bironic

I'd wanted to see the Afrofuturist cyberpunk musical movie Neptune Frost since hearing about it last year, and eruthros requesting it for Festivids provided extra motivation.

The film was sometimes confusing but definitely memorable. So much interesting stuff happened visually and thematically that I really wanted to turn it into a treat for eruthros, yet the prospect was also intimidating. And there was only a week or so until go-live. So the first draft was pretty much the final draft. Does it make any sense? Who knows! But hey, the vid exists now.

It didn't turn out as organic as I'd envisioned. The first sequence, of the miners, wanted to be cut to the beat, one action per drum strike. But that did suggest an editing style in which the beginning of the vid, about oppression in a police state and capitalism and feeling trapped within prescribed gender identities, holds to its own rigid structure, and then as the main character transforms into her ideal self and the people around her break free and wake up and resist, the cuts begin to fall outside that rhythm. Neptune's own clips, you may notice, don't hold to the drumbeat from the start.

Hack the Binary on AO3

I'm super pleased that eruthros responded positively and that a few others found the story compelling. Particular gratitude to thingswithwings for checking visual triggers and providing pre-go-live feedback that it did, in fact, make some sense even for someone who was only passingly familiar with the film.

Of note: There's cool stuff in the movie that doesn't appear in the vid, most notably some dream sequences involving fluorescent makeup. One of the two main characters is only glancingly featured. And the ending of the vid does not reflect the ending of the movie. It's a more streamlined (and Westernized?) version of the movie narrative.

Try, Try Again

Last but not least. All these vids were done and there were still two weeks until go-live. Surely time for one more treat? It wasn't like I had anything else to do. So I surfed people's Dear Festividder letters for ideas and found thingswithwings's request for the Netflix Black-teens-invent-a-time-machine movie See You Yesterday, about which she wrote, "I really hope someone makes a vid for this one."

I watched the movie, I liked the movie, the themes were timely and important—the seeming inescapability of police brutality for Black communities, the generational loss of family and friends to violence, the enduring passion to effect change—and it's always nice to vid science geeks and non-white characters. Plus, thingswithwings didn't have any treats at that point, although by the time this got done, she had three others. So it goes.

Straightaway I grabbed the footage and a ticking clock sound effect, which I thought would be good for the time trope and for building a sense of suspense or urgency. I imagined a vid in which all the loops built and built and mixed and repeated and worked with and against the relentless tick tick tick. I laid down the first sequence. I laid down a second, then ripped it up. Again. Again. Something wasn't working. I didn't know how to get from setup to climax. The monotonous clock necessitated using as few clips as possible, lest people (read: I) get bored or impatient. The project stalled.

For a week and a half, I kept opening the Premiere file and closing it again. I wanted the vid to exist, but my brain didn't want to make it. Finally, the day before go-live, I threw out the clock and dumped in this slow-build piano track from the "maybe vid this one day" pile. I'd always figured I'd use it for a murder mystery or something, but it did the trick here. Suddenly the sequences started working. I didn't even have to adjust the existing clips much. The piano drove the narrative instead of fighting with it. I snipped lots of little pieces from the music to suit the pace the vid wanted to follow. And the draft got done at 8 or 9 p.m., hallelujah.

Internal critic: Could the movie's themes have been made more apparent in the vid? Could the vid have benefited from clearer editing or more powerful statements? Could it have balanced the pain and violence with more clips of support and love? Could I have found uses for cyclical symbols like Sebastian's whirling power saw? Yes. But it exists in the world, and I got a little better at problem solving. I like how the last sequence recontextualizes scenes from the movie to hinge on that pivotal moment when someone has the choice between violence and de-escalation. It's a different way of depicting the ambiguity of the movie's final images between hope/optimism and despair/pessimism that thingswithwings said she likes.

(It's just as well the clock didn't work out, since I later learned the official trailer used one. But it's too bad I didn't leave myself enough time to search for—and haven't cultivated enough working knowledge to have at the ready—perfect music by a Black artist.)

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )

I'm glad livrelibre made a See You Yesterday vid for the collection, too: Rise Up. They work nicely as a pair, I think. Hers lets the footage breathe, and she gives more attention to the love and support between CJ & friend Sebastian and CJ & her brother Calvin & their mother.

