The Virgil Refit: Vinceró!

My iTunes informs me that I listened to "Nessun Dorma" so many times in the last three days that it has made it onto my "Top 25 Most Played" list. I hit "repeat" and listened to it as I refitted my vid from this past Thanksgiving, "Kirk/Spock: Virgil Says Relax".


This is the result:
"Kirk/Spock: Virgil Says Don't Sleep; A Refit"

I'd always been pleased with my literary rendition of Dido and Aeneas into a parody of fan-fiction Kirk/Spock romance-- but I was never satisfied with my video version. One thing that never felt quite right was the song, Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax," which was good but not really Trekkie-like...

So, after I finished my e.e. cummings vid [post below], I decided to take a few minutes to swap the audio on that old vid.
Of course it took a lot longer than a few minutes to get the timing right, but I replaced it with Hawaiian singer IZ's beautiful ukelele medley of "Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" which is both hopelessly romantic and just a bit campy. (That's a good thing!)

And then--wow--for the first time, I ran into copyright problems. You may know, recently WMG (Warner Music Group) has been burning a wide swath through youTube, removing vids that use songs they hold copyrights to. So, YouTube informed me it would not load my vid because WMG owns IZ's song. (Sadly, he himself died at 38.)

Well, this is a hot issue, and a complex one, which I shall pass over in silence.
Luckily, Paramount doesn't do this to Star Trek. And wisely for them, as fans have created free ads for their "product" for 40-some years now.

Anyway, what could I do?
I chose a different romantic, slightly cheesy song: Puccini's aria "Nessun Dorma," from the opera Turandot.
The theme fits pretty well, too--during pon farr, no one sleeps! It's a violent, passionate business, just like opera.

Then I decided to add a few images and especially to tighten the vid's timing, which dragged (I'd put too much text onto each frame, and then had to allow time to read the Virgilian language). Trekcore.com has more than 54,000 screencaps, and when you're looking for just the right tilt of the head, it can take a long time. Of course, it's fun to look.
Next thing I knew, I'd spent almost as much time on the refit as on the original. Well, no, but a lot.

The lesson I learned is not to work with something so wordy again, in this format. Film--even these little slide-shows I make--is a visual medium. Yeah, I knew that, theoretically, but as a friend once said of me, I am an experiential learner. Which is a nice way of putting it.

I think this is a much improved version, but I left the old vid up for now too. Partly because Bink says she likes "Relax" better... If you have an opinion, I'd love to hear it.

(Vinceró! = "I shall win!")