowly revealing the structures of power, such that we come to realize that while Adele and Topher have a lot of power in the LA dollhouse they are relatively low on the Rossum Corporation's ladder. Nonetheless, they do have influence, knowledge, and skill sets that are crucial to overthrowing the powers that be. I wanted to show both their complicity in dollhouse's pleasures and their eventual repudiation of it. I thus included personal relations they have with dolls earlier on as well as Topher's eventual breakdown and Adele's role as a leader in the resistance. What I think is so compelling about the show is these characters' various trajectories and transitions, such that we get to experience each of the dolls and dollhouse employees' growing political consciousnesses, which are uneven and tenuous but nonetheless present and ongoing.

[chaila]

Oh interesting! I totally read them in different roles, and was just a bit unsure of whether their roles were changing or what was happening. I hadn't realized that Adele becomes part of the eventual resistance, or the larger corporate thing going on.

[1ofgloriasjudys]

Yeah, I used footage from the episode "The Attic" to structure the vid as a whole (shots of Echo, Sierra, and Victor hooked up to machines in white suits and water), and it's the episode in which Adele is revealed at the end to be covertly orchestrating the beginnings of a collective resistance. We think she sends Echo, Sierra, and Victor to the attic as punishment for their growing resistances to dollhouse tech, but, in fact, she is sending them their to collect intel on Rossum and its vulnerabilities. Echo's line in the vid's final shot is her telling the whole team, assembled for the first time as a group, that she got what Adele sent her in to retrieve. I cut Echo off there so as to give the line a double meaning and convey the strength and fortitude of the collective.

[cyborganize]

OH SHOW. I don't want to go into a tangent about all my Dollhouse opinions -- suffice it to say that it was TRYING to do something really interesting, and I wish it had been longer/better. You really highlight what it COULD HAVE BEEN if it had gotten to Echo as a real character sooner and stayed there. I loved how you presented Echo as the least a victim of the Dollhouse (less of a pawn than the staff, ultimately), and the most the heroine who tries to save them all!

[metatxt]

Admittedly, I left Dollhouse just when it was getting good (The Attic) because I couldn't deal anymore. J tells me I should finish it...and this vid made me WANT to finish it.

Am I right to read the song as being directed to the audience? That this vid is Echo breaking the 4th wall? I enjoyed how the vid highlights Echo as savior, but also that her "kind of love" means using the dynamic subjectivity she developed as a doll as a weapon of resistance and solidarity.

[1ofgloriasjudys]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I'm so glad you picked up on that, and I couldn't have put it better myself! Upon viewing the first cut of the vid, someone told me that it read as a love letter TO Echo, so I did my best in making revisions to convey that it was coming FROM Echo, instead, which was my original intent.

[beccatoria]

Hey - thanks for the link. I haven't seen the show but this vid is really interesting. Clearly I'm missing layers here, but I really like what the song choice does for the footage. It's a song about determination and brutality and loss but it's a love song, and there's something lovely about the way you vid with and against that throughout the vid.

I got the sense that this was a vid rooted deeply in the context of the show and the clips and what they meant, specifically, juxtaposed against the lyrics you chose - which is my favourite kind of vid. Unfortunately, that is often not such an accessible vid for those who haven't seen the source. Despite that, and regardless of the fact it may be inaccurate, I left this feeling like I had a very clear, and very specific picture of Echo and the show in general. I...think I got what you were trying to say. And it also made me wonder if I should resurrect that vidding meta I never wrote about how sometimes I think we're wrong to associate the more surface-visual vids with accessibility because sometimes a viewer doesn't need to understand all the context to know there much be context and to be intrigued by depths they can sense but not yet understand.

Anyway, thank you for the link to this!

[1ofgloriasjudys]

Wonderful! Yeah, I made the vid meaning to engage closely with Dollhouse and its fans and critics but hoping that something would still resonate for those unfamiliar with the show. I'm glad that it did for you. I am all for not making assumptions about viewers' analytic abilities. From the conversations I've witnessed and participated in at WisCon, people familiar with vidding are able to make very astute observations about vids without knowing the entire context. Do let me know if you write up anything on this!