Dear Festividder
Oct. 24th, 2020 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosDear Festividder (and passerby who like to read letters),
Thank you for making me a vid! I tend to go into way too much detail when I write these letters – please don't feel obligated to read the things below the cut tags if that would make the exchange less fun for you. I like many different kinds of vids and I like these sources, so you're pretty sure to make something I'll like.
I have one outside-the-cut-tag thing, though, because I have two visual triggers.
1) Super fast flashes of lights or colors that have high contrast. Almost all vids are fine for me, but some that intercut scenes for two or three frames at a time can trigger this. It depends on the amount of contrast between the two scenes – stutter cuts are fine between two similar scenes, but not between one dark green and one bright red lit scene, or between a nighttime and daytime scene. Strobe lights (in the source) or strobe light effects (in the vid) can also trigger this.
2) Frame rate fuckery - when a show or a vid plays 24 fps footage in 30 fps or vice versa. So, like, when a film puts footage at the wrong frame rate to make it feel awkward or tense, which is super common in action films these days. (E.g. the Bucky/Steve knife fight on the street in Winter Solider.) It can also happen by accident, with incorrect project settings for a vid, or when a show needs to stretch or compress footage, or if a show was incorrectly digitized.
If you're concerned about either of these, please feel free to run a sample bythingswithwings. She can also explain them with examples if that would be helpful.
General Preferences: I really enjoy the diversity of vidding styles and genres at festivids and I look forward to seeing your style! I'm down for: any rating, outside source (including crossovers), still footage, dialog included in the vid, critiques, action, deep character studies, shippy vids, action vids, dance vids, slash, femslash, het, gen, canon pairings, and non-canon pairings.
Things I love: people who put care into the work they do; building communities and found families; history and places being related to people and feelings; queer people; joy; relationships between characters; time travel; speculative fiction; eating the rich; fighting for justice; people supporting each other.
Music: I am happy to watch vids to all kinds of music! I love vids to instrumentals (a ton of fun to vid also), to dense lyrics-heavy songs, to hip hop, to weird indie music, to fun dance songs, to classics, and to things I've never heard of before. I also like vids to non-music, like spoken word pieces or sound effects.
However, I am hard of hearing in a way that makes it difficult to parse lyrics that are mumbly or obscured by the instrumentation. (I hear volume and instruments and melody just fine.) I'd appreciate it if you offered subtitles, especially if you intercut dialog and song lyrics.
John Boyega RPF [multi]
John Boyega is an actor, a producer, and an activist. I first saw him in Attack the Block (amazing) and then I was thrilled when he was cast in Star Wars. He's a really excellent actor, and he always has interesting things to say about his work. Also recently he gave a great speech at a BLM protest!
Request details: So here is the deal: there is a fucking shitton of terrible, racist content and comments about John Boyega that gets in the way of any search you do for him (or shows up in the comments). So all I want is a vid about John Boyega being awesome. It could be about his acting, his activism, his interviews, his critiques of Star Wars and Star Wars fans, or that time he played with puppies to promote Pacific Rim. I just want more good content about John Boyega to exist on the internet. Give me "John Boyega trolling racist fans was great" or "John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are cute about each other" or "John Boyega's powerful commentary on racism." Just something good about John Boyega please.
The Repair Shop [TV]
The Repair Shop is a reality television show about many skilled craftspeople working together to fix broken objects with emotional significance for their owners. The clients come in with all different situations and stories: one may have a toy that they have kept in a box for sixty years, even though it's broken; another may bring in a musical instrument that they want to have repaired for their parents; and a third may bring in a trophy that they won years ago and that broke in a fire. (Yes, they always come in threes.) And then the craftspeople do their best to repair those items. It's about putting care into things that are important to people.
Request details: The Repair Shop was my early pandemic comfort watching, and it's such charming comfort watching! It's so soothing: the reality tv formula plus skilled people looking at the history of an item, cleaning it, color-matching the repair, rebuilding the hinge, adjusting the gear, planning the wood. And it's filmed with attention paid to the skill and work, so there are always glorious closeups of that work. I also really appreciate the way they work as a team – handing off pieces of projects or sharing tools or teaching someone how to do something new.