Five! Five festivids this round, ah ah ah. This would not have been possible without a two-week winter break at work and, you know, not being able to go anywhere or see anyone.


absternr and I matched on two fandoms, so I was excited to vid for her.


Death Is the New Sex

I knew straight off that I wanted to try vidding Aniara, the existentialist Swedish sci fi film I loved last year, hard as it might be. The opportunity was extra sweet because absternr said in her letter that she'd requested the movie after seeing it on the nominations list, which was my doing. I just needed a song and the confidence to try editing something that needed to descend into a frenzy of different emotions and actions. Spotify paid off in the song hunt; it had introduced me to "Death Is the New Sex" not long before and thought it might work for this project.

It was a bit tough to sit with these characters' existential crises day after day while dealing with my own and, uh, the world during a pandemic, but the editing itself went really well. There was more storytelling up front than expected. Although the frenzy part didn't turn out as frenetically paced as envisioned—I'd been thinking something more like Long Night's Journey Into Day—I'm happy with how things came together.

With immense thanks to marginaliana for finding clean footage. Making the first draft when half the clips had hard-coded captions was difficult because they distracted the eye and made the footage seem busier than it really was.

P.S. Gotta love a project with clip categories like "screaming," "cults," "dancing" and "makeouts."

P.P.S. Although there are many spoilers in the vid, the ending is not among them. Clips from the end of the movie do not appear anywhere in the vid, and the end of the vid is taken from several different places in the movie.

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )


Calling All the Monsters

I'd also been playing with the idea of vidding Los Espookys, an HBO comedy miniseries about a group of delightfully morbid friends in Mexico who do horror special effects and come to discover that the supernatural is more real than they knew. (Well, Andrés and Tati knew.) I didn't have any song ideas, but Spotify came to the rescue again with playlists of Halloween songs. mollyamory and arduinna were kind enough to provide files so I didn't have to screen-grab the whole show, and I was able to draft the vid in a day. Just a fun little romp through Renaldo's geeky love of horror and the team's adventures in staged and not-so-staged effects. My one regret is that I couldn't crop out the subtitles on the shot of the werewolf makeup reveal because they were right over her hand/mouth.

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )

What's that? Tentacles and morbid humor? Count me in.

It Came from Beneath the Sea is a classic B-movie about an oceanic creature that starts encroaching on human ships/submarines/beaches/cities because radiation. It features the special effects of legend Ray Harryhausen. There are a bunch of human scientists and military types, but whatever, we know who the real protagonist is. I was pleased to be compared to jetpack_monkey when someone guessed that he made this vid. :)


Title: Part of That World
Fandom: It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)
Characters: Giant octopus, civilians
Music: from Disney's "The Little Mermaid"
Length: 2:34
Content notes: Sea monster attacks treated humorously
Physical notes: Stop-motion animation
A/N: A treat for gwenfrankenstien for Festivids 2018-9.

Summary: Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world

( Links, embed & lyrics )

( Commentary! )

This year's favorite festivids:

Goodbye by ? for walkthegale (The Innocents) - A vid of the movie based on the ghost story/novella The Turn of the Screw. Slow and spooky. Awesome establishing of pace and mood.

Dance to Another Tune by ? for thingswithwings (Runaways) - That subjective magic of source + song match, mood, progression, turning ordinary shots of things like the paper snowflakes into something haunting, a series of smart choices down to details like the cult choosing kids who theoretically won't be missed.

It's nothing at all by ? for runawaynun (Battle for Sevastopol) - The choice of Radiohead and the cutting style together create a beautiful flow of horrific events.

Unlock the Lock by ? for runawaynun (The Expanse) - Another good match of song and source and editing, a lovely portrait of Chrisjen and Bobbie and what connects them.

I Know What I Am by ? for colls (Ocean's 8) - How do you handle a source with so many characters? By using a song with two vocalists trading off repetitive verses, of course. I do love a well-structured and well-paced vid.

