franzeska

AdaCamp was awesome. I wondered if I'd feel out of place since I'm not a coder, but there was a lot of discussion of open culture of various kinds. The opening session, unsurprisingly, was on impostor syndrome. I've conquered a lot of mine already, but it was still interesting. We did an exercise on identifying values we hold dear and figuring out how we've lived up to them. That didn't do much for me. What was interesting was seeing how many values on the list people have attributed to things I've done that seemed like no big deal to me. (Moving to Japan on a whim, for example. I didn't think of it as especially adventurous. It was just something to do.) I have a lot of values that I suppose I do think are important on some level but they don't spring to mind because I have no trouble living up to them. Here's a version of the worksheet we were using.

Even more interesting was the discussion on the mailing list before AdaCamp where tons of people confessed that they weren't sure why they'd been allowed in and they'd expected their applications to be rejected. (So let that be a lesson to any OTW people who didn't apply!) I was initially hesitant, but there was some mention of remix and fandom-y stuff, so I thought why the hell not. Something like 80% of applicants were accepted this time. For the DC one, they didn't even have enough qualified applicants. I imagine the number of applications will rise in the future and the percentage accepted fall, but 80% is pretty good odds. Go ahead and apply, people. (Though, sadly, they don't know when and where they'll be holding one next.)

Also on the mailing list, someone posted asking if other people were interested in fandom-y things. She commented that women have no trouble getting into various art forms and adapting to various online platforms but that this contrasts with our typical attitude towards getting into programming. I found this very interesting because many of her examples I completely agree with. (Tumblr, for example. Figuring out that broken-ass interface is not easy, but that hasn't slowed fandom down any.) But she mentioned video editing, and there I very much disagree: fans avoid getting into vidding all the time precisely because of the kind of impostor syndrome that keeps women away from programming and other technical skills. It's also time-consuming and potentially expensive and generally has higher barriers to entry than writing fic does, but I think insecurity over tech is probably the biggest one.

This was supposed to be a big meta post, but I'm hungry. So I get breakfast and you get a link to a n00b-friendly vidding tutorial.

In the vanishingly unlikely circumstance that anyone is A. still reading my journal and not lost forever to Tumblr and B. a Haven fan not already watching havenfans, go weigh in on the fic exchange brainstorming post.

It's that time of year again: that time of year where, like public television, OTW asks you to give. Unlike public television, however, we will not replace your regularly scheduled dose of entertainment with boring clips of singing guys and talking head fundraisers. (If you've never seen public television in the US, trust me, the funding drives are obnoxious.)

Why do I give? I give because I believe in OTW's mission and because I love the products it has given me: For all its still-in-beta rough edges, AO3 is exactly what I envisioned when I read that first post proposing that fandom needed an archive of its own. It's everything I missed from the great era of archives mixed with wonderful journal features I no longer want to do without (threaded comments!). It welcomes all of my fic, from the tamest to the wackiest, all of my fandoms, and even my vids and art. As a vidder, I expect to use embeds, and I expect to change hosting, but I had never imagined how wonderful it would be to have proper archive tagging and searching. Vidding has never had a site like animemusicvideos.org; beginning to use AO3 this way has been marvelous.

Fanlore is developing into an impressive resource for the zine shopper. There have been zine listings before, but few as helpful or complete. I have also enjoyed improving the articles on internet history and taking a stab at a few of the anime/manga ones. Some content areas remain sadly anemic; the great joy of wiki editing is collaboration, so I hope more people will join me.

Transformative Works & Cultures, though an academic journal, can be fun reading for the layperson. I particularly enjoyed the vidding issue (especially Toward an ecology of vidding--if you've never "gotten" vids, this article is for you). Our preservation, advocacy, and other efforts outside of AO3 are often less visible, but their absence would make us all poorer.

I got into fandom when I was 13--lurked, played, wrote, discussed, and participated for years before I had a credit card, a strong sense of history, or the desire and ability to support fandom projects. The biggest reason I give is for all of today's 13 year-olds, for fans who cannot afford to, for fans who can't send money to the US. I give money for the same reason I volunteer for OTW and the same reason I'm on the Board: I give so that all of us can enjoy what OTW has to offer.

I'm still watching Haven commentaries (surprise, surprise), and the writer ones are as good as expected. It's great to get all these little details of what they were thinking or what they wanted to do and couldn't. And then there are the details I really should have known anyway. The first time I watched the groundhog day episode, I was thinking: "Hey, it's just like the thing at that farmers market". Writers' commentary: "So I live in Santa Monica, and there was this thing at a farmers market..."

Damn you, people who told me about this show. You know who you are. Especially killa, who sent a vid to Escapade not this last February but the year before. I didn't actually appreciate the vid at the time, but it did make it all too obvious what would happen once I watched even a single episode. (Which is exactly why I only got around to that last weekend.)