That said, it's not all about the craft: I tear up at this show all the time, because these objects mean things and carry memories. So many episodes end with people crying when things are repaired, hugging the craftspeople, or gasping in delight.
My faves are:
But also I like everyone else in this bar!
Content notes: Some episodes deal with the Holocaust; sometimes it's "a memento from my grandmother who survived the Holocaust" and sometimes it's "my grandpa fought for Britain and brought back this German helmet," which, yikes. Some episodes also contain largely unexamined history of British colonialism and imperialism – "my grandpa traveled to India as part of the colonial government, and got this souvenir" or "my parents, who were missionaries" or "in the Boer war" etc.
Fast Color [film, safety]
An incredibly gorgeous film about three generations of black women with superpowers! It's a post-apocalypse film, a superhero film, and a family drama film all at once. The family story gives the actors (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, and Saniyya Sidney) an incredible amount to work with, and they knock it out of the park.
Request details: I love basically everything about this film? The cinematography screams out to be vidded, and that's definitely a big part of why I'm here! But even more than that I'm interested in the relationship between Ruth and Bo, both of whom are so interesting as characters and so interesting together. Also, I think it might be fun to play with the elements of the apocalypse as an emotional metaphor - this movie does really great things with the connections between places and people.
Content notes: seizures, drug addiction and recovery, generational trauma
Salt Fat Acid Heat [TV]
Salt Fat Acid Heat is Samin Nosrat's food show, based on her book of the same name. It's very short – four episodes! – and each episode is devoted to a place and an element of good cooking. Samin travels to Italy to talk about fat, Japan to talk about salt, Mexico to talk about acid, and stays at home in the USA to talk about heat.
Request details: I love to watch Samin Nosrat loving things! Her attitude of exploration - the way she tries things and tastes new things and asks experts to give her their experience and advise – is often both beautiful and charming, when she grins delightedly or tastes raw ingredients or throws herself into a flavor combination. I really appreciate the way that the show recognizes expertise – and links to it on her website. Also the food cinematography in this miniseries is gorgeous – beautiful, colorful foods filmed with delight. I would love to see a vid about food and joy and community!
Billy Porter RPF [multi]
Billy Porter is an actor, singer, and dancer; he currently plays Pray Tell on Pose. He has also done a bunch of other cool things, like Kinky Boots on Broadway, a whole cover album of Richard Rogers songs, and a season of American Horror Story.
Request details: Billy Porter's red carpet appearances in the last few years have been AMAZING. And his interviews are amazing as well! I'm so happy about his interviews about why he wears dresses, and I love the incredibly fashionable work he is doing when he wears dresses to some appearances and suits to others. I deeply appreciate his joy, his sincerity, and his sense of humor. I'd love a vid that was all fashion and dance and singing, or a vid about his life story, or a vid about his various kinds of acting work! But whatever it is, please make it FABULOUS.
Paradox (Marvel Comics Character Earth-80324) [comics]
Paradox is an anti-gravity dancer, a secret agent, and a shapeshifter - and he is also possibly the first queer superhero character in Marvel comics. He's in two incredibly weird comics printed in the early 80s, set in a future with an oppressive space empire that is completely unrelated to the rest of Marvel canon.
Request details: I LOVE HIM. Paradox is a secret agent for the ISA, an oppressive space CIA-ish organization; he has been nonconsensually genetically engineered to be a shapeshifter. The ISA is super uncomfortable with his queerness. The ISA sends him off to investigate rebels; he meets a team of other ISA agents and they all become pals. They pursue the rebels ... and then Paradox kills his own ISA team. FOR REAL. Turns out he's been a space rebel all along! Then he takes the form of one of his team members and KILLS THE EMPEROR. In a giant explosion. ILU you angry shape-shifting space bi. That's basically all I want in a vid: the angry shape-shifting rebel space bisexual dude who blows the emperor up.
Paradox's main story appears in Marvel Preview #24 in 1980; his backstory comes later in Marvel's Bizarre Adventures #30 in 1982. Then in 2011 he universe-hops into modern comics and the 616 universe in Wolverine: The Best There Is. (This Wolverine comic is terrible, like, it's so bad, but I'm happy that Paradox is in it, shapeshifting his way around the 616 universe and wearing his 1980s leather pants and white flowy shirt and black vest and leaning dramatically against walls.)
