That it’s so different. That it makes such a bold statement with a slow song that’s so focused on the voice and the lyrics with next to no surrounding music. This haunting atmosphere it evokes, the sort of other-worldliness connected to it. I think it’s one of the strongest promos the show has ever done. It almost feels like the Darkness is singing that song while rolling over the world and wrapping it in chaos and smothering every other sound so that nothing except its voice is to be heard in the silence. No explosions, no fancy fighting scenes but long lingering shots allowing this feeeling to wash – like that wave – over the viewer. And I think it’s amazing. It has so much more weight this way. Yes, to me it feels like the calm within the storm. Freaking perfect!
Agree re: one of the strongest promos they’ve ever done.
It is one of the strongest promos we’ve ever seen precisely because “they” meaning the people who usually make the promos had nothing to do with it. The CW is in charge of promos that go on air. THIS was made by the postproduction staff of Supernatural. I think they were tired of terrible promos and took the initiative. And I think they’re really excited about the new season and super proud so that’s awesome too!
Never has a promo made me so excited about a season (episode – whatever). You can tell it was put together by people who put their hearts into this, who love Supernatural and can’t wait to share their hard work with the fans. God, I hope they do more of these!
“It is one of the strongest promos we’ve ever seen precisely because ‘they’ meaning the people who usually make the promos had nothing to do with it.”
Exactly!
On a semi-related side note, I increasingly have this… hunch… that there is increasingly a difference between “The Supernatural Casual Viewers Are Promised/Given” and “The Supernatural Dedicated Fans Are Promised/Given.” Casual viewers (ideally, according to the CW, young men) here being those who might see a CW promo and tune in for the first time, or who fall in and out of watching based on how good the week’s episode looks, and the CW PR is geared towards getting their eyeballs on the TV screen for ad revenue. Whereas fans (mostly women) are those of us who are really “plugged into” the fandom on the studio side, and who are analyzing this show and have favorite writers and Opinions about the set design and really follow the themes and subplots, and for the most part our eyeballs are gonna be on the screen regardless. We talked a lot last year about how freaking annoying the CW PR was, and how it alienated a lot of Supernatural’s existing fan base (remember that time they called “teenage girls” the worst monsters of all?), and I think that’s what’s happening…
I remember having this thought about a “split canon” for the first time when seeing what didn’t air (i.e., the CW) but still got included on the DVDs (i.e., a product that benefits only the studio financially – the CW doesn’t get a cut of those revenues, as far as I understand it, and same goes for licensed merch and convention fees). Like, who buys DVDs? Fans. Casual viewers don’t do that; they’ll never see any of the stuff that we saw, or listen to the audio commentaries. Who watched the part where Mark Sheppard and Bob Singer talked about Season 10? Fans. Guess who didn’t? Casual viewers. Who’s watching this new S11 promo and will be influenced by its tone as we start watching the season? Fans. It’s not airing where casual viewers will see it; only those who are already plugged into the studio side of things will see it. And casual fans who only watched the CW promo are going to have a very different set of expectations about Season 11′s tone and content – raunchier, less “creeping horror” and instead more “action! guns! women!,” etc. And there’s so much that the set designers and VFX people put into this show that casual viewers aren’t paying attention to, which never becomes part of “their” version of the show. They’re not paying attention to the allusions or the way lighting choices or the color purple have come to mean something symbolically. And there’s tons of stuff said at conventions (or, likewise, there’s meta circulating among fans that points out an allusion to other media or to another point in the show!) that becomes a paratext for how fans but not casual viewers watch the show – we’re told that things like the Collette parallel were accurate, and then we watch with that in mind, while casual viewers don’t.
Anyway. I don’t know what conclusions to draw from this observation.
Yasss! Thank you! All of this is so accurate! Never have I felt this strongly about a promo before. It’s just so damn amazing. I have lost count of how many times I’ve watched it, and I still haven’t had enough. And the song fits so well it physically hurts me! I’m so excited, I’m gonna die of feels.
Tumblr backup 