I have so many thoughts and no time to write them up in a big post for my journal... But I will say it is the perfect show and that its first season DVD set is even more perfect for being stuffed full of commentaries. I love commentaries. Love. I have the special edition of Tesis imported from Spain just so I can listen to the director's commentary. I've even listened to the director's commentary enough times that I actually understand what he's saying. (He has a soft voice. The original sound is up too loud. Castellano marbles in mouth mumbling central. Oy.) I failed to watch all of the movies I wanted to for my Bava vid because I got distracted by commentaries. It's a sickness. Seriously.

So, naturally, the instant my DVDs arrived, I started watching the commentaries. ( Which are full of spoilers )

Escapade rocked! I'm sorry about the demise of the Bay Area's local slash con (BASCon) and YaoiCon's move (sellouts!), but Escapade is totally awesome and fans in the Bay Area should seriously consider making the trek next year. In fact, there was a suggestion that we have a "party bus" next time since such a large number of us come down from the same area. I think that's a great idea and would be happy to organize it.* I'm also wondering how many Bay Area fans are aware of this East Bay meetup group and this yahoo group. The meetup.com group is where I met several of this year's Escapade newbies. We've mostly met at coffee shops in downtown Berkeley so far, plus a smattering of people's own houses. It's sort of vaguely a slash meetup, but only in the sense that you shouldn't bother coming if you don't want to hear people talk about m/m slash. If you primarily like yuri or vidding or whatever, don't be shy! The yahoo group has more people in the South Bay and a little more of a classic Media Fandom vibe on average with more fans who've gone to Escapade and BASCon for years. A whole roomful of us raised our hands at Escapade and said we were from the Bay Area, so I know there are a ton of you who either don't know these groups exist or who hate happiness and puppies. Get your butts signed up. I expect to see you at my place next time I invite people over.

I did a bunch of interviews again this Escapade (yay), had some vids in the vid show (yay) and agreed to run a bunch of panels (oops). Naturally, my life was exploding in the week before the con, so I had no handouts and had not actually prepared, but things went pretty well, I thought. My panels were The Art of the Pimp Vid and Vidding Aesthetics (both of which were roundtable discussions with limited windbaggery from yours truly), OTW - The First Five Years (I blathered and then we talked about the DMCA exemption), and So You Want to Be a Vidder. This last one was something that didn't get as many votes as my other proposed vidding panels but made the schedule anyway, either because of the track or because the concom wanted to support it. I was really glad it did make it and even gladder that some people who needed it showed up. I was worried it would be nothing but experienced vidders there to help, but we got a couple of non-vidders and a couple of VCR vidders who haven't (yet) made the jump to computer vidding. It was wonderful to see them there; I know Escapade circles are full of classic vidders who've been out of the game for a while, and that always makes me sad because I suspect a lot of people would like to still be vidding but are too intimidated and feel like they've been left behind, and that's an even crappier feeling than being an intimidated newbie getting into vidding for the first time.

The internet is full of great tutorials on every program out there, advanced tutorials on the finer points of vidding tech, meta on vidding aesthetics, and the "basic" tutorials I taught myself from. In my opinion, all of these, including the "basic" ones, are not actually newbie-friendly. I intended the panel as a true vidding 101 that would work for even the most hopelessly lost, no matter what computer and vidding software they had. It seemed like it went pretty well, but it would really have been better if I'd prepared a handout instead of writing things on the big pad of paper and making people take notes from my messy handwriting. I've also been meaning to write up a super-duper basic vidding 101 tutorial online and also some meta on taste, insecurity, and vidding fandom, so what better time than while doing my panel write up?

Vidding for Dummies like me

I am a new-ish vidder. I started in 2010 on free software and am both extremely lazy about craft and prefer a style with few effects and lots of straight cuts. A BNF vidder this does not make me; someone who can do an actual 101 tutorial, however... Well, I guess we'll see. Below are the basic conceptual steps of making a vid on a computer, as divorced from tech babble as I can make them.

1. Get footage
2. Prepare footage for your video editing program (changing formats, making/selecting smaller pieces)
3. Edit your vid (the artistic part)
4. Export your finished vid and prepare it for upload

Seriously, that's it. If you can download a few programs and muddle through some tutorials, you can be a vidder just like anyone who can hold a pencil can be a writer. Maybe you'll find out you have great natural talent. Maybe you'll suck. Maybe you'll work really hard on craft and maybe you won't. But anybody can vid.


( Blah blah blah vidding )

Happy Festivids reveals, everyone! My presents turned out to be made by Jetpack Monkey and eruthros. Thanks, guys, they were awesome. (And that was suuuper subtle telling me you had that font.) And now to talk about myself!

Vimeo passwords = festivids


Earlier on this Festivids, someone asked me if I was going to try to break my record from last year. The thought had not even crossed my mind... Until they said that. Then I thought about how sad I was not to be able to make presents for random people last year. There were great prompts, but I was busy with my Project, so I just couldn't squeeze in extra vids. This year, I decided: This year! All through November and December, I had a massive spreadsheet of all of the awesome ideas I was dying to work on.

