VVC report, part 1
This was my second time going to Vividcon-the first was summer of 2010-although I never posted about that one because the experience was so jam-packed joyful (and because, like this year, I had to go straight back to a busy office). 2010 was a special VVC for many reasons, among which were the unusual concentration of fan friends of mine whom I hadn't had a chance to meet before then (thingswithwings, eruthros, toft, isagel, anatsuno, chagrined, livrelibre, others I'm forgetting, but holy hell what an awesome group) and of House and SGA fic writers I hadn't known were attending (frostfire17, harriet_spy, spike21, thehoyden, anoel, others I'm forgetting again), plus roga was in the country and able to attend too. That was also the first time I met heresluck and astolat and elynross and cesperanza, who accompanied me to my airport gate on the last day to chat because her flight was a little later than mine. I was still new at vidding and didn't feel confident enough to discuss technique or strike up conversations with big-name vidders beyond "I loved X" (though I was fine talking about general fannish stuff or specific fandoms with anyone), or to submit any vids as premieres.
This year's con was different on many fronts as expected, but it turned out to be perhaps even more of a satisfying experience. Not going with a buddy meant I both met new people and talked with many I'd met last time, hopefully starting to forge some relationships (in the sense of [a] remembering one another and [b] communicating more online between cons). I met obsessive24 and thirdblindmouse and futuransky/heyiya and shati and pharis and grammarwoman and rokikurama with the cool glasses. It feels silly to say, but I did feel proud to talk with people like laurashapiro and giandujakiss, with milly, bradcpu, kuwdora, hollywoodgrrl, kiki_miserychic. They are not scary! Well, okay, I remembered from last time that milly isn't scary. :) & of course it was great to see kassrachel again, although bittersweet because she has her own circles and we didn't intersect much.
Right, but aside from what now looks like obnoxious and/or uninteresting name-dropping, I knew enough about the craft to take useful notes and contribute (I hope) not-stupid comments and questions at panels, but still have more than enough left to learn so that the panels were all interesting. I'm getting better at remembering which vidder has done which works that I've liked. Not least, I had two vids premiere and a third play in a themed vidshow and they all did well, which has made my heart swell like the Grinch's. For the first time, vidders I deeply admire came up to me to say nice things. I don't have words yet for what that was like.
I guess it's all part of the process of becoming a member of the community.
.
So. Ack, from what angle do I attack this write-up?
I guess we start at the beginning. After dropping my stuff in the hotel room Thursday afternoon, I was lucky enough to catch thirdblindmouse among the fans in the lobby, whom it was great to finally meet, and also kerithwyn and amnisias, who are lovely and with whom I spent a lot of time over the weekend. Finally properly met settiai in the way where I will now actually remember her, oops. talitha78, serrico, danegen,
charloween and a few others joined for a fun dinner. Then it was time for registration-and shortly afterwards, rhoboat's
Mystery Vid Party
This is, it seems, a VVC tradition in which rho loads a ton of vids into a playlist and scrolls through them until someone yells "Stop!", at which point you watch whatever you've landed on, which might be excellent or absolutely terrible. We had many examples of each. :)
On the excellent side, there was rho's own Learning to Fly, a gorgeous character study/story from the Thai kickboxing movie Beautiful Boxer, which looks to be a cross between Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior and Farewell My Concubine. Cool stuff, queer themes, and I do want to see the film now.
Another standout was a River Tam vid (Firefly) called, I could have sworn, "Play Dead," but I can't find it on Google or LJ search so now I'm not sure. Hm. Would've liked to watch it again.
Then there were the super-sappy 'ship vids, the improbable pairings,* the emo songs, the vids with no end. Good times had by all, except when we were hiding our eyes.
*I was intrigued by one that paired Sam and Tyrell oh, Google says it's spelled Tyrol?
from BSG, although it, too, had its cringey manipped-makeout moments. I was also surprised that people in the room were surprised by a Rodney/Elizabeth vid. They said they'd never have thought of that pairing. I know I've read several Rodney/Elizabeth fics; it seemed like a natural combination among the various staff 'ships. *shrug*
Through serendipity we landed on the Torchwood mpreg classic vid "Papa Don't Preach" followed by an apparently equally infamous Clark/Lex mpreg kitten-baby constructed reality parody vid from last year's con, I Swear, by dualbunny, sweetestdrain and greensilver. I hadn't seen or known about "I Swear," but ha, it does make an impression. It was fortunate that I was indoctrinated into its special kind of beauty, because the last vid of this year's Challenges show (theme: transformation), "Jag Svar" [no link yet], offered a live-action sequel complete with House and Wilson as delivery room staff.
