Dear Festividder 2023
Oct. 22nd, 2023 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosThank you for making me a vid!
I have a couple things that I put outside the cut tag, 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, strobe effects, full-screen glitch effects or lighting effects, or fast lightning flashes can also trigger this. These have to be very fast to bother me – think three lightning strikes in a second (dark, light, dark, light, dark, light, dark in one second).
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. (For example, the Bucky/Steve knife fight on the street in Winter Solider or like the entirety of Mad Max Fury Road.) It can also happen by accident, if footage at one frame rate is put into a project with a different frame rate, or sometimes when a show needs to stretch or compress footage and they do it by duplicating every third frame. (You might not be able to see this – many people see this as smooth motion, because our brains are already interpreting stills as motion.)
I'll call these out in the source notes below for any fandom where they're relevant.
Please also feel free to run a sample bythingswithwings. She can explain them with examples if that would be helpful.
The rest of this post is additional details if you're interested!
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, 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; history and places being related to people and feelings; queer people; joy; 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, to dense lyrics-heavy songs, to hip hop, 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. I am fine with dialog in a vid.
That said, I'm hard of hearing in a way that makes it difficult to understand lyrics that are mumbly or obscured by the instrumentation (or, like, 50% of the dialog in a modern action movie). I'd appreciate it if you offered subtitles, especially if you intercut dialog and song lyrics.
I asked for: Home Movie: The Princess Bride (2020) [SAFETY], Slash/Back (2022) [SAFETY], The Great Canadian Baking Show (TV), Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) [SAFETY], They Cloned Tyrone (2023) [SAFETY], Mythbusters (TV 2003), Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire [SAFETY], amauryguichon (the chocolate guy) (Tiktok Youtube Instagram), and blumineck (tumblr youtube tiktok)
Home Movie: The Princess Bride
Home Movie: The Princess Bride is a version of The Princess Bride made in 2020, while Hollywood wasn't filming, starring many different actors filming in their back yards and houses, on cell phones. It's absolutely nonsensical – like ten different people play each character and all the costumes are like bathrobes and sometimes a cat stands in for a character – but everyone is clearly having a ton of fun. It's a romp!
Why to watch: fun, silly, communities telling stories together!
There's no trailer, but here's a sample scene:
Contains: All the same stuff as The Princess Bride, including forced marriage, torture, ableism.
Request details: So I missed this in 2020, but when I saw it later it gave me warm feelings about creativity and community. It's about telling silly stories, doing the lines exactly but doing them while climbing up the stairs for a cliff or using an umbrella as a sword. I have no idea how to vid it narratively because it's hard to tie all the actors playing the same character together, but I think it could be gloriously fun and silly and about people coming together. Also Diego Luna does a STELLAR Inigo Montoya and if they ever do a remake for real he could bring something great to the character.
This is filmed on vertical cell phones, but the version most people have uploaded to youtube has a background comparison screen. I'd be fine with a vid that used just the cell phone video or with a vid that was in 16:9 or did comparisons.
Slash/Back
A scifi/horror action film in which four young girls protect their community from an alien invasion. It's filmed entirely in Baffin Island, near the Arctic Circle, and it stars Inuit actors and is directed by an Inuit director.
Why to watch: This film is GORGEOUS. If you like a scifi action film where you can see things, check out a film shot in the summer in Pangnirtung: the light is amazing and it gives the film a really different vibe than a lot of action / alien invasion films. It's also super cool: I love all the kids and their different personalities and the way they work together to repel the aliens.
Contains: some alcoholism (largely offscreen) and a short scene with a white cop hassling native kids.
Request details: I would love something about the main girls – Maika, Jesse, Uki, and Leena – working together! If you want to make a vid that's more of a character study, I really appreciate Uki's investigations and persistence and also Maika's whole character arc. Also like, take any excuse to put the badass slomo walk in the vid.
Crossover opportunity: This film sits exactly between Prey and Attack the Block, which is a fun comparison to think about!
The Great Canadian Baking Show
The Canadian spinoff of the Great British Bake Off, with Canadian themes (Montreal bagels) and ingredients (birch bark syrup and seaweed and saskatoon berries) and a truly stellar number of interesting, thoughtful, awesome contestants.