But circumstances conspired against me. I got a dream assignment for Yuletide: Wiseguy, with a Vinnie/Sonny request. A dream assignment--and a nightmare--because I was obsessed with writing something long and plotty that could be enjoyed by people not already into the show. (Come to me, my pretties. I will give this fandom LIFE! *castle thunder*) My writing is okay once I do it; it's the doing it that's the problem. I agonized over that damn thing until the eleventh hour. It ate up every bit of my time and energy for making fandom stuff. I also had a variable combination of too many weekend social engagements and too much illness and out-of-sortsness to vid. Not to mention our abnormally cold weather. Now, this is the Bay Area, so our cold winter weather is balmy compared to lots of places... But you have never felt cold until you have been indoors here in a 1910 house. We do not overheat our buildings like the rest of the country does. The room with my vidding computer is essentially unheated. It wasn't just so cold I couldn't feel my fingers: it was so cold I got splitting headaches and had to go lie down. (I was also too dumb to figure this out, so I kept thinking I had the flu.)

Miami Vice

And then there was my assignment. You'd think getting Miami Vice would be awesome. But I cannot think of a single MV prompt more likely to give me vidder's block than the one I got. (Sorry, Barkley.) I like Sonny, but he's just about last on my list of reasons for loving Vice. I like him in relation to the other characters, as a vehicle for the show's unrelenting aesthetic, as part of pairings: I don't care about him on his own. Yes, yes, I know optional details are optional, but I saw that and just froze. Did that mean pairings were okay? Which pairings? Once upon a time, this was a fandom with some pretty serious divisions in shipping. And the prompt sounded kind of dismissive of the source, a source I have a terminal case of SRS BZNS about. (Yes, really. Yes, I know what my vids look like. Shut up.) It's a show that gets misremembered as being about Don Johnson in white linen and lulzy stupidity when it was actually Michael Mann's masturbatory love letter to film noir, stuffed full of topical political messages, and at least a buddy cop show if not an ensemble piece. I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS, OKAY?! Anyway, I fretted over what to do. I considered trying to vid The Hooters; I've been meaning to for a long time, and the cries of joy or screams of rage as Philadelphians are earwormed are always fun, but I couldn't find anything I thought would work for Miami Vice. Eventually, I settled on trying for a silly tribute to Sonny's ass set to that mashup of One Direction and Journey. (Yes, this is a desecration of Journey, but I stalked barkley's journal enough to find a discussion of whether Styx or Journey is better and a blasphemous vote for Styx, so...)

This vid stalled. And stalled. And stalled.

It got to be January. I had done a little bit of work on a few treats and picked out music and concepts for a few more. I had done nothing at all on my assignment. A few days before the deadline, I realized that it was never going to happen. I needed a vid and I needed it fast. I always feel like it's kind of tacky to use an old vidbunny for an exchange, but that's what I did. This is the vid I wanted to make as my premiere for last VividCon. I'd had the idea planned out for a long time, but then, well, you know, Whitney Houston, so talitha78 talked me out of it. "Too soon!" she said.

But after watching Daniel Jackson put on his dancing dress and Tango and Cash "boom boom" that many times, I was convinced that it was no longer too soon and that this was the vid that my recipient truly deserved. (Whether that's 'deserved' like "Nothing but the best for my recipient!" or like "Barkley, you brought this on yourself!" I leave as an exercise to the reader. ;D)

When I went to clip fourth season, the season that features Tubbs' sexy beard and which is therefore the best season, I found the footage much less cooperative than I'd hoped. My original idea was just this song plus that season; I hadn't actually checked that I'd have what I needed. I was trying not to take too many things way out of context, so I didn't want to use the shots of Tubbs bringing Sonny takeout and consoling him about his relationship issues* as pre-marriage shots (also, they sucked more than I thought visually), and there just wasn't as much immediately pre-marriage footage as I wanted. Some of it had very short clips or film defects too. And yet, Miami Vice. Epic cheese. That fucking song from The Bodyguard. Most of this vid practically vidded itself.

Once I figured out how to use the wedding footage with its tiny amount of Tubbs, everything fell into place. I quickly realized I needed the most epic and awesome of all Miami Vice Emo Shots™: Tubbs, after Crockett has been shot, looking sorrowfully out the window into the RAIN. Yes, this is one of only a few things in the vid that is wildly out of context, but it's visually perfect. Plus it's from a shitty clipshow episode. My only problem was finding material for the part after Sonny puts the ring on her finger. I needed big, epic shots of Crockett and Tubbs together. I wanted them from earlier in fourth season. I ended up with a shitload of driving shots, some of them from the momentous scene where Tubbs tells Crockett he doesn't want to have to speak at his funeral. This was amusing to me, and it flowed okay, but it just wasn't EPIC enough. Sadly, I never did find the footage I wanted, and the deadline loomed, so I stuck in random kitten. Look, kitty! You like kitties, right? Kitty, kitty, kitty.

