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labellementeuseSo everyone's seen those 20/30 days of vids/tv shows/fanfiction/whatever memes going around, and I really like them because I like to rec and I like to read other people's recs but I rarely do it without some kind of structure/being forced. So I like that. On the other hand, the chances of me being able to post 20 times in a month are slim to none. Plus, I figure I'd get boring. So I'm going to do my version three at a time, which is one week, and if it takes two weeks then so be it. Also, I'm doing the vidding one, because vids are cool. I figure three vids is about as many as I can expect my random flistie to watch in one day.
Preliminary Notes:
- I really like multifandom vids. Like, really. Half of the vids I plan on reccing are multifandom, so if you don't like those, steer clear.
- The recs are going to be, obviously, skewed towards fandoms I'm in at the moment. I tried for a bit of range, but you're going to see a lot of Jossverse vids, partly because I'm watching Buffy really heavily at the moment, and partly because I have probably read three or four BTVS fics that I enjoyed, but the good vids seem to come one after the other. There are a couple of fandoms that I think have fabulous vids that are notably missing: Battlestar Galactica, Stargate: Atlantis, and Doctor Who. Yeah, IDEK what's going on there, but I'm in a Jossverse place so I'm just going with it. Supernatural gets a little work-out, too.
- I really like political and meta vids, so there's going to be some of that.
Day 1: A vid that made you start watching a brand-new show
Channel Hopping, by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ash48, and Channel Surfing, by ash48 and maichan808.
Supernatural; humour; gen; spoilers throughout but not specially significant post-season 4; violence, gore, horror, 90s television.
So, we're really off to a bad start, because I don't think any vid has got me into a TV show. I've often watched vids in fandoms I don't know, especially those that come highly recommended, and enjoyed them for their merits; but I can't say that I've then gone on to watch the show, although I'm sure it'll happen some day. So instead I'm starting off light-hearted, with these two humorous vids which mash up Supernatural (of all shows) with opening themes to various TV shows. I also find them interesting as companions: the second one has, to my mind, slightly higher production values and does a slightly better job of fitting appropriate clips and tone to the theme tunes, and I find some switches from show to show a bit more clear. But the first one remains very funny.
In Channel Hopping I particularly love Buffy (although, let's face it, I was going to), Knight Rider - a show I've never seen, but which I immediately recognised in the vid (thank you, fannish osmosis); Days of Our Lives, for the best use of a canonical joke. Channel Surfing obviously pushes the conceit a little further, and for CSI: Miami is working with a bit of an unfair (BUT HILARIOUS) advantage, but I thought the Winchester Boys Mysteries and Winchester (Dexter) were both excellently done. Minus points for earworming me with the Full House theme, holy crap!
Day Two: A male character study vid you love
Jesus Walks, bymimesere, sadly presently only available on youtube.
Angel: The Series; Charles Gunn; spoilers throughout; violence, language.
I'm not completely sure, but I believe this is the first vid I ever watched - and how lucky am I that it was this brilliant piece on Gunn? I really don't believe I ever fully understood Gunn until I watched this vid. In just under four minutes - yet never feeling long - this vid takes you through Gunn's entire history on the show, layering his characterisation just brilliantly, giving me, at least, a much more coherent sense of Gunn than I had had before watching it. I think you could watch just this vid, and no actual episodes, and completely understand Gunn.
3:07, "guns/sex/lies/videotape", was my first introduction to really fast editing still being coherent, as well as to why literal vidding isn't always bad. I love 1:50-2:20. 2:50-3:00, to me, reveals how ill Gunn was served by the show and by the people around him. While the prevailing message of Joss' shows is usually something like "with the family we make, we can survive losing our original family/not having a family/the ways real life sucks." But in later seasons of Angel, I struggle to see Gunn as having the kind of support that Angel and Buffy both have, or close friendships at all, really. Fred is dead by this point, and they'd been broken up (hiss spit!) for ages; his friendship with Wes had self-destructed; and I don't think Angel ever gave as much to Gunn as Gunn gave to Angel. And perhaps that's the real story of this vid. Gunn gives away his real family (his sister) and the first family he created (his "gang" - in the words of the vid, the "terrorists" and "atheists") to sacrifice everything for the Angel Investigations crew. Himself, literally, often; his identity for Wolfram & Hart; he lets Angel Investigations use him, his constructed/media-mediated identity as a poor, young, black man in that brilliant scene in Wolfram & Hart early on in the show. & he gets back... what? He gets to die in an alley next to Angel and Illyria?
