Festivids reveals #3-4 of 5: Black Girl in a Big Dress and The Halloween Tree

[bironic]

In Want of a Gentleman

After vidding Aniara, it was time for something fluffy. I'd watched and offered the super charming web series Black Girl in a Big Dress after hearing about it in sandalwoodbox's Dear Festividder letter and thought it would be fun to try. It only needed some music. From somewhere or other came the idea to look up Black classical composers. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a.k.a. "the Black Mozart," went on the list. I liked an album on YouTube of pieces by African American musician-composer Francis Johnson, but they were so short, I didn't know how to make any one of them work for a whole vid. Then the brainwave came to use individual dances to match each of Adrienne's would-be suitors, and boom, the concept and the music came together perfectly. It took maybe two days to lay down the draft, followed by some fiddling around.

The title cards were fun to make. It was my graphic designer coworker M.'s idea to add Victorian-flavored frames. I'm especially pleased with the trumpet/bugle fanfare announcing Colin's entrance.

(Hope no one minds that Johnson wrote his music just after the Victorian era in which Adrienne's cosplay is set. I figure if she's living in modern times and reenacting the past, she and we can enjoy a slightly anachronistic soundtrack. :) )

Watch on the AO3 or

Watch on Vimeo

Music:"Victoria Gallop" (excerpts) / "New Cotillions: German Town" / "New Cotillions: Brandy Wine" / "Philadelphia Gray's Quickstep" by Francis Johnson, performed by The Chestnut Brass Company and Friends
Content notes: Cosplay, courting, secondhand embarrassment
Audiovisual notes: Fade-to-white transitions



This Is Halloween

But wait, there's more. After taking a break from Festivids to make deelaundry's extremely overdue Fandom Trumps Hate vid, I still had the vidding itch and a lot of time on my hands. One of my only other offers had been The Halloween Tree, the Hanna-Barbera adaptation of the Ray Bradbury book that I'd read two years ago, which I knew feedingonwind has been asking for. So I rented the movie and got cranking on music ideas.

A children's song on YouTube about the Halloween tree seemed like it would work, except it got too repetitive too fast, so I went with my first thought, "This is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Chopping out most of the verses helped (1) separate the song a bit from the original movie and (2) focus the theme on global and historical contributions to what the U.S. today calls Halloween, as per what Moundshroud teaches the kids in the movie. P.S. Did you know Moundshroud was voiced by Leonard Nimoy?

Again, the whole thing came together in a day or two, including remastering a handful of clips when the draft was complete because the screen capture program I use, OBS Studio, often gets choppy. It was fun to make, to give feedingonwind a treat after they'd missed the signup deadline, and to add another Halloween vid to my collection.

This one couldn't be added to the official festivids collection because feedingonwind didn't sign up, so it slipped under the radar. I hope more people see it now.

Watch on the AO3 or

"This Is Halloween" (Watch on Vimeo)

Music: Danny Elfman (edited)
Content notes: Brief shot of a child in a culturally appropriative costume
Audiovisual notes: '90s cartoon frame rate, lightning and a few other flickers, zoetrope effect in the Stonehenge sequence, camera movement that includes spinning