As I was rewatching and putting in some final edits, I noticed that I had an unfortunate amount of quasi-lip sync in the party scene. It would have been better with more or less, but I was out of time, and it was kind of funny, so whatever. And then it hit me: the most epic and cheesetastic part of this epic and cheesetastic song is the bit every kid in grade school sang all year to the point that I was ready to bludgeon them with a chair: IIIIIIIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ! Oh yes. It needed the lip sync, precious. And egregiously, recognizably out of context or not, there is no scream in all of Miami Vice more epic, more dynamic, and more worthy of bad lip sync than Rico screaming out "SONNY!" at the end of the fourth season finale. I originally had far more lip sync in, but I couldn't find a match for everything, so pared it down to just the 'I' shots.

How much you should have known this vid was mine: Dude, it's a Miami Vice vid to a cheesy love song. With rampant talky face. And eight million shots of Rico. Plus, as Anoel pointed out in the guessing post, it's pretty transparently the prequel to the Miami Vice vid I did for Escapade last year. (Don't worry, anoel: they do get back together. After a fridging, some vigilante justice, amnesia, and a lot of cheese. I don't know about kittens though.)

Who actually guessed this one: Everyone in creation.

Too Soon from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

After I had finished flailing and hating myself for not making this vid perfect, I realized I still had a bit of time to work on treats. Somewhere in here, I decided that a pinch hit was a good idea. It was, of course, not at all a good idea, but hope springs eternal, and I loved the prompt. I still had a few things half started and a few pieces of music picked out. But I had a free weekend coming up. It was the last weekend before the due date, so I knew I had to finish up anything I was going to so I'd have those evenings free for exporting, uploading, and troubleshooting. I definitely had to finish (not to mention start) my pinch hit. Did I, in fact, work on any of those vids that weekend?

Ha ha ha ha

No. I started a completely new vid. And by 'started', I mean sat down and made in like one sitting from rewatching the movie to music selection to finished product. It was a sitting that took all weekend, but it was ~*magical*~. Last year, lilly-the-kid betaed for my cranky self, and if you have betaed for me, you know that I have very Definite Opinions. (Astronauts in space can probably tell I have very Definite Opinions.) I'm not always the easiest to beta for. So when she asked me to make her a vid, I could not refuse. Yes, when she asked me. Right here in her Dear Festividder letter:

"I'm especially fond of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but any one of the series (or all of them) is/are fine with me. I love the cinematography and the beautiful yet disturbing imagery. And maybe a totally over the top, yet still completely sincere epic slash vid between Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes (or any combination thereof) might be pretty awesome..."

It clearly reads: "Franzi, please make me a vid." (Except for the part where she is WRONG WRONG WRONG because only Blondie and Tuco are made for each other. HDU! OTP! Boo, Angel Eyes, hissssss.) Luckily, I was able to make this at the eleventh hour because my stepfather owns the super awesome collectors' edition version of the movie. He did ask what I wanted it for though.*

It had been years since I'd seen this movie. I can't believe how much of it I didn't remember, and I don't think I'd ever seen the full three-hour version before. God damn, it's good. It's not over-hyped at all. It's also not the slashiest Western I've seen, not by a longshot, but there was a lot more potential than I had remembered. I have so many thoughts about Tuco's feelings about his brother, the little moments of kindness they show each other in between attempted murders, and that part where Blondie sees the bloodstain and asks if Tuco is dead.

I did remember Leone's style (why show a one-second establishing shot when you can show a fifteen-minute one?), and I knew I would need a slow song. Besides, a slow song is practically a necessity for this genre of slash vid, a genre I would call: "Oh dear god, what have you done now?" (Or possibly LKBV.) Google came to my aid... But, my goodness, I did not realize quite how rich the 1980s and retro imitators are for songs discussing breath and other relevant subject matter. Rejected candidates include Take My Breath Away by Berlin, Breathless by The Corrs, and Kim Wilde's version of You Keep Me Hangin' On (thank you, jetpackmonkey). But, no, only Show Me Heaven had the sound I wanted. It was perfect. I cackled madly to myself about hilarious quasi-literalism as I vidded. This was going to be the most outstanding piece of ridiculous crack ever. I filled the timeline and played it back.

…

Ha... ha?

Somewhere between cackling at pairing the Days of Thunder soundtrack with an inviolable cinema classic and finishing laying down clips, a whole lot more of my id leaked out onto the timeline than I'd expected. This was supposed to just be a laugh. Apparently, my id has a different reaction to the idea of young Clint Eastwood and breathplay...

Well, I guess I know what kink epic fic I'm asking for next yuletide!

Man, if this isn't proof that I am 100% unable to like anything in an ironic or joking way, and anything I spend too much time writing, vidding, or thinking about is something I end up shipping! Oops. Also, Eli Wallach is totally not ugly in this movie and Tuco is the only sympathetic character. Also, why hasn't anyone written me this yet? (Except for this fic. This fic is genius. Even if there's no breathplay.) I'm ready to write a god damn pairing manifesto and scream about my feels on Tumblr. Jesus. Maybe I'll just write that breathplay epic myself.

