fray-adjacent

beccatoria asked: Point to a section from one of your favorite vids you've made and explain why you're proud of it.

I'm gonna be a big ole bragger (we vidders don't get enough opportunities to boast) and pick four.

1. The third verse in Tightrope, from 2:06-2:27, where I put in a lot of effort to get the blocking and motion to match up between clips and kept the energy high all in the service of a strong narrative focus on Buffy challenging authority figures and taking an egalitarian approach instead of an authoritarian one. I'm especially proud of how I worked in Quentin Travers around 2:15, stutter cutting across 4 seasons and matching the blocking with Buffy's horrible test in Checkpoint. And the final clip of this section, where she walks away from Wesley, is possibly my favorite in the vid, both because of the lyrical matching and what I did with speed changes and freeze frames.

2. The bridge in Everywhere, from 1:49-2:06. The first verse is Xena's pov, the second Gabrielle's, so part of the task of the bridge was to move to a dual pov. Relatedly, this section of the vid was all about them coming together as a team/couple. So I started with how they are different, by juxtaposing Gabrielle dancing with clips of Xena fighting. And because this silly show has a Footloose episode and two musical episodes, I was able to gradually bring them together by showing Xena go from trying to stop Gabrielle dancing to joining in, and by showing Gabrielle's dancing look more and more militaristic, until at the end of the section they are dancing and fighting side by side.

I also love the montage of OTP feels in the last chorus, around 2:47-3:23. This part wasn't particularly difficult to make, it more felt like the payoff for harder work I did in earlier sections of the vid.

3. The section of Become You where Lao Ma is watching Xena, around 0:42. Also a bit later in the vid I ran a clip of Lao Ma stepping backwards and looking serene in reverse, so she is stepping forward with an expression of desire, at 0:58-1:01. I wanted to show her agency and desire for Xena and those sections are particularly successful at doing that.

Also in that vid, the section paralleling Lao Ma's execution with Xena's near execution, at 2:22-2:38. This almost feels unfair because the source did so much of the work in terms of visual parallels, and for some reason the clips of Xena fighting blended beautifully with the execution scenes so the whole thing is just pretty.

More than any recent vid of mine, this one has sections I love and sections I'm deeply unsatisfied with. I suppose that's not surprising since it is the most ambitious vid I've made yet in terms of argument. Anyway it was nice to share a bit of the former with you all, since I've been fairly focused on the latter since I published the vid.

4. I'm really proud of the ending of Starkville, from about 3:49 on. Again, the show provided me with easy visual parallels and metaphors, I just had to put them there and play with blending modes a bit. The most complicated thing I did there, besides the fire overlay, was to put a reddish gradient overlay on that entire final section and faded it out a little more slowly than I did the last clip, which makes her bloody and brutal facial expression fade to red before it fades to black. I was quite happy with that.

Day 30: Do you have a favorite vid you've made? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!

My two favorite vids that I've made are "Tightrope" and "Everywhere".  I don't think it's a coincidence that one is an ode to my all-time favorite character set to dance music, and the other is an ode to my all-time favorite pairing, also set to dance music.  :D

But I'll go with "Tightrope", because I'm pretty happy with all the fun jump cuts and time toggling and things like that that I put in there.  And it's not just an ode to Buffy's kick-assery, but also a vid about how she handles all the different pressures and tensions in her life, about how sometimes she fails at that but mostly she just does it.  And about how the Scoobies help her.  I secretly kind of love that Buffy's ships take up about 20 seconds of the vid, in a segment I called "Boy Trouble"

I'm not entirely happy with the ending of that vid though.  The idea was that, at least on a broad thematic level and ignoring the comics, once Willow does the empowerment spell then Buffy no longer has to walk that tightrope, at least not like she did before.  But I don't think that really came through.  I mean, it just looks like I lazily ended the vid with the last clip from the show. 

Still, it was awfully fun to make everyone dance.  :D

( 30 Questions )

Title: Tightrope
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Song: "Tightrope" by Janelle Monae (edited)
Character: Buffy, Scoobies
Summary: I gotta keep my balance
Content Notes: Covers all 7 seasons, but no real plot spoilers.
Duration: 3:07

Thanks to violace and kiki_miserychic for excellent beta!

Premiered at Club Vivid 2013

Vimeo | Youtube | Download (78 Mb H264 MOV)


password: tightrope

 

( Lyrics )