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Under the Skin Vid "Put It On Me" - Vidder's Notes
Vid at AO3: Put It On Me, Under the Skin Vid
I watched Under the Skin quite a while ago, and had vague plans to vid it ever since because it's a beautiful show with interesting themes. The thing that interested me most to put into a vid was Shen Yi's difficult relationship to art -- his desire to control it, to make it a useful tool that he can employ safely for a targeted purpose, and art's continued refusal to comply with his attempts to gain control. The way the show pulls out those themes and emotions of what creativity can feel like, is very compelling to me, and so are the visuals of the show, which are put together with a lot of care and attention to detail.
My problem was that I could never find a song that really clicked. By the time of receiving the Festivid's assignment for Under the Skin, the best song I'd found was What the Water Gave Me by Florence & the Machine. I still think it would make for a good Under the Skin vid, but it's very long, with an extended instrumental bit at the end. I didn't manage to edit the song to my satisfaction, and I didn't have any ideas for the instrumental bit. After kicking that song for a while to no avail, I felt pretty discouraged, and went looking for alternatives.
Scrolling through the playlist I made at the time, there's Bishop Briggs' Reborn (too Christian) and Baggage (not the right vibe), Control by Halsey (creepy and ominous in the wrong way), Talk by Hozier (if I were a better vidder this could have worked, but making a high-concept vid where personified art is the "I" Hozier sings about is beyond me), Mountain at My Gates by Foals (not weird enough), Art School Wannabe by Sorority Noise (I think I only added this because the title made me snort), and the two songs I ended up making projects for: Bird Song by Florence & the Machine, and Put It On Me by Matt Maeson.
Bird Song did not end up working because Under the Skin doesn't have enough body horror shots, or shots of characters (especially Shen Yi) losing their entire mind in a vidable way. I still think Bird Song is a decent concept for Under the Skin, but the visual vibe and emotional intensity isn't quite right. I fairly quickly pivoted to Put It On Me -- with some reluctance, since for reasons I can't quite identify, the song didn't excite me to vid it. It's a bit funny to me that in the process of making a vid about how in being creative, sometimes the artist won't feel 100% in control of their art, I ended up grudgingly using a song I didn't super vibe with because it was the best choice for the creative piece.
And then I made the vid! Put It On Me was the first vid I made using the clipping tool that I built for myself, and in another grudging admission I have to say I very much appreciated having neatly tagged clips sorted into folders that I could peruse while filling the timeline. I especially enjoyed the "unreality" folder that was just full of clips of all the weird-ass art they deal with over the course of the show. I don't know if I'll turn into a vidder who always clips, but for this project, I think the end result benefited from the fact that I did.
Notes on specific bits:
00:00 - 00:18
I open with Shen Yi in the lecture hall because all those scenes left me with the impression of Shen Yi being intensely uncomfortable as a lecturer. Part of it may be that the lecture hall set actually seems to be a theatre, lending those scenes a note of Shen Yi literally doing a performance in front of his students -- a performance of someone who looks at art rationally and unemotionally, someone who only picks up a brush or pencil for cold, purpose-oriented reasons. Watching Shen Yi in the rest of the show, that performance is evidently a lie -- perhaps a lie of omission, but it's a pretty big omission. So to set up Shen Yi's dilemma of wanting to distance himself emotionally from (his) art, I open the vid on a lecture hall shot. And then I immediately show him failing to use his art for a practical purpose -- "if there's no-one to blame, blame it on me" set to him failing to draw a suspect's portrait and being frustrated about it.
00:18 - 00:37
In the next bit, I use a lot of clips that show emotions in art from the case they deal with around episode 5, of the teacher whose childhood friend/crush is the dead body of the week. These are not Shen Yi's emotions, but they kind of are, considering how closely Shen Yi is paralleled with the teacher in the show, and considering that he's the one who ends up completing the teacher's mural of her dead friend, honoring the teacher's emotional expression through art. And then there's a glimpse of the portrait Shen Yi painted that led to a person's death -- not at the time an emotional painting for him, but certainly one that caused many emotions going forward.
00:37 - 01:15
The next bits go into Shen Yi's ambiguity towards art, his discomfort about how revealing it is, and his frustration that while being revealing, it's not revealing to him the one thing he wants to know (the face of the woman who asked him to draw the portrait). He's not getting useful information from his art, he's just having his innermost feelings put on display for everyone to see.
01:15 - 01:52
The bit after that explores his guilt: his inability to draw the person who asked him to paint the portrait renders her a phantom, someone who may as well not exist, meaning he's the only one who can be held responsible for the death of the inspector he painted. Maybe there was no woman, and he painted the portrait just because he felt like it; maybe art/creativity is what made him commit this lethal error. Maybe his inability to control art acting through him to create images that kill people means that he is a conduit for harm to come into the world.
01:52 - 02:08
Consequently, the next bit explores his suicidal tendencies. In this part especially, I'm using the lyrics to make him talk to art as an entity with agency: an entity that is separate from him, that will never feel like he does (will never care that one of his portraits led to the death of a human being), that doesn't care about the anguish he goes through, that just watches and then incites him to create more art for art's sake.
