Vid: Public Eye - All These Things

[thisbluespirit]

Anyway, as you'll have noticed, I've been trying to explain Public Eye since last November and failing. Now I've made a vid and that's the best explanation I have, and I'm happy at last:

All These Things
A Public Eye tribute.
(Length: 4.59 minutes)
"You've lived to be old... It's not a question of years, it's a question of seeing." Frank Marker and a life full of other people's problems.


Ever since I first watched this series, I've felt that a vid was the only way to respond, even though it's 40-50 year old UK TV, incredibly mundane, not pretty, and nearly half of it doesn't exist any more. (I couldn't even include a clip of Frank's set-up and arrest, because the S3 finale "Cross That Palm When We Come To It" was wiped long ago, along with 35 other 1960s episodes.)

It may be a TV series about a run-down private detective who deals only with the mundane sort of cases a real private eye might have taken on (divorce, credit checks, missing persons etc.) but it's a show that's immensely honest and it believes fiercely that you can make gripping TV out of someone buying a fridge or over-ordering carbon paper. The thing is, most of the time, it somehow manages to be right. And the lead actor has one of the most marvellously expressive faces I've seen. The song is over-used, I know, but it's taken me ages to give in and admit it was everything I wanted for the vid.


Notes & Warnings: Clips from S1-7. (Spoilers for S6 episode "The Man Who Said Sorry".) Mix of black & white and colour.

While Public Eye is 1960s/70s TV and not very graphic, the vid does contain some scenes of violence/death/suicide, particularly towards the end. There are also some prison-set scenes at the start.

Public Eye: All These Things from lostspook1 on Vimeo.

Password: frank

Music: "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers
Disclaimer: Done for love, not profit.

Link to vid at YouTube


(ETA: I'm finding the embed is slightly jerky (like YT, though not as bad). It isn't on Vimeo, or in my file. Maybe it's just me, but if it is, try the link instead. It's fine there.)

Song Lyrics:
When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
One more son
If you can hold on
If you can hold on, hold on
I want to stand up, I want to let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I want to shine on in the hearts of men
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out

And when there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
These changes ain't changing me
The cold-hearted boy I used to be

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier (x10)

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the backburner
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

Over and again, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done
(Time, truth, hearts)
If you can hold on
If you can hold on

Comments

[opusculasedfera]

I don't know anything about Public Eye except what's been in your posts, but this was such a good character study. You did a great job with the slow build up of tension and using the song to create a throughline between the more solitary shots of Frank and all the people he becomes involved with.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! I'm glad it worked for people - and thanks for stopping to watch!

[sakana17]

(here via vidding)
I'd never heard of the show but was intrigued by the description. It can be challenging to use source material from this era, so I'm always interested to see how it's done. From this vid I could get a feel for the intensity and drama of the show and the main character. I thought the vid was really well done and it makes me curious to see the series!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! And thanks for taking the time to watch & comment on something like this. :-)

I'm not what anyone could call a vidding expert, and I tend to just try and make what I want to make, regardless of the age - but I have to say, with this series, I could see just watching it that it was, despite its age, very visual in the way it expressed things, and it was part of what made me want to try and vid it.

[clocketpatch]

This vid is so brilliant! Even with only seeing the one episode + your talking about the show, I could figure out a lot of things that were happening and got lots of feels. I love the way you interspersed colour with b&w, angst with joy, and all those great little life moments, and the ending with Frank just walking along the boardwalk.

It's just lovely and I can't think of a more perfect advertisement for the show, because I vaguely wanted to watch it before to know what all the fuss was about, but now I REALLY want to watch it, and am also sad because it doesn't all exist.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! It was so good to find this comment waiting yesterday morning! When I'd finished the vid, I felt (rightly or wrongly), that it was just so much better than anything else I'd done, and really worked - but what I didn't know was what it would look like to someone who didn't know the show. I'd tried to think about that when making it & tried to make sure most clips that were of people showed clear emotion + helped by the lyrics, but I did worry it would just look like random clips of all these different people.