Maybe that's a more negative message than the vid ultimately purveys, I'm not too sure. Anyway.
Male Character Study Honourable Mentions:
Handlebars, byflummery, Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor, he is a scary mofo; Start the Commotion, by danegen, Alec Hardison, he is everything great and wonderful and shiny (this is also a good pimping vid and I rec it for those purposes).
And, um, three due South vids that really deserve me talking about them more, Zebra by Shalott (Ray Kowalski has a lot of energy) and In the Mirror (Ray K) and Out Here (Fraser) byheresluck. I mention all three of these partly because I really like them (my favourite is In the Mirror though, because it is more nuanced than Zebra to me and also I like Ray more than Fraser), and partly because I wanted to very quickly compare one shot that's used in all three vids: the shot where Ray hits Fraser. I think the treatment of this shot in each vid is fascinating. In Zebra, the shot of Ray hitting Fraser cuts straight to Fraser hitting Ray. This is just part of the variety of Ray's experience and to my mind the shots are just kind of thrown in there as Fraser/RayK shorthand (because this is a significant moment in their relationship); it works because Zebra, the song, is about balancing opposites, old young, short tall, calm violent, so the shots balance each other. In In the Mirror, the shot isn't even completed - it cuts to Ray hitting a punching bag in the middle of the swing. (I could make up a few reasons for this, but the way I read it is that this vid is clearly being narrated by Ray, and he doesn't dwell on that moment, for various reasons.) But in Out Here, it's really dwelt on. You get the whole scene, basically. Ray angry, Fraser being stand-offish, Ray hitting him, Fraser turning the upper cheek and walking away, with fascinating lyrics over the top. ("Came to a choice: stay or run. I ran.") It treated that moment as something worth re-exploring and exploring in the context of this vid, which is about Fraser being emotionally distant from Ray. (Erm, there might be a bit of unfortunate victim-blaming subtext there, though.) And you don't get the shot of Fraser hitting Ray back, which I think is so interesting, because you crave it so much.
Day Three - A female character study vid you love
I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker, bykuwdora.
Stargate: SG-1; Doctor/Captain/Major/Lt. Colonel/Colonel Samantha Carter, in multiple universes; spoilers throughout; explosions.
(You should watch the vid before you read this one. I'll wait.) The only way this vid could be any better to me is if it included that clip of Sam punching out Ba'al, but it's otherwise pretty frigging awesome. This is a vid about AU Sam, and for those of you familiar with SG-1 (and IMO you need to be to really get this vid), there are quite a lot of AU versions of Sam in canon. They're often sad or dead or, best-case scenario, awkward, and this is those Sams dreaming of our amazing Sam. That makes me sound really mushy and I guess I am pretty mushy about Sam, but this vid is not. This vid is simply clever, funny, and beautiful, and I like it a lot. A LOT. Although I don't think SG-1 always treated Sam as well as they could have (and the less said about her stint on SGA the better), this vid emphasises everything that is clever, graceful, confident, and frankly fucking brilliant about our Sam, while looking with tenderness and sympathy at there-but-for-the-grace-of-the-multiverse Sams, brave and awkward and endearing and blowing themselves up and erasing their own timelines for the rest of the universe. I love them. I love this vid.
