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Title: "Ancillary Justice" book trailer
Fandom: Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie
Music: "Nad Dunaem" by DakhaBrakha and "Epic Drums" by Immediate Music (edited)
Length: 1:28
Summary: Nineteen years, three months, and one week ago, I was a troop carrier.
Content notes: Several people get shot or are threatened with guns by members of a military force.
Physical notes: Zoom effects on some of the titles and clips.
A/N: A labor of love, nine months in the making. I watched or scanned through about 50 movies and TV shows (plus endless YouTube videos) in the hunt for clips that looked like my headcanon of critical moments, places and characters from the books, while trying not to use hugely recognizable actors and actresses. Not that you'd know it from the final source list, but the research process involved reading and learning a lot about the history of black characters in Western science fiction film and television as well as a crash course in modern African SF/F independent filmmaking, both of which were fascinating.
I ended up short in some areas and with more footage than I needed in others, and had to make some tough decisions, not all of which I'm perfectly happy with -- but when faced with the choice to either piece together what I had and turn it in for the perfect themed vidshow at Vividcon ("No source? No problem," curated by
revolutionaryjo, highlighting fanvids for canons without obvious visual material, like books and podcasts) or to obsess over it for another nine months, I chose the former. And here we are.
If you've read Ancillary Justice, I hope this brings you joy. If you haven't, maybe this will pique your interest.
Thank you to everyone who helped out with brainstorming, source ideas, file acquisition, soundboarding, script revisions, translation and beta watching, including:
stultiloquentia,
thedeadparrot,
jjhunter,
jetpack_monkey,
chagrined,
alpheratz,
nightdog_barks,
eruthros,
violace,
futuransky,
no_detective,
cosmic_llin,
thingswithwings,
sholio,
kabal42,
cinco,
zulu,
deelaundry,
thirdblindmouse,
kiki_miserychic,
grammarwoman,
ghost_lingering,
daasgrrl, R. and J. It took a village. I hope you agree the results were worth it.
Streaming on Vimeo | YouTube | AO3 | Twitter | Tumblr | Download mp4
SCRIPT (adapted from the source text)
19 years, 3 months, and 1 week ago, I was a troop carrier
An artificial intelligence linked to an army of ancillaries
Until the Lord of the Radch destroyed all but one body
I've followed the trail from planet to planet
Risked failure and death
To obtain justice
Before everything falls to pieces
LYRICS
I listened to a lot of polyphony and shape-note singing before settling on a single female voice blended with more traditional trailer music. Something just makes me think Justice of Toren would enjoy DakhaBrakha's harmonies. The excerpted lyrics aren't important for understanding the vid, but they are:
Над Дунаєм стояла
Над Дунаєм стояла
Косу русу чесал(а)
Which a collaborative of friends settled on a translation of: "Standing over the Danube, she combed out her golden hair."
SOURCES
In order of appearance: Halo/UNSC Infinity, Total Recall (2012), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Expanse, Pumzi, Killjoys, Planet Earth (BBC), Stargate: Continuum, Interstellar, "Bowl Tea" by Wu De, Only Lovers Left Alive, "Brave Man's Bridge" in Shiniuzhai National Geological Park/China, Men in Black III, Doctor Who, bronze statue of Kali, Blade II, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Firefly, Ascension, Gravity, Virtuality, Sunshine, After Earth, Une Africaine dans l'Espace
ETA: Okay, for the record, because wow: Ann Leckie's blog post/Tumblr post/tweet, Metafilter, Tor.com
Fandom: Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie
Music: "Nad Dunaem" by DakhaBrakha and "Epic Drums" by Immediate Music (edited)
Length: 1:28
Summary: Nineteen years, three months, and one week ago, I was a troop carrier.
Content notes: Several people get shot or are threatened with guns by members of a military force.
Physical notes: Zoom effects on some of the titles and clips.
A/N: A labor of love, nine months in the making. I watched or scanned through about 50 movies and TV shows (plus endless YouTube videos) in the hunt for clips that looked like my headcanon of critical moments, places and characters from the books, while trying not to use hugely recognizable actors and actresses. Not that you'd know it from the final source list, but the research process involved reading and learning a lot about the history of black characters in Western science fiction film and television as well as a crash course in modern African SF/F independent filmmaking, both of which were fascinating.
I ended up short in some areas and with more footage than I needed in others, and had to make some tough decisions, not all of which I'm perfectly happy with -- but when faced with the choice to either piece together what I had and turn it in for the perfect themed vidshow at Vividcon ("No source? No problem," curated by
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
If you've read Ancillary Justice, I hope this brings you joy. If you haven't, maybe this will pique your interest.
Thank you to everyone who helped out with brainstorming, source ideas, file acquisition, soundboarding, script revisions, translation and beta watching, including:
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Streaming on Vimeo | YouTube | AO3 | Twitter | Tumblr | Download mp4
"Ancillary Justice" book trailer from bironic on Vimeo.
SCRIPT (adapted from the source text)
19 years, 3 months, and 1 week ago, I was a troop carrier
An artificial intelligence linked to an army of ancillaries
Until the Lord of the Radch destroyed all but one body
I've followed the trail from planet to planet
Risked failure and death
To obtain justice
Before everything falls to pieces
LYRICS
I listened to a lot of polyphony and shape-note singing before settling on a single female voice blended with more traditional trailer music. Something just makes me think Justice of Toren would enjoy DakhaBrakha's harmonies. The excerpted lyrics aren't important for understanding the vid, but they are:
Над Дунаєм стояла
Над Дунаєм стояла
Косу русу чесал(а)
Which a collaborative of friends settled on a translation of: "Standing over the Danube, she combed out her golden hair."
