Sometimes I shouldn't use words

Title: Last Chance Texaco
Artist: Ricki Lee Jones
Fandom Caprica (episodes 1-13)
Characters Graystones
Warnings: Flashing lights, self harm, suicidal ideation
Format: DivX
Size: 49.1 MB

Summary: She’s not there


Download from here (Right/control click and save target as)

( Notes )
( Lyrics )

I finished my festivid! It's the first vid I've ever made specifically for a challenge, which was a deeply scary concept at first (what if I can't think of anything, what if it sucks) but it worked out fine. Much like ordinary vidding except for actually getting made instead of floating around as a brain vid before gradually fading into virtual nothingness. Also the parts that were hard or hardly formed in the brain version just flowed easily onto the screen and the parts I thought I had nailed were as hard as. Lyrics are not your friend when vidding. I need this bludgeoned into me with a very blunt instrument and speaking of blunt instruments, a rec:

Ego by cappylicious In which Arthur Pendragon is totally worthy of Beyoncé Knowles.

Other, non-instrumental, vid recs:

Some Time Around Midnight by bop_radar When Lee met Kara and was doomed. For three minutes feel how that feels.

Black Velvet by wistful_fever Kurt brings the living colour.

This weekend I did ALL the laundry AND signed up for festivids (fan_eunice explains what and why) AND realised that the UK rights for the LXD dancing/superhero/web series had come through and I could download it from iTunes. Yay!

LXD thoughts: (  Like dolphins can swim )

Title: I’m Yours
Artist: Jason Mraz
Fandom/Characters/Pairings: Glee/Original glee kids
Warnings: Slushie abuse and limelight flicker
Format: DivX
Size: 49.1 MB

Summary: There’s no people like show people.

Extreme thanks to anoel for being a fabulous beta


Download from here (Right/control click and save target as)


There’s nothing ironic about feedback

( Notes )
( Lyrics )

Reading the impassioned debates currently surrounding the Vividcon policy statement I’m reminded of previous discussion about whether a person’s online journal should be considered public or private space. I think the faultline creating some (but not all) of this VVC related discord is similar. Vividcon is a conference, anyone can register, as of now it has a policy statement. In those ways it looks like a public space but in many others and to many others I think it feels more like, not private space maybe but a homely one. Not family homely, at least not biological family homely but created family maybe. Like Scooby space for lack of an existing word and because, to a child of the seventies, Scooby is a prefix that makes things sound friendly.

Since much of the anger began around issues of disability and access, I’ll use a disability related analogy. My kids go to a special school. It’s a good special school that for the last three years is housed in a purpose-built building (of the kind the current Lib-Con government is busy removing funding for the construction of). The building makes things easier for ASD and learning disabled children. The classrooms can be easily sub-divided to allow small group or one-on-one teaching. There are special rooms where students can go to chill out, there are visual timetables everywhere. For those with physical difficulties all parts of the school are fully wheelchair accessible. The space, all by itself, does a lot to make the world an easier, more navigable place for the children there.

Our house is not purpose built. We don’t have visual timetables or a chill out room or many of the other facilities they have at the school but our house is not an institution, it’s a home and where the space can’t do the work needed to make things good the people do it instead. We do it or at least we try. Similarly when visiting places if they’re public places, zoos, museums, parks, amusement parks we read the information and the policies and if they sound like there might be a problem or it’s expensive and there’s no disabled discount we don’t go. We could contact the people in charge and make personal enquires but often it’s simpler just to go somewhere else. If we’re visiting someone else’s home for a party or a barbecue or a dinner, however, we don’t research its accessibility on the internet or ask to see their policies, we talk to the hosts with the straight forward expectation that they will be hospitable. Again, in Scooby spaces people do the work that buildings and best practice recommendations do in public spaces.

So what of Vividcon, public or Scooby? I think the problem is that the answer very much depends on who’s asking. From all I’ve read of the history it began (and not so long ago, 2004?) as a very “let’s put this show on in our barn” operation, in other words totally Scooby (Mickey and Judy = Shaggy and Velma or Fred and Daffny. Dicusss). But it grew and grew and vidding has grown and grown and while some people come to Vividcon the old way, through getting to know other vidders others get to hear of its reputation long before they (virtually) meet the people. It’s become an institution without maybe feeling like one and for those who don’t feel it being judged as an institution is as discomforting and hurtful as if the OFSTED inspector were to arrive on your doorstep to tell you you were a failing home. Meanwhile the response to that probably makes those who read the policy and quite reasonably judged it on its institutional merits feel like they’re being excluded from High Table or the Senior Common Room because their face (or body) doesn’t fit and they don’t know the right people and the right people don't want to know them, which is equally hurtful and discomforting.

