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Festivids 2023 Reveals!
11 February 2024 12:25 pmI 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.
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.
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