Female Character Study Honourable Mentions:
Boulevard Of, byshati; Buffy Summers and the Slayers. This is also a great Faith vid for me, although it's clearly not focused on her. Also, a vid I have long since lost that I loved deeply: Living Dead Girl, a Supernatural vid about Meg by monkeycrackmary. I haven't seen this vid for many years and I do miss it; I've never been able to enjoy the (excellent) Faith vid to the same song because I was too busy thinking about this vid!
Preliminary Notes:
- I really like multifandom vids. Like, really. Half of the vids I plan on reccing are multifandom, so if you don't like those, steer clear.
- The recs are going to be, obviously, skewed towards fandoms I'm in at the moment. I tried for a bit of range, but you're going to see a lot of Jossverse vids, partly because I'm watching Buffy really heavily at the moment, and partly because I have probably read three or four BTVS fics that I enjoyed, but the good vids seem to come one after the other. There are a couple of fandoms that I think have fabulous vids that are notably missing: Battlestar Galactica, Stargate: Atlantis, and Doctor Who. Yeah, IDEK what's going on there, but I'm in a Jossverse place so I'm just going with it. Supernatural gets a little work-out, too.
- I really like political and meta vids, so there's going to be some of that.
Day 1: A vid that made you start watching a brand-new show
Channel Hopping, by
ash48, and Channel Surfing, by ash48 and maichan808.Supernatural; humour; gen; spoilers throughout but not specially significant post-season 4; violence, gore, horror, 90s television.
So, we're really off to a bad start, because I don't think any vid has got me into a TV show. I've often watched vids in fandoms I don't know, especially those that come highly recommended, and enjoyed them for their merits; but I can't say that I've then gone on to watch the show, although I'm sure it'll happen some day. So instead I'm starting off light-hearted, with these two humorous vids which mash up Supernatural (of all shows) with opening themes to various TV shows. I also find them interesting as companions: the second one has, to my mind, slightly higher production values and does a slightly better job of fitting appropriate clips and tone to the theme tunes, and I find some switches from show to show a bit more clear. But the first one remains very funny.
In Channel Hopping I particularly love Buffy (although, let's face it, I was going to), Knight Rider - a show I've never seen, but which I immediately recognised in the vid (thank you, fannish osmosis); Days of Our Lives, for the best use of a canonical joke. Channel Surfing obviously pushes the conceit a little further, and for CSI: Miami is working with a bit of an unfair (BUT HILARIOUS) advantage, but I thought the Winchester Boys Mysteries and Winchester (Dexter) were both excellently done. Minus points for earworming me with the Full House theme, holy crap!
Day Two: A male character study vid you love
Jesus Walks, by
mimesere, sadly presently only available on youtube.Angel: The Series; Charles Gunn; spoilers throughout; violence, language.
I'm not completely sure, but I believe this is the first vid I ever watched - and how lucky am I that it was this brilliant piece on Gunn? I really don't believe I ever fully understood Gunn until I watched this vid. In just under four minutes - yet never feeling long - this vid takes you through Gunn's entire history on the show, layering his characterisation just brilliantly, giving me, at least, a much more coherent sense of Gunn than I had had before watching it. I think you could watch just this vid, and no actual episodes, and completely understand Gunn.
3:07, "guns/sex/lies/videotape", was my first introduction to really fast editing still being coherent, as well as to why literal vidding isn't always bad. I love 1:50-2:20. 2:50-3:00, to me, reveals how ill Gunn was served by the show and by the people around him. While the prevailing message of Joss' shows is usually something like "with the family we make, we can survive losing our original family/not having a family/the ways real life sucks." But in later seasons of Angel, I struggle to see Gunn as having the kind of support that Angel and Buffy both have, or close friendships at all, really. Fred is dead by this point, and they'd been broken up (hiss spit!) for ages; his friendship with Wes had self-destructed; and I don't think Angel ever gave as much to Gunn as Gunn gave to Angel. And perhaps that's the real story of this vid. Gunn gives away his real family (his sister) and the first family he created (his "gang" - in the words of the vid, the "terrorists" and "atheists") to sacrifice everything for the Angel Investigations crew. Himself, literally, often; his identity for Wolfram & Hart; he lets Angel Investigations use him, his constructed/media-mediated identity as a poor, young, black man in that brilliant scene in Wolfram & Hart early on in the show. & he gets back... what? He gets to die in an alley next to Angel and Illyria?
