bironic

( Discussion of menstruation, reproductive organs, surgery recovery )

I took off work ’til the end of the month. My mom came for a week, my sister for almost a week, and now it’s “vacation” with daily-ish friend visits. I’m hoping my brain will permit playing around with a vid for some of the time. I have ideas for a show and a movie, neither of which I had any plans to vid until compelling songs presented themselves.

Friends and acquaintances have responded to the vidding offer with almost $900 in charitable donations so far. I have a good feeling we will reach $1,000 by the time things wrap up on Sunday.

Thoughts at this moment: I am yet again proud to be part of this community. I am proud to have reached a point in my fannish "career" where people like my vids enough to want to participate in a drive of this kind. I feel like I'm doing something useful.

I'm looking forward to finding out who the "winners" are and what we will make together.

Try, Try Again

Last but not least. All these vids were done and there were still two weeks until go-live. Surely time for one more treat? It wasn't like I had anything else to do. So I surfed people's Dear Festividder letters for ideas and found thingswithwings's request for the Netflix Black-teens-invent-a-time-machine movie See You Yesterday, about which she wrote, "I really hope someone makes a vid for this one."

I watched the movie, I liked the movie, the themes were timely and important—the seeming inescapability of police brutality for Black communities, the generational loss of family and friends to violence, the enduring passion to effect change—and it's always nice to vid science geeks and non-white characters. Plus, thingswithwings didn't have any treats at that point, although by the time this got done, she had three others. So it goes.

Straightaway I grabbed the footage and a ticking clock sound effect, which I thought would be good for the time trope and for building a sense of suspense or urgency. I imagined a vid in which all the loops built and built and mixed and repeated and worked with and against the relentless tick tick tick. I laid down the first sequence. I laid down a second, then ripped it up. Again. Again. Something wasn't working. I didn't know how to get from setup to climax. The monotonous clock necessitated using as few clips as possible, lest people (read: I) get bored or impatient. The project stalled.

For a week and a half, I kept opening the Premiere file and closing it again. I wanted the vid to exist, but my brain didn't want to make it. Finally, the day before go-live, I threw out the clock and dumped in this slow-build piano track from the "maybe vid this one day" pile. I'd always figured I'd use it for a murder mystery or something, but it did the trick here. Suddenly the sequences started working. I didn't even have to adjust the existing clips much. The piano drove the narrative instead of fighting with it. I snipped lots of little pieces from the music to suit the pace the vid wanted to follow. And the draft got done at 8 or 9 p.m., hallelujah.

Internal critic: Could the movie's themes have been made more apparent in the vid? Could the vid have benefited from clearer editing or more powerful statements? Could it have balanced the pain and violence with more clips of support and love? Could I have found uses for cyclical symbols like Sebastian's whirling power saw? Yes. But it exists in the world, and I got a little better at problem solving. I like how the last sequence recontextualizes scenes from the movie to hinge on that pivotal moment when someone has the choice between violence and de-escalation. It's a different way of depicting the ambiguity of the movie's final images between hope/optimism and despair/pessimism that thingswithwings said she likes.

(It's just as well the clock didn't work out, since I later learned the official trailer used one. But it's too bad I didn't leave myself enough time to search for—and haven't cultivated enough working knowledge to have at the ready—perfect music by a Black artist.)

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )

I'm glad livrelibre made a See You Yesterday vid for the collection, too: Rise Up. They work nicely as a pair, I think. Hers lets the footage breathe, and she gives more attention to the love and support between CJ & friend Sebastian and CJ & her brother Calvin & their mother.

Five! Five festivids this round, ah ah ah. This would not have been possible without a two-week winter break at work and, you know, not being able to go anywhere or see anyone.


absternr and I matched on two fandoms, so I was excited to vid for her.


Death Is the New Sex

I knew straight off that I wanted to try vidding Aniara, the existentialist Swedish sci fi film I loved last year, hard as it might be. The opportunity was extra sweet because absternr said in her letter that she'd requested the movie after seeing it on the nominations list, which was my doing. I just needed a song and the confidence to try editing something that needed to descend into a frenzy of different emotions and actions. Spotify paid off in the song hunt; it had introduced me to "Death Is the New Sex" not long before and thought it might work for this project.