I'm amused about the colour/b&w thing, because before I started - and when I'd got to the speed change and it was all b&w till then - I worried that would look odd, but as soon as I mixed the two, I literally never thought about it again. I turned colour blind or something.

So, thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! And feels! Feels was more than I dared to hope for. ♥

(Also, yes, it is very hard nearly half of it doesn't exist, because I needed a clip of Frank getting arrested for my vid, so that Alfred Burke's face could tell everyone watching that it was a set up. Because it would have done.)

[elviaprose.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful vid! Even not knowing the show, it's wonderful to watch, and your love for these characters comes through so clearly. Stunning work!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you so much, and thanks for taking the time to watch! ♥

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

This is really good! Excellent editing, and I'm glad you went ahead with your original choice of song. It does get used a lot, but if it's right, it's right; and from everything that you've said about Marker, it seems like a perfect choice.

I see that you snuck your broom clip in there! Nice contrast to the violence that came later. It looked oddly like Mrs Mortimer punching Frank towards the end, but I suppose it must have been somebody else with similar hair?

Nice work.

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! And I should partly blame (or thank you?) for bringing it back to mind yet again with your fanmix. ;-)

There was not much danger of me not including the broom or the tangoing. And, heh, no, it's not Mrs Mortimer. Pauline Delany is in that sequence, but as Mrs Jessop at the start of it. Mrs Mortimer never hits anyone, not that we see, anyway!

[oonaseckar.livejournal.com]

I know less than nothing of vidding (my usual disclaimer) so really all I can give is impressions: of the velocity of life for Frank, of endurance by him, buffeted along, of the little bit of warmth he gets out of it! (And how he doesn't really expect much more.) Of the agency he exerts where he can, the participation he insists on, when he could just throw up his hands and abdicate responsibility. (Getting his two penn'orth in, getting his point across.)

Enduring impressions, the mug, the rose, and Mrs Mortimer smiling: maybe the same for Frank? (Oh, and Frank getting duffed up a lot, and seeming pretty resigned to it...)

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! :-)

The velocity is just me being misleading. If I did a more accurate show tribute, at least two minutes would be spent purely on tea/coffee-making, drinking said tea/coffee, and Frank cleaning the office/mending things and standing about on street corners.

Enduring impressions, the mug, the rose, and Mrs Mortimer smiling

♥ (I must be a sentimentalist at heart...)

[liadt]

Very professional looking, well done! I like how you synched the guitar ins with the wobbly kitchen wall cam and Frank not being a soldier (ie getting beaten up). The use of colour was good. I thought it was all going to be b/w and then wham! blue car!

The lyrics sound like they fit right too.

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! Thanks for watching. :-)

As I said above, though, I thought about the issue of mixing b&w with colour a lot before I started... and then as soon as I got going simply ceased to see it and wouldn't have known the car was the first colour clip. (I thought about the other clips a lot, but something in my brain ceased to bother with noticing the differences between colour & not.)

[liadt]

Your unconscious brain is a very clever thing. Students and grey beards would write great meaning into the colour car in essays.

[thisbluespirit]

I mean, I did at one point think about the first colour clip, but I think that was before the car clip was in there, so...

But of course it is all just my unconscious being clever, let me take all the credit and be smug. ;-p

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

Aww, that was lovely. It was sad and sweet and bittersweet. Poor Frank getting beaten up so much. I loved the bits of Frank and Helen holding hands, even though it didn't last. The rose! ♥ Oh, Frank, you know you love Helen - go admit it to her.

It was a really well done video, and really good to watch. Thanks for sharing it.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! (And, whoops, I seem to have inadvertently made you share my very unromantic ship. :lol:) Thanks for taking the time to watch it. ♥

[elisi]

I've had this open in a tab for days and finally got round to watching it, and am now v. curious about the show! Is it on Netflix at all? (You are a brilliant vidder, the beats were easy to follow, even though I've never seen the show.)

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! And thanks so much for watching! I was trying to make it as clear as I could, with the show being so obscure, but of course, you can never be sure till you set it loose to find out.

And the series is out on Network DVD. I know it's not on Netflix in the US, but it might be over here - probably not though, unfortunately. :-/