January is the teachingest month, February isn’t much better and what fandom time I had has largely been funnelled into making the Summer Glau vid of ass-kicking (mostly mine). But now it’s done, so time to start savouring all those other-people productions, which have been piling up on the hard drive waiting to be fed back and recced.

Wicked Game by obsessive24 Third time is the charm Dee. You loved Billy and then Lee but falling for hope, for that dream of earth, was the real killer.

Mr Blue Sky by charmax who always makes the best robot vids. Robot hands, hands of love. Concentrate of WALL-E, one drop to save a world.

I Will Follow Savannah Weaver saves her world with duckies and happy feet.

Past in Present by sol_se makes me want to play hockey. Even though every time we did play (at school) it rained. Like Glastonbury without music, drugs or choreography. In this vid still the best days of your life.

Etheric Messages by thuviaptarth Alchemical beginnings A pale woman with mermaid hair. The dead sing. The drowned world speaks to her in patterns. What’s important is what’s missing.

Happy 2010 to all who made it this far. And it’s vid meme time.

2009 turned out to be a year of record productivity. I made four vids and a vid commentary vid. Which is somewhere between one and a half and double the number I usually get to make. In order of release they were:

Nobody Loves You T:SCC (Ellison and Weaver mostly)

Youkali and Mandalay Dollhouse (contrasting doll and client manifestos to Kurt Weill songs)

Babies commentary Battlestar Galactica, Pulp and biology porn (spoken commentary with accompanying visuals on my first BSG vid)

Riots Black Narcissus (nuns on the run)

My favorite video this year (of my own): Riots. Because I only made it a month ago and it only took 4 days, (not counting clipping). It almost vidded itself. And I think of all my vids it most resembles what I thought it would look like in my head. I think all I was trying to do was to recreate the memory of a film I hadn’t seen for twenty years. Usually memories are deceptive, you remember scenes that never happened or ones that did as being much less choppy than they really are and the colours being brighter and the movement more fluid but with this movie none of that turned out to be a problem. The good stuff was just as good as I remembered it.

My least favorite:
 Youkali. Because it’s not quite finished but I released it anyway because I had finished Mandalay and wanted to be done with them both. I do like the first three quarters of Youkali but the ending needs serious work still. If I ever get around to remastering I might do that but remastering is all the tedious clipping related parts of viding and none of the fun so it probably won’t happen. Which is a shame because I still like the concept behind both of those vids a lot.

Most successful video: Nobody Loves You. I had a period in the summer of being dissatisfied with this vid although the response was orders of magnitude bigger than any of the others this year. Possibly because of that but more because there were so many brilliant SCC/Terminator vids being released and it wasn’t any of them. Now though I’ve finally got the S2 DVDs and re-watching brings back all the memories of why I made this particular vid so I like it again.

Video most under appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: In terms of comment numbers that would be Riots but in terms of downloads:comments ratio they’re probably all quite similar. I don’t feel any of my vids were under appreciated this year, someone had something interesting to say about each of them.

Most fun video to make: Mandalay. It was nasty and funny, at least I thought it was funny. There was a being a bad, bad person rush to a lot of the making of it and also I felt like I got lucky with how Epitaph One turned out. I made the vid gambling that it would give me an ending I could use and in the end it paid off.

Hardest video to make:
 They were all hard. Nobody was hard because I made it while the series was running and never knew how it was going to end. Also technically because it involved masks, which I have real trouble grasping for some reason. Youkali was hard because I’ve never vidded tango and came close to giving up two bars in because I just couldn’t get anything to flow. Mandalay was hard because comedy is always hard and even Riots, which wasn’t funny at all, had major codec issues in the clipping phase. I just couldn’t get the dvd files to demux to anything usable.