It was a bit tough to sit with these characters' existential crises day after day while dealing with my own and, uh, the world during a pandemic, but the editing itself went really well. There was more storytelling up front than expected. Although the frenzy part didn't turn out as frenetically paced as envisioned—I'd been thinking something more like Long Night's Journey Into Day—I'm happy with how things came together.

With immense thanks to marginaliana for finding clean footage. Making the first draft when half the clips had hard-coded captions was difficult because they distracted the eye and made the footage seem busier than it really was.

P.S. Gotta love a project with clip categories like "screaming," "cults," "dancing" and "makeouts."

P.P.S. Although there are many spoilers in the vid, the ending is not among them. Clips from the end of the movie do not appear anywhere in the vid, and the end of the vid is taken from several different places in the movie.

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )


Calling All the Monsters

I'd also been playing with the idea of vidding Los Espookys, an HBO comedy miniseries about a group of delightfully morbid friends in Mexico who do horror special effects and come to discover that the supernatural is more real than they knew. (Well, Andrés and Tati knew.) I didn't have any song ideas, but Spotify came to the rescue again with playlists of Halloween songs. mollyamory and arduinna were kind enough to provide files so I didn't have to screen-grab the whole show, and I was able to draft the vid in a day. Just a fun little romp through Renaldo's geeky love of horror and the team's adventures in staged and not-so-staged effects. My one regret is that I couldn't crop out the subtitles on the shot of the werewolf makeup reveal because they were right over her hand/mouth.

Watch on the AO3 or ( behind the cut. )

Going

[TW: alcohol/verbal abuse?]

I got home yesterday from a week in Tennessee with my mom and her bf at the bf's new-ish anticipating-retirement house, same as last winter break. Also the same, I returned ambivalent about the experience: refreshed from the change of scenery and outdoor time in the warmer weather and lack of TV/internet and glad to have spent time with my mom, yet somewhat the worse for wear physically and emotionally, although I'll take this year's hot tub-related rash over last year's wood stove-related itchy eyes and sore throat. I don't like being around fighting family members, especially when there's nowhere else to go, and it continues to disturb me how he talks to her when he's frustrated or drinking; and I missed doing Hanukkah traditions more than I expected to.

Highlights: digging up our own pair of Christmas trees from the woods behind the house, one "real" one and one Charlie Brown-style wimpy one; eating fresh grilled beef and venison; sitting on the porch in short-sleeved shirts playing Scrabble and listening to the neighbor's roosters. We reviewed footage from their motion-activated camera and saw a bear and cub, a coyote and lots of deer; when we played one night with the bf's Xmas present, a pair of infrared binoculars, we saw a skunk on the front lawn. I wrote 400 words or so of miscellaneous fic. I'm trying not to fixate on the bad stuff.

Doing

After putting it off as long as I could, I ordered a new laptop. This post comes to you from it. Reason #1: It will run Windows 10 instead of the Windows 7 that will no longer be supported in about a month, even though I dislike Windows 10. Reason #2: With souped-up components, it's supposed to be able to handle Premiere and After Effects, which would allow me to replace my current, eight- or nine-year-old everyday laptop and vidding desktop with a single, portable machine. I need to see how well it runs within the 30-day return window. It would be nice if everything worked properly, not least because a replacement wouldn't come with a significant holiday discount. $$$

I do have half a Festivids draft. We'll be finishing that on the current/old computer, because we all know it's a bad idea to change programs etc. mid-vid.

Watching

What I actually wanted to tell you about is this Israeli/German movie I watched on Netflix last night while too travel-tired to do anything else, The Cakemaker/Der Kuchenmacher/האופה מברלין [The Baker from Berlin], because it could have been GREAT and instead a single story decision made it THE WORST.

Setup: A man from Israel, Oren, who comes to Berlin regularly on business, starts sleeping with a young bakery owner there, Thomas, whose cakes and cookies he has fallen for. ( Spoilers and infidelity )

WATCHING

So much stuff while alpheratz visited.

The ten 11 episodes that've aired so far of the Taiwanese m/m dramedy HIStory3 – Trapped, one of her current fandoms. It's like if someone wrote an earnest but naïve AU where the original high school-aged characters become either police detectives or gangsters and half of them are in clueless love with the other half, only that's the canon. I liked the clam who started needing to fight to keep the amusement from his expression at the antics and/or obliviousness of his crush, whose ears recall Colin Morgan's as Merlin.

