Music: “Un Jour Il Viendra” by Sarah Brightman
Game Studio: Activision/Infinity Ward
Date of Production: January 14, 2008
This is one of my favorite videos that I’ve made, in part because it’s not greatly loved. It was picked up by Machinima when it came out, but the overall comments weren’t the best (although thankfully, some people did enjoy it). I actually just checked the link and saw that there were more comments there. Oh well, at least people’s opinions haven’t changed.
Most of the video game tributes for war-games tend to be very “manly.” You can see what I mean here, here, here, and here. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, only that I found it too obvious. Certainly, one might consider war a “manly” activity - in the worse sense of the word - and perhaps that’s part of the problem. It’s all about anger. In addition, I think the juxtaposition of the beauty of the song with the violence of the clips makes it even more jarring, much like the combination of classical music and violence in A Clockwork Orange.
Sarah Brightman’s song, Un Jour Il Viendra, translates to “One Day He’ll Return” (here’s a translation of the entire song). This certainly seems appropriate given the context. Moreover, it’s a piece of music that was in the movie The English Patient, scored by Gabriel Yared, so the war theme is there.
The idea of the clip is for it to cut between the scene with the soldiers on the helicopters and the overall battle scenes. The helicopter scene is semi-gameplay footage in that the player does have control over where to look but not over the actions. The idea was that you are a soldier going to war and you are expected to encounter all these horrors. In the meantime, there is a song playing that’s about a woman singing for your return. As another against-the-grain move, I slowed down all the action, which is something else that the other clips tend not to do.
The way the helicopters glide across the horizon reminded me of the sea, like whales or some majestic creature, and thought it worked well with the music. I also liked the way the clip ends just when the soldier descends from the helicopter and joins the war, symbolic of a descent into hell but also hopeful that he might return to his loved ones.
Posted by Aaron Chia Yuan Hung at 12:56 AM. Filed under:
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