I made four vids for festivids! I'm not really going to do a vid post here, just links to the AO3 posts, but I did manage to write up some vidder's notes for them, which I am posting here in the order that I made them.

All of these vidsongs came from my general music listening catalogue. This is almost always how I find my vidsongs. Two of them, Tea for the Tillerman and Music, were songs I'd already had filed away as potential vidsongs for an unspecified fandom, and one, I'm that Girl, was a song-first idea.

Les Fleurs (Ponyo)

I matched with lizardjay on both Ponyo and Totoro, but I didn't actually have any ideas for Totoro. I had a couple of other songs for Ponyo in mind: Starfish and Coffee by Prince, which would have leaned more into Ponyo as simultaneously a weird little fish and a very typical young child, and Dudar Ai by Dake, a Kazakh artist. Dudar Ai has this very sweet, chill sound though the lyrics are a bit dark -- I've never seen a full translation, but what I have seen has a star-crossed lovers vibe, which I can see working for Ponyo/Sosuke. Anyway, I settled on Les Fleurs because I liked how the rich yet delicate sound of the verses contrasted with the big crescendos in the chorus, especially since lizardjay specifically mentioned liking the water physics animation in Ponyo. I made the first half of it, up to the shot of the moon, in one evening, then finished the second half like a month later, because I was a bit stuck on how to finish it. It's definitely not a vid that follows any particular plot or character arc and instead focuses on vibes and visuals, which now that I think about it describes most vids I've made in the last couple of years. So I wrapped up the vid with the underwater imagery that I love in the slower parts, and various energetic motion in the second chorus, with a focus on arcs/circles. I liked combining clips of Ponyo running around the house with clips of Lisa's ill-advised driving, which I later slightly regretted because I repeated it in Tea for the Tillerman but actually had character-based reasons to do so.

For some reason I ended this vid on a sea full of jellyfish, even though I find those images in Ponyo horrifying because (a) jellyfish are scary! They just float around and sting you! (b) in my previous career as an atmospheric scientist, I saw a talk about how ocean life would be affected by ocean acidification if carbon dioxide emmissions continue unabated into the coming decades, and it was one of the most upsetting climate change talks I've ever seen. One of the take homes was that jellyfish would be fine but very little else would be. So I put that clip in as a placeholder and then got used to it and even grew to like it even though all those fucking jellyfish images remind me of that talk.

Music (Jungle music videos)

This vid exists for three reasons: I wanted to make a treat for bingeling; I've been enjoying making vids that focus more on movement and visuals than narrative; and I've wanted to vid this song since very early in my vidding days.

At some point in the latter half of last year, bing posted about Jungle music videos. I have no memory of what she wrote, but whatever it was it made me feel pretty sure she was going to request it for Festivids. I was keen to make a vid for bing and I was excited to vid music videos as I was in the early days of working on my Beyoncé vid, so after watching some Jungle music videos I started thinking about songs. I had a few songs in mind and was pretty close to selecting one of them -- I can't remember what any of them were! -- and then, one evening while I was making dinner, I remembered the song I ended up using -- Music by Joss Stone featuring Lauryn Hill.

I discovered this song around 2014-ish, when Cosmo Baker made a mix of songs featuring or produced by Raphael Saadiq (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61zmjin2uCw). It's one of my favourite mixes of all time, and after listening to "Music" a few times I started thinking about vidding it. My idea at the time was a BtVS vid about all the slayers, where the "music" is their slaying. One thing I love about the song is how the lyrics, especially Lauryn Hill's verse, emphasise people connecting through music, and so I have always envisioned this song for an ensemble vid. Later, after I stopped wanting to vid BtVS, I thought about vidding Star Trek: Discovery to it, where the vid would be about science and exploration and how learning more about the world can help you feel more connected to it, and you learn ways that different ideas, people, things are also connected. I still love the idea of that vid but I never quite felt that Music was the right song for it -- I actually wanted something with an even more sensual feel. Anyway, I was auditioning songs for this vid, and when it occurred to me that I could use this one I felt really pleased that I'd waited, because I loved this match so much.