Maybe that's a more negative message than the vid ultimately purveys, I'm not too sure. Anyway.
Male Character Study Honourable Mentions:
Handlebars, by
flummery, Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor, he is a scary mofo; Start the Commotion, by danegen, Alec Hardison, he is everything great and wonderful and shiny (this is also a good pimping vid and I rec it for those purposes).And, um, three due South vids that really deserve me talking about them more, Zebra by Shalott (Ray Kowalski has a lot of energy) and In the Mirror (Ray K) and Out Here (Fraser) by
heresluck. I mention all three of these partly because I really like them (my favourite is In the Mirror though, because it is more nuanced than Zebra to me and also I like Ray more than Fraser), and partly because I wanted to very quickly compare one shot that's used in all three vids: the shot where Ray hits Fraser. I think the treatment of this shot in each vid is fascinating. In Zebra, the shot of Ray hitting Fraser cuts straight to Fraser hitting Ray. This is just part of the variety of Ray's experience and to my mind the shots are just kind of thrown in there as Fraser/RayK shorthand (because this is a significant moment in their relationship); it works because Zebra, the song, is about balancing opposites, old young, short tall, calm violent, so the shots balance each other. In In the Mirror, the shot isn't even completed - it cuts to Ray hitting a punching bag in the middle of the swing. (I could make up a few reasons for this, but the way I read it is that this vid is clearly being narrated by Ray, and he doesn't dwell on that moment, for various reasons.) But in Out Here, it's really dwelt on. You get the whole scene, basically. Ray angry, Fraser being stand-offish, Ray hitting him, Fraser turning the upper cheek and walking away, with fascinating lyrics over the top. ("Came to a choice: stay or run. I ran.") It treated that moment as something worth re-exploring and exploring in the context of this vid, which is about Fraser being emotionally distant from Ray. (Erm, there might be a bit of unfortunate victim-blaming subtext there, though.) And you don't get the shot of Fraser hitting Ray back, which I think is so interesting, because you crave it so much. Day Three - A female character study vid you love
I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker, by
kuwdora.Stargate: SG-1; Doctor/Captain/Major/Lt. Colonel/Colonel Samantha Carter, in multiple universes; spoilers throughout; explosions.
(You should watch the vid before you read this one. I'll wait.) The only way this vid could be any better to me is if it included that clip of Sam punching out Ba'al, but it's otherwise pretty frigging awesome. This is a vid about AU Sam, and for those of you familiar with SG-1 (and IMO you need to be to really get this vid), there are quite a lot of AU versions of Sam in canon. They're often sad or dead or, best-case scenario, awkward, and this is those Sams dreaming of our amazing Sam. That makes me sound really mushy and I guess I am pretty mushy about Sam, but this vid is not. This vid is simply clever, funny, and beautiful, and I like it a lot. A LOT. Although I don't think SG-1 always treated Sam as well as they could have (and the less said about her stint on SGA the better), this vid emphasises everything that is clever, graceful, confident, and frankly fucking brilliant about our Sam, while looking with tenderness and sympathy at there-but-for-the-grace-of-the-multiverse Sams, brave and awkward and endearing and blowing themselves up and erasing their own timelines for the rest of the universe. I love them. I love this vid.
Female Character Study Honourable Mentions:
Boulevard Of, by
shati; Buffy Summers and the Slayers. This is also a great Faith vid for me, although it's clearly not focused on her. Also, a vid I have long since lost that I loved deeply: Living Dead Girl, a Supernatural vid about Meg by monkeycrackmary. I haven't seen this vid for many years and I do miss it; I've never been able to enjoy the (excellent) Faith vid to the same song because I was too busy thinking about this vid!
