To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

1. You could not plan a more perfect match between image and lyric in this one spot.* It is the most perfect thing ever. It is also just a bit too cheesy and obvious for a vid that's pretty much a black comedy with a heart of srs bznz (much like the source).

2. "Oh my god, how long IS this song?" The song is only three minutes. (Note to self: Never do another vid where much of it is fast cuts and clips of less than a second.)

3. "@#$%&! ANOTHER GODDAMN CHORUS? What is this, some kind of...chorus?" (Second note to self: Especially don't do vids where most of the fast cuts and extremely short clips are in the chorus.)

4. "Well, that was unexpected but brilliant. Let's redo this whole verse to accommodate that clip."


* For those who will understand: The song is Dar Williams's "Are You Out There," and the lyric in question is "I will write this down / and then I will not be alone again." The clips are McMurphy spray painting the names of dead soldiers on the outside of the hospital at China Beach, and then the entire cast at the Vietnam Wall in DC twenty years later.

I 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.

( Ramble ramble )


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.

Googling confirmed what I suspected: my skating-induced knee pain is in fact a reoccurrence of the condition I had nine years ago (which was apparently induced by walking around Europe or, according to the doctor I saw, the fact that women's hips aren't directly over our knees). On the upside, at least I know exactly what exercises I need to do, and I know that they start helping almost instantly. Plus the linked PDF gives me some different ones I can do. On the downside: c'mon, body! I try to do right by you with exercise, and this is how you repay me?

Bah.

While I'm here, have some a link to this free 65-song mixtape (you may have to "like" NoiseTrade on Facebook to access the link, sorry).

I'm particularly fond of the offerings by Steve Moakler ("Today"), Kate Tucker ("Hangover"), Rachel Yamagata ("Saturday Morning"), and Matt Wertz ("Get To You"). I don't know if Yamagata is actually reminiscent of Joni Mitchell or if it's just that all of my Pandora stations used to play a song by her called "1963" incessantly, but that's the association I have.

I think the Matt Wertz song might make an interesting The Americans vid, if only because it's a song produced in 2013 that's doing its absolute best to sound like it came straight from 1986, and on a meta level that amuses me. Lyrically, it doesn't fit anyone in the show, although isolated phrases may lend themselves to certain shots. I guess it could be twisted pretty easily to be about spy missions, though. I'll have to give it some thought once I finish watching this season...

At ten o'clock this morning, I had a blank timeline and a dream. Nine hours later, I have a vid! Well, the first draft of one, anyway. All three and a half minutes of the song are accounted for, and I think there only needs to be a minor amount of tweaking. I love it when these things come easy!

I'm thiiiiiis close to finishing my Fringe vid (gen, everybody, wackiness). However, it has some issues. (Like, "Hahaha, what the hell is supposed to be happening during the bridge?") Beta, anyone? Pretty please? *doe eyes*

*

I'm really thinking about doing Yuletide this year. Mostly because I am desperate for any Northern Exposure fic (that I haven't written), Shall We Dance fic (ditto), Corner Gas (yep) and/or Robson Arms fic (at all!). Anyone have an idea what the timeline might be this year? And does the horsetrading about nominations happen in the recent brainstorming post, or is there another post specifically for that?

*

Google's doodle today is hilarious and way interactive. Poor li'l redshirt e. ;)

Hmmm. Well, I had planned to spend the long weekend vidding, but I've slowly realized over the past few days that my current idea, a gen Farscape vid to Karine Polwart's cover of "Rags to Riches," is going to look an awful lot like my other Farscape vid, just with more focus on the other characters and less on John. I think I might need a few more months away from that first vid before I tackle this one.

Which leaves me with an abundance of choices, and thus, a poll!

DW People, see the LJ version of this entry for the poll.

I seem to have actually made some progress on my space pilots revisions in the past week. Amazing! I might actually get a second draft of this thing ready by the end of the month. We'll see.

I have also been watching, um. A lot of Farscape. Finished with S1! I haven't watched but one or two episodes since it ended in 2003, so it's been a weird mixture of not remembering anything about some episodes, and yet being able to recite some scenes word for word along with the characters. (You all know which those are, I bet.) So many memories of high school are being dredged up by association. Plus the shipperlist! You guys, remember how we worshiped at the altar of Justin Monjo? And how much we all hated Chiana when she first showed up, called her a refugee from Cats, all that? I never thought I'd grow to like her, but I did, and now I get to like her even in the early episodes.

It's held up surprisingly well. I was worried it would feel dated and cheesy, but with a few exceptions, it doesn't. It is a little Nineties Sci-Fi at times in the early episodes, and the motleyness of the characters isn't as unique as it was at the time, but it definitely still feels fresh, even without the vast infusions of crack that happened in later seasons. And the effects are still amazing. I would be impressed with them if they showed up in a series airing today, and they're phenomenal for 1999. And of course the puppets are still awesome. And I can't remember if they won makeup awards every year they were on, but if they didn't, they should've.

Aeryn was my favorite when this was still airing, but now I think Zhaan intrigues me more. (Though Aeryn is a really close second.) D'Argo is still a bit Worf Lite at this point, but he's gotten noticeably more interesting over the past twenty-two episodes. John is...you know, I love John. John's awesome. He's confused, and even though he was smart on Earth he's bad at everything in his new environment, and I always love a fish out of water, especially one who treats it as an opportunity for wonder as well as anger/sadness. (Looking at you, Joel Fleischman. Oh, if only you could sit down with John for an hour.) And I still love that he's a Southerner but not a walking stereotype. LOVE IT. But I've seen people complain about John kind of taking over even though he's the least qualified to do so, and I do get it. He's awfully in charge from the very beginning. Sure, it's because he's our POV character, but it probably would've been more graceful to not grant him Decision-Maker status in so many situations.