The editing for this was interesting. One of the defining features of Jungle's music videos is very long takes -- usually the entire video is a single take. So the idea of editing it felt a little confronting. On the other hand, I didn't have the issue I've found other times I've vidded music videos, which is that the clips are so short that if they don't work with the rhythm of the vid then they're unusable, or awkward. I chose which videos to use by watching them while listening to the song and discarding the ones that had a really obvious mismatch. Fortunately a few of them worked really well with the song, and the ones that didn't I was able to massage (mostly with small speed changes) to work OK. Because I wanted to use longer clips, the bits where the dancing doesn't quite match the song were a little tough to work with -- this vid was more difficult than I anticipated -- and there are a few parts I'm still not totally happy with but really wanted to keep the clips anyway. Comments on this vid remind me that, as a viewer, your brain is happy to make the music and visuals match even when they don't perfectly, and so viewers are usually more generous than the vidder themselves on things like that.

Bingeling mentioned in her comment on the heterosexual storytelling in the source material, and I was glad she did, cause gosh did I do a lot of editing around that. Except those two guys from "Time" -- I ship them, too, bing!


I'm That Queer (Janelle Monáe music videos)

So, I've spent the last year and a half listening to Renaissance a lot, and I've thought about vidding most of the the songs on it. When I was thinking about vidding I'm That Girl, it occurred to me that, apart from the title and titular line, it was a really fitting song for Janelle Monáe, both sound-wise and lyrically. But then I discarded the idea because I didn't want to vid a song with that title and repeated lyric about a non-binary person, even though as far as I understand Janelle Monáe has expressed strong ongoing identification with women. But when I matched with lizardjay, who requested Janelle Monáe music videos, I got excited about the idea again, and felt that I could work with the "I'm that girl" lyric by making the subject of the vid less Monáe themselves and more the queer community their videos so often represent. I made the vid in a 3 day daze during the week I had off at Christmas. It was a lot of fun -- I especially enjoyed doing the really fast cutting which I don't do very often, and doing some fun work with colour and overlays. I've made use of other editors' really quick cuts of centre-frame faces, particularly in my Everything Everywhere All at Once vids and in my Beyoncé vid, and it was fun to construct one myself. I've been wanting to make a stream-of-conscioussness style vid since I started vidding, and I think this is about as close as I've ever come. I don't know what else to say about this vid! To paraphrase David Lynch, the vid is the talking. (Thanks to findmeinthealps for making me aware of the David Lynch quote.)

Oh, I do have one more thing to say! Evidently, if I want to vid Beyoncé for festivids and not be guessed, all I have to do is not call attention to the fact that it's a Beyoncé song! Because most people don't have her catalogue committed to memory. cry-laughing emoji.


Tea for the Tillerman (Ponyo)

Lisa is one of my favourite characters in any Miyazaki film, though she exemplifies how strong Studio Ghibli almost always is when it comes to characterisation. She doesn't have loads of screen time but she's so rich and complex and has such a clear inner life. The way her life feels frantic, the fact that she loves her child deeply and is overwhelmed by parenting, the way she comes off, to me, at first glance as someone who is aggressive and angry but she's just going about her day, being friendly with neighbours and looking after seniors. She is wonderful.

I had the idea for this vid early on in my festivids plans, and I clipped for it at the same time as I clipped for "Les Fleurs", but when I finished "I'm That Queer" I wanted a break from vidding. I also got back to work after having the week of Christmas off and I'm mostly finding it difficult to vid outside of vacation time these days. So I'd given up on the idea of making this vid. Then, the Friday before go-live, I had a rough day at work. It wasn't actually, objectively, a particulary bad day, but I was in a terrible mood and so fairly small things kind of ruined the day for me. At some point in the afternoon I thought to myself, I am going to make that fucking Ponyo vid tonight and fuck everything else. And that helped me feel better. I ended up making the vid in about an hour and a half -- the fastest I've ever made a vid by a wide margin, though I think it's also the shortest vid I've ever made. In retrospect I'm amused that I made this vid about a stressed out, overwhelmed parent as a result of being a stressed out, overwhelmed childcare provider, but honestly that fact did not occur to me until several days after I made the vid. It wasn't the content of the vid at all that gave me the catharsis, it was the act of vidding, and any vid idea that was short enough and for which I already had clips would have worked just as well.

I kind of wish I'd made a Lisa vid to a slightly longer song, one that could give more breathing room to the frantic moments and the still moments, and one that could also accomodate a bit of Lisa/Granmamare, because I definitely ship it.

Dear festividder,

Yay vids! Here is a bit about the fandoms I requested.

Beyoncé Music Videos
I definitely include Lemonade, Homecoming, and Black is King in this category. I'm not so interested in the RPF side of this. I love Beyoncé's music, the amazing visual style of her videos and films, the dancing, and her celebration of Black people and cultures. Anything that focused on any of those things would be fab! Feel free to use one of her songs, but I'm happy with lots of other music, especially by Black artists. In particular I've thought the following artists would vibe well with her: Erykah Badu, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliot, D'Angelo, or a lot of 70s soul/funk.

