Highlander vid: God's Gonna Cut You Down

[sholio]

... um, I made a thing? Many thanks to gnine for the vid beta! Let me know if you have any trouble viewing/downloading and I'll see what I can do.

Title: God's Gonna Cut You Down
Artist: Johnny Cash
Fandom: Highlander
Summary: Methos & Cassandra episode/character vid for "Comes a Horseman" and "Revelations 6:8". (Massive spoilers for both episodes, obviously.)
Content Warning: Contains (non-graphic) scenes of sexual assault

Right-click and download MP4 (32 Mb)

Streaming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rjL2X0PyE0

ETA: Since I'm cross-posting this to vidding comms, a note for new people coming in - I'm watching the series for the first time, so please no spoilers for late season five/season six in comments? Thank you!

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/336445.html with comments.

Comments

[cynatnite.livejournal.com]

I so love this vid. The music worked perfectly! Great Job!

[sholio]

Thank you so much! :) I'd been toying with various ideas for HL vids, and then this song came up in iTunes right after I watched the Horseman eps, and bam, that was it! I'm glad you liked it!

[cynatnite.livejournal.com]

I friended you. I hope that's okay:)

[sholio]

It's perfectly fine; it's always friending/defriending amnesty around here. :) Expect more HL squee posts to come!

[shendara.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful! HL was my first fandom and I still love it. The song is just perfect. I think I'll have to rewatch a few episodes...

Thank you!

[sholio]

Thank you very much! I'm currently discovering the show for the first time, and loving it. This song came up on my iTunes playlist right after I'd watched the Horsemen episodes, and I immediately knew that I had to vid those episodes to it.

[shendara.livejournal.com]

I wish I could discover the show for the first time again - it was a wonderful experience back then and that was the German version. *g* It was my fandom life for about three or four years.

I read your episode reactions and it was so much fun watching you fall for Duncan and Co. :) I started with seasons 5 and 6 so I never could experience the gradual build-up in the storyline(s).

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaaaaah *flails* okay this vid is joining my list of FAVOURITE HIGHLANDER VIDS EVER. I need to go watch it about ten million more times.

[sholio]

Awwww, thank you so much! *bounces*

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

I am making GOOD PROGRESS on watching this ten million times, and I just had to come back and tell you how much I love the ending sequence, and also the bit where it goes back and forth between the hourglass and the four horsemen walking in a line. And the bit where Cassandra's sword gleams at the first instance of "god". And, um, all of it. (and the song is SO PERFECT. I'd already been familiar with the song, and liked it, but now it's never going to be about anything but Highlander to me.)

[sholio]

*squees* Thank you! Really, this comment makes me all happy and bouncy. :D This was one of those rare vids where everything fell into place in the most amazing way; it just all worked, and every time I'd get stuck on a section (I knew I wanted to use the hourglass somewhere, for example; I just couldn't figure out where) I'd go watch more bits of the episode and find the perfect clip to juxtapose it with. :D Anyway, I'm so glad you like it! (I think that song is going to be forever associated with Methos in my head now, too. *g*)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Oh, very cool - Gnine mentioned she was beta'ing this so I was looking forward to it, and it works awesomely - great song for it, and beautiful clip choices!

[sholio]

Squee! I'm glad you liked it; this vid has totally eaten my brain for the last few days. Like I said to her in one of my emails, it's very nice not to have Johnny Cash playing on a constant loop in my head. *g*

[trobadora]

Hee! This is fantastic. ♥

[sholio]

Thank you! ♥ I'm glad you liked it!

[aislingde.livejournal.com]

This vid is fantastic.

I really love it. The way you show Mehtos and his relation to the other is great.

[sholio]

Thank you very much! I'm so happy you liked it - and that's a pretty icon, too. :)

[aislingde.livejournal.com]

Thanks, it's one of the first I've ever made.

Highlander was my first fandom and I'm still a little bit in love ;-)

[gnine.livejournal.com]

Was so happy to beta this for you and continue to love it, works so perfectly! ^__^ I look forward to more from you ^_-

[sholio]

Thank you so much, again, for the beta! *hugs* I did tweak that one trouble spot you pointed out; I think it was that long clip of Cassandra that was causing pacing issues, so I tried breaking it up a bit -- I'm still not entirely happy with it, but looking at both versions I think it hits the beats better...

I had so much fun making this, and yeah, I think there will be more HL vids in my future. ^_^ (There's just so much pretty! How can I not wallow in the pretty?)