SOURCES
In order of appearance: Halo/UNSC Infinity, Total Recall (2012), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Expanse, Pumzi, Killjoys, Planet Earth (BBC), Stargate: Continuum, Interstellar, "Bowl Tea" by Wu De, Only Lovers Left Alive, "Brave Man's Bridge" in Shiniuzhai National Geological Park/China, Men in Black III, Doctor Who, bronze statue of Kali, Blade II, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Firefly, Ascension, Gravity, Virtuality, Sunshine, After Earth, Une Africaine dans l'Espace
ETA: Okay, for the record, because wow: Ann Leckie's blog post/Tumblr post/tweet, Metafilter, Tor.com
no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2016 10:59 pm (UTC)The vidshow theme sounds really interesting and I hope to be able to see some of the other vids used in it.
no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 01:38 pm (UTC)If you haven't seen, the playlist for the whole show was posted at http://vividcon.info/vidshows/267/. The link for the Raven Cycle vid In Dreams isn't filled in yet but I found it on Tumblr: http://squidwithelbows.tumblr.com/post/143432333175/in-dreams-the-raven-cycle-amv-since-the-raven It's beautiful.
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Date: Aug. 12th, 2016 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2016 12:41 am (UTC)Um, yes. Yes yes yes. Some fragmentary first impression highlights:
- the bolding / lingering of the text "one body" in context of single voice singing works really well
- that pace change! where the drums kick in / up and the clips start pounding by and then the moment there's a hint at breathing space again you've got Breq | One Esk Nineteen spinning out into the dark - as a viewer I started to draw breath, spotted the significant of 'oh shit that part' and gasped / held in sympathetic mirroring of the predicament well into the blanking (blacking out?) of the screen to give the credits.
- overall, there's this sense of going from a more remote POV (quite literally, in seeing ship body from distances where the ship is moving but the POV itself seems almost fixed) with isolated flashes / flash-backs interspersed with text and that haunting, haunting voice - that one note in particular being held and the singer leaning into it even more, hot damn — and then the ship destruction, where the intense blueness of it is almost as striking as the whiting out bit — and suddenly the camera quite literally drops us into a singular embodied POV, and rather than having isolated flashes we go straight from one action to another, and the camera is constantly moving even as the clips with people in them are constantly struggling. The shift from guns / bodies holding guns to the clip evoking the temple massacre where the focus is very much on the person who will be shot.
So good.
oh man, now I really want to see what you'd do for Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy.There's such evocative sense of place throughout this - space itself, and spaceships as the bodies that belong to space (vs. Breq's human body spiraling out, which viscerally does not belong to space and in immediate peril of dying of it); the planets, and the way green and swampy is shown as a plane or a satellite might see it vs. ice / snow world hits us at ground level as Breq and Seivarden struggle through it; and all the references to Radch culture - the glimpse of tea, the omen coins, the gloves - and to Breq (the statue! eeeee - also, given the text that comes immediately after, it comes across as 'the moral weather today is justice, and by justice I mean head whacking').Which is to say, this is great and I really like it and I would love to hear more about all the stuff you learned in the course of your research for it. Thank you for making this, and for sharing it with us!
(HOLY SHIT.)
no subject
Date: Aug. 18th, 2016 11:27 am (UTC)I'm always a little surprised on rewatching just how fast the clips go by - I get so much out of the choices you made, and the way they're instantly recognizable / evocative of particular moments or thematic elements of the book that they expand in my memory.
Also, switching back to the initial solo singer after the screen blacking / final definitive drumbeat is just exquisite, experience-wise. I like how it both brings us full circle back to space (and suggests that's what's going through Breq's head too) and also full contrast between the human body in space peril still lingering as an afterimage in our eyes (the glow and gone of the white uniform) and what we saw the last time we heard the singer, i.e. all the spaceships, and in particular one spaceship - Justice of Toren - blowing up (will Breq's final human body expire or explode like her spaceship body and all her other ancillaries did? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT).
(no subject)
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Date: Aug. 13th, 2016 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2016 01:12 am (UTC)My daughter also says she likes it, although she has not (yet) read the books. :p I will hand her the first one now!
no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2016 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 20th, 2016 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 13th, 2016 08:29 am (UTC)This vid is awesome, I squeed at every new image (tea!!! gloves!!! the bridge!!!), I cannot even begin to imagine how much work went into putting it all together. And I'm adopting your Breq fancast as my headcanon.
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Date: Aug. 20th, 2016 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: Aug. 16th, 2016 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2016 05:39 am (UTC)The music's really compelling/well-pieced together. I especially like the hitch in the moment of fading sound/light around :37.
no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 05:13 pm (UTC)>>nice use of font. And color scheme. It's nice shades of s/f blue!
:D We have a couple of beta
readerswatchers to thank for that - toward the end, they encouraged me to pick a more exciting font than the plain white one I'd been using in the drafts, and I did like this one for its futuristic, stark yet elegant feel. Looked much more polished and genre-appropriate afterwards - thanks, betas!no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2016 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 18th, 2016 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 04:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, thank you!
no subject
Date: Aug. 18th, 2016 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 19th, 2016 04:00 pm (UTC)So glad you liked the bridge and statue, too, and I share your yearning for a full-length adaptation.
Thanks for the comment!
no subject
Date: Jul. 31st, 2017 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 8th, 2017 01:59 am (UTC)