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've really enjoyed all the Festivids I've watched so far. I've mostly watched vids for sources I'm familiar with, which is more this year than previous years thanks to things like Bunheads and Bedknobs and Broomsticks and (once I catch up with canon) Supergirl.

But of course I want to give a special shout out to the vid made for me, because it is awesome. I received Your Mother, a Saga vid focusing on Alana and Hazel, and it is gorgeous. I am pretty unfamiliar with comics vidding, and what the vidder did with visual effects was stunning. They also made fantastic use of the rhythms of the source, spoken word. And the vid has so much heart and determination just like Alana. I love it dearly.

Alas, I dropped out of Festivids due to a back injury. So I didn't make a vid.

I watched Frozen for the first time a few weeks ago, on an airplane. It was great fun and I regretted not having seen it in the cinema. I have hangups about the way Pixar et al draw people -- I like a lot of other things about their animation, but I think the people look weird and it bothers me and when I see previews all I can think about is how I wish their faces were hand-drawn. But Frozen made me think I ought to try and get over that, because I enjoyed it a lot and wished I hadn't watched it for the first time 2 years late on an itty-bitty screen.

On that same flight I also watched the first episode of iZombie. I dunno, maybe it was the delirium of being 13 hours into a 14 hour flight, but I liked it a lot. I read the comic for quite a while and enjoyed it at first, when it was "zombie uses brain-eating telepathy to solve murders". But the comic quickly became an apocalypse story that I found over-the-top and excessively plotty and incredibly boring. I'm thinking the tv series is unlikely to go down that route. The characters played off each other well and I found Liv and Ravi to be very compelling. Also Ravi is a rare example of a television character who is physically My Type. And he's a kind person which I find very attractive. So I enjoyed that as well. I haven't managed to watch any more but I hope to.

I'm slowly catching up on Supergirl. It's reminding me of early Buffy and most of Xena, in that I love the character interactions and yawn at the plots. But the characters are great. ( not so much spoilers as vague references to spoilers for the first ~9 episodes )

The latest Stevenbomb, from a few weeks ago, was possibly my favorite yet. This show just keeps knocking it out of the ballpark.

ladiesbingo -- a challenge for fanworks about relationships between women -- signups are happening! I'm excited to participate although I'm not sure I'll manage to actually get a bingo. But it will be fun to participate and it should help motivate me with vidding.

Yesterday I opened Premiere for the first time since, like, April and dropped my Aeryn Sun vidsong onto the timeline and added some notes (using titles on the sequence itself) about how I'm going to structure the vid. I got warm fuzzies just opening up Premiere! So hopefully the motivation to actually vid will return. But I still need to rewatch that last run of S3 and then see if I can salvage anything from S4 -- I hated a lot of what they did with Aeryn that season.

Also I'm probably going to officially do festivids this year. Between that, ladiesbingo , and my goal to finish the Aeryn Sun vid for Wiscon next year, I have a rough plan for getting my mojo back.

I finished The Peacekeeper Wars and almost immediately turned around and re-watched the Farscape pilot. I've never done that before (much as I've been tempted at times), but it's been over two years since I started the series, so I hardly remembered it. Needless to say, it held my attention much more this time around. I especially was overwhelmed with Moya feels the first time John sees her, and felt a lot of sadness/excitement for John. The part I'd remembered best was the UST filled conversation between Zhaan and D'Argo, which I very much enjoyed again.

Also, I hadn't realized that Rygel had been the one to break them out of their cells! Good for him. Now he's done like five things I approve of. (I am not a Rygel fan.)

Oh, and the PKW was pretty good too! Some silliness, but also some really fun comedy and action for Aeryn. I felt like she got more agency in the PKW than she did in, like, all of S4, so that was cool too. And I finally found out where the "shooting makes me feel better" line came from -- I always assumed it was from S1 and I'd missed it.

Um, there were a few moments that also made me very sad. I won't say which.

Also I've now watched all the Farscape vids I know about (so, like eight) and they are great. I still never know if people appreciate comments on old vids, which I then often use as an excuse to not do it, but...I might be leaving comments on some of your old vids, folks.

My Orphan Black vid is basically done, but my brain has decided that I have to color and gamma-correct basically every clip. Probably overkill, but it is *so* satisfying to adjust the black levels and see how much prettier the image becomes.

Festivids! I am Festivids-adjacent again this year, which means that if you want to squee/rant/ask for beta at me, I'm up for it!

ETA: I tagged this entry with vidding: history because that topic makes up the bulk of the discussion in the comments.

It's Monday morning in Australia, but they made it a holiday just for meee!  So I can watch Festivids!  And even though I might not say much because typing, I want to log onto vidding chat and hang out with people!

But I can't remember where it went.  A few people posted about the move some time ago, but I can't seem to recall exactly who it was and dig up their post.

Help?

Title: Fire Door
Fandom: Friday Night Lights
Song Title: Fire Door (live)
Artist: Ani Difranco
Length: 3:14
Summary: "I started to feel like I was on the inside instead of the outside"
Content notes: A few brief instances of non-graphic domestic violence. Song has some ableist language.  A couple spoilers for the series.
Youtube | Download (102 Mb H.264 MOV) | Subtitles file

Password: door

( Notes )

( Lyrics )

It's festivids reveal day!  Or at least, it will be when you're reading this.  Or maybe it is much later by now.   Anyway, my first ever festivid was "Sons and Daughters", a Whale Rider vid for eruthros.

Happy Festivids!

Title: Sons and Daughters
Source: Whale Rider
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Song: "Sons and Daughters" by The Decemberists (edited)
Length: 2:56
Characters: Pai, ensemble
Content Notes: About the support and empowerment that characters offer each other.

Download: zipped 92 Mb H264 mov, subtitles file included

Streaming Password: daughters


( Commentary on technical and creative process. )

I <3 my Maru vid so much!!  This vid was so much fun to watch, made such clever use of literalism in lyrics, and makes my heart so happy!  D watched it with me and agrees it's awesome.  This is going to be my new cheer-me-up vid for ages to come.  Also: I am convinced.  Maru + Cardboard Boxes = OTP 4Ever!!!!

I'm going through the entire master list and watching most everything that has content notes I find agreeable. It's so fun -- but I'm only on D.  Now I know why it's 2 weeks between go-live and reveals.

Also, I've been delighted by the comments on the vid I made!  It's great to see so much response to a vid.

Basically, Festivids is awesome.  But I already expected as much.