Our first episodes of Hot Ones, the YouTube show where celebrities eat a series of increasingly spicy wings between interview questions. We started with Jeff Goldblum, because Jeff Goldblum, and also because the emcee at a recent Jeff Goldblum-themed burlesque modeled her between-act hot wings schtick on his episode. Warning for "daddy" language at the YouTube link, which also featured prominently in the burlesque commentary. :( Our favorite, however, was Gordon Ramsay, hands down. After skipping ahead to when the spice started kicking in, we hurt ourselves laughing. I see we still have contestants like Michael B. Jordan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Key & Peele and Charlize Theron to look forward to.

The Kenyan f/f movie Rafiki. Enjoyed. Much lingering on beautiful faces, much detail of a few families' lives on the outskirts of Nairobi. Tricky for those seeking happy LGBT+ media, although where the ending falls on the spectrum of happiness or unhappiness depends on your perspective, and we are, after all, talking about a film that was largely banned in its originating country, where you can be imprisoned for 10+ years for having same-sex relations, according to *cough* the movie's Wikipedia page. Hope to hear from hermionesviolin or others who went to a special screening last night with guest commentary.

The sweet and uplifting Turkish documentary Kedi. If I'd known the movie was not simply about following street cats around Istanbul but also about the people who care for them and those people's views on life, I'd have watched it sooner. But the delay paid off in that I was able to experience it with someone who loves cats. A heartening portrait of community building and doing right by others, including animals.

Half of the Netflix show Special. We appreciated the importance of what it's doing, but the secondhand embarrassment, prominence of plots involving lying and coercion, self-conscious overuse of slang, and focus on the physical aspects of relationships proved too much.

And more, including this week's Game of Thrones episode, which I enjoyed, and which served as payback for Trapped since alpheratz got invested despite not having seen any of the show before. Anything further on GoT requires its own post.

ETA: and here it is; warning for S8 spoilers.

Thing I did not catch: The DS9 documentary What We Left Behind. I can't believe its only theatrical showing nationwide was last night! I've been enjoying the sprinkle of reactions and screencaps on Twitter but would very much like to see the whole thing when it's released on DVD or whatnot.

VIDDING

Nothing at the moment, although I'd like to make the sports movie vid in time for the FanWorksCon dance party deadline next month. (I can't seem to bring myself to call the party by its proper name of Sparkle Motion. As if its silliness detracts from the work that goes into the submissions. My issue to deal with.)

I don't think I've described the roadblock? Aside from time and desire, that is. Just that I'm trying an editing experiment that makes use of a small source list when those sources are an idiosyncratic drop in the ocean of sports movies, and I don't know how to explain-slash-justify the selection. Part of my brain knows it shouldn't matter, but another part wants a defense ready when someone complains. This was supposed to be a way to loosen up...

Spotify subscription continues to do its job of building playlists and sparking new vid song ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas refuse to align with current projects or sources I'd ever planned to vid. :) The second one so far is a moody female-vocalist folk song I think would be great for Jon Snow or the whole Stark family on Game of Thrones, but I do not want to make it myself. Too bad a handful of vidding auctions closed earlier this spring, or I could've pitched it to killabeez or sisabet or someone.

READING

Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now by Jane Burka & Lenora Yuen, a self-help book about various roots of procrastination, what it does for different people, and how readers might address their particular issues. Early pages seemed simplistic until the authors would come at you with stuff like 'when you consider a single piece of work as representing your entire capability, and you equate your capability with your worth as a person, then of course delaying completion of the project helps you put off confronting the fear that you're unlovable.' Now to find out whether the second half—the advice portion—has useful ideas that translate into effective behaviors. And yes, the running joke with friends and colleagues has been, "Have you read it yet?"

The book-length poem IRL by Tommy Pico, mostly because I wanted the foundation before reading Nature Poem, the second of four books so far in the series. It's strange reading on page what seems more like performance poetry; it's too bad our library doesn't have an audiobook version. I liked the excerpt from Nature Poem about the white ladies in the Museum of Natural History that appeared in New Poets of Native Nations, and Pico's audio version, recorded, ironically, for a museum exhibit, which Heid Erdrich played for us at the New Poets book event last fall, made the experience all the better.