How much you should have known this vid was mine: Cinematic greatness defiled with 80s soundtrack? With kinky sex and lots and lots and lots of looong closeups? Admittedly, a Leone picture consists entirely of panoramic scenery and EXTREME CLOSEUP, but still!

Who actually guessed this one: elipie and then shati. Though maybe I'd just already spilled the beans to everyone else who'd be likely to guess.

Show Me Heaven from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

Night Watch

So that was all very amusing, but I still hadn't started finished my pinch hit, and I'd be damned if I'd default on a pinch hit, especially at the last minute. Now, through terminal idiocy, I'd managed to not realize that I had the correct version of Night Watch all along. (Netflix sends this two-sided DVD, but both sides have multiple language tracks and whatnot, so I thought I'd gotten some dreadful dub-only version.) I finally twigged to what was going on with the DVD and started my rewatch of Night Watch and Day Watch. I have a lot of Feelings about the canon romance in this series, principally that I think Sveta is way too good for Anton, what happens to Kostya is totally obnoxious, and the idea of anybody in this universe having a destined one true, monogamous love forever is absurd. (Also, Kostya is desperate for Anton's approval, and Anton needs to fucking chill: They should have just fucked. It would have done them good.)

What drew me to the prompt was the request to replicate the awesome subtitles on the international theatrical versions of these movies. (Whether the awesome subs will be on the DVD you get is another story. Day Watch doesn't seem to have been released with them, and not all versions of Night Watch have them either.) I wanted a song with potential for interesting work with text. I generally dislike vids that just do every lyric in a hard-to-read font. If that's the aim, a .srt file or posting the lyrics with the vid would work better. If I'm going to do text, there will be more to it than just listing banal love song lyrics. So, clearly, I needed a song with interesting lyrics. But I also wanted to do this deep, multi-layered vid containing all of my fanwank about why Anton and Sveta are not destined, and I wanted to include the bodyswap, and... and... Yeah, it was a cool idea. It was also hard as hell to find a song for, but I eventually settled on Mathematics by Little Boots. I was going to show a Fibonacci sequence in white with the '3' in red or something.

Did I mention that the Escapade vid deadline was in the middle of all this? Yeah... I had massive tech issues with my vid for this year. I also used a lot of text in it. It took much longer than I would have expected.

I gave up on my other treats in progress. There just wasn't time after my Escapade vid eating up all the time I'd intended to use for my pinch hit. I was in chat stressing and bitching at tbm privately. Something she said made me rethink my idea. I don't remember what. I guess I made a crack like: 'Oh, maybe I'll just throw that out and make something to Sex Drive.' I'd been saving that song for a multi-fandom car porn vid, but the more I thought about it, the better it seemed. I still think Mathematics would make a great Night Watch vid and also a cool text effects vid, but someone with actual time and brain would have to do that, and I had no brain left at all. Sex Drive, on the other hand, just required a little editing for length, and I had a brilliant text idea to go with it. A little editing, I say... The version of the song I have is 5:41. I had neither the time to vid that nor the material to put in it, but I couldn't just chop off half. The music editing took me a while. When I sat down to edit, I only had about five solid hours of vidding time left. So that's what I did. No text, no brain, no meta, just SWEET, SWEET sportscars and boobies and bodyswap "pain" faces and Kostya pouting all over the place and BLOOD. Eh heh heh heh. (Damnit, why doesn't this canon cater to me? I want to know what Gessar and Olga were getting up to during the body swap. And don't tell me they wouldn't go for it! Anton totally went for it in Olga's body.)

But, believe it or not, this vid was supposed to have text and, like, depth, man. That version is... coming.

How much you should have known this vid was mine: Not much. These movies are pretty funny at points, but my vid is mostly car porn. Being obsessed with Kostya and using all the sanguivorous bits of the movies is hardly identifying in this fandom.

Who actually guessed this one: No one? I told some people about it ahead of time though.

Sex Drive from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

Brisco County Jr.

So that was, what, Thursday morning? I stayed home that day because I had a dentist appointment. I still couldn't work on my other vids until that evening though between the appointment and uploading my pinch hit. (Late. Oops. Sorry, mods.) I was hanging around wasting time in vidding chat, and people were talking about how many they'd made. In fact, people had been talking about this a lot all through Festivids... I'm not competitive in a winning contests and prizes kind of way. Vidding contests weird me out. But... I'd spent so much time whining, truthfully, about how little vidding I'd gotten done and had so many treat ideas I'd wasted a ton of time on, even if the timelines were still bare. Wouldn't it be funny, I thought, to finish a bunch of vids nobody knew about?