Content notes: queer slurs, dead queer women, non-consensual drug use, fridging
Availability: Because these are old one-off comics, they can be hard to find and they're not on Marvel Unlimited. If you can't find them, askthingswithwings and she will hook you up.
Watchmen (2019) [TV]
Watchmen is a 34-years-later sequel to Watchmen (the comic book); it takes the canon of the comic book seriously but then does a ton of new worldbuilding and layers it on top. It brings in many new themes as well: race, policing, what it means to be a masked superhero. It starts out looking like it's 50% superhero cop show, 50% history, but it stops looking like a standard cop show pretty fast.
Request Details: I am here for Angela Abar and Will Reeves: the amazing episode 6 when Angela takes Nostalgia is just astonishing, and it combines two things I love to pieces, time travel and embodiment, in a new and amazing way. I have only been able to find a few Watchmen 2019 vids, and so far all of them that I've seen have treated it like a standard cop or superhero show: the Angela vids mostly include early-season footage of her punching people in a copaganda cops-need-to-play-by-their-own-rules way. Which, like, that is in the show but it's not what the series is about! I do want vids where Angela punches racists, but I think there's so much more happening in this canon. There are so many cool opportunities for vids that do amazing things with the visuals to think about the overlays of history, to intercut Will and Angela, and to highlight this embodiment of history and generations, to think about policing and what it means here. Also that last shot of the season, the moment in which Angela [spoilers], just deeply needs to be vidded.
I do not give any fucks about The Blond Man or anything happening on Europa.
Content notes: Racism, white supremacy, police violence, the 1921 Tulsa massacre, the KKK, lynching, generational trauma, hypnotism causing suicide.
Thank you for making me a vid! I tend to go into way too much detail when I write these letters – please don't feel obligated to read the things below the cut tags if that would make the exchange less fun for you. I like many different kinds of vids and I like these sources, so you're pretty sure to make something I'll like.
I have one outside-the-cut-tag thing, though, because I have two visual triggers.
1) Super fast flashes of lights or colors that have high contrast. Almost all vids are fine for me, but some that intercut scenes for two or three frames at a time can trigger this. It depends on the amount of contrast between the two scenes – stutter cuts are fine between two similar scenes, but not between one dark green and one bright red lit scene, or between a nighttime and daytime scene. Strobe lights (in the source) or strobe light effects (in the vid) can also trigger this.
2) Frame rate fuckery - when a show or a vid plays 24 fps footage in 30 fps or vice versa. So, like, when a film puts footage at the wrong frame rate to make it feel awkward or tense, which is super common in action films these days. (E.g. the Bucky/Steve knife fight on the street in Winter Solider.) It can also happen by accident, with incorrect project settings for a vid, or when a show needs to stretch or compress footage, or if a show was incorrectly digitized.
If you're concerned about either of these, please feel free to run a sample by
thingswithwings. She can also explain them with examples if that would be helpful.General Preferences: I really enjoy the diversity of vidding styles and genres at festivids and I look forward to seeing your style! I'm down for: any rating, outside source (including crossovers), still footage, dialog included in the vid, critiques, action, deep character studies, shippy vids, action vids, dance vids, slash, femslash, het, gen, canon pairings, and non-canon pairings.
Things I love: people who put care into the work they do; building communities and found families; history and places being related to people and feelings; queer people; joy; relationships between characters; time travel; speculative fiction; eating the rich; fighting for justice; people supporting each other.
Music: I am happy to watch vids to all kinds of music! I love vids to instrumentals (a ton of fun to vid also), to dense lyrics-heavy songs, to hip hop, to weird indie music, to fun dance songs, to classics, and to things I've never heard of before. I also like vids to non-music, like spoken word pieces or sound effects.
However, I am hard of hearing in a way that makes it difficult to parse lyrics that are mumbly or obscured by the instrumentation. (I hear volume and instruments and melody just fine.) I'd appreciate it if you offered subtitles, especially if you intercut dialog and song lyrics.
