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' This is another song that immediately pinged me as to who it belonged to. I was looking through my roommate's (jic) cd collection and spotting a Depeche Mode cd. Now, I like their music and I have not listened to anything like all of it, so I decided to give the cd a listen. First, though, I flipped through the cd booklet. When I got to Nothing, the words reminded me of Sheppard. Huh, I thought to myself, I'd better go listen to this cd. I wanted to know if the song itself would also make me think of Sheppard. Clearly, it did. In fact, the clanging of the song reminded both of Atlantis and of, well, guns (there are a lot of those in this vid). So, I set out to make myself a Season One Sheppard vid. I started my placing with clips from Siege (and ended with Rising, going roughly backward through the series). The very first clips that were placed were the last eight 'nothing's, but they aren't all the same as what the vid ended up with. Originally, Teyla was not in the end, and instead, I had Zelenka with the jumper. The timing was also slightly different, with more of the John/Elizabeth moment. I placed the Colonel Everett "what am I trying to do" clips next, and started to get a real sense of the side of John that the vid is about -- the part of him that is intensely frustrated and very loyal and incredibly dangerous. The part of him that's still in Afganistan, trying to save his men. This is a vid that underwent a lot of shifts as I collected more and more footage -- originally, Chaya was in the middle musical interlude. This was changed to Elizabeth for the same reason that Zelenka was changed to Teyla at end -- to maintain emotional consistency. Rodney was always a very important part of the vid -- he's inescapably a vital part of John's hero complex, along for the ride much of the time (a trend which has continued into the second season, I'm pleased to say. I like character studies, whether I'm writing meta, writing fanfic, or making a vid. So, in a lot of ways, this is my view of what John's brain looks like when he's flying off in that jumper at the end of Siege (2). These are the things he's trying to save, the lengths he's willing to go to in order to save these people. And so, I had to choose which people to spotlight as "John's". Which ended up being relatively easy -- Rodney and Elizabeth are both in that final 'worrying' shot about him, and Teyla and John shared a couple of really gorgeous training sessions. I like Ford, but didn't really have room for him in this vid, nor did he end up fitting the premises, which became John's attempt to protect 'his' civilians. The musical section at the beginning took pretty much the entire vid to make, though I had a firm handle on where I wanted it to go once I had the footage from The Gift and The Brotherhood. First, it was all alternating between those two and Siege, and, as I got more clips, I added in earlier episodes (including adding in Elizabeth). Here, too, is the first appearance of that yellow burst. I'm not entirely sure when I decided to do that (though, as I explained to my roommate, the song just feels yellow to me). It's very close to the color of the gun blasts that we see near the end of the vid and it's also close to the color of Ancient drones, which is intentional, and it's meant to place a slight shift in the sound of the music (just as the using of additive dissolve on the clip of John and Rodney walking back to the puddlejumper at the end of the Defiant clip is meant to). This section does represent the vid fairly well -- you've got John stalking forth with a gun, you've got him right there with Rodney (side by side), sparring with Teyla, talking with Elizabeth, you've got him activating the chair, you've got him looking cute and curious. John Sheppard, nutshell. I knew that Atlantis was the 'sitting target' (which is half of their worries, really), but I was able to combine that with John himself, because of the episode 38 Minutes. To imply that this is really new to John. He doesn't know what he's getting by stepping on the other side of that wormhole. He's a sitting target, because he's not anticipating all the dangers that lie on the other side. The next musical section is 'John capturing a wraith'. Which, guh. That look on his face as he's prowling along the outside of the cage? Really, kinda super-mega hot to me. As I was going over this section near the end of the creating process, I noticed that it was lacking in people other than Rodney and John. As I was about to go into an actual, intentional Rodney and John section (because of the Genii), I made the decision to place in clips of Teyla and Elizabeth here, both to remind people that the vid is still about John's relationships with them as well. The brief Rodney-Elizabeth-Teyla moments are where John gets respect from that other person (which is echoed in his respecting them in general when he hands McKay his gun). The next section (life is full of surprises) was always about the Genii. It really does need to be, with those lyrics. And I love the contrasts here, from sunny meadow to dim cavern to huge cave with big machines. Then, at the end, there's this tiny clip of John from Home, because it's a perfect clip of him casually shooting someone, which leads right into the section, which is about John shooting Genii to get his people back. Here, both Elizabeth and Rodney are in peril, and John is fully willing to shoot people to save them. Then, in the next musical interlude, again, I explore John's relationships with his civilians. Rodney gets to save John, Teyla knocks the stick right out of his hands, and Elizabeth is circling and studying him. John is off-balance in this section of the vid, leading up into our next Genii encounter. Now, John and only John is the 'sitting target'. He risks his life, and in the end -- yep, gets nothing. The ZPM is taken away by the Brotherhood and he's just got his gun and his people, just always. Which leads to another situation that make John feel helpless -- what they learned about Teyla in The Gift. So, now, John's off balance, and we... Well, we're back at the beginning of the vid -- John's stalking through the corridor with his gun again, but this time, we see what happens at the end. They manage to capture a wraith prisoner. And it doesn't help them at all. And John ends up killing him with a cold-eyed, tight-lipped rage. In the next section, we see John attempting to lay all of this out to Colonel Everett. But Everett isn't listening, and we go into the final section -- guns are blazing, wraith are dying, but it isn't enough, isn't working. Here, John makes the decision to be the bullet, to sacrifice himself to save his people. And all they can do is sit and wait. We know how it ends, but, in John's point of view, he's doomed, because he will always choose to sacrifice himself if that gives his people a chance of surviving. And all this, he accepted on the flip of a coin.
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