Year end fannish blather
Dec. 22nd, 2013 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieI didn't do a fannish year in review last year because I hadn't produced very much. That's still the case this year, especially for fic, but I'm on vacation and have time, so I thought I would ramble a bit about my vids over the past two years.
The Places You'll Go - My Olivia vid! This song really reflects Olivia's ability to, well, stay calm in the face of crazy situations, which is one of her most impressive qualities. So I had to use it! The tempo changes were also very helpful to me as a vidder, since they let me linger in some places and cut quickly in others. What most strikes me about the vid now is how much use I was able to make out of shots where the camera pans or circles, generally to the left/clockwise. Not only does it visually tie some of the clips together, but it works rather well with the waltz beat of this song, since viennese waltz is basically endless circling. (I...may be the only person who associates fast waltzes with circles.)
Two Sleepy People - Myrna Loy and William Powell being adorable pretty much sums this one up. Not much happens in the song, not much happens in the vid, and that's okay. This one owes a lot to my beta,spatz, because it was a lot more disjointed before she got ahold of it. The slapstick portion in the middle was all her idea.
[Tilting at] Windmills - I had wanted to make this vid for literally years, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rowdycamels giving me the Farscape box set for my birthday last year was the kick in the pants I needed.
I tried to tell a very definite narrative in this vid, based on the song's twin themes of "I, Don Quijote, am bugfuck nuts and this distresses me!" and "But even so, life still holds riches that are worth being nuts for." From the moment John left the wormhole and inadvertently killed someone, he became a completely different person from the man he thought he was. Frankly, sometimes this person terrifies him, thus the intro and "I spend too much time/raiding windmills" with him doing a lot of shooting and getting progressively more violent, up to dropping a nuclear bomb and blowing up a bank; then later, wormhole weapons over the last "waiting where the light goes," not to mention Harvey showing up here and there.
As well, all the Earthy things he thought were going to happen in his life can no longer happen, at least not in the way he imagined, so the wedding to Aeryn he fantasizes about in "Dog With Two Bones" overlays "I spend too much time/seeking shelter [in fantasy]," and there is the brutal welcome to Earth from "A Human Reaction" over the bridge.
Most troubling, he feels he no longer has real control over his life, but instead is tossed "anywhere the wind blows." However, there are some good points about this new life that are "all worth waiting for," like the friends he makes and, of course, Aeryn and baby D'Argo. And to fully realize these good things, he has to let go of his preconceptions of how life was going to be and just embrace how crazy things are out in the Uncharted Territories.
I had a good time making this vid, because Farscape is such a beautiful show, and I had an embarrassment of lovely clips to choose from. My favorite parts are probably the beginning, where John's ship falls into the wormhole an disappears, and that long, long pan out from John, Aeryn, and baby D'Argo into space at the end.
Ordinary Day - This was just me having fun with Fringe's hilarious and/or gross imagery. I enjoyed every second of it. :)
Made White As Snow - Oh, Walter. Much of Fringe is the story of Walter seeking forgiveness for what he did, and it was interesting material to work with. This was my first instrumental vid, and it was quite difficult. But I really love that song, and there are so few vids out there to choral pieces, so I persevered. I think my favorite part is still towards the beginning, when the skittery violin interrupts the smooth choral work, which provided an excellent way to show the bad effects of Walter's kidnapping of Peter interrupting their current happiness, to the point where they can no longer be ignored.
Don't You Give Up on Me - I can't lie: this is my favorite of all my vids from this crop. I suspect the subject matter has something to do with that. ;) This song was a free download from NoiseTrade, and I just fell in love with it. I could not tell you why. There's just something about it that's pleasing to my ears. Around the time I downloaded it, I was converting all my figure skating videos to DVD, and the song struck me as very similar to the music often used for big group numbers in shows like Stars on Ice. I began to wonder how I could ever see skating done to this song, which led me to The Cutting Edge. Lucky for me, the song works really well with Kate and Doug's push me/pull you, two steps forward, one step back story. Getting to vid lots of motion and a good story is my vidding nirvana, so this was incredibly satisfying.
No Cheap Thrill - I made this one because the song made me want to dance, and I was getting tired of bopping around my bedroom. Also, I wanted to see if I could vid Fred and Ginger to a song where they are really not the first source you would think of to use. That's really about all there is to it.
As far as real life goes, I don't think I need a year in review because the biggest things in my life this year have been the subject of most of my LJ entries over the past several months. In brief, though:
1. Took up skating in May, made it through ISI Gamma by December. I would have tested through Delta were it not for my wretched inside three turns. *sigh* I've at least attempted, if not mastered, everything in Freestyle 1, which includes jumps and spins. I performed in a show! I got to know fellow skaters!
2. Wrote 80,000 words of not!drawerfic. If I'm lucky, I'm 30K from the end!
3. Lost a bit more weight early this year, then took up skating and stopped changing the numbers on the scale, but kept going down in measurements as fat transmuted into muscle. Feel way fitter than this time last year.