Recently finished:

- Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
- The True Queen by Zen Cho
- The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

They were all fine. If I were feeling better in the head, I'd probably label them "good."

Going to see Karen Russell (Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove) tomorrow with disgruntled_owl.

Doing: I confess I am not doing great, friends. It's probably just cyclical biochemistry, but combined with shenanigans at the office and acknowledgement that I need to turn back to medicine in search of help for stuff that therapy didn't budge after two years—even though it was dissatisfaction with medical solutions that sent me to therapy in the first place—there's been more than the usual amount of existential reflection and droopiness. Work is not getting done. Fun is not really happening either. I feel defeated in several arenas. Stuff annoys me everywhere I turn: an intractable audio delay on the Roku I bought over the holidays because the old one couldn't run apps anymore, road closures, bloggers' overuse of parentheses, con and other event organizers inviting original submissions without enough lead time, continuing frustration that so many Twitter users who cross my dashboard don't, to name one of many behaviors, track down original sources before RTing commentary.

This, too, shall pass.

Good things: Friend J. and I attended a book talk and signing with a powerhouse trio: G. Willow Wilson and Helen Oyeyemi interviewed by Kelly Link. It had its moments, but I wish it had gone deeper. The bookstore event organizer and Link both mentioned a conversation the authors had had earlier in the evening, and that sounded better than what we got. By contrast, last night coworker R. and I went to an alternately entertaining and illuminating talk with Werner Herzog, done conversation-style with a classics professor who has collaborated with him on ten films. It ran two hours with Q&A and could have gone longer, as far as we were concerned. Well, not the Q&A part; the questions and "questions" were of that painful sort that come from university students trying to sound smart.

My sister came to town for about 36 hours on her latest gig, with the Russian National Ballet, so disgruntled_owl and I got to hang with her. For those of you who are new here, my sister is basically a freelance tour manager for musicians. My favorite part was when one guy, whose English was better than most of the troupe's, gently teased her in the green room for eating sushi without drinking beer, and then a few minutes later, while watching the evening's performance of Swan Lake, I discovered he played the prince. Having seen the dancers offstage at the hotel and at the mall added a fun layer to the viewing experience: that one over there, she's the one who made an adorable pout when told the venue wifi wasn't working, and those two have just recovered from a bad landing and a fight, respectively…. Also, did you know the ballet has alternate endings? In this version, to the probable benefit of the children in the audience, Rothbart got defeated and Odette and the prince lived happily ever after.

Last and perhaps least, I replaced the living room area rug I'd disliked for five years. Pretty. (Not my apartment.)

Reading: Local friends are wrapping up a March mini-version of our autumn reading challenge. I decided to use the communal motivation to finish some books I was stuck on, plus one I'd had on the shelf for 20 years, A Canticle for Leibowitz. So at least some books made it back to the library completed after the maximum number of renewals and a few cents in fines.

Fanfic-wise, I tried some Star Trek: Discovery fic and have enjoyed this person Alethia's collection of Christopher Pike/Michael Burnham stories, except for one thing. They have excellent banter and good character voices and a variety of simple yet enjoyable premises, but there's little to no attention paid to the incredible breach of protocol inherent in a ship's captain sleeping with a crew member. It's either not mentioned at all, or it's brushed aside in a line or two. For me, that's a big disappointment. Also, the author likes italics more than I like reading them, because you shouldn't have to rely on them to indicate what you want emphasized, and even if they add force and movement to words like thrust in a sex scene, you don't need them multiple times per paragraph. Okay, see above re: being easily annoyed. At least it's not The Magicians, where, I'm told, fandom has decided fic should be written in the style of e.e. cummings.

Watching + Vidding: Ask me about the time I watched an entire TV show for Equinox Exchange after saying it was going to be a low-effort project. That's done now, and over the weekend I returned to a sports movie vid I'd been planning two years ago but set aside when Fandom Trumps Hate came along. It has structure. Structure is my friend. When I'm feeling less despondent I would like to work on the vid I suuuuuper owe deelaundry, as well as other projects recently mentioned here. And, you know, actually finish something.

How are you?