( Plus 8 more )

Last but not least, thank you to ??? for making Graveyard Smash, an appropriately tongue-in-cheek fusion of the wacky, bloody, adult-rated film duo of Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein. In addition to reveling in the characters' over-the-top expressions, necrophilia, voyeurism, etc., the vid presents a series of fun lyric matches, such as the play on party/Party and the poor "Wolf Man." I promise there's more to the movies than inappropriate sex, should you ever wish to check them out. :)

The good news: I laid out some clips for that Festivids idea last night and it made me have an emotion.

The bad news: On rechecking the recipient's request letter, she dislikes both that genre of music and that style of editing.

So: Plan B, methinks, even though it doesn't quite line up with the characters she asked for; I don't know what else to do.

I still want to make that other one, though. Probably it's best as a response to someone else's earlier request anyway.

How're everyone else's holiday season fanworks going?

Well, autumn was as much of a sh@#%*show as predicted, but the two big work projects have been turned in, and with luck, December will bring some relaxation.

Things wot have been up:

Reading

The local friend group's inaugural fall reading challenge comes to a close today. I blacked out my bingo card, which was all I wanted in the world. Not sure what will fill the void now that it's over.

The challenge definitely motivated me to choose reading over other activities, to plan ahead so there was always a book or five waiting next and to finish books that I might otherwise have set aside or let drag on. Whereas the last few years I averaged a book a week, during the challenge I averaged a book almost every two days; instead of 50-55 books total, 2018 is on track to top 75. Snow days, long flights and library due dates also helped.

Favorite reads:

• Strange Practice: A Dr. Greta Helsing novel by Vivian Shaw (thanks, rachelmanija)
• Two Mates for the Dragon by Zoe Chant et al, esp. the one by Juno Blake (thanks, rachelmanija & sholio)
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
• My Teacher Is an Alien series by Bruce Coville (reread)
• The Vampire Diaries series by L.J. Smith (reread)

The bingo card also pushed me to finally crack open 6 of the unread books I've owned for many years, which was nice.

Readings

I went to several book readings in September/October. Fully intended to write them up, then did not. For the record:

Dessa @ Brattle Theater
DeRay Mckesson with Ayanna Pressley @ Old South Church
Heid Erdrich, Tacey Atsitty & Eric Gansworth @ Harvard Peabody Museum (related post)
George Saunders @ Boston University

All excellent, with the possible exception of Mckesson/Pressley—the acoustics were so awful where we sat that we couldn't make out half of what they said; we gave up when they started the Q&A. Reading DeRay's book afterwards helped clarify what we'd semi-heard.

Vidding

No matter how many vids you make, there will always be new technical challenges. I can't even talk about this one because it's for a treat I want to make for Festivids. Suffice it to say that solution #1 involved math; the math that should have worked did not work because reasons; so I devised solution #2 over the weekend. Now for the "easy" part of, you know, making the vid and seeing if it turns out well enough to submit.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what to do for my actual assignment. That will sound funny later when you find out what the source is. So far, I've come up with a concept that would take too long to make, a song that wasn't about what I thought it was about, and a spoof where a spoof wouldn't be appreciated. Now that life is quieting, I'll sit down and figure it out. Because otherwise I'm looking at defaulting and making only the treat, which would be weird in addition to breaking my streak of making at least two Festivids each year.

(Well, there's this other treat idea...)

Traveling

Having given up on postponing travel for work reasons because work never lets up these days, I went to Tucson to visit childhood friend A. More strip malls than expected in the city itself, but gorgeous desert and mountains close by, and the low humidity means you don't turn into a sweaty mess while hiking. For Thanksgiving I spent ~36 hours in NY seeing family and then ~48 hours at home alternating social time with domesticity, a hybrid experiment that turned out pretty well.

In a couple of weeks I will visit synn, yay, and over winter break I will meet the new house my mom and her boyfriend acquired in rural Tennessee to retire to. Re: the above, I'll have to decide whether it's ridiculous to drag down my desktop computer for vidding or simply bring a book—Moby Dick's time may have arrived at last—and some writing materials. Still have those three unfinished Zahn-related fics.

Cooking

Since there were no Thanksgiving leftovers on account of we didn't host, yesterday I made turkey meatballs, green beans and stuffing for this week's lunches, topped with slices of that classic cranberry sauce that comes out of the can with a slurp in a single jiggly cylinder. While I was at it, I rescued a few pounds of apples we picked 6 weeks ago by turning them into applesauce with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar. Mm. That will accompany the week's dinners of sautéed kale, gigante beans and sausage. It felt good to put in the time in the kitchen; I hadn't cooked properly in a while.