[sheron]

I hardly ever watch vids so I don't know if I'll give this a go, but I'm certainly tempted XD

[sholio]

Hee! It has METHOS in it! *tempts*

(But some people just aren't vid people. I understand that!)

[ladysorka]

Oh, this works wonderfully. It's really a perfect song choice. (And, amazingly, used a bunch of clips cut in ways I haven't seen 100 times before in other Highlander vids, which is kind of impressive in and of itself.)

[sholio]

Thank you very much! And I'm delighted to hear that about the clips; I haven't really watched HL vids much at all, but I suspected that these would be very heavily-vidded episodes. *g* One of the things I was trying to do with the vid was avoid scenes that I figured were probably in a million vids already (the confrontation at the car, for example) or else rework the clips so that I wasn't just doing a straight retelling of the episode.

[valoise.livejournal.com]

Very nice!

[sholio]

Thank you! :)

[liz-mo.livejournal.com]

Oh, great vid! great new look on things and I love the fresh use of some images.
Sadly the download isn't working for me. Don't know whether it's my ancient WIn XP but I get 31 MB all right and when I try to unzip the file, it says CRC error :(
Any idea?

[sholio]

Thank you very much! -- but oh no on the download! Um. I think (not completely sure) that a CRC error means that some of the data was corrupted when downloading, so perhaps try downloading again and see if it'll unzip? If not, let me know and I can upload an unzipped MP4 for you (... um, can you play MP4s?) and see if that downloads any better.

Another thing is that you can use http://www.keepvid.com to download the Youtube file. The quality won't be quite as good, but it might download better for you!

I'm sorry you're having trouble!

[liz-mo.livejournal.com]

Tried it a second time. No use :(
It unzips to a folder named _MACOSX with the size of 1KB.
It might be my Unzipper or something.
An unzipped file would be great, my VLC should be able to read anything, I just updated it to the newest version.

And no worries!
I am always happy when people put up vids to download! I like to keep my favourites as "hard" copy (so to speak), in case I have no net or YT decides to delete things or ...

[sholio]

Okay, I uploaded an unzipped version, so let's see if this works better! :) Right-click and download from this link: http://www.sholiofic.com/misc/temp/Highlander-GodsGonnaCut.mp4

[liz-mo.livejournal.com]

Yup, works! Thank you oh so much! Watched it twice more right away :)
Great choice for a song!

[sholio]

Wonderful! I'm glad it worked -- and thank you!

[tei-0.livejournal.com]

EEEEE! Here because sophia_sol recced the hell out of this and she was RIGHT TO DO SO because it is awesome. The song is perfect, and I love how it's not just about Methos, either, the "blame", if you can call it that, really seems to shift through the whole thing. Which makes sense because those episodes left me, at least, completely disoriented in terms of where the show's internal morality compass was supposed to be, until I realized that it doesn't really have one, which I love. Also, the way the clips are kind of... percussive, I guess? Really fits the music well. Um. I'm sure there's a vidding term that I don't know for that, but yeah!

Er and I've friended you because, um, Highlander! I hope you don't mind.

[sholio]

Squee, thank you so much! :) I'm absolutely delighted that you liked it, and, yeah, the shifting blame was exactly what I wanted to do, because that was one of the things I loved most about the episode too -- that it never said "Here's the bad guy, this is who you should be rooting for" but instead gave us a much more complex, nuanced picture. (And yeah, friending is fine - hi! :))

[sentientcitizen]

So I don't normally comment on vids, because I am vidding fandom's biggest lurker, but THIS VID. I want to draw little hearts around it in my notebook with Ms. Essie Gonna-Cut-You-Down* written in the margins, or something. I have watched it exactly way too many times when I should be studying for exams. Consequently, I think my study partner might shoot me if I hum the tune even one more time. So, you know. Thank-you. And also you are wonderful. And, um, I'm going to go fangirl quietly in a corner, now, where it won't freak anyone out. (This is why I don't comment very often.) BUT. Yes. Brilliant vid. Makes me swoon with glee, etc.

*Most badass pen name ever y/y?

[sholio]

Heeeee, this is the best feedback EVAR; thank you so much! I am completely delighted that you liked it so much. *bounces* (And, yes, I am terrible at giving vid feedback too, which makes me all the happier that you took the time to feedback mine -- because I know how hard it is to get ME to do it!)

*Most badass pen name ever y/y?

Oh, absolutely. :D

[derry667.livejournal.com]

You've made a Highlander vid! And from the content, I see that you have now seen THOSE episodes. I have read some of your HL discussions with interest but not for a week or so coz I'm in the UK for a conference (or two). So I will have to pop back now that you've seen those crucial episodes.