Why to watch: We all know the Bake Off model, but the Great Canadian Baking Show is somehow an even sweeter spinoff. The judges are interested and delighted by new flavors, and they don't get defensive when they don't know something. Instead, they're peering into the oven next to the contestants and speaking to them as peers. And are SO MANY good contestants on the show!
Season seven (!!) trailer:
Request details: Soooo I did make a vid for this show several years ago, but I was only able to use the first two seasons. Season SEVEN is airing now! There have been so many great bakers and so many great running around with cake montages and so many disastrous bakes that weren't in my vid! I love the energy in the tent and the way the contestants help each other and laugh together. I love the delightful and surprising successes, the way sometimes a technical bake just comes out and the baker doesn't even know why. I'd just like something sweet and fun about this show and these great bakers!
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
The story of Aila, a young Mi'kmaq girl, who sells drugs in order to pay truancy tax so that she and other children will not be sent to the residential school; when her money is stolen, she needs to get it back to pay the tax. Set in the 1960s and 70s.
Why to watch: Aila is the namesake for the Aila Test, Ali Nahdee's version of the Bechdel Test for Indigenous women characters. This film deals with many difficult and traumatic subjects (see content notes), but although it's about trauma that not the only tone in the film - it's also a supernatural teenage heist film, a story about defiance and humor in this cycle of trauma, a story about telling stories and making art, a story about forgetting and remembering and generational trauma. Aila is played by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, who also plays Elora on Reservation Dogs, and she is absolutely brilliant in this role.
Instead of the trailer, how about the only vid for this film that exists? This is created entirely with trailer footage:
Contains: suicide; a child killed by a drunk driver; colonial violence; the prison system; residential schools; police violence; onscreen attempted sexual assault; referenced sexual assault; alcoholism and drug abuse; grief; anti-gay slurs (used in reference to the prison system); the r-word.
Request details: Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs is SO GOOD as Aila, and I would love an Aila centric vid! I think there's also a lot of space here to tell a story about telling stories: a vidder could do a lot with the art and the animation in the film. A vid could also play with the central metaphor - a story about the residential school consuming and killing victims who then, as the undead, take down the villains. The skull and the skeletons in the woods and the gas mask and the monster. Aila in her mask peering around the hallways of the residential school and stealing back space for herself. Aila centered in the screen and confident in herself.
Jeff Barnaby talks a bit about the Listuguj raids and the documentary Incident at Restigouche as foundational to his filmmaking in this interview. In this interview, he also talks about why Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set in 1976, the year he was born: "these people, at that time, set the rest of us free."
They Cloned Tyrone
They Cloned Tyrone is scifi-comedy-mystery-conspiracy film that's doing some fun genre bending, dancing around Blaxploitation, satire, horror, comedy, and a little bit pulp.
Why to watch: John Boyega (Fontaine) and Teyonah Parris (Yo-Yo) and Jamie Foxx (Slick Charles) being cool! Intensely interesting visuals and vibes – this film is doing a lot with genre and period. Like, take a look at the first ten seconds of the trailer. Okay. Now: the characters have cell phones and make jokes about the Obamas. This film is set in the present day, but there are homages to Blaxploitation films, and there are canonical reasons for the interesting genre and setting. Also John Boyega in particular knocks this out of the PARK, threading this line between the comedy / satire setting and the underlying despair and hopelessness. Also like. Erykah Badu covered "Tyrone" with new, clone-related lyrics?
Teaser trailer, which is super spoilery after about 0:35:
Contains: racism, scientific experimentation on Black people, sex work, references to eugenics and mind control and generational breeding.
Request details: I finished watching this and IMMEDIATELY was like "please bring me this OT3 and please let them instigate several more revolutions." Also like, this film is so cool about genre and period and there are NO vids showing it off! I would love an OT3 vid, or a vid about the investigation, or a vid full of HIJINKS, or something that does some genre work (like reframing this film, taking the comedy out, what does this look like as a horror film), or a vid about just Fontaine or Yo-Yo. There are so many options here!
Mythbusters
A tv show about science and testing things out: can you make a lead balloon? Does a duct tape boat float? What happens if you jump in a falling elevator? Could that thing from that episode of CSI work? What about that Star Wars physics?
Why to watch: Science, silliness, building things, a cool team working together. Testing things from Hollywood and also from classic math class thought experiments.
There aren't any good trailers, so how about "is an axe or a gun the best way to kill zombies" instead:
Contains: varies depending on the episode, but there are WAY too many cops on this show. Also some myths lead to racist or sexist conversations or costuming.
