Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

It can now be told! I made two treats this year:

Weapon of Choice (Busby Berkeley movies) for fairestcat 
Hold On (Floor is Lava) for thingswithwings 

I know, I know... TWO vids in a calendar year? Wild.

Hey guys! In all the personal hub-bub (bub), I forgot to post some fannish things of note.

I made one vid for Festivids this year -- Stronger (Re-Animator series)

I am participating in Equinox Vid Exchange: Vids in Space! Here's my letter.

I'm requesting Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), Star Trek: DS9, No Man's Sky, Flash Gordon serials, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, Vorkosigan Saga, and a multi-fandom vid about hope and optimism in space (because I want to believe we're going to survive and do better).

Hope that your fannish endeavors are going well!

Title: Stronger
Song: Stronger by Kanye West (for all intents and purposes with Daft Punk)
Source: Re-Animator / Bride of Re-Animator
Length: 1:58
For: terajk, Festivids 2016
Warnings: Physical triggers (e.g., epilepsy or migraine: strobe lights, bright lights, "stuttery" cuts between 2-3 stills), implied animal harm, comedic gore.

Summary: Herbert Kanye West

Password: reagent

Download 18.4MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click + "Save link as...")

Notes: For personal reasons, I had trouble getting a vid put together this year. This was my first major attempt at a vid for my recipient but it wasn't my only. There are like three other incomplete timelines for other vids for a different fandom still on my computer. One of them may actually get finished someday. Anywho, I just find the arrogance of Kanye West and Herbert West to be weirdly simpatico and the driving refrain of "Harder, Faster, Stronger" spoke to Herbert's obsessive desires (not just to reanimate flesh). Many thanks to jmtorres and thirdblindmouse for encouraging/enabling this weird addition to my vidography.

Title: The Bullpen
Song: The Bullpen by Dessa
Source: The Hazards of Helen (1914-17)
Length: 2:11
Made for: thirdblindmouse, Festivids 2015 

"An Action Girl is a female Badass who is just as tough and kicks just as much butt as the guys do. ... Expect regular appearances in action scenes, facing dangerous foes and deadly obstacles, and expect her to win." -- TV Tropes

 

Vimeo password: actionwoman

Download 42.4MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click and Save File As...)
 

( Yes, I have rambling notes and some brief discussion of film history )

I made three vids this year:

• Sound the Bells (Godzilla) for larissabernstein 
• The Bullpen (Hazards of Helen) for thirdblindmouse 
• Blank Space (MacGyver) for thirdblindmouse 

I predicted that I would get guessed for the first two (so much that I ended up making a second vid for tbm so I would still have some secrets). However, I was a little surprised to see that bessyboo guessed me for both at the same time (in, like, the fifth comment to the Guess the Festividder post). I kinda wish I was still offering vids for guesses, because you would have earned it, Bessy.

Festivids 2015 dropped a week ago, but I haven't had a chance to make a post. So here it is.

First of all, I received *FOUR* vids this year. Honestly, I'm absolutely flummoxed and gratified that these even exist. That they are all amazing in their own way is just f**king sweet.

What's especially awesome is that there are now THREE vids for the 1977 what-the-eff-did-I-just-watch masterpiece Hausu that didn't exist before, and they all come from different angles:

Great White Cat (unexpected instrumental music choice works amazingly well)
A Happy Song Where Everybody Dies (bulletproof music kink + dark humor = EEEE)
Rock Lobster (lyrical resonance makes everything MORE WTF, not less)

None of the vids are safe-for-work and they all contain copious amounts of blood (well, red water). Also your brain my never be the same again.

Last but under no circumstances least is a vid for The Mummy (1932);

Love Lockdown

Oh my heart. This is exactly the kind of vid I was hoping for when I requested the source, but it exceeded all of my expectations by using a Kanye West song that dug to the eternal soul of the material. Plus more Boris Karloff vids are never a bad.