First up, as I recall, was my Brisco County Jr. vid. I had spent absolutely forever agonizing over the intertitles, both in writing and in execution. I've been wanting to vid this awesome show, but I never seem to get around to it, and lots of the requests are for Brisco/Bowler. Now, the more I rewatch, the more I wonder how I never saw that back in the day, but the fact remains that I was a craaaazy hardcore Brisco/Dixie shipper when this originally aired, and I'd hate to sideline her... Unless I happened to vid a part of the canon she wasn't in in the first place.

The vid concept sort of sprang into my mind, fully formed, with the intertitles and the gag with the music. Sadly, I fear only lilly-the-kid will appreciate this music selection. The first half of the vid is the first half of the series finale but with all of the steampunk-y bits and most of the humor taken out. I wish I'd had more time for Pete and Aaron Viva and even Whip (I thought he was totally hot back in the day, but he's not nearly as funny). The music from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a little bit goofy, but it ends on a serious enough note and the movie has serious enough associations in people's minds* that it seemed appropriate for the rousing action and tragic ending.

And then there's the second half... I considered putting in more intertitles to clarify the story, but I thought the talky face went better with the music most of the time, and it seemed weird to have just one. However, just for the hell of it, I'll tell you that that one would have read: "Rubber bullets!"

The second piece of music is also by Ennio Morricone, but this one is the first version of the Wild Bunch's theme from My Name is Nobody, a parody Italo-Western that has vastly more in common with The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. than a normal Western does. When I heard that inexplicable Ride of the Valkyries bit, I knew it was perfect for the football huddles and play descriptions the bad guys go through in the second half. It's like Morricone's score for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly... on crack. The movie is pretty cracky too. I discovered it by wrangling AO3 tags and watching it on Netflix Instant before coming back to read the fic. Yes, there is fic of My Name is Nobody. Yes, it's slash. Of course. You're welcome.

To my great amusement, while I was stressing about my main assignment and coming up with ever longer lists of treats I'd like to make, I read back through lilly-the-kid's journal and what did I spy but a My Name is Nobody vid. Which, of course, I couldn't comment on in the middle of Festivids when I was about to give her a ridiculous Italo-Western vid treat. Doh! It's a fun vid that spoils the movie like crazy. But go watch it anyway and then read her meta on the movie. In addition to being really interesting, it will make it a lot more obvious why I thought this pairing of music would be hilarious for the Brisco two-parter.

How much you should have known this vid was mine: I was thinking this was less obvious than Show Me Heaven... until elipie pointed out that my "lyrics" are obviously me. Also the intertitles, especially ending with "What?". And the long-ass clips. Also the massive, rampant, unending talky face absolutely everywhere, which echan pointed out.

Who actually guessed this one: elipie... and that's it (C'mon people, who else would fill Festivids that full of talky face on purpose?)

High Treason from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

City of Lost Children

That was four, and I decided why the hell not: I'd finish the other vid I'd spent a long time on already. I had maybe a third of the timeline filled; I'd gotten bogged down in obsessing over minute timing issues instead of getting a move on. Sigh. This is a vid I debated about endlessly long before I picked music or started cutting. I saw it around the time it came out, and while it's funny and gorgeous and fascinating and all that, teenage me had one primary reaction: ONE AND MIETTE! SHIPPING IT FOREVER! Trust me, this reaction has not dulled with time.

The trouble is, I was not so sure either of the people who requested the movie this year would appreciate a vid about my shipper feels. I mean... Miette's played by a nine year-old. Opposite Ron Perlman. Yeah... So I picked the letter that at least mentioned found family and tried to retell the plot. I thought the piece of music would be too long, but even after I'd cut out all of the comic relief stuff and most other scenes with the bad guys, I realized I was barely going to be able to cram the whole story in in any kind of comprehensible way. So I threw away a lot more of the explanatory parts (like the first flea attack) and added in a million percent more Miette-whatsherface catfight and cheesy tattoo and OH GOD MADE FOR EACH OTHER LET ME TELL YOU. No, but see, he's this carnival strongman who's simple... or something. And she's the overly precocious leader of the child thieves. They discuss what kind of woman he would marry. The other kids accuse her of being in love with him. That was totally a catfight! LOOK HOW UPSET HE IS WHEN SHE DROWNS, AND THEN THE REVERSE HAPPENS TO HER LATER IN THE MOVIE, YESSSSS! My id! My id! Um... (I saw this at an impressionable age, okay? What do you mean "that's all ages"?)

The music was kind of an obvious choice. Someone asked me if it's from the movie. It's not, but you can see why the musician made such an impression on the director when one of his crew happened to put his album on in the car while they were driving somewhere. Yann Tiersen fits seamlessly with Jean-Pierre Jeunet's style, as you can see from Amelie, which does feature this piece and a whole lot of others by the same guy.

