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VVC: Audio Rarities, Master Class, & Nearly New (Thing 2)
Comment: OMG, this is hard. So many vids to comment on. So little vocabulary, or ability to put thoughts into coherent form... Failing! To do vids! Justice! [/shatner]
Audio Rarities
The Audio Rarities show was one of the best of the con for me. Clearly, a lot of work went into putting this one together. Twelve vids, and by the third, I was convinced there was no way they would all fit, timewise. Hell, I was hard pressed to put 10 in my show, and some of these were really *long* vids. But she made it! With time to spare!
Beloved by Magpie -- was a fantastic premiering X-Men vid, and I am now in search of a url so that I can watch it again. It was both a great song choice, and good pairing, with I want to say more on it again later, after I've watched it several more times. Anyone? Does Magpie have a site?
Ebben? Ne Andro Lontana by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feochadn - the musical choice here is an aria from La Wally. I saw this for the first time several years ago at Escapade, and it was disturbing, in many ways. The first is the obvious -- this is a Band of Brothers vid, within the background of World War II, with settings of winter, violence, death, and gore. It's harsh and unrelenting. The song is one that brings to mind sadness, and loneliness, and loss, through sound alone (since it's a foreign language, and the words may reflect the same, but I can't understand them). It leaves one emotionally wrung out.
The second is much more personal, and stranger. I'd actually heard this music before, to another, professional video, done as an environmental warning. In this music vid, you see elephants stepping off of skyscrapers and falling to their deaths, as people watch in shock, and then street cleaners uncaringly wash the streets down. This is also an extremely disturbingly little vid, that stamped itself firmly enough into my mind that halfway through viewing this vid for the first time, I realized part of me was waiting for the elephants to show up. Er. This memory of mine should in no way detract from the beauty, or harshness of this vid. I'm just now utterly scarred by this song. Death and blood and elephants.
Black Suits Comin' by Imation -- The music is by Will Smith, and I am now trying to track it down. Like much music of this type, I suspect I missed most of the words, and yet the beat, and the energy, totally carried me along witht he vid. This vid suffered from the fact that it was clearly an online vid, and they'd done the best they could to transfer it for the projector, but the pixelization was extreme. Again, anyone with a url, so I can watch it in it's original format, and maybe get a better viewing?
Space Hero bylapillus -- Basically, this was "Do you want to be in the army, and here's what you can EXPECT." It was fun, you could imagine soldiers chanting it while working out, and the clips were all chosen. The one section that seemed a little strange, or flat for me, was actually the meeting foreign women section. There was just no... punch to it. Apart from that, it was great.
Enormous Penis by Hank -- And this was perfect, because I suspect that when things are going poorly? D'argo really *does* sit around cheering himself up with thoughts of his enormous penis.
Fight by Wicked Amp -- When I looked at the program originally, I actually turned to Thing 1 and said "Fur Elise as a TECHNO REMIX? Well, now I have to go to Audio Rarities." I had to play that @#!$! piece about 2 bajillion times for a clarinet competition in the eighth grade, and it's flippin burned into my brain, and I sort of loathe it. *cough*. And yet, it worked very nicely here, and had good energy, and kept things moving along. Good choice for what was basically what the title proclaimed it to be -- a fight vid.
The Master Class
The Master Class won out over No Effects for me (very, very regretfully). It was a hard call, but I had already seen about 3/4ths of the No Effects vids previously (although not Jumping Jack Flash, which is STILL need to see!!)
Jo was the guest speaker for the Master Class, coming in with a strong cinematography background. Like many panelists and VJs this year, she was struck by the tech-curse, in her case, embodied in a small child with juice who destroyed her sample tape on the plane :(
Still, it was a good class, focussing on the evolution, and re-evolution, over and over, of the same techniques in film and video, every time the industry takes a leap forward with the technology.
We also went over, I think a little more successfully for me, the concept that I've heard of many times before, of "Crossing the Line" and why that is a bad idea, in film work. (Or, alternatively, when it can work).
I think this was also the panel where we hit on the concept of the fact that your mind will fill in the blanks. You don't need to keep hitting the viewer over the head with a fact, or even give them every line of the story -- they'll extrapolate.
Andmerryish even managed to drag Stephen King into the discussion. Again. I think it's her goal to bring him up in every panel she ever attends.
Nearly New. Most of it, anyway.
