John's voyage through his bizarre new world -- one that's weirder than anything he ever dreamed could exist -- came together better than it had any right to, since I learned how to vid making this one. (This was when I was using the editing VCR.) I lucked out on a few things (the whole Gilina arc was a huge help, and that gorgeous shot of Earth overlaid by the wormhole and John's face was perfect!); my favorite bit is still the expression on D'Argo's face on "I don't even know why". It surprised the hell out of the rest of AW when I mailed them the finished tape, since they'd been nagging me to do it for months.
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Bryan White's I'm Not Supposed to Love You Anymore -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
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Mel Brooks's Men in Tights -- Multi-fandom
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The Heights's Friendship -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
One of the things I did very deliberately was to include almost no shots of "couples", but every other pairing of characters that I could think of (and if you think finding Cordelia/Oz and Cordelia/Giles shots was fun, you haven't been paying attention). There are also no shots of Angel except as part of the group, since he was always the outsider, when he wasn't actively evil. I worship Joss for the ending fade-out shot on their yearbook that was the perfect clip to end the vid.
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Tara Maclean's If I Fall -- for Cordelia (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel)
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Jolie and The Wanted's Boom -- Multi-fandom
My tape collection yielded many, many examples of couples knocking each other on their asses (often figuratively, but literally hysterically often), but most of AW contributed a scene at one time or another. The final set and order of clips was determined two days before the AW submission deadline, after I had a last-second brainstorm and flipped the Sliders and Now & Again shots (which is lots harder to do via editing VCR than via computer), and *finally* settled on a Josh/Donna clip. And don't talk to me about the transition from Willow/Tara to Michael/Maria; it almost defeated me. I fussed over this thing after the rough cut was done more than any other vid I've ever made.
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Indigo Girls's Mystery -- Aeryn/John (from Farscape)
As I started to actually build the vid on paper, it emerged as Aeryn looking at her relationship with John, and trying to figure out what this thing called love is, analyzing both John and herself in the context of the life she's known. She concludes by making the very deliberate decision to kiss John at the end of the Look at the Princess arc, accepting that, whatever this is, it's real and she's going to take the chance. I approve. And the kiss at the end goes on *forever* -- I'm seriously amused that Val used the same kiss in her vid "Boomerang Bang", but cut it totally differently. The two of us are visual Trills; in any given fandom, we'll wind up grabbing the same clips for entirely different uses.
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Billy Joel's Extremes -- O'Neil (Stargate SG-1), Garibaldi (Babylon 5),
and Crichton (Farscape)
[done with Kiki]
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Making the vid involved getting three people from Chicago to Ohio (Val had the closest computer set-up), and far too many hours in a small room, but we got lucky on many things (Spike's "Love's bitch" speech was *precisely* the right length). The final product isn't as twisted as we'd initially planned -- a certain level of bittersweetness crept into the relationship between the time we conceived the vid and the time it actually got made, and the vid reflects that -- but we're still pretty happy with ourselves.
The main complaint we tend to get is that we ended the vid wrong using Buffy's kiss from Intervention. it doesn't fit with the mood, it's not funny, etc. They're not wrong, but I still can't find it in myself to regret using it. It's not an inaccurate look at Buffy and Spike's rather terrifying relationship, it's simply not as funny anymore...
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Billy Joel's Leningrad -- Babylon 5
The vid went from concept to nearly-finished product in two weeks, which is something of a record for me (I normally spend several months just 'building' a vid; laying it out scene-by-scene and line-by-line on 'paper'. Not this time. Unless you count the years it was unconsiously 'cooking'). The quick cuts that make up the end were fantastic practice for 'Shoe Box', which I did several months later, but also almost killed me since, when I originally laid down the audio track, I cut the song to ditch some of the musical fade-out. (Billy Joel cannot end a song!!!! He's as bad as Sting!) I then had to re-lay the audio over the video to get it back. :p This is not easy on a VCR setup. The choice to compare the individuals Londo and G'Kar, and then the races of Humans and Minbari, and watch them all gradually flow together into one group, was a conscious one, and worked out better than I could have hoped (even if I was flat unable to find an end shot I liked :p)..
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Barenaked Ladies' Shoe Box -- Roswell
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Indigo Girls's Galileo -- The West Wing
I chose to start with the first-season assassination attempt and its aftermath, particularly for the President and Josh, who spend the vid trying to figure out what they did in a former life to deserve *this*. The &*&^%$& musical break, by the way, took almost 7 hours *by itself*, between choosing scenes, finding scenes, and making scenes flow together with the beat (yes, I was still using the editing VCR). The transition back into the lyrics was particularly heinous. Appreciate it. (BTW, the vid was conceived long before the episode "Galileo" aired, and yes, I *was* jumping around shrieking, particularly since the last shot of the episode was *the* shot to end the vid.)