John Boyega RPF [multi]
John Boyega is an actor, a producer, and an activist. I first saw him in Attack the Block (amazing) and then I was thrilled when he was cast in Star Wars. He's a really excellent actor, and he always has interesting things to say about his work. Also recently he gave a great speech at a BLM protest!
Request details: So here is the deal: there is a fucking shitton of terrible, racist content and comments about John Boyega that gets in the way of any search you do for him (or shows up in the comments). So all I want is a vid about John Boyega being awesome. It could be about his acting, his activism, his interviews, his critiques of Star Wars and Star Wars fans, or that time he played with puppies to promote Pacific Rim. I just want more good content about John Boyega to exist on the internet. Give me "John Boyega trolling racist fans was great" or "John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are cute about each other" or "John Boyega's powerful commentary on racism." Just something good about John Boyega please.
The Repair Shop [TV]
The Repair Shop is a reality television show about many skilled craftspeople working together to fix broken objects with emotional significance for their owners. The clients come in with all different situations and stories: one may have a toy that they have kept in a box for sixty years, even though it's broken; another may bring in a musical instrument that they want to have repaired for their parents; and a third may bring in a trophy that they won years ago and that broke in a fire. (Yes, they always come in threes.) And then the craftspeople do their best to repair those items. It's about putting care into things that are important to people.
Request details: The Repair Shop was my early pandemic comfort watching, and it's such charming comfort watching! It's so soothing: the reality tv formula plus skilled people looking at the history of an item, cleaning it, color-matching the repair, rebuilding the hinge, adjusting the gear, planning the wood. And it's filmed with attention paid to the skill and work, so there are always glorious closeups of that work. I also really appreciate the way they work as a team – handing off pieces of projects or sharing tools or teaching someone how to do something new.
That said, it's not all about the craft: I tear up at this show all the time, because these objects mean things and carry memories. So many episodes end with people crying when things are repaired, hugging the craftspeople, or gasping in delight.
My faves are:
- Jay, a furniture restorer (but he mostly directs the group, acts as a host, charms everyone, and is enthusiastic)
- Steve, a horologist (he also gets handed cash registers and wind-up toys and anything with gears or clockwork)
- Suzie, a master saddler (she has her own projects that are mostly leather, but also she is often involved in other people's projects when they need straps, handles, and patches)
- Will, a woodworker (he is completely cute and charming and a little anxious and he does really lovely wood work and also astonishing color matching)
But also I like everyone else in this bar!
Content notes: Some episodes deal with the Holocaust; sometimes it's "a memento from my grandmother who survived the Holocaust" and sometimes it's "my grandpa fought for Britain and brought back this German helmet," which, yikes. Some episodes also contain largely unexamined history of British colonialism and imperialism – "my grandpa traveled to India as part of the colonial government, and got this souvenir" or "my parents, who were missionaries" or "in the Boer war" etc.
Fast Color [film, safety]
An incredibly gorgeous film about three generations of black women with superpowers! It's a post-apocalypse film, a superhero film, and a family drama film all at once. The family story gives the actors (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, and Saniyya Sidney) an incredible amount to work with, and they knock it out of the park.
Request details: I love basically everything about this film? The cinematography screams out to be vidded, and that's definitely a big part of why I'm here! But even more than that I'm interested in the relationship between Ruth and Bo, both of whom are so interesting as characters and so interesting together. Also, I think it might be fun to play with the elements of the apocalypse as an emotional metaphor - this movie does really great things with the connections between places and people.
Content notes: seizures, drug addiction and recovery, generational trauma
Salt Fat Acid Heat [TV]
Salt Fat Acid Heat is Samin Nosrat's food show, based on her book of the same name. It's very short – four episodes! – and each episode is devoted to a place and an element of good cooking. Samin travels to Italy to talk about fat, Japan to talk about salt, Mexico to talk about acid, and stays at home in the USA to talk about heat.