I haven't had a chance to do as much viewing as I'd like, but here are some of the vids that I really dug this year:

• They Are Afraid of Us Together (A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia)
• Motivational Speaker (Edge of Tomorrow)
• Relations of Life (Europa Report)
• See You Again (Girl Meets World)
• Blow (Gone Girl)
• All 9 Hamilton vids for convincing me to give the musical another. Shot!
• Show Me Your Teeth (Hieronymus Bosch)
• Legs (Kingdom of the Spiders)
• Under Pressure (The Martian)
• He Drives Me Crazy (Night at the Museum)
• Bitch Puddin's Fuckin' Theme Song (Robot Chicken)
• Your Mother (Saga)
• Centuries (Wayne's World)

For the sake of ongoing mystery, I am not reccing anything that I have been guessed for. We'll see how those guesses turn out in a week.

On Thursday I broke one of my personal rules for continued sanity and got into a heated debate on the Internet. It was pointless and mainly fueled by the fact that all involved parties were/are extremely passionate about the subject of contention (Festivids), but held strikingly different viewpoints on what that entailed.

The reason I don't get into fights on the Internet (or really, arguments at all) is that I spend the next two weeks living in an echo of the debate, considering how I could have responded better or more cuttingly or more kindly or when I could have extricated myself earlier.

To speed the process, I declared a Festivids-free weekend. Both the roommate and the spouse were instructed to gently flick me if I started talking about Festivids and to escalate the response if I didn't relent. Only one flick happened, thankfully.

Instead, I spent the weekend doing some LEGO scale-building experiments, playing through LEGO Dimensions (which is becoming a $$$ suck), and rewatching Grey's Anatomy with jmtorres. Last night, echan and I went to the Pasadena Symphony for Dvorak's "From the New World", which was lovely and fun. It's nice to expand your horizons sometimes.

I am very much looking forward to Festivids and I hope the rest of you are as well.

Since I'm in Phoenix for an extended period of time for a family emergency, I said "fuck it" and bought myself a cheap laptop so I would be able to watch Festivids and stay in touch with you fine folks.  Windows is weird. Are weird? *shrugs*

Anyway, I still have to come up with more coherent things to say about them, but both of the gifts I received are AMAZING. One is a Gamera vid set to an 8-bit rendition of music from My Neighbor Totoro. It's called Tonari no Gamera, which Google informs me is "My Neighbor Gamera" in English. So cute. It's an amazing overview of the "friend to children" era of the series that warms the heart. Plus, it has monster fights and fire-breathing.

The other vid is a stupendous match of source and footage. Space Mutiny + Survivor's The Moment of Truth = The Call. It's an exciting, fast-moving, lovingly cheesy overview of the 1980s South African space epic. Plus, as a bonus, the vidder really took the overall MST3K theme of my requests to heart and took their clips from the show, including the silhouettes of Mike and the Bots (and added a bit of their riffing at the end). Loved it.

Vidders who made vids for me, I am sorry I am late telling you I love your vids! I will leave comments once I've watched them both a couple hundred more times.

Title: White Telephone
Song: Charlotte Gainsbourg - White Telephone
Source: Halloween / Halloween H20
Length: 03:29
Warnings: Physical triggers (e.g., epilepsy or migraine: strobe lights, bright lights, "stuttery" cuts between 2-3 stills), violence, stalking.
Made for: terajk 

Summary: Portrait of a survivor.



Vimeo password: lauriestrode

 

Download HD MP4 (81MB) - highly recommended
Download SD MP4 (16MB)
 

( Notes under the cut )

I'll try to keep the pre-amble short this year, because the requests themselves tell a story. This is a Festivids request list that is as much for my mom as it is for me, as we'll see in a second.

( Mystery Science Theater 3000 )

( Gamera (Shōwa series, 1965-1980) )


( Rocky Jones, Space Ranger )

( Ed Wood's Kelton Trilogy (Bride of the Monster / Plan 9 from Outer Space / Night of the Ghouls) )

( Manos: The Hands of Fate )

( Space Mutiny (1988) )

( Danger: Diabolik (1968) )

As for music: go with your heart. Or your head. Or your spleen. Whatever you feel works best. Nothing is off limits.