Guy and Marian: Is This Love?

The thing that's kept me interested in the new Robin Hood series is the fascinating dynamic between Guy of Gisborne (the wonderfully smouldering Richard Armitage) and Marian of Knighton (the beautiful Lucy Griffiths). I wanted to create a video that explored the destructive yet passionate nature of Guy's love for Marian, so I included a number of scenes where fire played a key note. I was particularly pleased with the overlaid scenes in this video, which include fire as a metaphor for the passion Guy feels but also the danger that this passion brings for Marian.

Yorkshirewench's wonderful Guy/Marian video to Thomas Newman's Any Other Name was primarily what inspired me to create my own video. To me, her video is utter perfection, and is on the top 25 most played list on my ipod because of its sheer wonderfulness, both in terms of timing and matching of music, dialogue and images. I hugely recommend watching it, and her other videos, which can be found on youtube and on her website.

This video is from Guy's point of view, but I liked the way that Marian's expressions show so much conflict in certain scenes as well. One of the things that Lucy does so well in her role as Marian is to communicate the conflict that Marian feels as she tries to reconcile her love for Robin with the feelings that Guy evokes within her, and I wanted to pay tribute to this. Richard plays Gisborne's complex emotions so well - at once conflicted because of his loyalty to Nottingham and also because he has a chance of real redemption in his relationship with Marian.

The song has long been a favourite of mine, and something about Richard's demeanour in the first four episodes of the series suggested "80s rock ballad!". I think it's the smouldering ;). Is This Love is a wonderful song about the doubts and joys that love can bring, and it seemed to work really well for Gisborne. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed making it :)