Where the heck was I for the first chunk of the Nearly New show? I don't know. I clearly wasn't at the show, since the first 7 vids are a mystery to me. Perhaps I was taking a small break in the Con Suite. My memory appears to join the show, already in progress, withgwyn_r's Cannonball, which is certainly a good place to begin, at any rate.
Cannonball bygwyn_r -- gwyn had quite a few premiering vids in this year (like some kind of psycho, crazed, vidding machine. I'm not sure I have as many vids to my name as she appears to have made in the last six months.), and this is one of them that stuck out for me (though, not as high as Valentine Heart, which topped the list). I watched Firefly in a... mildly interested way, and often annoyed way (for the science, and for what felt like a lack of thought about how things would actually be). Usually, the vidders pull it off better for me than the show actually did, and this was an example of that. I'm not sure Mal and Inara, apart from a few brief moments, managed to convince me all that much of their interest in one another, but there was genuine tension, and chemistry here, so she seems to have found most of them!
Ghost by Mad Poetess -- This was an interesting vid for me. Some of it worked, and some of it didn't. From what I can tell, it worked more for me than for some of those I watched it with. Basically, it was a comparison of Giles with Ethan, and Buffy with Faith. Ethan and Faith were the "ghosts" in question, with their memories haunting those left behind. It used the structure of a section on Ethan/Giles, and section on Buffy/Faith, repeat, repeat again. What worked for me, was the memories, and the implied "way things could have been." Where it fell down, was in going on for too long, especially with Faith. Faith in the past, 3rd and 4th season, was certainly a harsh memory for Buffy, something lost. But by the end of the vid, she really can't be considered a ghost, in any sense of the word. I felt that if the vid had found an earlier stopping place, or perhaps if it had stuck to clips from earlier in the series, it would have worked better. Ordinary, from the Premiere's show, was an example of a vidder not feeling they had to cover the whole series, simply because it existed. It was that character, *as she existed* at that point in time. I need to rewatch this vid, I think, to see how it strikes me now, but I think it was a fairly good vid, that could have been better if it had tried to do a little less.
Moscow Drug Club byprzed -- This was a fun, fun vid. The song choice was great, the clips were well matched, and I had no problem enjoying it despite never having seen the show. Particularly nice were the dancing shots that got more and more bizarre, and just progressed in perfect order.
Wipeout by rache, Sandy & Nicole -- Basically a humorous comparison/merging of the Stargate and Farscape universes. Certainly a lot of fun for a rabid fan of both shows, and I suspect it worked well for those who watch neither, on the action/humor level.
Entry of the Gladiators by Angel -- This was an Indiana Jones vid, and for the first 20 seconds or so, it was amazingly strong, and I was very much looking forward to the rest of it. But... the rest did not live up to the opening. I'm not sure what happened, but after the initial section, I couldn't really decipher the reasoning behind the clip choices. There were some very nice ones, both in terms of humor, and motion, such as the rolling table top, but not enough there to tie it all together for me into something more coherent.
All Souls Night bydestina -- A beautifully done Gladiator vid. I'm both going to mention this here and... hold off on more comments, until I can find a way to see it again. But the color, and the repeated use of the family scenes both struck me throughout.
Imagine by Mudd -- it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing when I watched this vid. I'm unfamiliar with the movie version of 1984, and I hadn't looked at the program first, to see what fandom was being represented here. I went from "hrrmm, what is this" to "huh, strangely 1984ish" to "The fuck. This must be 1984." Of very effective use was not showing the protagonists face for a good chunk of the vid. Showing him from behind, and the scenery he was looking out at, had the effect of you mentally leaning forward, trying to look around him, and establish your bearings more, as well as get a look at his face. Unsettling, and effective. I'd say the first half of it was the most effective, as the second half didn't seem to have a firm ending I could latch onto, but still a strong showing.
Window of Opportunity byheres_luck -- And this was another example of fantastic song choice. I have yet to see Wonderfalls, although I expect to, as soon as teenygozer gets her hands on the dvds. Still, this conveyed the quirkiness of the show, and something about the main character, and her attitude towards life, and what it keeps throwing at her. This was a great choice to end the show on. From what I've heard, and the few moments I've seen of the show, it actually seems like here's luck may have also chosen the "smaller" moments of inanimate objects talking, or doing strange things, rather than over emphasizing them, or using too many. This let the story remain focussed on the real people, rather than bogging it down with just plain oddness. And the two inanimate objects apparently huddled together for a discussion/collusion was just plain wonderfully cute.