02:08 - 02:44
He burns his art only for it to reappear, and he erases himself (his signature), but it doesn't stop people dying -- his mentor dies anyway. Now he uses art to honor his mentor and bring him back at least in a portrait, but it's an emotional process, and difficult to separate from his emotions about the portrait he painted of the inspector.
02:44 - end
In the last bit, I'm using distorted art especially focused around eyes, skulls, and faces, to escalate Shen Yi's identity struggle between being an artist in control of his own art, being a helpless conduit for something powerful and harmful he's afraid of, and being someone who only engages with art on a rational, unemotional level. It leads into a physical confrontation between him and art as he semi-successfully wrestles his ocean painting to give up the information he's after: the face of the woman who asked him to draw the portrait of the inspector.
I watched Under the Skin quite a while ago, and had vague plans to vid it ever since because it's a beautiful show with interesting themes. The thing that interested me most to put into a vid was Shen Yi's difficult relationship to art -- his desire to control it, to make it a useful tool that he can employ safely for a targeted purpose, and art's continued refusal to comply with his attempts to gain control. The way the show pulls out those themes and emotions of what creativity can feel like, is very compelling to me, and so are the visuals of the show, which are put together with a lot of care and attention to detail.
My problem was that I could never find a song that really clicked. By the time of receiving the Festivid's assignment for Under the Skin, the best song I'd found was What the Water Gave Me by Florence & the Machine. I still think it would make for a good Under the Skin vid, but it's very long, with an extended instrumental bit at the end. I didn't manage to edit the song to my satisfaction, and I didn't have any ideas for the instrumental bit. After kicking that song for a while to no avail, I felt pretty discouraged, and went looking for alternatives.
Scrolling through the playlist I made at the time, there's Bishop Briggs' Reborn (too Christian) and Baggage (not the right vibe), Control by Halsey (creepy and ominous in the wrong way), Talk by Hozier (if I were a better vidder this could have worked, but making a high-concept vid where personified art is the "I" Hozier sings about is beyond me), Mountain at My Gates by Foals (not weird enough), Art School Wannabe by Sorority Noise (I think I only added this because the title made me snort), and the two songs I ended up making projects for: Bird Song by Florence & the Machine, and Put It On Me by Matt Maeson.
Bird Song did not end up working because Under the Skin doesn't have enough body horror shots, or shots of characters (especially Shen Yi) losing their entire mind in a vidable way. I still think Bird Song is a decent concept for Under the Skin, but the visual vibe and emotional intensity isn't quite right. I fairly quickly pivoted to Put It On Me -- with some reluctance, since for reasons I can't quite identify, the song didn't excite me to vid it. It's a bit funny to me that in the process of making a vid about how in being creative, sometimes the artist won't feel 100% in control of their art, I ended up grudgingly using a song I didn't super vibe with because it was the best choice for the creative piece.
And then I made the vid! Put It On Me was the first vid I made using the clipping tool that I built for myself, and in another grudging admission I have to say I very much appreciated having neatly tagged clips sorted into folders that I could peruse while filling the timeline. I especially enjoyed the "unreality" folder that was just full of clips of all the weird-ass art they deal with over the course of the show. I don't know if I'll turn into a vidder who always clips, but for this project, I think the end result benefited from the fact that I did.
Notes on specific bits:
00:00 - 00:18
I open with Shen Yi in the lecture hall because all those scenes left me with the impression of Shen Yi being intensely uncomfortable as a lecturer. Part of it may be that the lecture hall set actually seems to be a theatre, lending those scenes a note of Shen Yi literally doing a performance in front of his students -- a performance of someone who looks at art rationally and unemotionally, someone who only picks up a brush or pencil for cold, purpose-oriented reasons. Watching Shen Yi in the rest of the show, that performance is evidently a lie -- perhaps a lie of omission, but it's a pretty big omission. So to set up Shen Yi's dilemma of wanting to distance himself emotionally from (his) art, I open the vid on a lecture hall shot. And then I immediately show him failing to use his art for a practical purpose -- "if there's no-one to blame, blame it on me" set to him failing to draw a suspect's portrait and being frustrated about it.
00:18 - 00:37
In the next bit, I use a lot of clips that show emotions in art from the case they deal with around episode 5, of the teacher whose childhood friend/crush is the dead body of the week. These are not Shen Yi's emotions, but they kind of are, considering how closely Shen Yi is paralleled with the teacher in the show, and considering that he's the one who ends up completing the teacher's mural of her dead friend, honoring the teacher's emotional expression through art. And then there's a glimpse of the portrait Shen Yi painted that led to a person's death -- not at the time an emotional painting for him, but certainly one that caused many emotions going forward.
00:37 - 01:15
The next bits go into Shen Yi's ambiguity towards art, his discomfort about how revealing it is, and his frustration that while being revealing, it's not revealing to him the one thing he wants to know (the face of the woman who asked him to draw the portrait). He's not getting useful information from his art, he's just having his innermost feelings put on display for everyone to see.