So that was a good time for the couple of hours I lasted until bed. It also set the mood for the weekend: There's nothing to be afraid of when it comes to talking to or hanging out with some of the world's best fanvidders.
Breakfast the next morning, the con welcome, and then two vid shows:
History of Vidding: Club Vivid
I've got a lot to catch up on, history of vidding-wise. In 2010 this opening show introduced me to a number of lovely vids, my favorite of which was an absolutely awesome A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia/Deep Space Nine fusion that I wish were online so I could link you to it a million times.
This year, I especially enjoyed hearing the story behind why "The Joxer Dance" from Xena always opens Club Vivid, inasmuch as it is a story, as well as watching tzikeh and Killa's classy multifandom dance vid "Puttin' on the Ritz" and SE's Evil Love Shack of Darkness (The Evil Dead trilogy), which just kept going. Club Tik Tok still makes me uncomfortable, but whatever, lots of other people like it and that's fine.
BTW, this and all playlists are at the VVC comm here.
Let's Put on a Show
The only non-plenary vidshow I ended up attending the whole weekend, hm. It was up against a Vividcon quiz show on the schedule, at which I would have failed miserably, but I would have gone to this regardless because milly included They Want More and I was going to be in the room at a con where that vid showed if it killed me. Which, thankfully, it did not, although I had serious butterflies during the couple of vids leading up to it.
It was a fun vidshow with many angles on the show business/performance/filmmaking/voyeurism theme, including the Hamlet and Son of Rambo vids I recced last night as well as The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, the K-Pop artists Festivid, Slings and Arrows, Ghost Hunters ("someone's watching me"-is it a ghost, or is it the production crew?), and My Chemical Romance RPS. SE's beautiful Virtuality vid would have fit very well here.
Saturday night
were_duck, heyiya and I checked out the Weird Science vidshow DVD. It was okay. Most interesting to me personally was that kiki_miserychic set a vid to the beautiful Symphony of Science autotune mashup We Are All Connected. I confess I still prefer looking at Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson than at the SGU characters. I also liked bradcpu's House vid Vertigo, which I must have seen back in the day but didn't remember.
I'm really looking forward to watching the Let My Lyrics Go! and Vids That Go Bump in the Night playlists.
More to come. For now, some vids and then sleeeeep.
ETA: Part two here (panels).
This year's con was different on many fronts as expected, but it turned out to be perhaps even more of a satisfying experience. Not going with a buddy meant I both met new people and talked with many I'd met last time, hopefully starting to forge some relationships (in the sense of [a] remembering one another and [b] communicating more online between cons). I met obsessive24 and thirdblindmouse and futuransky/heyiya and shati and pharis and grammarwoman and rokikurama with the cool glasses. It feels silly to say, but I did feel proud to talk with people like laurashapiro and giandujakiss, with milly, bradcpu, kuwdora, hollywoodgrrl, kiki_miserychic. They are not scary! Well, okay, I remembered from last time that milly isn't scary. :) & of course it was great to see kassrachel again, although bittersweet because she has her own circles and we didn't intersect much.
Right, but aside from what now looks like obnoxious and/or uninteresting name-dropping, I knew enough about the craft to take useful notes and contribute (I hope) not-stupid comments and questions at panels, but still have more than enough left to learn so that the panels were all interesting. I'm getting better at remembering which vidder has done which works that I've liked. Not least, I had two vids premiere and a third play in a themed vidshow and they all did well, which has made my heart swell like the Grinch's. For the first time, vidders I deeply admire came up to me to say nice things. I don't have words yet for what that was like.
I guess it's all part of the process of becoming a member of the community.
.
So. Ack, from what angle do I attack this write-up?