Chilling

Only in the literal sense: Our boiler broke. It's being fixed. Meanwhile, space heaters.

...Which may or may not explain why there's a tickle in my throat today. Sigh.

Feeling

I need a vacation. I just want to sit in a room that is not mine for a few days and work on stories and let my mind wander without having to yank it back to take care of responsibilities. That’s what last month’s trip to my mom’s hotel in Worcester was supposed to provide, except I ended up needing to work. Now I keep going to the office and not really doing anything.

The silly part is that the only thing stopping me from taking time off is planning it.

Doing

My favorite college friend, R., is in town for a few days. We spent a good chunk of the weekend together. Due to a couple of near misses, we hadn’t met since 2015, and not in Boston since the year before that. I was all nerves leading up to dinner on Saturday, in part because he has "succeeded" more than me on multiple fronts and I do not have great self-esteem these days, in part because I’ve always had half a crush on him and want to make sure he still likes me too, and in part because it was a certain time of the month when anxiety peaks no matter what’s going on—but, to my great relief, I was reminded within the first few minutes that there’s a reason we became friends 17 years ago (!) and remain so now. He makes conversation easy, albeit with a hint of the know-it-all one-upmanship that tinges a lot of the relationships I had at school and still have with some coworkers. I was reminded once again that his life isn’t perfect either, and it matters a lot to me that he is comfortable talking about the challenges and disappointments we are dealing with as well as sharing joy in the things that are going well.

In any case, we ate interesting Italian/Peruvian fusion, enjoyed a breezy boat ride out to the Boston Harbor Islands, had a picnic, walked around some of the new developments on the waterfront despite being two very pale people in the summer sun, and talked a lot. <3

Later this week there will be dinner with a former coworker and a Star Trek-themed burlesque show with friends.

Writing

Zahn McClarnon characters continue to rev my creative engines.

750 words and counting of Hanzee/Constance (Fargo TV show, season two)
+ 2,240 Mathias/OFC (Longmire)
+ 1,940 Mike/Rachel and Kopus/Rachel (The Red Road)
+ 670 Zachariah/Pia/Lemuel (Midnight, Texas)
= 5,600 words since the beginning of July. \o/

Nothing is finished yet, and based on past experience, I’m worried about losing momentum and leaving everything incomplete. Even so, as maralenenok said last week, words is words, and as I said in reply, I’m pleased with how all four stories depict very different characters and have different structures and narrative voices.

Vidding

Planning three vids; waiting to see which gets started first.

Festivids approaches. I’m pondering requests old and new. The other day, I spur-of-the-moment gathered links to all the Longmire vids I could find on YouTube & the AO3 to confirm there aren’t too many for it to qualify.

Watching

Re: the above, I’ve been going through more of Zahn’s film & TV catalog and taking notes. In the last… week, OMG, I have seen or skimmed:

Fargo: Year Two - surprisingly engaging
Searchers 2.0 - golfing outfit!
Bone Tomahawk - dapper suit and walking stick, but only one scene
The Son - tiresome and cliché-ridden but at least he had a sizeable role

Started Into the West last night, also a skim. Spielberg tries to capitalize on the success of Dances with Wolves with a miniseries in the mid-’90s ETA: 2005, wow, the music and casting definitely feel a decade earlier. (Skeet Ulrich?!) So Zahn McClarnon was my current age when he filmed it.

Movie theater-wise, got together with various friend clusters to see Crazy Rich Asians, which was excellent, and Mission Impossible: Fallout, made by people who’ve mastered the art of the mainstream action film and more enjoyable than any James Bond movie I’ve seen. So many other movies to see; I keep running out of time.

Reading

Has been slow this past little while. Partly because I’ve wanted to do other things and partly because of the books themselves, I think. Right now I’m halfway through Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, which is fascinating in its combination of carnality and lyricism.

