Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Fanvid History Stash, II

See also, "Fanvid History Stash, I"

Writing about fanvids––"the practice of taking, expanding, and/or altering popular mass media narratives to create new derivative works… a core part of creative fan cultures" [per politicalremix]–– I really just want to say, 
"Here, look at these!"

I'm not going to embed them here--that gets unwieldy--but these are live links to some I'd point to, showing some evolution of vidding.

1. OMG,  this is HISTORY, guys!

"Kandy Fong's First Slideshow" (12:06 min) "In 1975, Kandy Fong made what is arguably the first vid by constructing a slide show that set Star Trek images to music. Fong had access to footage left on Trek's cutting room floor and, inspired by the Beatles video to "Strawberry Fields Forever", built a narrative around an original filk, or fannish folk song."

Sound quality is poor, but worth it (for Trekkies). I transcribed the voice-over dialogue onto this screencap:

2. "Apocalypse Pooh" (1987)
Todd Graham recasts animals from Disney's animated Winnie the Pooh in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now
7:48   s  l  o  w  minutes, to modern eyes, and more interesting as an idea than fun to watch, but a fascinating bit of vidding history,  from when vids were made on VCRs, and also interesting because it's not the more usual romantic story.

3. "Close to You" (2:07 min., 1999): "Tzikeh made 'Close to You' by combining footage from The X-Files with love metaphors from the famous Carpenters song."
The more usual romantic story, this manages to be wonderfully tongue-in-cheek as well as touchingly sincere. 

4. That was close, and this is "Closer".
This classic, by t. jonsey & killa, set to the Nine Inch Nails song, was first shown at a con in 2004. 
[Trigger warning: slash rape]
Uploaded by someone else, without permission in 2005, it went viral. Even though it suffered(?) from "context collapse", it obviously still works...   
Probably inspired thousands of vids---it certainly was the vid that made me start thinking, "I want to make one." 

I see new viewers are finding this due to the 2016 documentary For the Love of Spock, in which Leonard Nimoy's son specifically mentions this video as being rather "compelling".

5. "Multifandom Mashup 2016: 'To Absent Friends'" (2016): 
The modern aesthetic: finding unity in stitching together flashes of fractured bits. Vidder Pteryx is an editing genius. She says, 
"2016 has given us ... a lot of things to do and to think about.
The world is changing. It looks like we are on the final frontier, standing there and looking back to remember everything, say goodbye and finally make a step into new reality."
She also lists the movies (173) and TV shows (46), plus 3 animations that she included, here

6. "Hope: Rogue One" (1:48 min.) Sometimes (maybe even not infrequently) fanvids are better than their source. I wouldn't include this in a fandom-history list, but this [as of now, one-week-old] vid by the above Pteryx gets the good, and hopeful essence of a movie I walked out of.

I walked out of Rogue One, the latest (Dec 2016) Star Wars, because it was too much like watching the world at war as it really is now, and I couldn't take it. 
Or/also, it wasn't made for me. 
It was a fan's movie, and I'm not a Star Wars fan: 40 minutes in and we were on the nth planet, meeting the xth character, and I didn't care about any of them. 
If it'd been Star Trek, I'd have sat through it anyway.

I'll just go rewatch Diego Luna [here with Felicity Jones] in Y Tu Mamá También again. (Hm, haven't seen it in years--will I still like it? Must find out.)

5 comments:

ArtSparker said...

You have seen "Criminal", right? Diego Luna and Maggie Gylenhaal with duelling big sad wooby eyes? plus, John C. Reilly.

Fresca said...

Heavens! I have not! Thanks, Sparker, I'm adding it to my list. Mr Luna, the Original Big Eyes.

Fresca said...

OH! I looked it up, and yes, yes, yes! I did see it, and loved it, and will watch it again---thanks for the reminder. (remake of Nine Queens)

ArtSparker said...

Oh, I hadn't heard of Nine Queens.

bink said...

Thanks, now I feel like I've seen Rogue One (though I still might go when it gets to the Riverview).