Sleep-speaker

Hey guys, so first a general apology - I haven't been very...present here the last few weeks. I owe a lot of you replies on your longer, more thoughtful posts, and I owe, well, this. Because tightpresent happened, and then Vidukon happened and then WisCon happened, and that's a LOT of vids, you guys. And I had this awesome idea to post the epicest of Rec Posts all at once when they were all done with, except anyway, it's a week late.

I haven't forgotten about the daily meme I was doing, or, just...trying to be around more in general; it's just been a stressful RL time and, well, whatever, we're here for recs!

tightpreset

Okay so first, I want to point everyone to the vids that was me ~for meeeeee~ because I WON and got two of them, and they're both really great and interesting:

Mineshaft by chaila is a Sarah Connor piece to the most perfect song I've ever heard for her.

Meanwhile, Strange Angels by sanguinity is a Sarah Connor piece to a song I never would have thought would work, but it does - and it makes really interesting use of movie footage too.

Pretty much every other vid in the exchange was fascinating in one way or another, I pretty much blanket endorse going through the announcement post, but I do think it's worth highlighting a few others:

The Dream Before by sanguinity is an absolutely extraordinary vid about time travel with Derek as a pivot-point around which we see the whole universe unravel and repeat.

Losing Our Religions by ghost_lingering is an intriguingly ambitious project to vid ten different characters, both major and minor, as they struggle with faith of all kinds. Each character gets a different cover of REM's Losing My Religion.

Seamstress by chaila is the Jesse and Riley vid of my soul.

We Used To Wait by nicole_anell is a patient, sorrowful look at Sarah and Jesse.

Vidukon

YAY! Vidukon! Okay, I had like...a gabillion vids right after the con that I wanted to point out to everyone including a bunch I saw in the vidshows, and, of course, due to my idiotic procrastination I've forgotten half of them. I'm sure I'll pay for it one day in vid purgatory. But in the meantime, I can at least link to a few vids I really enjoyed and think you should check out too. Once again, I thought it was a really strong show overall? So I'm actually gonna focus some on the vids I think maybe got a bit overlooked because they were for less mainstream fandoms, or the vidders weren't actually present, etc:

Skin by m_a_r_i_k_s is a Debra Morgan vid (from Dexter) and it does a startlingly perfect job of capturing the character's incredibly complicated physicality - the way she manages to be expansive and dramatic at the same time as being tightly coiled with closed, awkward body language.

All The Rowboats by lilly_the_kid is a vid that I enjoyed at the time, but really appreciated once I got the clarity of her framing statement (which to be fair was in the programme but I have a memory like a sieve and it was dark!) and the way it uses the song to make points about the vidder's relationship to the source in a broader sense.

When I Am Laid In Earth by kiki_miserychic is a vid for a show called Utopia that I've never seen. Nonetheless, this vid is a beautiful, striking, disturbing spiral of colour and loss. I've never seen such vibrance mixed with such isolation.

FINALLY, nemonclature and I hosted a Vidding Tech panel, and our notes and example vids and little one-and-two minute tutorials on a few topics are all available at her DW, HERE, and we should all be very grateful to her because if it was my job to post it, it still wouldn't be done, and certainly not in such an orderly fashion...

WisCon

Ugh, you guys, I'm so jealous I didn't get to go, but why, why for it at most expensive time of year and four thousand miles away from me?

Either way, they have vid programming and stuff! Because I suck, I haven't had the chance to go and look at all the premieres yet, but I DO know that all of you need to go and watch chaila's Keep The Streets Empty For Me IMMEDIATELY. It's a Twilight vid, about Bella, that manages a wonderful (and visually stunning) take that critiques the original source's gender politics, without falling into the common trap of dismissing the fact that, despite potentially problematic execution, Twilight has always, canonically, been Bella's story, from her perspective, about her needs and desires.

And now I have to go off and hunt down the rest of the WisCon premieres...

Anyway, signing off, hopefully I will be back soon!

SO! Yesterday was the august anniversary of my birth. I am now old. Hoorah! Frankly last year sucked, so here's hoping 27 > 26.

One way in which the year is already looking up is the number of Awesome Things the internet saw fit to provide me with. Thus! A list of recs!

Vids:

Run With Me by chaila43 [Doctor Who]: River Song is magnificent, and so is this vid. Perfectly catches all the almost moments and in betweeny circularity of the way she teaches the Doctor everything he knows because she knows him after he's already learned it all. I still don't understand why I can't snap my fingers to open my front door.

For Your Entertainment by dualbunny [Battlestar Galactica]: We now move to a vid that is amazing for totally different reasons. This vid is about Chief Tyrol, to Adam Lambert, played completely straight, and is amazing for it. It shows how the song, like the Chief is actually violent and abusive when viewed straight, without pop cultural context about how we "should" take things or what narrative tropes are supposed to elicit what responses. It's the opposite of sleight of hand and it's remarkably cathartic as well as superbly edited.

U. R. A. Fever by kiki_miserychic [Fringe]: Olivia Dunham, BAMF. The use of motion in this is phenomenal. It has a rhythm and a pace that keeps you with it even as it disorients you right up until the end.

twinkle, twinkle by kiki_miserychic [Doctor Who]: Weeping Angels take over Amy's brain. CREEPY AS FUCK.

Falling For The First Time by glass_moment [Doctor Who]: Amy and the Doctor and Rory and Happy Adventures in Space and Time that, every now an again, smack you upside the head with a moment of Moving and your heart grows a few sizes.

Glass by cherryice [Watchmen]: This is just stunningly beautiful. I want to give it a huge write up but I kind of run out of words at that point and just want to aim you all at it.

Meta:

The Obligatory River/Eleven Feminist Manifesto by chaila43. There is nothing not awesome about being given a feminist manifesto for your birthday, I really recommend everyone try it at least once. IN OTHER NEWS, IT'S ALSO A SUPER AWESOME READ. And makes me feel about 15% less RIDICULOUS about my fangirliness!

So, children, go now to watch Sons and Daughters, a fabulous Cylon POV vid from heyiya.

It's a brilliant examination of the violent, disturbing evolutionary path the Cylon walk, while managing to still brilliantly capture a sense of boundless hope, optimism and just plain inability to understand committing speciescide, snapping the necks of babies and locking women up in baby factories ain't always such a great thing to do.

The tension between their at times horrific actions and their genuine, and at times innocent and naive, desire to learn, grow and be good beings, is excellent.

Plus in this instance, the vid does all sorts of entertaining meta-tastic stuff about Cylon evolution - both literal and in terms of storyarc and characterisation - and reproduction. And how in both those cases it's pretty much literally technological evolution and utterly different to ours.

So yeah, it's great! Go watch it! Yay!

I've been planning to do this for a really long time, so, no reason to put it off any longer! Here is a comprehensive list of my alltime favourite BSG vids!

Alphabetically, by filename as they exist in my vids folder!

( Here Be Vid Recs! )

And that's it for tonight cus I'm gonna fall over with tiredness if I stay up any later!