Thinking

About how, despite what roundup posts like this imply, I can write OR vid OR watch a lot of movies OR plow through a lot of books OR do in-depth media reviews OR go full-tilt at work OR be very social OR do everything I’m supposed to do food- and activity-wise to manage my health condition… but not more than one, maybe two, at a time. Thirty-six years old and I’m finally learning to accept the need for priorities and compromises and moderation instead of fighting against it, and to admit that I am not a machine running at 100 percent efficiency, and to see the rise and fall of different categories over the months as something that keeps life interesting rather than a flaw.

I do recognize the privileges that allow me to have even this much spare time and, more or less, the energy to do something with it. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not sad about not being able to do all the things, always.

"Mystery Festividder" gwenfrankenstein made me a vid for Gods & Monsters, an Ian McKellen/Brendan Fraser movie set in the 1950s that is about being gay in England and Hollywood, and making the first two Frankenstein films, and art, and aging, and lost love, and never really recovering from war. The vid focuses especially on the last few themes, a tough and brave choice. I am glad to have helped encourage this vid into the world—and glad the vidder agreed to give it a less bleak ending than the original.

War Baby

* * *

As well, my personal faves from the collection:

MAYBE "ARRIVAL" SHOULD HAVE ITS OWN CATEGORY

The Scientist by violace for cherryice (Arrival) ♥

ATMOSPHERIC

Relativism by cherryice for such_heights (Arrival) ♥

Human Elements by AurumCalendula for colls (Star Trek: Discovery)

Kings and Queens and Vagabonds by walkthegale for jagwriter78 (The Last Unicorn)

QUEER ROMANCES DON'T HAVE TO BE TRAGIC

Hang Out With You by absternr for thingswithwings (Take My Wife)

Speak Your Heart by Josette_Arnauld for such_heights (Moonlight)

VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION

Weapon by eruthros for absternr (Janelle Monae works)

RHYTHM & ACTION

Cali God by anoel for NicoleAnell (American Gods) ♥

Ain't Born Typical by runawaynun for anoel (Atomic Blonde)

Work by bingeling for thirdblindmouse (Wanted)

CHARACTER STUDIES & ENSEMBLES that I enjoyed but also really loved the songs so can't tell how much of the enjoyment was due to that

Level Up by scribe for condnsdmlk (Killjoys)

Beautiful Hopeful by AurumCalendula for such_heights (Star Trek: Discovery)

CREATIVE

they're good dogs Brent by bessyboo and platinumvampyr for cherryice (@dog_rates | WeRateDogs)

AUDIO CHOICE

The Mystery Cat by seekingferret for elipie (American Vandal) - T.S. Eliot!

Pirate Jenny's Dream by cara marie/geniusshrike for himundergreen (Westworld)

Also of note! The vids for:
- America (comic) by absternr
- Underground (TV) x2 by thingswithwings
- Kiki (documentary) by metatxt
- Wondaland (music videos/record label) by eruthros - appreciation deepened after reading comments about art & community
- INSIDE (video game / WTF body globs) by mithborien

Every year I'm surprised by the disconnect between the Festivids nominations list and people's requests, i.e. how many sources on the list aren't requested by anybody, suggesting that people nominate a non-trivial number of things they want to vid rather than want to receive.

I get it, probably because several of you have explained it to me in the past. Someone might be inspired when they see a source on the nominations list and end up requesting it when they wouldn't have otherwise, providing an opportunity for the nominator to make the vid they want. Maybe the nominator is more likely to make the vid when it's a gift for someone and/or comes with a prompt attached and/or has a deadline and/or has a built-in audience.

It's just not how I tend to operate. I nominate sources I want to receive vids for, and I offer sources from the list of what other people have nominated. So it feels odd, even though it has happened several years running, to see such a small percentage of my offers show up in people's Dear Festividder letters.

Anyway. The AO3 roundup after signups closed revealed that only two of the sources I offered were actual possibilities, and it was easy to gauge how much more likely one was than the other. So the assignment, when it arrived today, was not a surprise.

I like the source, obviously, and I spent some time last night poking around for music ideas just in case, so I think it will be fine. At least I shouldn't have to default like I was worried about!

And I hope whomever got me as their match is excited by at least one of the prompts. I am definitely excited to receive a vid for any of those movies or for the book.

Sending supportive vibes out to all of you participating in exchanges, fests, NaNoWriMo, etc. in the next couple of months. <3