[derry667.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I love the vid. Forgot to say. (face palm)

[sholio]

Thank you! That makes me blush and squeak, coming from you ... (Have I mentioned lately that I've watched your Rory-Amy-Doctor vid over and over and OVER again? *g*)

And, yeah, I've seen the whole show now. I had some ups and downs with Methos along the way, but I've settled into loving the character again. Actually, I'm amazed how hard the show has grabbed me; I think the last thing I fell for to this extent was SGA, and, well, look how that turned out!

[derry667.livejournal.com]

I kind of thought you might have had those "ups and downs" with Methos.

In the end, I like him because he's not squeaky clean but he neither denies nor embraces his dark side. It's there. It happened. He takes responsibility for it, in a way, even though he does want to face up to all of the consequences.

Although, it does make you think a bit about the real world corollary and what sort of acts are unforgivable and how much can a person change and what does that change count for in terms of forgiveness. One example would be, how far should centenarian Nazi war criminals be pursued? I only ever lurked in the outskirts of HL fandom (and long after the show had finished) but there seemed to be a very vocal group painting Cassandra as an insane vindictive woman who should obviously forgive Methos. But how many would say that about people who suffered similar losses to Nazi atrocities in WWII?

Anyways... I'm glad you are still enjoying the Doctor Who vid. I'm working on one for Sherlock at the moment. I dunno if you've seen that show. There's only 3x90min eps and I think you'd adore Martin Freeman's take on John Watson. But hey, you're just embarking on an SGA style fan frenzy? You might be bit busy with that one. LOL!

Oh, but I just found a vid that I think you'd adore. It's about the women of Doctor Who (going right back to the 60s) to the tune "Just A Girl" by No Doubt. You can find it here (http://odessie.livejournal.com/25092.html). I've downloaded and already converted it to a format for my ipod to watch repeatedly. I think you will too.

[sholio]

Oh, yes, I've seen that DW vid and really liked it! (Have you seen this DW vid yet? It's another one that's definitely going in my must-rewatch folder ...)

I haven't seen Sherlock yet, though quite a bit of my flist seems to be quite gone for it. Eventually I'll succumb, I'm sure! But, yeah, I don't think I have room for a new shiny thing in my fannish brainspace yet. Once my Highlander frenzy dies down, I'll try to remember to give Sherlock a try.

About Methos - Yes! I love that the show doesn't try to paper over his dark past and his flaws; it doesn't try to pretend that none of that matters anymore, and that he's a completely different person. It does raise a lot of issues about where to draw the line - at what point is a person absolved of their past crimes? The Nazi war criminal analogy is a good one, I think. There's not an easy answer to it; it's a massively complex situation.

And I did think that the show, if not the fandom, did a pretty good job of handling the complexity of a situation like that. I don't think I would have liked Methos half so much if the show had tried to present him as a completely changed man and an innocent victim of Cassandra's malice - like some of the fandom does - but they didn't. Neither, however, does he wallow in angst and guilt about it, or devote his life to atoning, or anything like that. It happened, it's done, and he's simply trying not to be that person anymore. I liked the matter-of-factness to it. Like you said, he neither denies nor embraces his dark side; it just is.

[eumelkeks.livejournal.com]

What a glorious and unexpected find! Thank you for sharing this video!

[sholio]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

Great vid! Methos is love, especially as a Horseman. <3

[sholio]

Thank you very much! :)

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

Linked via eumelkeks. AWESOME.

[sholio]

Thank you so much!

[genteelrebel.livejournal.com]

Oooo, brilliant!

Liz_mo recently sent me a message praising your vids to the hills--this is the first one I've watched, but oh, I am so in agreement with her. :) Wow. Lovely song choice, and you really have managed a very unique take on the Horseman story. I especially loved the ending, with the clip of Cassandra raising that ax over Methos's head, then the flashback to what he did to her-that juxtaposition of images really made me feel like I'd just been hit in the stomach (and believe it or not, I mean that as a compliment *G*! I've ficced that scene several times from Duncan and Methos's POV, but never Cassandra's. So I am in awe that you were able to make me feel it from her POV in such a visceral way--bravo!) And then comes the final image, with her walking away...pure genius. Thank you for a wonderful 2 minutes!

[sholio]

*blush* Thank you so much for the fabulous comment, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the vid! I admit that I was a little nervous about vidding an episode that has been addressed so often in the fandom, but I had this vid in my head and it just had to get out. *g* Anyway, thank you so much. :)