Request details: Mythbusters started out as low-pressure tv for me – I started watching it withthingswithwings when we were making a giant multi vid about Yuletide, because it was something that definitely wasn't going in the vid so I didn't have to think about clipping. We recently started a rewatch of fun bits and have been enjoying it again, so this is my nostalgia request! I have forgotten a lot of the details so It's fun to see myths again, and also it's fun to watch everyone working together to do absolutely ridiculous things like attach rockets to cars or drop cars from helicopters or make boats out of duct tape or frozen newspaper. I enjoy their low-budget, we're-shopping-at-Mr-S's-and-trying-to-find-cheap-used-cars start, and I also enjoy the later season go big or go home moments. I'd enjoy hijinks, falling down, building-things-and-working-together, team appreciation, or a vid about the build team or Adam and Jamie or both. Kari, Scottie, Grant, and Adam are my faves, and I also really appreciate Jamie's intense weirdness.
Crossover opportunity: Mythbusters Jr is also a fun time and they go to a lot of the same filming locations! Also it's in HD and Adam gets to mentor a bunch of smart kids.
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is an Africanfuturist animated anthology short film series with a bunch of different directors and writers – every episode has a different scifi concept and different style of animation.
Why to watch: This is a fun, short time commitment tv show with a lot of cool animation styles. The short films are all animated by Triggerfish (a South African computer animation studio). The different short films have different characters, themes, and styles, but a lot of them develop really cool worldbuilding and characters in just ten or fifteen minutes.
Request details: So I just think these are all really nifty and I'm interested in what a vid that encompasses several of them could do! Maybe a vid about the futures / universes they imagine, or about the anxieties or journeys of the kids at the center of most of them? There are also some interesting themes around social media, around spirits, or around identity or growing up that could be fun to explore using just a few of them.
Trigger notes: the title / intro screen of the episodes (the first three seconds when it says Kizazi Moto) is enough of a glitch effect to bother me. Episode two ("Mkhuzi: The Spirit Racer") is an animation style that has too much bright flashiness for me. Episode two is also the least interesting to me in terms of plot, but if it's interesting to you please try to avoid the parts of it that are super saturated color flashing. Episode three ("Moremi") has some moments of frame rate fuckery.
amauryguichon (the chocolate guy) (Tiktok Youtube Instagram)
Amaury Guichon is the guy you might have seen on tiktok who makes giant chocolate sculptures that are completely edible (and reportedly delicious). He's made furniture, animals, plants, functioning tools, foods that look like other foods, and all sorts of fun stuff.
Why to watch: Amaury's process is sort of meditative to watch; he usually posts video of the process of making something new, and you spend the whole time going "what is he making? Are those feathers?" and then at the end it comes together. The videos on youtube are the best quality, but really the best way to watch his work is in an unlabeled video reposted somewhere that you come across, so you don't know in advance what he's making.
That said, here's a recent one on youtube:
Request details: I was introduced to Amaury Guichon via his Netflix show, School of Chocolate, which is interesting because it's a reality show competition that's about learning – students don't get kicked off the show for failing, they get opportunities to learn more about a specific technique. It's fun if you like that kind of reality tv! Later, though, when I got back into tumblr I found myself really enjoying thirty seconds of Amaury sculpture as I scrolled down my feed for the puzzle of it: what's it going to be, how is he doing that, why, what's that for? And the glorious moment of reveal, when the chocolate suddenly becomes a wood log, or a dragon, or a clock. I'd love a vid about the process of art coming together, or a vid that's about using tools in ways they're not meant to be used (the first time you see him use a lathe on a piece of chocolate is like WHAT). This could be a really cool vid about discovery and exploration and art!
blumineck (tumblr youtube tiktok)
blumineck is the guy you might see around tumblr or tiktok or youtube, testing out some cool movie trick shot like firing six arrows at once, and then doing it again while hanging upside down.
Why to watch: he's a pole dancer by profession and an archer for fun and he has a great time testing out implausible things. As I was writing this letter I realized that he's kind of an archery-specific mythbuster? Like, he's delighted to discover new cool things and say that something in a film is actually plausible. His videos are mostly short and feature a surprise hanging-from-a-pole section.
