Don't Talk About The Rabbits

So, a small aeon ago, the Escapade dvds arrived! There was joy across the land! And I loved it, and wanted to give feedback and maybe post a few thoughts on the show.

Along the way I got stuck ("Oh my god, I can't even write a coherent sentence, much less anything that does justice to how complicated some of these are"), I got scared ("They will ALL HATE ME for saying this stuff"), I found I could simply not find the words to express how I felt about some of the vids ("Vid Pretty, Fire Bad"), a Psycho-Hosebeast attacked and made me consider hiding under my bed and abandoning fandom ("I know nothing of this 'vidding' you speak of"), and then suddenly it was August already and VividCon was occurring and a ton of vid posts were out on LJ and any posts would have been lost in the mix and I was full of disgust for myself.

At any rate, I've recently decided I have to stop the whole thing where I never post something til it's utterly perfect, because... then it never happens. As a result, I'm going to post a series of posts about *some* of the Escapade vids, but not all. The ones I leave out weren't the vids I disliked, they were the ones I didn't feel capable of talking about well, or at all, for whatever reasons. And I'm also going to let myself do short comments on some of these vids, although, admittedly, I got totally carried away on a few others and may have said too much (and the vidders may be all "What the hell. She has no idea what she's saying. That's not what my vid means!"). The end result is not even half the vids will probably show up here.

I will say upfront, I tried this a few years ago as well, and, well, it didn't go great. I made some comments on what was on of my favorite vids of the show, and although I loved it, I said a few critical things as well. The vidder defriended me within the day. My brain froze up. I was like "If one of the best vidders out there is upset by this, what about the vidders whose vids I actually disliked?!" I was seized with guilt and frustration and my brain refused me and I never did a review of the second half of the show. I'm trying to overcome that here, but I'd just like to say, if you don't want to *know*, don't read these posts, okay? For the most part, these were the vids I loved. But there are some I was lukewarm on, and some niggling points along the way.


vid: Holding Out for a Hero
by: Mary Crawford
Fandom: Hercules

Disclaimer: I beta'd this vid. I am not impartial at all.

Now, off you go to watch this vid and laugh your ass off! I really wish I had been there to see the reaction to this vid – and maybe some of the reaction to the listing for Yet Another “Holding Out for a Hero” vid. I can see it now. "Holy Fucking Christ! Will these people not let this song go to a peaceful grave already?"

So HA. It was the perfect set of characters for the vid. A vid that could revive this song in something other than a zombie-form, and make it do a jig, or maybe a breakdance, in leather pants, even. You could enjoy it without knowing the show (one of the benchmarks of a humor vid, for me) and really, is there anything better than that slow build to an entire horde of women chasing Hercules down a cliff, some of them clutching at stray boobs along the way?

I'm still not sure about that bird falling on Ares' head though, Mary. And I wish there had been a better clip than beat-up Zeus by a tree.

vid: Struggle
by: Luminosity
Fandom: Angel

Lum is one of those vidders who isn’t really capable of making a bad vid, so when watching them, it’s more of a matter of “did this work for me”. While I enjoyed the vid, it didn't engage me quite as much as I would have hoped, and it took me a while to figure out why this was.

I liked the song she chose, and I definitely felt the song worked for Lindsey. It was laid back, smooth. In the face of disaster, Lindsey and the song both just sort of lean against a door and think about working up to a smirk. But this meant that the nature of the song was laid back. For the most part, it was, not monotone, but level, and repetitive. There were not a lot of ups and down, to help pull you along from verse to verse, and differentiate emotions. The visuals had the same effect, strangely. Despite the fact that there is extreme violence, anger, sex, you name it, happening – it seems to be happening so calmly. (Yeah, fine, you're kicking my door down. Wait 'til I top off this drink first, okay? Jesus.)

Lum also tends to tell her stories on a very intuitive and visceral level. The narratives she tells are the ones inside the character's heads, and as such, they are most certainly not a point-a, point-b, point-c type of narrative. Because the visuals and the audio both had this laid back quality, they felt like they had equal weight, and while often this is a good thing, the result here was that neither stood out as much as they should. I'd get lost in trying to follow the twisty paths of the visual narrative, and find I had no idea what the lyrics were, past the refrain.

For me, this was more a vid I had to sit back, and let wash over me, and acknowledge that I wasn't going to get as deep a meaning out of it as I know was there to find.

I did adore the framing device, however. What seems to be just part of the flow, and the nature of Lindsey's character, with the repeated images of his playing the guitar, is just made so much stronger when it's put into the context of his playing at the bar, and for Lorne, at the finale. Everything right there, in advance, for the future to see….

vid: Stress
by: Rache and Sandy
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis

I had to take a deep breath or five before watching this vid. I knew it would be fabulous, and that was part of my problem. I’ve had a Rodney vid in mind for ages, and I tend to get – freaky and paranoid about watching vids about fandoms/characters I’m thinking of vidding for. I know seeing a vid too close to what I am considering will kill a vid idea stone cold dead for me. I also knew it was laughable to think that Rache and Sandy had made a bad vid. Having seen it, I think I’m okay, and much happier for having done so!

(My partner in vidding crime, aka_arduinna who was watching along with me on the first go-round of this disk, pointed out, correctly, that Sandy and Rache do not have the aversion to using clips from SG1 in an SGA vid that some vidders might have, and it gave them a broader set of source to work with. I was really happy to see the SG1 source.)

Sandy and Rache are, frankly, the masters of matching movement and music with perfect timing. And David Hewlett is really a master of physical comedy in all sorts of subtle and overt ways, which just gave them tons to work with here. Hands hands hands hands HANDS.

I don't have much to say about this vid, because most of it is so perfect, and nothing should be changed. Watching the physical movement is just beauty. And Sandy and Rache do things with cuts in this vid that pretty much made me seethe will jealousy.

So, I'll go straight to nitpicky. "Everybody's out to get me but I feel all right" – unfortunately, although these shots were fast and tight and lovely, they didn't actually convey much of a sense that people were out to get him, or that he was other than his usual state of wired about it. It's possible the footage just doesn't exist of the level of paranoia I was hoping for in some of these clips.

I adore beyond reason the use of Rodney's forced turn at the beginning of "It's the little things that get you."

We spent five minutes discussing how Rache and Sandy probably managed the fast hand reversal clips movement clips so seamlessly.

The clips of Rodney/Cadman kissing Carson at the end – a minor quibble, but they made me hesitate. They worked in the context of the lyric, but they still threw me out of the forward motion of the vid, because I stopped to think too much about them, and whether they bothered me. Which they did, a tiny bit. A niggle at my brain.

And the last thing – I wasn't entirely sure about the finale clip. I think I wanted something that slapped me upside the skull a little bit more.