Flatbush Cats
This is a Youtube channel for a cat rescue organisation in Brooklyn. They make really high quality videos about their operation, with strong narrative structure and high quality visuals. They used to focus more on rescue and teaching people how to do it/encouraging people to become cat fosterers, but now they are working on building a low-cost spay/neuter clinic and their videos focus on that. The best footage is probably from their videos from a year or more ago, when they focused more on the operations, but they've got some really cute Bodega cats in their recent videos. I love this channel, they warm my heart and also have inspired me in terms of their ability to make high quality long(ish) form videos on such a compelling topic. Note that some videos have graphic injuries in them, usually severe eye infections. These are almost always warned for -- I have found that when the injury is the focus of the video they always warn for it, but sometimes they don't warn when they re-use a clip in a later video. I would like to not have graphic injuries in a vid for this source, though the more commonplace distress is OK for me.

The Lathe of Heaven (1980, Safety)
I love this book, which I re-read earlier this year, and the film. What a trip. If you haven't seen/read it, it's about a man who is able to change reality with his dreams, but he can't control it. He sees an ambitious pyschotherapist who sees the potential and tries to change things, with all sorts of consequences as you can imagine. The book is by Ursula K Le Guin and she was involved in the writing and production of the film, which was done by PBS. It was the only film adaptation of any of her books that she liked. I would be happy with any vid on this -- going over the plot, trippy 70s shit, criticism if you like, whatever interests you!

Nailed It! (TV)
I only watched this about a year ago! I love it so much! I'd love a vid about general hijinx and/or one focussing on Nicole and Jacques' dynamic, which I find super fun.

Twister (1996, Safety)
So, until very recently I was an atmospheric science academic researcher with expertise in the dynamics of storms -- this is a topic that bridges weather and climate research, btw-- I've done a fair amount of field work, AND I am an elder millenial. AND YET I only watched this film for the first time this year, and whooo boy I effing loved it. I love the storms (except when they throw semi trucks, sorry but that is a bit much for me), I love the use of radar and satellite imagery -- I literally shouted "GOES 8!" (or maybe it was GOES 7) when they showed it. I love the focus on field work and tbh the movie gets a lot of things right in terms of the culture of academic weather weenies (not so much the wacky instrument technicians, but Jo and Bill for sure). Also Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are fantastic, I love them individually and as a couple. I also really liked how the new girlfriend didn't suck! A side note that is probably not relevant, but just in case: the instrument was based on an actual idea, but in reality the instrument never worked for exactly the reason that it didn't work for most of the film -- in order to get the little instruments sucked into the funnel of the tornado, you have to very accurately predict the tornado's track, and that's just impossible, they are too mathematically chaotic. Is there a song about chaos theory? Anyway you can't really go wrong vidding this, unless maybe you focus entirely on the otherwise all-male research team that Jo character leads? TBH the vid could be Helen Hunt in a White Tank Top Hair Whipping in the Wind and I'd be happy.


Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers
I really love this series. Honestly, any idea you have for this would be wonderful, and given how challening vidding a book series is, I don't want to put on any constraints! If you have a vision, I'd love to see it.

Notes on music, triggers, etc

I like a fairly wide range of music and will watch and enjoy vids to most music, including music I don't choose to listen to. I really mean that -- instrumental music, death metal, it's all good. However, I grew up listening to country music and I have some hangups there. There are loads of country artists that I like but it might be best to avoid country, especially 90s or later country. Also I hate Tom Petty.

I don't see it coming up with these fandoms, but I would not want vids to have graphic violence or sexual violence. By graphic violence I mean something very gory or where a lot of what is happening is shown. For example. the kind of violence that's in Game of Thrones or Spartacus is not OK; the kind of violence that's in Star Trek Discovery is OK.

I don't have any visual or auditory triggers and do not personally require subtitles, but I ask that if at all possible you provide trigger warnings and subtitles for other viewers.

I haven't posted any vids on here since January 2021, so here I'm posting the rest of the vids I made in the first half of 2021 and later I'll post the vids I made in the second half and in 2022.

Downloads for all vids are available at the AO3 links.