The things I've learned this year: 
It’s been an experimental/self-indulgent year. A year of not getting betaed because I mostly just wanted to play with stuff. So I learned that without betas things are less good than they could be. I’ve learned what it’s like to work with lots of different music and even with me talking substituting for music, which was weird. I’ve learned some tech –I think I’m OK with masks now as long as I stick to simple geometric shapes. With the possible exception of Nobody it’s been an emotionally detached year, a year in the comfort zone. I think I’ve grown destructively, I’ve got better at dissecting the source and reassembling it to make pretty patterns, but not creatively.

Things to work on in 2010: Growing creatively, being less about the clever and more about emotions again. I have three ideas for vids. One I love the song and it’s another old(ish) movie source but very violent and quite manly which may be hard. The second works out a long standing obsession with Hollywood so although it’s kind of meta it’s personal as well. And thirdly a Sarah Connor vid. My Sarah and therefore a little too personal. Also scary because there are such good, definitive Sarah vids out there already. Sarah Connor is Patti Smith QED and she can be Mary and Judy Garland but I think Sarah contains multitudes. I think she could be Amelia Earhart too.

I don’t think I should even pretend to think about taking part in any kind of vid exchange –the fastest one I’ve ever made took 3 months and that’s not including all the early brain-vidding part of the process. Although it’s probably a good thing that someone just posted a Supernatural vid to Paul McCartney’s Blackbird because for a short while I had this overwhelming urge to commit the world’s first Lord King Dollhouse Meta Episodic Bad Vid (it’s about a BIRD. A *BLACK* BIRD). That wouldn’t take 3 months.

Trying to think of rare fandoms to nominate, request or offer for a virtual version of festivids is still fun though.

TV
Boys from the Black Stuff/GBH

Bleak House (Diana Rigg and Gillian Anderson versions)

Prime Suspect

Black Books, Blackadder, The Young Ones, The Royale Family

The Terry Gilliam animations in Monty Python

David Attenborough’s Life on Earth and all the series that came after

Noggin the Nog (because I have the DVDs, but all things Postgate)

Northern Exposure

V (the original series –must include Diana eating live rodents and the birth scene)


Movies
Women of Pixar

Powell and Pressburger movies (except for Black Narcissus because I’m working on one for that and don't want to jinx it)

Movies in which Cary Grant dresses up in women’s clothing

Wings of Desire

Night of the Demon (omitting the last 3 minutes)

Bell, Book and Candle/Vertigo (aka Kim Novak is hot)

Notorious

Robin Hood movies (not the Kevin Costner one but definitely the Sean Connery/Audrey Hepburn one)

Three Women

Dirty Pretty Things

I have some thoughts on some vids. First thought is about sisabet’s Comfortably Numb , which I am discomforted to have to admit to not recognizing as a cover of a Pink Floyd song (seriously, listening to prog rock was practically illegal in the peri-post punk era). Suddenly it makes so much sense (and I wish I’d seen it on a big screen because that grid work needs scale to fully appreciate – it’s a *big* vid).

Second though is about Land by sweetestdrain. Because the sea of possibilities isn’t just about the in-story, no fate but what we make, but also about this being a story that’s constantly retold. Harlan Ellison successfully sued Cameron for allegedly basing the first movie on two episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits (Demon with a Glass Hand and Soldier) but the only connection I can see is that they all use the idea of soldiers (who may or may as well be robots) traveling back in time. I don’t think that counts any more than the JC allusions, maybe the apostles should sue. By contrast, the second story directly transforms the central conceit of first. The third and the TV series both do the same for the second – it’s growing exponentially. And the vid weaves them all together and makes its own retelling in the process. It feels as if there’s also something being said in the way the first half of the vid, before Sarah enters left, while it’s still just a John story, is actually quite linear. As if *his* story, the hero/saviour myth, has been retold so often that it’s worked itself into a rut but her story, Mary’s in the New Testament source, is something still new and alive and diversifying in infinite combinations.

My third thought is a rewrite of some old thoughts on another sisabet vid Icebound Stream. The original post was made for the Tea at the Ford site but that’s been down so long I thought it might be an idea to back it up here.

( Cut for past ramblings )

Disclaimer: I suppose these are more (entirely subjective) reactions than recs as such. But words are hard and a vid has to get under your skin for any to come. There is no bad. There is much good. Links to all vids and vid shows are here.

( Non-attending Premieres (3 vids) )
( Club Vivid (9 vids)  )
( Premieres One (6 vids) )
( Premieres Two (4 vids) )