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Peter Cetera's Glory of Love -- Multi-fandom
This was the first vid I did entirely via computer, and I had far too much fun with it (you know that commercial where the guy is sitting on the plane assembling a movie of his girlfriend? That was me on the plane to Los Angeles). Animation has its own trickiness when it comes to vidding -- it pixilates horribly if you try to slow a clip down, for example -- but you can't beat it for fun visuals. I tried to balance out the heros saving the heroines with the heroines returning the favor, so that everyone was fighting "for the glory of love". I'm particularly fond of the way "Beauty and the Beast" weaves through, but cutting down the three transformation scenes at the ned of the movies was a major pain in may ass. :p
BTW, Disney's new tendency to wait almost a year before releasing things onto video/DVD? Really, *really* annoying for someone who needs those "Atlantis" clips *now*.
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Survivor's Ever Since the World Began -- Stargate SG-1
This was a pain in the butt, since it was the last vid I did via VCR; then I turned around and made it the second vid I did via computer. I was still figuring out what I was doing as I went, aided only by the fact that I'd already put the guts of the vid together, and 'only' had to screw around with the intro, and the scenes I was changing (i.e., the entire first verse, half of the second and most of the third), as I was putting them in. (The second iteration of "Just another part of the plan", which ended up being Daniel playing with the universe in Maternal Instinct was half coincidence, half intent -- I'd always used a clip from MI there, but changed it to the "summoning fire" bit after Meridian, just to be sadistic.) It was particularly satisfying mucking around with all of the parallel universes and time travel stuff, all of the ways things could have gone. I had intended to use some Sam/Martouf scenes, but Val did it better in 'Settling' so those got cut and replaced. ! Which turned out for the best, since I wound up putting Sam and the ambassador/her husband in their place, which is so much cooler!
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Jessica Riddle's Even Angels Fall -- Multi-fandom
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Barenaked Ladies' One Week -- The West Wing
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Once the gnat was dealt with, I just kept going using four clips per Horsechick: one clip of their name (Chaos, Death, etc.), one clip of their avatar (the water buffalo, the butterfly, etc.), one clip chosen by the group as a whole to torment them (i.e., Cousin It, the wedding), and one scene chosen as their favorite of the year. Some of them were harder than others (go ahead, *find* a water buffalo!), but worked out unintentionally well (we had to use the "death incarnate" bit from Jeremiah, and it fit so *nicely* with the South Park opening credits with the drive-by buffalo), and some just sort of happened (I still don't know *why* I used "the little fear demon" for Dianne, honest!) along the way (and yes, I knew I was "going to die"). The rest, of course, were all about torture.
The split-screen was done for the benefit of the audience, to make the actual credit part of the credits shorter, so appreciate it. The actual rolling credits took longer --and cost me more sleep -- than any other two vids on this reel combined. I *hate* Adobe Premiere's titling software with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
As for the montage... I came up with clips, I looked through quote lists for lines, I asked for suggestions, I spotted stuff in movies, and I moved everything upside down and around and around until I got what I wanted. Some are obscure, some are hysterical, some are as close to sweet as I get ("Our friendship is gonna be the stuff of legend"), some were just irresistable (Tara's "Grr, argh" and Jerry O'Connell's spit-take were grabbed the second I saw them). The original AW montage two years ago was a short, off-the-cuff thing brought on by too much caffiene and too little sleep; I'm proud of being part of lifting it to the intricate celebration of sickness and insanity that it is today.
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Aine Ni Cheallaigh's Lift the Wings [from Riverdance] -- for Tara
(from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I miss Tara. She came a long way in two years, from a "frail bird" to a strong, wise woman; I think this song is exactly the sentiments she would have expressed to Willow, Dawn and Buffy as she left them -- "And I'm with you when I dream of you, a stoirin/And a song will bring me close to you, a stoirin a ghra". I advise keeping tissues handy.
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"Seeing Red" really pissed me off. Seriously. Tara had become my favorite and her death was so stupid and pointless. So, of course, I had to vid. I scrambled frantically around for a song (I was still hoping to get it done for MediaWest) and ran through several possibilities (Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" was a serious contender) before the Riverdance soundtrack occured to me. "Lift the Wings" breaks my heart anyway, particularly in the New York version, and the haunting, traditional Irish music seemed to fit Tara down to the ground, even before we get into the lyrics.