I had like zero time left to make this. I'm pretty sure I was still finishing it Friday evening. But I had a good chunk of the timeline filled, and I knew I would never finish it at all if I didn't finish it for this Festivids... So I set myself a schedule: Twenty seconds of timeline, twenty minutes from now. Each section I worked on was like that. Thirty seconds: thirty minutes. Ten seconds: ten minutes. I started with the parts of my outline I thought would be easiest and filled in from there. Whatever my first impulse was, it had to be good enough because I did not have time for revisions. I didn't even have time to rewatch much. Toward the end, I was using nothing but jump cuts in the same scene or really, really long clips because it would have been too complicated to try to fit in more scenes and make the narrative clear without a thorough beta. 2:44 (just after the woman pulls the lever) to 2:54 (where I repeated the shot of Miette screaming) is all one clip, for example. See what I mean about Yann Tiersen going with Jeunet's style!

How much you should have known this vid was mine: Not at all. I didn't expect anyone to guess this one without help, and no one did. Among other things, I removed the considerable amount of comic relief. Me: removing lulz. Whoda thunk?

Who actually guessed this one: nobody, and not for lack of trying

Miette Pour La Vie from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

And then it was Friday night...

It was Friday. I had uploaded and officially submitted everything, most before midnight, one just after, I think. There were other treats I had wanted to make, treats with cool prompts or with sources with a lot of nostalgia value. Nothing, however, came close to The Stuff. This fucking movie has stalked me for years. When I was a kid, every time we went on vacation and I could gorge myself on cable, there it would be in the 3 a.m. timeslot, an inexplicable parody of 80s commercialism and diet fads, a horror movie about evil frozen yoghurt. I couldn't even tell you how many times I've seen this movie. I remembered the title. I remembered the concept, vaguely. I even remembered this one line (only slightly incorrectly) that stuck with me for years. Back before the days of IMDB, people would be like: "Evil frozen yoghurt. Are you kidding me?" But now, thanks to the power of the internet, and the fact that Netflix Instant has the rights to every shitty movie no one has heard of or will ever pay money for again, I can rewatch in full.

...and it's every bit as cracked as I remembered. It's exactly as I remembered. AND MY LOVE FOR THE HERO IS EXACTLY AS I REMEMBERED. There are caper movies. There are heist movies. I've rarely seen such a gleeful and unrepentant specimen of corporate spy as a hero. From the moment I saw this movie nominated and exploded all over chat, I knew I had to vid it. I agonized over music. I wanted the perfect piece to encapsulate my decades-long obsession with the hero and the PURE AND TRUE PERFECTION of his relationship with the heroine. Also the massive 80sness of this movie. Also its insane, over-the-top inexpicableness. IT NEEDED TO BE PERFECT.

I didn't find that song. Nothing could possibly capture a movie so majestic, so sublime. And, also, I never found any songs about sympathetic criminals that remotely fit. So I googled "yuppie song 80s awful", and there in someone's list of the most inexcusably materialistic and stupid songs of the decade was Hip To Be Square. The list had a lot of stinkers, but the invective they'd saved for this, their #1 pick, was awe-inspiring. I decided that instead of finding lyrics that suited, I would use lyrics that clashed ironically. Sure, the hero looks like a square, but... well... can you guess which line has stuck with me all these years?

It was midnight my time, 3 a.m. on the east coast. A few weeks before, I had edited and edited the two sections with the Stuff commercials, but the rhythm had never seemed completely right. This would have been an excellent time to go to bed.

I SPIT ON GOOD IDEAS!

I have no idea what time I finished, but it was fast and it was before reveals. If my editing for Miette Pour La Vie was free from second guessing, this was staggeringly so. I was distraught over not doing justice to this CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE, but not so distraught I wanted Festivids to miss out on killer diet dessert or those amazingly 80s commercials.

How much you should have known this vid was mine: If you were in chat when I saw the nomination, it was probably pretty obvious.

Who actually guessed this one: The real question is who even saw this vid. It's at the end of the alphabet and for a source no one knows. But unless I'm very wrong, I'd say absolutedestiny guessed the moment he watched.

Play It Straight from Franzeska Dickson on Vimeo.

* Yes, this happens. No, not like that. You have a filthy mind.

* Yes, of course I told him. Why do you ask? He asked to see the final product too. Then he said "Oh Jesus" and laughed a lot every time there was a floofy umbrella or naked ass or something else you forget is in the movie when you haven't seen it in a while, and I rambled about the Kuleshov Effect for a while.

* Never mind that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is also full of black humor: that's not what people remember it for.

This is a placeholder. I am wondering how much of a letter it should really be. Between previous Dear Yulegoat letters and what I've already written this fall for other exchanges, I'm well on my way to winning NaNoWriMo. /o\

Whoops. Hi there, Yulegoat. I should have a letter up in a couple of hours.


Okay, so I lied. There's not an exchange out there I won't write an interminable Dear ___ letter for! For all you awesome treat-writers, let me repeat the details from my requests:

( Chee & Leaphorn, Miami Vice, Wiseguy )

... Yes, those are my requests from my actual signup. Why do you ask? But since I've bothered to write a letter, now it is time for MOAR WORDS!

