RivkaT

I decided to write up a list of vids I never get tired of, trying to limit myself to one per fandom except SPN, which means a large number got excluded. It’s also interesting to see which from my old recs post have become “rewatch a lot” vids. I’m definitely trending to faster cuts, but I still love my emo porn.

( Angel, BSG, Chuck, Dark Angel, Doctor Who, Farscape, Firefly, Heroes, Highlander, Iron Man, Legend of the Seeker, Multi, QAFUS, RPV, Smallville, Star Trek TOS, SGA, Supernatural, X-Files  )
comments on DW

Rec: giandujakiss ’s new Castiel vid “A Charming Man,” which I was privileged to beta. It’s exactly the argument about Castiel and what he is/does/portends for Dean, and how he fits into and upends Sam and Dean’s lives, that I wanted to see. Great use of internal motion and lyric matching; superfast cuts.

( Mostly strong women ... ) comments on DW

I actually made most of this vid, um, before I had children.  I finished it because it seemed silly not to do so and because it matched the "worst-case scenario" cliche bingo prompt.  Also, it is ridiculously large for a 3:42 vid (81 M); clearly I'm exporting improperly. 

End of the World News: Clark POV: I'm not the one wasting my time.

I find myself wanting to reread a short J2 Pern AU featuring Jensen’s dragon’s first mating flight that I read a while back—not the big dragonrider AU I found when I asked Google, but a different one more plainly set in Pern. Anybody remember this?

My SV bodyswap story, Switch: A Comedy of Terrors, is now available as a podfic read by pennyplainknits, also zipped. By the way, I love the whole podfic enterprise; I can’t do it myself because I am a creature of the written word (seriously; I am very little fun at parties), but I’m always thrilled if anyone wants to make podfics of my stories. All I’d like is a link when you’re done!
( Books on fan films and on Farscape )

1. It makes me sad that among Wolfram Alpha's easter eggs is not "how old Cary Grant?" Google, by contrast, gets the answer right off.

2. Rewatching Serenity, I noticed three instances where extradiegetic titles turned into diegetic images--the Universal logo/Earth-that-Was, the movie title/the side of Serenity, and Haven/the entrance to Haven. I'm used to extradiegetic music moving into (or out of) the diegesis, but is it common for images to do this? This made me think about the extent to which, as one of the articles I recently read argues, the fact that we can now treat film pretty much the way we treat sound in terms of mixing, manipulation, etc. is affecting editors' and directors' sense of possibility for images.

3. Fellow parents! You know how in Dora the Explorer there’s always that creepy moment where Dora turns to the screen and waits unblinkingly for the audience to answer her question “What did you like best?” (My kids never answer; does anyone?) Z. suggests it would be engagingly disturbing to edit together ten or twelve of those moments, and I heartily agree. Maybe with the following quotes integrated in:
( In Dora's case )

( competition policy, reusing music, happiness, persuasion )

I’ve been watching two adorable I’m on a Boat ST:Reboot vids. Some thoughts: ( very vague movie spoilers )

(2) I really love seeing two or more artists take the same strictures and play with them! The vidders here sometimes use the same shots, but in different places, and they use ( more vague movie spoilers ); and they use “If you're on the shore,/then you're sure not me-oh” quite distinctly, with one humorous and one kind of painful. It’s a little more repetitive than the three Body vids in three different fandoms, or the three Handlebars vids, but still neat to watch.

Warning: abuse of exclamation points!

I have finally seen the new Star Trek, and now I can read all the bookmarked spoiler posts! ( Before that, I only have a couple of things to say: )

( SPN, from Lazarus to Lucifer: )

In the continuing saga of “meta vids I make in my mind,” I have mentally storyboarded a John Sheppard/SGA vid, on the order of counteragent’s Still Alive, using both footage and fandom source, to Poe’s Angry Johnny (No Kill Version). I mean: “I can do it in the water/I can do it on dry land/I can do it with instruments/I can do it with my own bare hands.” How is that not about us? But I’m still hoping someone will make the “shows we break up with” vid to Voltaire’s Future Ex-Girlfriend.

