jetpack_monkey | VID: Blow (The Prisoner)

Title: Blow
Source: The Prisoner (1967)
Song: Ke$ha - Blow
Made for:

sweetestdrain

Spoilers: The whole series.
Warnings: Some quick cuts. Gun violence with muzzle flash.

Summary: By hook or by crook, this place about to blow.

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Vimeo password: likeblazes

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This premiered at VidUKon 2013, my very first VidUKon premiere (and I believe the only time I've had a vid show there ever). I was sad I could not be there to see it with the crowd. Oh well.

So, when I was 19? 20? A friend sat me down with the first couple episodes of The Prisoner and just said, "Watch." And I did. And then I borrowed his box set and watched the rest. It was just so... weird. And surreal. And it had a very strong point of view that I didn't always agree with, necessarily, but I felt the passion behind the arguments and I never felt put out by the conflict of ideals. Then the ending came and it's like "Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?" Seriously. What. I had no idea what I just saw, but I felt so invigorated by not understanding.

Long story short, this sucker's lived in my brain this whole time. And what's most fascinating to me has always been Number 2. Different actors (nearly) every week, different personalities, different approaches... But always the same title and always the same goal.

And they are insidious. Their job is bend Number 6 without breaking him because (conveniently) he is far too valuable to scar permanently. So what do they do? They let him have his little escape plans for the first half of the series. They try using them to their own advantage, although Number 6 is a little too clever for that. Then, when they get fed up with his escape attempts, they spend an entire episode ("Many Happy Returns") sending him a very specific message -- leaving here is possible. Escape is not.

The message succeeds; Number 6 stops trying to escape after that point. But blocking off Number 6's singular obsession -- and doing it by flanking him successfully in the ongoing mind game -- is ultimately their undoing. Number 6 realizes at that point that the only way to leave the Village is to completely undo it. And so the rest of the series (where it's not ridiculous divergences that came from ITC ordering more episodes than McGoohan wanted to make) is a series of episodes where 2 tries to break 6 and 6 tries to break 2 (and by extension, the Village).

Basically, I always wanted to do a Number 2 vid, even bearing in mind that the multiple-actors-same-role thing would be tricky to pull off (this isn't Doctor Who, after all -- The Prisoner doesn't have nearly the same level of popularity, nor does it have easy visual markers like regenerations).

jumpercut was a huge Prisoner fan (check out her vid) and we spent some time babbling about the series there and on IRC afterward. And I just... something clicked. So that's why it's for her. Because I might have come up with the idea for the vid before we became close friends, but she's the primary reason that there is a finished vid at all.

Thanks to Sweetestdrain and

absolutedestiny for valuable betaing and notes. Thanks to VidUKon for showing my vid.

Be seeing you.