Audio Rarities
The Audio Rarities show was one of the best of the con for me. Clearly, a lot of work went into putting this one together. Twelve vids, and by the third, I was convinced there was no way they would all fit, timewise. Hell, I was hard pressed to put 10 in my show, and some of these were really *long* vids. But she made it! With time to spare!
Beloved by Magpie -- was a fantastic premiering X-Men vid, and I am now in search of a url so that I can watch it again. It was both a great song choice, and good pairing, with I want to say more on it again later, after I've watched it several more times. Anyone? Does Magpie have a site?
Ebben? Ne Andro Lontana by
feochadn - the musical choice here is an aria from La Wally. I saw this for the first time several years ago at Escapade, and it was disturbing, in many ways. The first is the obvious -- this is a Band of Brothers vid, within the background of World War II, with settings of winter, violence, death, and gore. It's harsh and unrelenting. The song is one that brings to mind sadness, and loneliness, and loss, through sound alone (since it's a foreign language, and the words may reflect the same, but I can't understand them). It leaves one emotionally wrung out.The second is much more personal, and stranger. I'd actually heard this music before, to another, professional video, done as an environmental warning. In this music vid, you see elephants stepping off of skyscrapers and falling to their deaths, as people watch in shock, and then street cleaners uncaringly wash the streets down. This is also an extremely disturbingly little vid, that stamped itself firmly enough into my mind that halfway through viewing this vid for the first time, I realized part of me was waiting for the elephants to show up. Er. This memory of mine should in no way detract from the beauty, or harshness of this vid. I'm just now utterly scarred by this song. Death and blood and elephants.
Black Suits Comin' by Imation -- The music is by Will Smith, and I am now trying to track it down. Like much music of this type, I suspect I missed most of the words, and yet the beat, and the energy, totally carried me along witht he vid. This vid suffered from the fact that it was clearly an online vid, and they'd done the best they could to transfer it for the projector, but the pixelization was extreme. Again, anyone with a url, so I can watch it in it's original format, and maybe get a better viewing?
Space Hero by
lapillus -- Basically, this was "Do you want to be in the army, and here's what you can EXPECT." It was fun, you could imagine soldiers chanting it while working out, and the clips were all chosen. The one section that seemed a little strange, or flat for me, was actually the meeting foreign women section. There was just no... punch to it. Apart from that, it was great.Enormous Penis by Hank -- And this was perfect, because I suspect that when things are going poorly? D'argo really *does* sit around cheering himself up with thoughts of his enormous penis.
Fight by Wicked Amp -- When I looked at the program originally, I actually turned to Thing 1 and said "Fur Elise as a TECHNO REMIX? Well, now I have to go to Audio Rarities." I had to play that @#!$! piece about 2 bajillion times for a clarinet competition in the eighth grade, and it's flippin burned into my brain, and I sort of loathe it. *cough*. And yet, it worked very nicely here, and had good energy, and kept things moving along. Good choice for what was basically what the title proclaimed it to be -- a fight vid.
The Master Class
The Master Class won out over No Effects for me (very, very regretfully). It was a hard call, but I had already seen about 3/4ths of the No Effects vids previously (although not Jumping Jack Flash, which is STILL need to see!!)
Jo was the guest speaker for the Master Class, coming in with a strong cinematography background. Like many panelists and VJs this year, she was struck by the tech-curse, in her case, embodied in a small child with juice who destroyed her sample tape on the plane :(
Still, it was a good class, focussing on the evolution, and re-evolution, over and over, of the same techniques in film and video, every time the industry takes a leap forward with the technology.
We also went over, I think a little more successfully for me, the concept that I've heard of many times before, of "Crossing the Line" and why that is a bad idea, in film work. (Or, alternatively, when it can work).
I think this was also the panel where we hit on the concept of the fact that your mind will fill in the blanks. You don't need to keep hitting the viewer over the head with a fact, or even give them every line of the story -- they'll extrapolate.
And
merryish even managed to drag Stephen King into the discussion. Again. I think it's her goal to bring him up in every panel she ever attends.Nearly New. Most of it, anyway.