If you’re wondering whether the critical/disruptive message of Dollhouse is penetrating, look no further than this New York Times article, identifying Eliza Dushku’s character as a “secret agent who becomes aware that her memory has been repeatedly erased.” Uh, no. Rape and coercion aside, I believe there’s a state action requirement before you can be a secret agent.

I’m reading a lot on film and sound, and I love that the theorists when recorded sound first came in kept talking about how sound was going to destroy cinema. Rudolf Arnheim: “It remains to be seen, however, whether there is, in the movies, any justification for the kind of involved plot that we find in the novel and the play.” Arnheim also decries how silly actors look when they talk (“visually monotonous, meaningless, and often ludicrous”), exactly like vidders do.

Trying the DW crossposter again. Apologies if it looks awful; I do not understand how to make the cut tag work in the rich text interface, much less the block quote, and think that Semagic may be my best option for the time being. ( Free theory! )

1. How badly I’m flailing this semester: haven’t seen last week’s SPN yet. Eighteen zillion reaction posts bookmarked for later.

2. Thanks to giandujakiss and liv_512 for the party hats!

3. When coping strategies collide: The local grocery store has a friendly dragon mascot. The store brought in a person dressed as said friendly mascot. My children were terrified. To reassure himself after they fled, 1.0 kept repeating “pretend dragon.” Only problem: every time he said “dragon,” 2.0 burst into tears.

4. rhea314 made a podfic of my Clark/Lex story Rainbow Sign!

5. I do not know Psych. But I didn’t feel I needed to for talitha78’s Gus vid “White” and Nerdy (Weird Al song). It’s a response to RaceFail and, I think, a sharp commentary on Weird Al and how his performance of “white and nerdy” depends on a racial contrast we’d usually find quite ugly but apparently excuse because (white) nerds are funny.

Z. found it:

Washington Post story on band's video set to Muppets DVD footage.

This is my latest mental BSG vid -- with Baltar as Andrew, of course. Never trust robots! Don't take them along on trips!

And this (just lyrics, unfortunately -- I bought the album on iTunes) is my mental evil Sam vid for SPN.

Final Cult Pro. Ah, the joys of Mac vidding!

Things I want magically given to me (assume spoilers for aired episodes):

( Veronica Mars )

( Battlestar Galactica )

( Smallville )

misterrivkat pointed out this story about US soldiers making music vids of their bloody experiences.

So, one of my pet peeves is that bumper sticker that says, “School’s open -- Drive carefully.” At 11 at night, that’s not true; it’s like having a bumper sticker that proudly proclaims, “It’s 9 am!” Not to mention the inherent ridiculousness of such an exhortation. Thus, misterrivkat got me a T-shirt, sadly not a bumper sticker, that says this. It’s from Ben's Ironic Iron-On T-Shirt Factory.

( variations on a lyrics meme )

These guys have apparently spontaneously -- like the many feral vidders before them -- reinvented the fanvid. Except they also wrote and performed a song for the vid, which is called "Lotion." It's for The Silence of the Lambs. You can find it, if you really want to, under "Downloads." I must presume they didn't have a lawyer advise them about this.

Hideaway and No Darker Than Yours, the latter with lovely art by Digitalwave, are now available on my website, and I'll post them to SSA & Level Three shortly. There's also The Bitter Vid (direct link to .mov file), which was essentially my attempt to detach emotionally from Smallville as of the end of S3. As seperis said about Clark's attempt to fix Lex in "The Presence of Fire": not entirely successful. Music: Placebo again, "The Bitter End."

Here, A & B Song. "All our time slips away." I feel pretty good about this, and hope you like it too. Thanks to boniblithe, cesperanza, and geekturnedvamp for helpful comments. Anything wrong with the vid -- their fault.