Chee/Leaphorn: Since I decided to sign up for the books and/or tv version for some exchanges this season, I've gone and reread the series. I liked it a lot better than when I was a kid, and I like the later books much better than reviews had led me to expect. Unfortunately, I still want to strangle Chee every time anything involving women happens, and Emma remains a character we're told Leaphorn loves but not one we see, care about, or have any real sense of. Blah, blah, blah she liked to watch the sun rise. They met in college. He'll Never Love Again. Zzzzzz. There are many, many wonderful things about Hillerman's writing, but his leads' love lives are not among them. But still, it's obvious from my request how much I love TV!Emma, so I want to assure you, Yulegoat, that if you're a book fan who foolishly clicked 'any', you don't have to include zombie!Emma, and I would love book fic too. If you're a show fan and you do not understand how perfect and beautiful they would be because you are blind, BLIND don't see the OT3, I would love something exploring Chee's need for approval (c'mon, he totally has a mancrush on Leaphorn at the very least). Or, you know, Chee sleeping with one or the other of them as long as no one's cheating. (Or, in fact, Chee doing anything other than angsting about his deadend relationship with Janet. The number of books that dragged on for...!) I'd also be interested in TV fic that incorporates book plots that were changed or never filmed or book fic about all those interesting minor characters we never hear about again.

I watched the series after I started poking around on Tumblr, so I don't think I have too many long posts here on it (hence the extra, extra, extra long signup details). Mainly, I have posted pictures of Chee in his tighty whiteys and Leaphorn watching him.


Miami Vice: Wow, I think I've managed to cram everything in there already, so I will just say that I have massive, slow-loading picspams of the first few episodes (done before I learned to vid and then was abruptly distracted) along with blow-by-blow reactions. I have vidded MV a whole bunch and written copious other posts and Dear ___ letters about it. I first started watching it summer of 2010; just scroll back to find the WAVE OF MIAMI VICE if you need more info on my feelings on the show. I have never seen the movie, and while I like Mann, I think it's important to remember that he wasn't the only artistic force behind the show, the plot of the movie is adapted from an episode he didn't write, and the pastels were an integral part of the original--to eliminate them is not a good way to make MV gritty. To eliminate them is to miss the point!


Wiseguy: So! Many! Feelings! (Are what I had when I watched the first arc. "I know," you're saying: "Welcome to the club.") Unlike the other two requests, I don't know every detail of the canon backward and forward. If you're contemplating a longer fic, I would adore something that would be enjoyable to someone who hasn't seen the show too. In other words: pimping fic! Like I said in the request, I love fixits, and I am no purist about how you shoehorn in that happy ending. Vinnie is a good character, but I tend to find everybody else a lot more fascinating and Vinnie more of a necessary foil. I have no squicks about criminals winning and think most of the law enforcement characters on Wiseguy are thugs or morons. Even if we meet a few good apples, it does not inspire me to care about Sonny being a crook. In other words, if you write some AU where he gets away and proceeds to break the law a lot, I won't mind at all. On the other hand, I also don't see him as particularly drawn to crime; he's just minding the family business when he's forced to. (Yes, I liked that one AU from Yuletides past. I didn't feel the new secret and more legal agenda changed his character all that significantly.) Teresa is adorable. Feel free to throw her in or not as you choose. Sonny wanted to marry her for dynastic reasons: considering that religion, money, power, and sex probably rank somewhere well below The Mother of My Children in Sonny's book, I don't think she'd have any problem sharing. (I mean, look at her speech where she asks him why he's really marrying her! She's a really interesting character.) I have some other Wiseguy posts and Dear ___ letters floating around too, though not as many as for Miami Vice.

I totally meant to edit my signup one last time, yadda yadda, but of course I never got to it. I never could decide whether I wanted a Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter vid as much as I want a vid to these other things I signed up for. (But it's a great movie, so you should watch it even if nobody requests it for Festivids.) As always, I have things about which I have piles of shippy feelings and for which I want fic too and other things that I'm fannish about but in a different way. Vidding-style fannishness can be, for me, a lot more like general cinephilia... but I'm supposed to be writing a Dear Festividder letter and not meta about the nature of fandom, so I'll spare you. And if you like those optional details minimal as well as optional, spare yourself and stop reading now. >:D

LET THE HARROWING BEGIN!

The Festivids form appears to have put fandoms in alphabetical order, which means I don't have to obsess over whether I'm unconsciously ranking my fandoms by preference and/or whether you'll take them that way. So, in alphabetical order, ( here are my requests as they appear on my signup )

Enough details for you? ( NOT FOR ME! )

Things accomplished:
* Made it home from VVC without incident.
* Dealt with 1100 unread messages in my inbox.
* Revealed names on Parallels.
* Called the hotel and got them to ship the jacket I forgot there.

Things not accomplished
* Actually posting to Parallels coms
* Responding to any of my most important e-mail
* Sleep