Request details: I love to watch Samin Nosrat loving things! Her attitude of exploration - the way she tries things and tastes new things and asks experts to give her their experience and advise – is often both beautiful and charming, when she grins delightedly or tastes raw ingredients or throws herself into a flavor combination. I really appreciate the way that the show recognizes expertise – and links to it on her website. Also the food cinematography in this miniseries is gorgeous – beautiful, colorful foods filmed with delight. I would love to see a vid about food and joy and community!
Billy Porter RPF [multi]
Billy Porter is an actor, singer, and dancer; he currently plays Pray Tell on Pose. He has also done a bunch of other cool things, like Kinky Boots on Broadway, a whole cover album of Richard Rogers songs, and a season of American Horror Story.
Request details: Billy Porter's red carpet appearances in the last few years have been AMAZING. And his interviews are amazing as well! I'm so happy about his interviews about why he wears dresses, and I love the incredibly fashionable work he is doing when he wears dresses to some appearances and suits to others. I deeply appreciate his joy, his sincerity, and his sense of humor. I'd love a vid that was all fashion and dance and singing, or a vid about his life story, or a vid about his various kinds of acting work! But whatever it is, please make it FABULOUS.
Paradox (Marvel Comics Character Earth-80324) [comics]
Paradox is an anti-gravity dancer, a secret agent, and a shapeshifter - and he is also possibly the first queer superhero character in Marvel comics. He's in two incredibly weird comics printed in the early 80s, set in a future with an oppressive space empire that is completely unrelated to the rest of Marvel canon.
Request details: I LOVE HIM. Paradox is a secret agent for the ISA, an oppressive space CIA-ish organization; he has been nonconsensually genetically engineered to be a shapeshifter. The ISA is super uncomfortable with his queerness. The ISA sends him off to investigate rebels; he meets a team of other ISA agents and they all become pals. They pursue the rebels ... and then Paradox kills his own ISA team. FOR REAL. Turns out he's been a space rebel all along! Then he takes the form of one of his team members and KILLS THE EMPEROR. In a giant explosion. ILU you angry shape-shifting space bi. That's basically all I want in a vid: the angry shape-shifting rebel space bisexual dude who blows the emperor up.
Paradox's main story appears in Marvel Preview #24 in 1980; his backstory comes later in Marvel's Bizarre Adventures #30 in 1982. Then in 2011 he universe-hops into modern comics and the 616 universe in Wolverine: The Best There Is. (This Wolverine comic is terrible, like, it's so bad, but I'm happy that Paradox is in it, shapeshifting his way around the 616 universe and wearing his 1980s leather pants and white flowy shirt and black vest and leaning dramatically against walls.)
Content notes: queer slurs, dead queer women, non-consensual drug use, fridging
Availability: Because these are old one-off comics, they can be hard to find and they're not on Marvel Unlimited. If you can't find them, ask
thingswithwings and she will hook you up.Watchmen (2019) [TV]
Watchmen is a 34-years-later sequel to Watchmen (the comic book); it takes the canon of the comic book seriously but then does a ton of new worldbuilding and layers it on top. It brings in many new themes as well: race, policing, what it means to be a masked superhero. It starts out looking like it's 50% superhero cop show, 50% history, but it stops looking like a standard cop show pretty fast.
Request Details: I am here for Angela Abar and Will Reeves: the amazing episode 6 when Angela takes Nostalgia is just astonishing, and it combines two things I love to pieces, time travel and embodiment, in a new and amazing way. I have only been able to find a few Watchmen 2019 vids, and so far all of them that I've seen have treated it like a standard cop or superhero show: the Angela vids mostly include early-season footage of her punching people in a copaganda cops-need-to-play-by-their-own-rules way. Which, like, that is in the show but it's not what the series is about! I do want vids where Angela punches racists, but I think there's so much more happening in this canon. There are so many cool opportunities for vids that do amazing things with the visuals to think about the overlays of history, to intercut Will and Angela, and to highlight this embodiment of history and generations, to think about policing and what it means here. Also that last shot of the season, the moment in which Angela [spoilers], just deeply needs to be vidded.
I do not give any fucks about The Blond Man or anything happening on Europa.
Content notes: Racism, white supremacy, police violence, the 1921 Tulsa massacre, the KKK, lynching, generational trauma, hypnotism causing suicide.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-24 07:41 pm (UTC)