Some Guts
Fandom: Aggretsuko
Song: Fagetarian and Dyke by Team Dresch
A Retsuko character vid
AO3 Post


Wait for It
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Xena Warrior Princess
A vid about Willow and Gabrielle's role as sidekicks. Song is Wait for It by Leslie Odom Jr.
AO3 link


Boys
Fandom: Xena Warrior Princess
Xena's getting bi. Song is Boys by Lizzo.
AO3 link

Here are two Xena vids I finished within a week of each other, a month or two ago.

Title: Kind Friend
Song: Hey Kind Friend by the Indigo Girls
Summary: "Remember who I am." A Xena character study.
Notes: Alludes to suicidal ideation. Refers to the series finale but doesn't show much from it. Has some basic dissolves and camera motion but no very fast cuts or bright flashing lights. Song has an unfortunate if understandable mispronunciation of a minor US city*.
Subtitles included in download and on Youtube stream

Download | AO3 post | Youtube


*Spokane is pronounced spoe-can, with a very slight emphasis on the second syllable.



Title: Bitterroot
Song: Bitterroot by the Indigo Girls
Summary: basically 100% shenanigans.
Notes: Numerous jump-cuts. One shot of a white person (Xena) wearing indigenous-coded clothing.
Subtitles included in download and on Youtube stream

Download | AO3 post | Youtube

Previous years: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

I'm posting this later than intended, but at least it's still January! However, it's a bit late for those 2019 vids. They seem like ancient history.

Vids I made in 2020

Statuette (Steven Universe, June)
Touch Me Fall (Xena, July)
Thank U, Next (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, October)
Rain on Me (The Old Guard, November)
Find Your Way Back (My Neighbor Totoro, November)
The Memory of Trees (Miyazaki Multi, December)

Additionally, I remastered Starkville and Shed Your Skin, both Xena vids, and made significant edits to the intro of the latter.

Vids I made in 2019

Sparrow's Lullaby (Xena vidlet, January)
Fine with the Dark (Xena, June)
Butterflies (Xena, December)

Favourite

I made three vids in 2020 that I'm really pleased with. The first is Statuette. It's kind of an intellectual high concept vid, and I don't know how successful it is, but I know what I meant and so I enjoy it. Happily, laurashapiro  left a lovely comment that told me that at least one other person got it. I also love The Memory of Trees, which gives me all the Miyazaki feels I wanted, and Touch Me Fall. In the latter I let myself lean into the weird and it paid off. In particular, both Statuette and Touch Me Fall feel like my most experimental, conceptual vids, where I took some risks that paid off.

Least Favourite

Sparrow's Lullaby, because the overlays in the last 10 seconds or so are just way too much. I like the first part though, quite a bit. I'm also not happy with the end of Butterflies or the last third or so of Rain on Me. I hemmed and hawed on Rain on Me because the song felt a bit too long to support the concept, and wo it was. Though I'm still pleased with the vid in most respects, far more than Sparrow's Lullaby which I mostly pretend doesn't exist.

Most Successful

Butterflies has gotten a fair amount of traction on youtube, which is now not only where my vids get by far the most views but also where they get the most comments. I have also gotten lovely comments on Thank U, Next on YT, which has given me a super positive view of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fandom. But within my own vidding circles I believe that Touch Me Fall was the most successful.

Most Underappreciated by the Universe

Oh poor Statuette, I worked so hard on you and am so proud of you, but, well.

Most Fun to Make

The Memory of Trees came together surprisingly fast. Like, once I'd finished cutting clipping I made it in about 24 hours including solid sleeping and eating breaks. Lately I've been vidding much faster than I used to and there's something fun about that fact? Like just the feeling of flow, of having lots of ideas, lots of great material to work with and never getting stuck. But I also enjoyed making Statuette, because I discovered cool ways that you can manipulate the colour, timing, etc with animation that you just can't do with live action. It was a lot of fun.

Hardest Vid to Make

TBH, none these vids was hard to make. Statuette and Touch Me Fall were a lot of work, but I enjoyed it, so it wasn't a struggle. The last section of Butterflies I felt quite uninspired and didn't really know what to do with it, so maybe that one?

The Things I Learned This Last Year

That vidding is, almost all of the time, a genuinely fun and relaxing hobby for me. It definitely got me through the year. Also that when in doubt I intercut, and it might be worth trying other methods a bit more.

Planning for Next This Year

My big goal is to finish my Lesbian Icons Vid Series in 2021. I've already made two more vids for it this month, and I have 2-3 to go. TBH I feel like I need to see this project through before I return to a life where I have to travel for work again -- though I doubt I will ever again do so as much as I did in 2019 -- and my output returns to 1-3 vids per year.