John and Aeryn are obviously the designated canon couple from the moment they meet onscreen (and she beats him up), but they were pushing D'Argo/Zhaan pretty hard there for a while too. That would've been...interesting. I'm pretty sure I would've liked it better than the whole Chiana/D'Argo,/Jothee...thing that happened in the later seasons. (Between that, the Endless Two Johns Arc and the John Goes Crazy For Reals Arc in S3 and S4, respectively, I have to admit I'm...well, let's just say I'm going to savor S2 before I get there. Though S3 does redeem itself with "Revenging Angel," which is my favorite episode.)

There seems to be commentary for almost every episode. I don't usually watch commentaries, but if there's an especially good one, sometimes I do. Are any of them good? The title for the one for "Jeremiah Crichton" does suggest much mockery goes on, and that's certainly the only way I'm ever watching that episode again (well, that an an alcohol substitute I still haven't found yet).... Wish I'd made that decision for "Thank God It's Friday, Again," because really, was there any reason for that episode to exist? I think not.

Two questions for the class:

1. After "A Human Reaction" (which might be my other favorite episode. Oh, man, you remember when...Cristin, was it you who recorded the morning after scene that was deleted for US airings but aired in Canada and showed it at ScaperCon? That was awesome), I am jonesing for some fic of the John and Aeryn go to Earth and stay variety. I started one once, but the logistics of it got away from me and I never finished it. Anyone got recs along these lines?

2. I just remembered that the aspect ratio changes in S3. AAAAAAHHHHH! That's going to frell up my vid, isn't it? Vidders, halp! I've never had to deal with this before! What do you do?

(I'm going to have to do a lot of cropping, aren't I? Arrrrgh.)

1. Begin reading Joshua Zeitz's Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. I got it from the library because my novel/screenplay/musical/whatever it is today is set in early 1932, so I figured background from the 20s would be helpful. It's good; I would prefer something slightly more academic, but it's definitely readable and informative. I like the attention to mundane(ish) detail like the types of fabric used in clothing and different styles of makeup, and the inclusion of anecdotes and quotations from both people like the Fitzgeralds and reasonably regular folks is very nice. Again, I wish there were a similar volume for the 30s; maybe there is and I just haven't found it.

2. Decide that period music would be a fun addition to the book. Visit Grooveshark. While I'm on this step, some interesting pieces I ran across:

Waiting for Katie - Benny Goodman

Dixie Stomp and Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You - Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra

Crazy Rhythm - Apparently this was covered by a zillion people during the decade, but this is a version by the Roger Wolfe Khan Orchestra

It's Time to Say Goodnight - Henry Hall and His Orchestra. This is actually from the 30s. I also found this lovely waltz demonstration to it, though I have no idea where the video comes from.

3. Wander a little too far into the 30s, come across "Two Sleepy People," and get blindsided by a desire to make a Nick and Nora Charles (or perhaps an everything-Myrna-Loy-and-William-Powell-were-in-together) vid to it. Well, more accurately, it might be to this version, if I can get past Seth MacFarlane's voice constantly reminding me of Brian from The Family Guy.

Rats.

I'm not sure it's going to work out for me; the tempo and dynamics are really regular, which I've found leads to uninteresting vids when I'm the one doing the vidding. But the lyrics and the general mood of the song evokes the gentle, alcohol-soaked adoration Nick and Nora had for each other so well that I can't resist.

I am vidding, and have two observations:

1.) Man, Northern Exposure sure had a lot of night shots. (Understandable, I suppose, since, hey, set in Alaska, with eighteen hours of darkness for half the year. Still.)

2.) Their directors and/or cinematographers (I am unclear on exactly who decides to film a scene from an unusual angle or that a shot will be tracking instead of static and things like that) were amazing. This is one of the most beautifully shot TV shows I've ever seen. I love the way they make use of the transitions from indoors to outdoors around the radio station, Ruth-Anne's shop, and Fleischman's office. I'm also fond of all the overhead shots.

I have a good feeling about this vid. I'm mostly done; it's just about eight seconds towards the end that are giving me fits. Everything I try just seems kind of blah. It'll work out, though, even if I have to do some rearranging.

Current mouse status: Silent. But last night it didn't start up until almost midnight, so this means nothing. At least only seems to move around for two or three hours at a time before going silent the rest of the night and day.

Grar. There is a longstanding bug in iMovie that will unmute audio tracks on individual clips if you use too much slow/speeded up-motion in any given project, and it has been the bane of my existence for the past couple of days. The way I usually fix it is to export the vid with the bad audio, re-import into iMovie, delete the audio track and replace with the song I'm using, then re-export, but iMovie ALSO likes to screw with the timing of your project if you have too many transitions, and oh, look, apparently this one has too many. So I have been cleaning up all the little spots where the video is suddenly going faster than it was in the original file, and you know, I do find it very soothing to match video to music by fiddling with the individual frames, but this is ridiculous. I guess it's Apple's way of getting you to pay for Final Cut Pro. Too bad I don't have a spare thousand dollars lying around.

In other news, lyssie is running a hand-kissing commentfic promptfest, and I left one for Fraser/Thatcher. (Of all the pairings I ship, they seemed the most likely to do anything involving hand-kissing. Well, maybe Mulder and Scully would've.) So if anyone's interested... :)

Meanwhile, I'm writing this strange thing that kind of fuses what really happened in the finale with certain events from the original finale script that made the LJ rounds a couple years ago. At the moment, it basically exists as an excuse to get Thatcher doing fieldwork, which is never a bad thing, IMO.

Finally, I discovered that if you join her mailing list, you can download four unreleased songs by Karine Polwart for free. It's totally worth it for "Maid of the Loch (You and I and the Sky)," which is currently my favorite song. The others aren't bad either.