Top Five Vids of 2008 ... so far

[eruthros]

thingswithwings and I were talking about sockkpuppett's list of the top five vids of 2008 for NY Magazine. And we thought, wouldn't it be great to turn this into a meme and have a whole bunch of people share their top five? And share the joy of these vids all over again?

Turns out top five is really, really hard. Especially when I mostly want to gush and tell y'all to go watch them.

In no particular order:


1. giandujakiss's Buffyverse vid Origin Stories.
I have trouble articulating how much I love this vid. I'm still getting new things out of it, putting together the clips and the lyrics in new ways; there was a period this last summer where I would watch it two or three times in a row every day, and it was amazing every one of those times. Anyway. Gianduja uses Robin Wood's story -- and his origin story, with his mother Nikki -- to make a political argument about people of color and women on Buffy; and she does this by reminding us all that the leather coat, which the show plays as Spike's origin story, is Robin's origin story too. This is a vid about Nikki and Kendra and the Chinese slayer (whose name we don't even know!), it's a vid about Spike's crimes being set on a different moral plane that anyone else who kills a slayer, and it's a vid about Robin. And the coda is amazing; she uses Dana to such good effect. And, just, the idea of the origin stories -- that all the Chinese slayer and Nikki get to be is Spike's origin story -- is beautifully done. The editing's awesome, the clip choice is awesome, the narrative is brilliant, and I'm always finding something more. Absolutely one of my favorite vids of the year.

2. charmax's multi-fandom vid I'm Your Man.
Charmax calls this a "celebration of media cliches," and I think that's a perfect description -- she finds such joy in all the cliches of women in drag and in all the cliches of queer women in television, and she does it beautifully. Not just in terms of matching the clips really well; she also finds ways to trace motion from one source to another, to make them speak to each other. I also love her framing device (literally!) -- the mirror at the beginning and the video screens at the end.

3. sisabet's SGA vid Here It Goes Again.
John Sheppard's pain is never not funny. This is one of my vids for when I am sad and lonely; I go watch Sisabet's amazing use of timing and the subtle golf-club section and the hilarious John Sheppard faces and I feel a million times better. She found so many amazing physical moments in the series that I'd never really seen before, or never really considered, and she put them all together and turned them into something that is simultaneously an amazing character study and completely hilarious. Her opening titles are perfectly timed and brilliantly chosen and from their it just keeps on being awesome!

4. Seah and Margie (flummery)'s Doctor Who vid Handlebars
This is just -- I mean, it's the Doctor. It's a perfect song choice, and then it's so incredibly beautifully cut. The transitions throughout the verses are so perfect that it hurts; it's just such a beautiful progression. (I'm trying not to spoil the vid, because if you don't know the song, the first time watching it is awesome, so.)

5. lim's HP vid In Exchange For Your Tomorrows, which just barely squeaks in under the wire at January 2nd 2008. Lim is an amazing vidder -- her work always tells stories in interesting ways, and does it by using footage in ways I never would have imagined. I read this vid as a commentary on the cyclical story of Harry Potter; that this all happened before, and is going to happen again. It's an awesome critical piece and it's beautiful. Yes, this: Grindelwald, and Voldemort, and someone else for Albus Severus Potter, and Snape's caught in the middle of it, bound up in the return of Voldemort.



Lots and lots of honorable mentions, in no particular order:
1. laurashapiro's awesome Doctor Who vid Shut Up and Drive, which takes the good parts of season three of Doctor Who's treatment of Martha and gives us a Martha who has power in their relationship, and who knows she's awesome. Martha is > me.

2. thingswithwings's multi-vid The Glass, which still makes me kinda sniffly. I love so much her depiction of the glass itself as something that fandom has taken and made sexy, of the way we break the glass and then put it back so we can break it again.

3. kiki_miserychic's Sarah Conner Chronicles vid Does Cameron Dream of Electric Sheep?
I only just started watching T:SCC a while ago, so this is a lot newer to me than it probably is to some of y'all. Cameron, and humanity, and robots. The effects are really well-used here, I think; she plays with overlays and speed changes in interesting ways, to (for example) make the dance instructor more robotic.

4. lierdumoa's Firefly vid How Much Is That Geisha in the Window?
Her tag is "Fuck you, Joss, you racist asshole," and she makes you feel it by the time you get there. Where Origin Stories, above, is a vid that uses Robin Wood's narrative to point out the racism of the show, HMITGiiW? builds up a historical context for Firefly that Firefly forgot it had. I don't often see vids with external footage where it's supposed to be external, but Lierdumoa's doing it here, to make a documentary of Firefly's past. And she's also doing fucking awesome things with voice, at the end of the vid, when she uses sound clips of the show's dialogue. And, oh man, the opening shot of this vid, where the Asian woman vanishes from the frame? The whole thing is brilliant.

5. On a completely different note, fan_eunice and greensilver's Doctor Who/Torchwood vid Papa Don't Preach.
These guys do some seriously amazing editing to come up with a constructed reality vid where Jack's having his baby. It's got great timing, great use of clips to play with context, and they do really fun things with the video monitors in their clips, and then on top of that? It's fucking hilarious.