The Places You'll Go - My Olivia vid! This song really reflects Olivia's ability to, well, stay calm in the face of crazy situations, which is one of her most impressive qualities. So I had to use it! The tempo changes were also very helpful to me as a vidder, since they let me linger in some places and cut quickly in others. What most strikes me about the vid now is how much use I was able to make out of shots where the camera pans or circles, generally to the left/clockwise. Not only does it visually tie some of the clips together, but it works rather well with the waltz beat of this song, since viennese waltz is basically endless circling. (I...may be the only person who associates fast waltzes with circles.)
Two Sleepy People - Myrna Loy and William Powell being adorable pretty much sums this one up. Not much happens in the song, not much happens in the vid, and that's okay. This one owes a lot to my beta,
spatz, because it was a lot more disjointed before she got ahold of it. The slapstick portion in the middle was all her idea.[Tilting at] Windmills - I had wanted to make this vid for literally years, and
rowdycamels giving me the Farscape box set for my birthday last year was the kick in the pants I needed.I tried to tell a very definite narrative in this vid, based on the song's twin themes of "I, Don Quijote, am bugfuck nuts and this distresses me!" and "But even so, life still holds riches that are worth being nuts for." From the moment John left the wormhole and inadvertently killed someone, he became a completely different person from the man he thought he was. Frankly, sometimes this person terrifies him, thus the intro and "I spend too much time/raiding windmills" with him doing a lot of shooting and getting progressively more violent, up to dropping a nuclear bomb and blowing up a bank; then later, wormhole weapons over the last "waiting where the light goes," not to mention Harvey showing up here and there.
As well, all the Earthy things he thought were going to happen in his life can no longer happen, at least not in the way he imagined, so the wedding to Aeryn he fantasizes about in "Dog With Two Bones" overlays "I spend too much time/seeking shelter [in fantasy]," and there is the brutal welcome to Earth from "A Human Reaction" over the bridge.
Most troubling, he feels he no longer has real control over his life, but instead is tossed "anywhere the wind blows." However, there are some good points about this new life that are "all worth waiting for," like the friends he makes and, of course, Aeryn and baby D'Argo. And to fully realize these good things, he has to let go of his preconceptions of how life was going to be and just embrace how crazy things are out in the Uncharted Territories.
I had a good time making this vid, because Farscape is such a beautiful show, and I had an embarrassment of lovely clips to choose from. My favorite parts are probably the beginning, where John's ship falls into the wormhole an disappears, and that long, long pan out from John, Aeryn, and baby D'Argo into space at the end.
Ordinary Day - This was just me having fun with Fringe's hilarious and/or gross imagery. I enjoyed every second of it. :)
Made White As Snow - Oh, Walter. Much of Fringe is the story of Walter seeking forgiveness for what he did, and it was interesting material to work with. This was my first instrumental vid, and it was quite difficult. But I really love that song, and there are so few vids out there to choral pieces, so I persevered. I think my favorite part is still towards the beginning, when the skittery violin interrupts the smooth choral work, which provided an excellent way to show the bad effects of Walter's kidnapping of Peter interrupting their current happiness, to the point where they can no longer be ignored.
Don't You Give Up on Me - I can't lie: this is my favorite of all my vids from this crop. I suspect the subject matter has something to do with that. ;) This song was a free download from NoiseTrade, and I just fell in love with it. I could not tell you why. There's just something about it that's pleasing to my ears. Around the time I downloaded it, I was converting all my figure skating videos to DVD, and the song struck me as very similar to the music often used for big group numbers in shows like Stars on Ice. I began to wonder how I could ever see skating done to this song, which led me to The Cutting Edge. Lucky for me, the song works really well with Kate and Doug's push me/pull you, two steps forward, one step back story. Getting to vid lots of motion and a good story is my vidding nirvana, so this was incredibly satisfying.
No Cheap Thrill - I made this one because the song made me want to dance, and I was getting tired of bopping around my bedroom. Also, I wanted to see if I could vid Fred and Ginger to a song where they are really not the first source you would think of to use. That's really about all there is to it.
As far as real life goes, I don't think I need a year in review because the biggest things in my life this year have been the subject of most of my LJ entries over the past several months. In brief, though:
1. Took up skating in May, made it through ISI Gamma by December. I would have tested through Delta were it not for my wretched inside three turns. *sigh* I've at least attempted, if not mastered, everything in Freestyle 1, which includes jumps and spins. I performed in a show! I got to know fellow skaters!
2. Wrote 80,000 words of not!drawerfic. If I'm lucky, I'm 30K from the end!
3. Lost a bit more weight early this year, then took up skating and stopped changing the numbers on the scale, but kept going down in measurements as fat transmuted into muscle. Feel way fitter than this time last year.
