Kiki's Vid Comments
Jann Arden's "Ode to a Friend" - Farscape, friendship vid for John & Aeryn
My Very First Video, and wow is it obvious. Ode is a fairly slow song, so I
got to learn how to hit the pause button, how not to record VCR messages,
and the quirks of blackspace on this vid. It's still sloppy in places where
I couldn't edit it cleanly, but overall it came out fairly well. But I could
do so much better now.
This vid is more about John and Aeryn's friendship than any romance; I used
first and mid-second season clips and tried to give an idea of the support
and reassurance they give each other. They're friends who always watch each
others' backs above all else, which hopefully came through.
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Sting's "Desert Rose" - Stargate SG-1, Daniel-Sha'uri
An almost entirely chronological re-telling of Daniel and Sha'uri's tragic
romance, beginning with the movie and going through "Forever in a Day." The
limited number of episodes containing Sha'uri dictated the shape of the vid,
since she only appeared in about four hours of the series. "Desert Rose" had
all these wonderful Arabic riffs in it, as well as being about desperate
longing--- so how could I resist? This vid also clued me in to keeping my
remotes separated, since I taped over 45 seconds of work when I mixed them
up, and I had to re-record the clips from the beta tape amid much frustrated
shrieking.
Keeping the clips from the movie specific enough to show the characters and
distant enough not to mess up the transition to the series clips was tricky,
and it works much better than it should, probably because my tape quality
wasn't the highest. The shimmer of the sandstorm hitting the city matching
the audio effects is a happy coincidence that I left in. Having the video
end on the white-out of the kiss and final chime of the song is entirely
deliberate, but the timing is even better than I'd planned. Vids *are* half
luck. I'm still not happy with the middle instrumental sequence, but the
rest of it is pretty much what I had in mind. Val did all the clean-up
editing on this one, zapping many extra frames that I couldn't cut and
stretching the leftover to match the beats I laid out. Val rocks.
I had to end it on the kiss, because their story should have ended on a
kiss, not the very sad reality we got. I already wrote fanfic to change the
ending; the vid helped me remember why I cared enough to do so in the first
place.
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Fiona Apple's "Never is a Promise" - VR.5
Semi-chronological/character overview for the entire series. Lizbet (yay
Lizbet!) gave me the idea of framing it with Sydney taking her last
disastrous trip into VR, and the rest just flowed from there. Beginning with
Sydney learning of VR.5 and the shadowy world of the Committee, it segues
into a look at her relationships with Oliver, Duncan, and Samantha, and how
they play out. VR.5 was a visually *stunning* series which was about five
years ahead of its time in the spy vs. spy and computer elements; if either
the writers or viewers could've kept the plotlines straight, we would have
gotten a lot more than 13 episodes. Since it was constantly pre-empted and
never recapped prior to new eps, that sadly didn't happen.
"Never is a Promise" is about lies, secrets, and betrayed promises, so it
perfectly fit the tone of the series, which always concealed the truth from
the viewer as well as the characters. Val did super editing clean-up duty
again, but she couldn't fix flaws in some of the recordings I had to use
because the pro compilation of the series annoyingly leaves out "5D", one of
the more pivotal episodes. I love Anthony Stewart Head, I love Michael
Easton, and the visuals of the show were always a joy; I am very glad I
don't have to fanfic the ending, since other people have done it better, and
this vid lets me sum up the coolness of VR.5 without having to write about
it.
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Introductions - Silly vid, done with Dianne
Introducing... everyone we're vidding about! Pretty much owes its existence,
as far as I'm concerned, to Buffy's smartass comeback to the demon
interrogator in the first clip. All of the Horsechicks made suggestions,
most of which didn't get used, but did give us ideas for other things.
Dianne and I had fun finding answers to the question "Who are you?" both
literal and (especially in Jack's case) metaphorical. At least three
quarters of it was recorded during New Year's Eve weekend 2000/1 while Dee
was visiting me in Denver, both of us getting very very punchy very very
late at night trying to remember bits of people introducing themselves.
Dianne did the editing and clean-up, added in the funnier Buffy and Angel
clips at the end, substituted better versions of already recorded clips, and
smooshed it together on her computer.
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Billy Joel's I Go To Extremes - multi (Farscape/Stargate SG-1/Babylon 5) done with Perri
Our tribute to some cool guys (Jack, John, and Michael) and the triumph of
attitude over bad odds. The similarities among our heroes became pretty
eerie after a while; several clips are almost mirrors of each other as our
boys fight, get pissed off, go crazy, fly fun toys, dive-roll and shoot
stuff. Perri did 80-90% of the work here--- I just helped pick out clips and
lay out the vid, and did a little recording help while I visited Chicago
over Halloween 2000. We spent about four to five hours straight recording
clips, after which "I Go To Extremes" is engraved on your permanent memory
banks. Perri is an exacting and very careful editor, which she tried to
blame on her new editing set-up at the time, because it made it all so
easy--- I still say that's like blaming your coke spoon for your addiction.
Anyway, anything that hits the beat, flows well, or just looks damn cool is
to Perri's credit.
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