shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2014-10-19 09:04 am
shallowness) wrote2014-10-19 09:04 am
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End of an era - AoJE
So, without my meaning for it to happen, it became months since I last watched an episode of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre. Perhaps I prefer catching up with webseries rather than watching them live, never mind the transmedia of it all. Last night, because ITV’s Player wouldn’t work (it’s the most convoluted of the players) and I wanted something a little more cosy than BtVS, I finally got around to watching the final episodes of AoJE
Ep 92 Home
Jane’s got her own place, Diana and Mary come to visit and are lovely, if a little loud and dismissive of Simon or not quite getting his issues. Or the weirdness with Jane. Still, it seems like Rose is still a friend to them, which is good. Update on Rochester, but apparently Jane has yet to see him. Hmm. Jane is attempting to be an independent grown-up. Did she get a job or is her uncle’s money financing her at this point? I forget. I forgot how sweet I find Jane.
Ep 93 Steps
Hi, thingy! No longer a maid! Did Grace ever watch the vids? Because why would she hire her as an assistant after that? Granted, we’re reaching lap of honour time, but they never really developed this character, so I didn’t really care if Jane had underestimated her more than she’d realised. At least Jane told her she was filming. Was the filming of the feet meant to be intentional inuniverse?
I was dubious about most of the rest i.e. the silent shot of a blurry Jane and Rochester, with their backs to us, talking in the distance. Why show all of that (or probably I’d have been happier if we’d had a look over the shoulder to acknowledge she’d told him she was filming this)? It was just too long with the visual of them talking and us not being able to hear, even if the body language got interesting eventually. (YT comments suggest they recast the actor which explains a lot.) I’m glad I wasn’t watching this live, as I’d have got really frustrated, because it's an important conversation, and in an ideal world, we'd have got something with the heft of the last dialgoue scene between them.
Ep 94 Revision
Jane does a talk to camera! In which she references how hard it is for her to talk about stuff to people – except that‘s what she’s been doing on the internet all this time!? I think that’s a real problem with transferring books about isolated characters into internet vlogs.
So, we had a round-up of everyone’s lives, a portentous hint that Rochester ‘has changed’, and one side of an upsetting phone call. John, remember him? If you hadn’t read the book, it’d be understandable that you didn’t. They only chose to cut after, and she got a cup of tea in the break, natch, and then chose to film herself calling Rochester.
Some Twitter stuff about Game of Thrones later...
Ep 95 Home
Oho, did they know the last line when they started all this? This was a better episode than I was fearing, given the last two and that they couldn’t get the actor who’d originally played Rochester. (I know I kvetched about the old mumbler, but of all the characters to lose the original actor for short of Jane herself, and it seemed like Alysson Hall was at the heart of the project!?) I liked the idea of Rochester playing cameraman again and at least the hands gave us more physical presence. I liked that there was a bit more effort to the final episode – domesticity and tea-making, outdoorsyness and clips of everyone, even if I’m not convinced that everyone Jane met = her family. Diana and Mary, yes, Adela and Rochester, too, obviously. But...
Still, ‘Dear Viewer, I made a home’ and Jane reaching a decisive point as a character where she didn’t need to use the videos any more were quite satisfying (not as satisfying as it could have been. Nowhere near as satisfying as LBD, or even the book).
Ah well, I’m glad I got there. It’s really fed my interest in watching more modern day adaptations of novels, be that on the web or not, showed that there were alternate ways to slavishly copying LBD, even if AOJE’s ambition was sometimes greater than its means, and even if it never fully got to grips with how to reconcile the plot with the modern setting or how the characters would realistically be interacting with the videos/filming, which I’m not convinced LBD did either.
I wonder if there's fix-it fic regarding the final episodes or if the writers lost interest.
EDIT: If you want to watch The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, go here for the videos and Storified stuff.
Ep 92 Home
Jane’s got her own place, Diana and Mary come to visit and are lovely, if a little loud and dismissive of Simon or not quite getting his issues. Or the weirdness with Jane. Still, it seems like Rose is still a friend to them, which is good. Update on Rochester, but apparently Jane has yet to see him. Hmm. Jane is attempting to be an independent grown-up. Did she get a job or is her uncle’s money financing her at this point? I forget. I forgot how sweet I find Jane.
Ep 93 Steps
Hi, thingy! No longer a maid! Did Grace ever watch the vids? Because why would she hire her as an assistant after that? Granted, we’re reaching lap of honour time, but they never really developed this character, so I didn’t really care if Jane had underestimated her more than she’d realised. At least Jane told her she was filming. Was the filming of the feet meant to be intentional inuniverse?
I was dubious about most of the rest i.e. the silent shot of a blurry Jane and Rochester, with their backs to us, talking in the distance. Why show all of that (or probably I’d have been happier if we’d had a look over the shoulder to acknowledge she’d told him she was filming this)? It was just too long with the visual of them talking and us not being able to hear, even if the body language got interesting eventually. (YT comments suggest they recast the actor which explains a lot.) I’m glad I wasn’t watching this live, as I’d have got really frustrated, because it's an important conversation, and in an ideal world, we'd have got something with the heft of the last dialgoue scene between them.
Ep 94 Revision
Jane does a talk to camera! In which she references how hard it is for her to talk about stuff to people – except that‘s what she’s been doing on the internet all this time!? I think that’s a real problem with transferring books about isolated characters into internet vlogs.
So, we had a round-up of everyone’s lives, a portentous hint that Rochester ‘has changed’, and one side of an upsetting phone call. John, remember him? If you hadn’t read the book, it’d be understandable that you didn’t. They only chose to cut after, and she got a cup of tea in the break, natch, and then chose to film herself calling Rochester.
Some Twitter stuff about Game of Thrones later...
Ep 95 Home
Oho, did they know the last line when they started all this? This was a better episode than I was fearing, given the last two and that they couldn’t get the actor who’d originally played Rochester. (I know I kvetched about the old mumbler, but of all the characters to lose the original actor for short of Jane herself, and it seemed like Alysson Hall was at the heart of the project!?) I liked the idea of Rochester playing cameraman again and at least the hands gave us more physical presence. I liked that there was a bit more effort to the final episode – domesticity and tea-making, outdoorsyness and clips of everyone, even if I’m not convinced that everyone Jane met = her family. Diana and Mary, yes, Adela and Rochester, too, obviously. But...
Still, ‘Dear Viewer, I made a home’ and Jane reaching a decisive point as a character where she didn’t need to use the videos any more were quite satisfying (not as satisfying as it could have been. Nowhere near as satisfying as LBD, or even the book).
Ah well, I’m glad I got there. It’s really fed my interest in watching more modern day adaptations of novels, be that on the web or not, showed that there were alternate ways to slavishly copying LBD, even if AOJE’s ambition was sometimes greater than its means, and even if it never fully got to grips with how to reconcile the plot with the modern setting or how the characters would realistically be interacting with the videos/filming, which I’m not convinced LBD did either.
I wonder if there's fix-it fic regarding the final episodes or if the writers lost interest.
EDIT: If you want to watch The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, go here for the videos and Storified stuff.