New vid! Book trailer for "Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie

[bironic]

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

"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

Comments

[bironic]

Ahh, I accidentally opened a link in the same tab and lost my comment draft. Let's try this again:

:) :) I was hoping this would please you after our initial conversations! Thank you for sharing these observations and expressions of joy.

>> and the singer leaning into it even more, hot damn

Yesss. I love the quality of her voice and how it sounds like breaking with grief at that point, even though the lyrics describe an innocuous image.

Re: research, here are some links:

http://www.thebritishblacklist.com/tbb-presents-case-black-women-science-fiction-fantasy-screen-part-2/

http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2013/02/eric-s-blog/fear-of-a-black-galaxy-black-people-in-science-fiction.html

http://www.firsttvdrama.com/central/bgirls.php3

http://www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com/a-crash-course-in-the-history-of-black-science-fiction/

http://indiechannel.co.za/future-myths-an-intro-to-african-sci-fi-films/

http://www.vice.com/read/black-sci-fi-documentary-speculative-fiction

(Obv. more on those themes, plus TV tropes stuff ["literal cliffhanger," "escape pods"], specific shows, landscapes...)

[jjhunter]

You, Stulti, and thedeadparrot were such wonderful soundboards / partners in brainstorming re: figuring out key bits of Radchaai culture / philosophy / symbolism etc. I could incorporate into writing Radchaai-style poetry for last Yuletide; I'm thrilled you found anything of use in that for this project too. (I was not at all expecting to be included in the credits for this trailer; it really made my week.)

Aw, yessss - thank you for all these research links! *starts ordering books from the library and queuing up YouTube shorts to watch over the weekend* This is especially timely since I was just starting to think about what I might want to nominate for Yuletide this year - 'Pumzi' in particular looks like it hits a lot of my near future speculative fiction buttons.

That last VICE article reminds me of a fantastic essay by Rebecca Wanzo in Transformative Works & Cultures last year: African American acafandom and other strangers: New genealogies of fan studies. I highly, highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

[bironic]

Thanks!

Add the Afronauts trailer to your list, too - really cool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS6rBBtXFkg

Pumzi is a beautiful and powerful short film. I owe my familiarity with it to at least one Festivid, but I think it's offline now (http://fv-poster.dreamwidth.org/155647.html). There are a few ficlets on the AO3...

[jjhunter]

Ooooooo, ALL the riches! You spoil me. :D :D :D

[jjhunter]

Coming back to tell you I watched Pumzi earlier this week, and it was so good. Definitely requesting it for Yuletide!

Would also recommend every talk I've found online so far (all of two) by Pumzi's writer/director, Wanuri Kahiu:

Africa and science fiction: Wanuri Kahiu’s “Pumzi”, 2009 | Interview: https://vimeo.com/104147918

Afrofuturism in popular culture: Wanuri Kahiu at TEDxNairobi: http://tedxnairobi.com/speaker/wanuri-kahiu/

The sound quality on the latter is not as good, but if you click over to the YouTube page there's a good transcript to go with it. One of my favorite bits, from when she's talking more specifically about Pumzi near the end:

[12:15] In "Pumzi", what I did is I created this idea [...] about how we use different layers of technology in order to communicate and the thought process of that is that we're looking for more efficient ways of communicating rather than finding emotive ways of communicating.