Signups for the fall/spring vidding comm equinox_exchange close tonight. This round's theme is "1990s source." There are enough personal favorites on that list that for the first time, I'm signing up rather than waiting to see people's prompts and deciding whether to make a treat. (Given other projects & commitments, I'm trying to think of this one as an easy fill rather than a big investment like Festivids.) Dang it, though, I didn't think to nominate Powder or A Simple Twist of Fate.

Here are my requests!


Fandom: Brimstone (TV)
Characters: Ezekiel Stone, The Devil (Brimstone)

There need to be more Brimstone vids in the world! Like probably everyone, I enjoyed Zeke's flirtations with the Devil. A more spoofy song about how Zeke's manpain and fridged wife maybe haven't aged super well in the last decade could be fun too. I did unironically love many of the demons of the week, especially Gwen. Or: it's fun to be the devil?


Fandom: Roar (TV)
Characters: Longinus, Tully

Longinus!!!! Go whole-heart for Sebastian Roche's face + hair + angst, or make fun of it, or ship him with someone, whatever you like.

Alternately, I don't think I've seen any Tully vids, like, ever?

Or: If you can do a gen vid that makes the show look... like it was good/deep? That would be cool! :D


Fandom: Multi-Fandom
Characters: Alex Mack, Odo

Won't someone cross over Alex from "The Secret World of Alex Mack" + Odo from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"? Liquefiable detectives FTW!!


Fandom: The Crow: City of Angels (1996)
Characters: Ashe, Sarah

I love Vincent Perez and Mia Kirshner's beautiful goth/emo faces. <3 <3


Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Characters: Odo, Weyoun, Dukat, Damar, Julian Bashir

Show of my teenage heart. Some ideas off the top of my head for favorite characters:

- Weyoun's worship of Odo
- Odo character study - justice & gray areas, search for identity as not quite changeling not quite solid. relationships with quark or laas or lwaxana or that femme fatale from that one episode where he gets to have a sort of romance. not into the odo/kira romance, though.
- Cardassians! Damar character study? Damar & Weyoun comedy hour? Dukat's hopeless obsessions with Sisko and/or Kira?
- Bashir character study - arrogance and humility in medicine? personal growth? individual relationships?
- Also see above re: super-niche request for a crossover with The Secret World of Alex Mack!

Travel

I just returned from a week in rural Tennessee, where my mom's boyfriend bought a house for them to retire to in a few years. It's perched on the side of a mountain abutting Cherokee National Forest. It felt like vacation as soon as I heard running water and smelled wood smoke. Beautiful land,* spacious home, largely off the grid, although the steep slope made me nervous. We saw turkeys and Carolina chickadees along with many neighbors' pets and livestock. Went for easy hikes, ate venison steaks, played games, sang along with my mom's guitar on Christmas Eve—she has adopted the bf's Italian-American Catholic traditions—and discussed the ups and downs of their relationship. I fired a gun for the first time; took out some bottles with buckshot. When in Rome...

*stolen, sigh

Festivids

Hauling my desktop (vidding) computer 800 miles proved worthwhile, as I squeezed in two productive editing sessions. The draft is nearly complete. I'd like to send that out for beta soon and try for a treat. It would be sad to break the streak of making at least two Festivids per round.

Vidding anniversary

May will mark the tenth anniversary of posting my first vid. I'm planning some short write-ups for the occasion that can be spaced throughout 2019, like "favorite opening credits" and "vids that never made it." Is there anything you'd like to know?

In memoriam

I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of stardreamer. I had only just begun to get to know her here on Dreamwidth, where she was an engaged, insightful, compassionate commenter. It took longer than it should have for me to subscribe to her journal, which is when I learned that she had been struggling with pancreatic cancer for a while. It finally got the better of her in November. A real loss. Among other things, I'm sad I didn't finish the Midnight, Texas fic in time for her to read it; it's a tiny fandom and she'd said she was looking forward to it.

May her memory be a blessing.

The good news: I laid out some clips for that Festivids idea last night and it made me have an emotion.

The bad news: On rechecking the recipient's request letter, she dislikes both that genre of music and that style of editing.

So: Plan B, methinks, even though it doesn't quite line up with the characters she asked for; I don't know what else to do.

I still want to make that other one, though. Probably it's best as a response to someone else's earlier request anyway.

How're everyone else's holiday season fanworks going?