Full of Grace
| Vid | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Full of Grace |
| Creator: | Morgan Dawn & Justine Bennett |
| Date: | Feb 1998 |
| Format: | VHS video |
| Length: | 3:54 |
| Music: | "Full of Grace" by Sara McClaughlin |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | Due South |
| Footage: | |
| URL: | http://archiveofourown.org/works/8972914 |
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Full of Grace is a Due South fanvid that focuses on the Fraser/Vecchio relationship. It attempts to provide context to the departure of the Ray Vecchio character from the TV series at the end of the second season. The vid offers several points of view shifts starting with Benton Fraser and ending with Ray Vecchio.
Vidder's notes: 4 months after we made the vid, the show ended. During the season finale, they played this song, leaving us with an eerie sense we’d tapped into the show’s gestalt mind."
In 1998, when season 2 of the TV ended using the same song, vidder Morgan Dawn posted the following to the Virgule-L mailing list. It is quoted here with permission:
Wow. Just watched the first part of the season finale. It is very strange to see that perfect song you selected for expressing the relationship between Benny and Ray show up in the show expressing the relationship between Benny and Ray.We are so used to building off of what we see on the screen in fan fic. To see your vision as part of canon with all new footage expressing your thoughts -- it is eerie.
(Ps. For those of you who haven't been following Due South, my vid partner and I, Justine Bennet, did a Due South songvid for Escapade that used the song, "Full of Grace". The same song was used in this weeks Due South episode when Benny and Ray are finally reunited.)
Morgan Dawn ("I know I can love you much better than this. Full of Grace")[1]
Reactions/Reviews
- described by Sandy Herrold as "one of the most beautiful, heartwrenching vids I have ever seen....The perfect mourning song for the Vecchio lovers."
- I cried. This was devastating. What a tremendous eulogy." ~ Escapade vid show organizers
- In 1999, the vid was discussed on the Virgule-L mailing list and one of the vidder's offered more background on the vid:
"[At Revelcon there] was an achingly poignant video to Sarah McLachlan's melancholy "Full of Grace" (the one that goes, "I could have loved you better than this"), in which Fraser and Ray-1 seem to be gradually, inexorably, drawn apart. Lots of windswept frozen landscapes and melancholy exchanges of glances. Sigh."Interesting twist on the vid. I don't think when Justine and I made it we ever thought that we were making a statement about Ray2. I wanted to make a statement about how unhappy I was with the loss of Ray1: sorta of like, well, if you're going to take him away from us, we'll show you how to take him away from us. Ha!
Maybe my co-vidder will have other ideas on it. But the best part of making vids/writing stories is that your viewers/readers bring their own interpretation to your work.[2]
- In 2002, the vid was again discussed on the vidder mailing list:
[gwyneth]: "This is one of my desert island vids. One of the fascinating things for me is how they handled character focus in this vid -- as a non-fan of the show, you might not have been able to catch it, but we move from Fraser to Ray in these cool parallels with women they've been deeply affected by on matching lines, and it makes the impact of their loneliness hit even harder for each section of the vid. It's just goregous. And the shot of Fraser sitting there at his table talking to Dief still wrecks me every time. It shouldn't be so heartbreaking, but its position in the vid makes it devastating -- as does the simple shot of Ray wiping condensation from the car window. Morgan told me that was mostly a filler shot, that they didn't know what else to put there, but it works so gorgeously because it's such a simple image that, put against the lyrics, becomes so much more powerful."[3]
- Another fan commented as part of that same discussion:"I've always been astounded at the spectacular interpretation of the lyric "I'm pulled down by the undertow" in this instance. The vidder shows each man's attraction to women who are, in one way or another, dangerous for them to be involved with, but does it with a melancholy, supported by the music, that seamlessly meshes with the overtones of the series and yet expounds upon it at the same time. This is one of the vids I would use as an example for a panel on the meaning of lyrics within the context of the vid you've chosen to make."[4]