01:15 - 01:52
The bit after that explores his guilt: his inability to draw the person who asked him to paint the portrait renders her a phantom, someone who may as well not exist, meaning he's the only one who can be held responsible for the death of the inspector he painted. Maybe there was no woman, and he painted the portrait just because he felt like it; maybe art/creativity is what made him commit this lethal error. Maybe his inability to control art acting through him to create images that kill people means that he is a conduit for harm to come into the world.
01:52 - 02:08
Consequently, the next bit explores his suicidal tendencies. In this part especially, I'm using the lyrics to make him talk to art as an entity with agency: an entity that is separate from him, that will never feel like he does (will never care that one of his portraits led to the death of a human being), that doesn't care about the anguish he goes through, that just watches and then incites him to create more art for art's sake.
02:08 - 02:44
He burns his art only for it to reappear, and he erases himself (his signature), but it doesn't stop people dying -- his mentor dies anyway. Now he uses art to honor his mentor and bring him back at least in a portrait, but it's an emotional process, and difficult to separate from his emotions about the portrait he painted of the inspector.
02:44 - end
In the last bit, I'm using distorted art especially focused around eyes, skulls, and faces, to escalate Shen Yi's identity struggle between being an artist in control of his own art, being a helpless conduit for something powerful and harmful he's afraid of, and being someone who only engages with art on a rational, unemotional level. It leads into a physical confrontation between him and art as he semi-successfully wrestles his ocean painting to give up the information he's after: the face of the woman who asked him to draw the portrait of the inspector.
hi i'm here to talk about under the skin song choice!
god i love this song choice for so many reasons and i really enjoyed hearing about your experience wrestling to find The Right Song.
first off, I'm a traditional painter and this kind of bluesy/alt-rock singer/songerwriter heavy is some of my favorite music to blast in my headphones and lose myself in a canvas with, so right away I am like the Super Niche demographic of vidder+painter+THIS MUSIC that the vid is basically massaging my brain.
secondly, what is it about this kind of music that lends itself so well for The Struggles and Horrors of wrestling with the creative beast???? That fucking drumbeat.
I also kind of goggled at your link to the hozier song Talk---WHICH is an incredible vid idea. I can't even recall if I've vidded Hozier at this point but oh my god. but let me tell you. in 2019 I made a vid called New Blood to the film Velvet Buzzsaw which is about haunted art. Full of body horror and weird art visuals. And the song I glommed onto was absolutely this heavy beat bluesy/dark, atmospheric thing. And I absolutely vidded it from the POV of the dead artist/art, which isn't very apparent until the further on you get into the vid, but oh my god.
so trust me when i was watching the Put It On Me for the first time during the discord watch party, I was losing my GODDAMN MIIIIIIIIIND.
I love your song journey and it resounds with me so MUCH. I often will be making playlists and picking up songs and asking "does this spark joy? is this going to fill my heart and timeline for the character?" Also another testament to how much I'm vibing with all your song ideas, I totally vidded Halsey's Control a few years ago.
I can totally see why Control as an option you entertained and then passed on for this show. It definitely has the ominousness that the others don't. I don't know the source but yeah, I can definitely see why that one was discarded.
I'm fascinated by the Bird Song choice and would be interested in seeing any timeline you have (if you're willing to share!) with the show clips. But yeah, when something isn't working and you have to move on, you just have to try something else that might be closer to It.
but the visual vibe and emotional intensity isn't quite right.
there's so much in this statement that resounds with me. This Feeling, the emotive and thematic sense that evolves in our brains as we are shuffling all these visuals and feeling around in our brain and on the timeline. How do we quantify it, how do we explain? It just isn't working or working enough, until we find something the closest and try to work towards the best.
And the fact that you said you weren't as excited for the song you finally chose in the end is wild but also so understandable to me. You still pushed through and got it all down and it really is an incredible result.
Because really in the end when the Idea is there, and you're trying to find the best way to live up to that idea, there's that struggle with the creative process. Where do you cede control, yield to it, and when do you be more intentional and specific and try to let the ego part of the brain sculpt the idea. (is this making sense? I'm just foaming at the creative brain right now).
Is it safe to assume, from your implied paragraph about trying out a new process for this vid, that the novelty of having a tool that helped you with clipping helped you push through the timeline? in spite of your lack of enthusiasm for the song? It sounds like you're not a clipper at all, so there was enough for you to be entertained by and be able to find that sense of play while you got everything down with those goddamn beaaaaats.
I think in the last few years I have enjoyed splashing around in my very specific ways of making niche fandom vids, but I might be in a little bit of a rut in some ways. I could probably use a boost of new-process enthusiasm when making a new vid. (In my case I think I'm probably going to try out some more color correction/intentional color grading now that I have a newer laptop that won't fry at rendering.)
anyway. I'm...I think I've written a whole treatsie of squee about song choice.
I love your vid and I love the song you ended up using for it. Thank you for sharing your song notes. ♥