6. giandujakiss's X-Files vid Hell of a Place.
So, I've seen a lot of X-Files vids, but I've never seen an X-Files vid like this. She calls it "the epic love story of Mulder and Scully," but ... what's this? It's starting with government helicopters and death and destruction and X-Files and the ouroborus tattoo transitioning into the seal of the President? Yup, this is a vid about Mulder and Scully's work together, about the way they find each other and love each other while things are blowing up around them; Gianduja finds the oppression in the original series, and makes out of it a whole different relationship for Mulder and Scully. It is a hell of a place.

7. gnine's SGA vid What Is Eternal.
Gnine plays with the SGA episode "The Last Man" and the implications it has for Rodney's history, and she does what the SGA PTB wish they could do with their AU and time-travel episodes. She uses color-changing effects and masks so incredibly well; the moment where she transitions from John and Rodney walking down a hallway to the same hallway in future!Atlantis makes my heart go "oh!" And when she masks the Atlantises over each other? That's Rodney's story; he's caught up in Atlantis, and the people on Atlantis, and it's all in here. The song might seem over the top, but then, so is Rodney, so it ends up working really really well.

Honorable honorable mentions, or, I should write something for these, but now I'm kinda exhausted:
heyiya's post-apocalyptic multi vid The Future Stops Here, in which Heyiya does some fucking amazing things with apocalypses in Britain, and with power and resistance and dystopia;
sol_se's SGA vid Red Moon, which I find endlessly impressive for the work it does building a canon and a backstory for the relationship out of similar backstories for John and Ronon;
and giandujakiss's multi vid Hourglass, which does awesome things with fannish tropes -- this is fan-vision, in which we make connections and love our tropes.



So! That's my top five ... plus. I hope some of you guys pick up the idea and make your own lists, because I want to see the awesomeness that I've missed!

ETA: thingswithwings's list is here.

Comments

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a great idea! I love your choices.

[eruthros]

Thanks, I hope you decide to play too!

PS: I nearly listed your Hustle vid, which I loved a lot and which got me into a new fandom -- the timing is amazing and it makes me go \o/ -- but I don't think it's online anywhere?

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Got you into a new fandom, really? That makes me grin like you wouldn't believe. Yay! And no, I don't have it publicly accessible anywhere. That was actually one of Lum's limitations with the NYMag thing -- the vids had to be available streaming. I know it limited her.

Thanks so much for being so kind. Mickey and Danny and the crew thank you, too. :D

[eruthros]

Yes, I was thinking that I had it a lot easier than Lum did, because I could link to lj posts and even to people who had password-protected their pages.

It totally got me into a new fandom! I watched all of Hustle in, like, two weeks or something, because "Farewell Welfare" made me go "!!!"

Also, I want someone to put Mickey blowing in Danny's ear next to the Starsky and Hutch and the SPN ear-blowing scenes in a multi-vid sometime.

[thingswithwings.livejournal.com]

you reccd me! ya big lug.

for the record: I think it's really interesting to put your reading of In Exchange For Your Tomorrows next to mine, because I think that we're coming at the same thing from different directions, and that we do converge in the middle. Space and time! The claustrophobia is the same as the compulsion to repeat.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Thank you very kindly!

[eruthros]

I really love that vid :) It fills me with unabashed joy!

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm so thrilled to hear that!

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I feel extremely honoured that you put my little vid in your list of awesome. Thank you!

I want to make a list, but I feel like it will just repeat yours and thingswithwings's. I may do so anyway.

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!! I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you liked the vids - and wow, that you were able to tolerate Origin Stories for that many viewings (I myself have reached the point where I can't watch it any more because all I see are things I wish I could have done better). And, wow, you guys came up with such similar lists without consulting each other? I always suspected you might actually be the same person...

[eruthros]

I love them a lot! They're some of my most re-watched vids.

I was in the field at the time, and I'd get into the lab at the crack of down every day and watch Origin Stories or some other vid a couple times, while I had my coffee and had fifteen minutes of privacy. It was actually a really interesting thing, because I couldn't download anything new, and I don't usually watch vids every day, and I rarely watch them in repetition like that, but I think I learned a lot about different ways to read vids doing it. (And also, when I was bitter and angry about the way my colleagues talked about television and fannishness and trekkies, I'd be like, "yeah? well, we can do THIS.")

Sometimes we suspect that we might actually be the same person as well. *facepalm* But look! We read "In Exchange for Your Tomorrows" differently!

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the honorable mention. I see at least one vid I haven't watched before.

[giandujakiss.livejournal.com]

Hi there - would you mind terribly if I asked you to amend your link to Origin Stories to change it to the LJ announcement, instead of my site? As it turns out, my bandwidth is about to go blewy, but I have temporary Sendspace links up at my LJ.

The link is here:

http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/360051.html

Thank you!

[eruthros]

No problem! Already done.