I made a vid about a month ago and forgot to post it! Now I've made another. Luckily they are both made by the same director/studio, and they are both responses to the same equinox_exchange  prompt, so they kind of fit in one post?

Title: Find Your Way Back
Source: となりのトトロ / My Neighbor Totoro
Song: Find Your Way Back by Beyoncé
Summary: A vid celebrating children's play and love of nature
Content Notes: Suggested potential parental death

Download | AO3 | Youtube 

Title: The Memory of Trees
Source: Miyazaki Multi: 風の谷のナウシカ / Nausicaä: Valley of the Wind;  となりのトトロ / My Neighbor Totoro;  もののけ姫 / Princess Mononoke;  千と千尋の神隠し / Spirited Away;  ハウルの動く城 / Howl's Moving Castle;  崖の上のポニョ / Ponyo
Song: The Memory of Trees by Enya
Summary: A vid about the depiction of nature in Miyazaki's films
Content Notes: Some fast cuts

Download | AO3 | Youtube

Title: Touch Me Fall
Fandom: Xena Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Indigo Girls
Summary: A six minute meander through Xena's sexuality.
Content warnings: Flashing lights, jump cuts, stutter cuts. Sexualisation of violence. Blood, references to torture, and show-typical violence. White people in indigenous-coded clothing; orientalism; and cultural appropriation. A white woman killing a Black man.

Download | AO3 post

Title: Statuette
Fandom: Steven Universe
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Music: Emily Haines
Summary: I couldn't keep to myself. Pearl; order and chaos; collective joy and liberation in Steven Universe.
Notes: Contains spoilers for all of Steven Universe and a few clips from SU: The Movie and Steven Universe Future, but no spoilers for SU:TM and one spoiler for SUF, which might not be noticeable out of context. There are some fast cuts and fast motion but no flashing stutter cuts.
Premiered at (Virtual) VidUKon 2020

Download | Youtube | AO3 post

 

Title: Fine With the Dark
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Amy Ray
Characters: Gabrielle, Xena
Relationships: Xena/Gabrielle
Content Notes: show-typical violence, fast cuts, flashing lights. Includes a brief allusion to events from the series finale. Feel free to contact me with questions about content.

Download | AO3 post | Direct YouTube Link

1. The polar vortex is pretty much always there in winter. The strong winds circumnavigating the Arctic -- or Antarctic -- help keep the North/South pole cold and middle latitudes...less cold (as a person who is happiest in the tropics, I can't bring myself to say "warm").

2. The cold weather in the UK and extreme cold in parts of North America right now are due to the polar vortex being disrupted, so that the winds no longer blow from west to east but instead in a wavy pattern: the dip from northwest to southeast, then back up to the northeast, bringing the cold arctic air with them.

3. Breakdowns of the polar vortex are often a consequence of sudden and rapid warming in the stratosphere (which can happen for a number of reasons, including, say, shifts in the location of tropical rainfall due to El Nino -- the atmosphere is complicated). It takes a few weeks for a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) to lead to a collapse in the polar vortex.

4. This extreme cold event was remarkably well-forecasted because the polar vortex breakdown was preceeded by an SSW: see, e.g., this blog post from late December. The UK Met Office, in early January, wrote in their outlook that late January would be very cold, on the basis of the SSW that was occurring at the time. January proceeded to be anomalously warm, until the end of the month, when temperatures dropped just like they said it would (take that, Daily Mail!).

5. The link between disruptions of the polar vortex and global warming is tenuous, and an area of active research. Some climate scientists argue for a mechanism that would make it more likely, because the poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet. But the evidence for that mechanism has not been fully shown.

6. In the absense of that mechanism, it's more likely that extreme cold events will become less common with global warming*.  It might well be that the cold spells that only come once -- or less than once -- per year in the UK used to happen a couple of times per year, and so now when they happen they seem remarkable and we (those of us who aren't global warming deniers) are inclined to attribue them to climate change. (I'm not applying this argument to what's happening in parts of North America, because my impression is that that's a more rare cold event.)

7. Because SSWs and their associated polar vortex disruptions last for several weeks, there can't be more than two or three of them per winter, so even if global warming does make them more likely, it will probably be hard to show that with any statistical rigor for a long time.

Source: I'm an atmospheric scientist, and a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper on this topic. (But it's not my usual area of research; I joined the project to bring my tropical meteorology expertise.)

*but extreme heat, drought, and flooding are all definitely becoming more common -- I'm not saying that global warming isn't a problem!