I guess we start at the beginning. After dropping my stuff in the hotel room Thursday afternoon, I was lucky enough to catch thirdblindmouse among the fans in the lobby, whom it was great to finally meet, and also kerithwyn and amnisias, who are lovely and with whom I spent a lot of time over the weekend. Finally properly met settiai in the way where I will now actually remember her, oops. talitha78, serrico, danegen,
charloween and a few others joined for a fun dinner. Then it was time for registration-and shortly afterwards, rhoboat's
Mystery Vid Party
This is, it seems, a VVC tradition in which rho loads a ton of vids into a playlist and scrolls through them until someone yells "Stop!", at which point you watch whatever you've landed on, which might be excellent or absolutely terrible. We had many examples of each. :)
On the excellent side, there was rho's own Learning to Fly, a gorgeous character study/story from the Thai kickboxing movie Beautiful Boxer, which looks to be a cross between Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior and Farewell My Concubine. Cool stuff, queer themes, and I do want to see the film now.
Another standout was a River Tam vid (Firefly) called, I could have sworn, "Play Dead," but I can't find it on Google or LJ search so now I'm not sure. Hm. Would've liked to watch it again.
Then there were the super-sappy 'ship vids, the improbable pairings,* the emo songs, the vids with no end. Good times had by all, except when we were hiding our eyes.
*I was intrigued by one that paired Sam and Tyrell oh, Google says it's spelled Tyrol?
from BSG, although it, too, had its cringey manipped-makeout moments. I was also surprised that people in the room were surprised by a Rodney/Elizabeth vid. They said they'd never have thought of that pairing. I know I've read several Rodney/Elizabeth fics; it seemed like a natural combination among the various staff 'ships. *shrug*
Through serendipity we landed on the Torchwood mpreg classic vid "Papa Don't Preach" followed by an apparently equally infamous Clark/Lex mpreg kitten-baby constructed reality parody vid from last year's con, I Swear, by dualbunny, sweetestdrain and greensilver. I hadn't seen or known about "I Swear," but ha, it does make an impression. It was fortunate that I was indoctrinated into its special kind of beauty, because the last vid of this year's Challenges show (theme: transformation), "Jag Svar" [no link yet], offered a live-action sequel complete with House and Wilson as delivery room staff.
So that was a good time for the couple of hours I lasted until bed. It also set the mood for the weekend: There's nothing to be afraid of when it comes to talking to or hanging out with some of the world's best fanvidders.
Breakfast the next morning, the con welcome, and then two vid shows:
History of Vidding: Club Vivid
I've got a lot to catch up on, history of vidding-wise. In 2010 this opening show introduced me to a number of lovely vids, my favorite of which was an absolutely awesome A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia/Deep Space Nine fusion that I wish were online so I could link you to it a million times.
This year, I especially enjoyed hearing the story behind why "The Joxer Dance" from Xena always opens Club Vivid, inasmuch as it is a story, as well as watching tzikeh and Killa's classy multifandom dance vid "Puttin' on the Ritz" and SE's Evil Love Shack of Darkness (The Evil Dead trilogy), which just kept going. Club Tik Tok still makes me uncomfortable, but whatever, lots of other people like it and that's fine.
BTW, this and all playlists are at the VVC comm here.
Let's Put on a Show
The only non-plenary vidshow I ended up attending the whole weekend, hm. It was up against a Vividcon quiz show on the schedule, at which I would have failed miserably, but I would have gone to this regardless because milly included They Want More and I was going to be in the room at a con where that vid showed if it killed me. Which, thankfully, it did not, although I had serious butterflies during the couple of vids leading up to it.
It was a fun vidshow with many angles on the show business/performance/filmmaking/voyeurism theme, including the Hamlet and Son of Rambo vids I recced last night as well as The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, the K-Pop artists Festivid, Slings and Arrows, Ghost Hunters ("someone's watching me"-is it a ghost, or is it the production crew?), and My Chemical Romance RPS. SE's beautiful Virtuality vid would have fit very well here.
Saturday night
were_duck, heyiya and I checked out the Weird Science vidshow DVD. It was okay. Most interesting to me personally was that kiki_miserychic set a vid to the beautiful Symphony of Science autotune mashup We Are All Connected. I confess I still prefer looking at Richard Feynman and Neil deGrasse Tyson than at the SGU characters. I also liked bradcpu's House vid Vertigo, which I must have seen back in the day but didn't remember.
I'm really looking forward to watching the Let My Lyrics Go! and Vids That Go Bump in the Night playlists.
More to come. For now, some vids and then sleeeeep.
ETA: Part two here (panels).