Where the heck was I for the first chunk of the Nearly New show? I don't know. I clearly wasn't at the show, since the first 7 vids are a mystery to me. Perhaps I was taking a small break in the Con Suite. My memory appears to join the show, already in progress, with
gwyn_r's Cannonball, which is certainly a good place to begin, at any rate.Cannonball by
gwyn_r -- gwyn had quite a few premiering vids in this year (like some kind of psycho, crazed, vidding machine. I'm not sure I have as many vids to my name as she appears to have made in the last six months.), and this is one of them that stuck out for me (though, not as high as Valentine Heart, which topped the list). I watched Firefly in a... mildly interested way, and often annoyed way (for the science, and for what felt like a lack of thought about how things would actually be). Usually, the vidders pull it off better for me than the show actually did, and this was an example of that. I'm not sure Mal and Inara, apart from a few brief moments, managed to convince me all that much of their interest in one another, but there was genuine tension, and chemistry here, so she seems to have found most of them!Ghost by Mad Poetess -- This was an interesting vid for me. Some of it worked, and some of it didn't. From what I can tell, it worked more for me than for some of those I watched it with. Basically, it was a comparison of Giles with Ethan, and Buffy with Faith. Ethan and Faith were the "ghosts" in question, with their memories haunting those left behind. It used the structure of a section on Ethan/Giles, and section on Buffy/Faith, repeat, repeat again. What worked for me, was the memories, and the implied "way things could have been." Where it fell down, was in going on for too long, especially with Faith. Faith in the past, 3rd and 4th season, was certainly a harsh memory for Buffy, something lost. But by the end of the vid, she really can't be considered a ghost, in any sense of the word. I felt that if the vid had found an earlier stopping place, or perhaps if it had stuck to clips from earlier in the series, it would have worked better. Ordinary, from the Premiere's show, was an example of a vidder not feeling they had to cover the whole series, simply because it existed. It was that character, *as she existed* at that point in time. I need to rewatch this vid, I think, to see how it strikes me now, but I think it was a fairly good vid, that could have been better if it had tried to do a little less.
Moscow Drug Club by
przed -- This was a fun, fun vid. The song choice was great, the clips were well matched, and I had no problem enjoying it despite never having seen the show. Particularly nice were the dancing shots that got more and more bizarre, and just progressed in perfect order.Wipeout by rache, Sandy & Nicole -- Basically a humorous comparison/merging of the Stargate and Farscape universes. Certainly a lot of fun for a rabid fan of both shows, and I suspect it worked well for those who watch neither, on the action/humor level.
Entry of the Gladiators by Angel -- This was an Indiana Jones vid, and for the first 20 seconds or so, it was amazingly strong, and I was very much looking forward to the rest of it. But... the rest did not live up to the opening. I'm not sure what happened, but after the initial section, I couldn't really decipher the reasoning behind the clip choices. There were some very nice ones, both in terms of humor, and motion, such as the rolling table top, but not enough there to tie it all together for me into something more coherent.
All Souls Night by
destina -- A beautifully done Gladiator vid. I'm both going to mention this here and... hold off on more comments, until I can find a way to see it again. But the color, and the repeated use of the family scenes both struck me throughout.Imagine by Mudd -- it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing when I watched this vid. I'm unfamiliar with the movie version of 1984, and I hadn't looked at the program first, to see what fandom was being represented here. I went from "hrrmm, what is this" to "huh, strangely 1984ish" to "The fuck. This must be 1984." Of very effective use was not showing the protagonists face for a good chunk of the vid. Showing him from behind, and the scenery he was looking out at, had the effect of you mentally leaning forward, trying to look around him, and establish your bearings more, as well as get a look at his face. Unsettling, and effective. I'd say the first half of it was the most effective, as the second half didn't seem to have a firm ending I could latch onto, but still a strong showing.
Window of Opportunity by
heres_luck -- And this was another example of fantastic song choice. I have yet to see Wonderfalls, although I expect to, as soon as teenygozer gets her hands on the dvds. Still, this conveyed the quirkiness of the show, and something about the main character, and her attitude towards life, and what it keeps throwing at her. This was a great choice to end the show on. From what I've heard, and the few moments I've seen of the show, it actually seems like here's luck may have also chosen the "smaller" moments of inanimate objects talking, or doing strange things, rather than over emphasizing them, or using too many. This let the story remain focussed on the real people, rather than bogging it down with just plain oddness. And the two inanimate objects apparently huddled together for a discussion/collusion was just plain wonderfully cute.
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