Request details: It probably explains a lot about me to know that I was obsessed with this archer who wrote at great length about the cool archery in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings? Anyway I just really appreciate that blumineck has a hobby in "doing weird parkour archery and finding out if that Legolas shot could happen in real life." There's also a bunch of pole dancing that could go in this vid – cool weird body movements and hilarious curving arrows and things falling down. Maybe a sort of dancy vid or a sort of actiony vid or something about experimentation?
I have a couple things that I put outside the cut tag, 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, strobe effects, full-screen glitch effects or lighting effects, or fast lightning flashes can also trigger this. These have to be very fast to bother me – think three lightning strikes in a second (dark, light, dark, light, dark, light, dark in one second).
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. (For example, the Bucky/Steve knife fight on the street in Winter Solider or like the entirety of Mad Max Fury Road.) It can also happen by accident, if footage at one frame rate is put into a project with a different frame rate, or sometimes when a show needs to stretch or compress footage and they do it by duplicating every third frame. (You might not be able to see this – many people see this as smooth motion, because our brains are already interpreting stills as motion.)
I'll call these out in the source notes below for any fandom where they're relevant.
Please also feel free to run a sample by
thingswithwings. She can explain them with examples if that would be helpful.The rest of this post is additional details if you're interested!
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, 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; history and places being related to people and feelings; queer people; joy; 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, to dense lyrics-heavy songs, to hip hop, 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. I am fine with dialog in a vid.
That said, I'm hard of hearing in a way that makes it difficult to understand lyrics that are mumbly or obscured by the instrumentation (or, like, 50% of the dialog in a modern action movie). I'd appreciate it if you offered subtitles, especially if you intercut dialog and song lyrics.
I asked for: Home Movie: The Princess Bride (2020) [SAFETY], Slash/Back (2022) [SAFETY], The Great Canadian Baking Show (TV), Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) [SAFETY], They Cloned Tyrone (2023) [SAFETY], Mythbusters (TV 2003), Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire [SAFETY], amauryguichon (the chocolate guy) (Tiktok Youtube Instagram), and blumineck (tumblr youtube tiktok)
Home Movie: The Princess Bride
Home Movie: The Princess Bride is a version of The Princess Bride made in 2020, while Hollywood wasn't filming, starring many different actors filming in their back yards and houses, on cell phones. It's absolutely nonsensical – like ten different people play each character and all the costumes are like bathrobes and sometimes a cat stands in for a character – but everyone is clearly having a ton of fun. It's a romp!
Why to watch: fun, silly, communities telling stories together!
There's no trailer, but here's a sample scene:
Contains: All the same stuff as The Princess Bride, including forced marriage, torture, ableism.
Request details: So I missed this in 2020, but when I saw it later it gave me warm feelings about creativity and community. It's about telling silly stories, doing the lines exactly but doing them while climbing up the stairs for a cliff or using an umbrella as a sword. I have no idea how to vid it narratively because it's hard to tie all the actors playing the same character together, but I think it could be gloriously fun and silly and about people coming together. Also Diego Luna does a STELLAR Inigo Montoya and if they ever do a remake for real he could bring something great to the character.
This is filmed on vertical cell phones, but the version most people have uploaded to youtube has a background comparison screen. I'd be fine with a vid that used just the cell phone video or with a vid that was in 16:9 or did comparisons.
Slash/Back
A scifi/horror action film in which four young girls protect their community from an alien invasion. It's filmed entirely in Baffin Island, near the Arctic Circle, and it stars Inuit actors and is directed by an Inuit director.
Why to watch: This film is GORGEOUS. If you like a scifi action film where you can see things, check out a film shot in the summer in Pangnirtung: the light is amazing and it gives the film a really different vibe than a lot of action / alien invasion films. It's also super cool: I love all the kids and their different personalities and the way they work together to repel the aliens.
Contains: some alcoholism (largely offscreen) and a short scene with a white cop hassling native kids.
Request details: I would love something about the main girls – Maika, Jesse, Uki, and Leena – working together! If you want to make a vid that's more of a character study, I really appreciate Uki's investigations and persistence and also Maika's whole character arc. Also like, take any excuse to put the badass slomo walk in the vid.
Crossover opportunity: This film sits exactly between Prey and Attack the Block, which is a fun comparison to think about!
The Great Canadian Baking Show
The Canadian spinoff of the Great British Bake Off, with Canadian themes (Montreal bagels) and ingredients (birch bark syrup and seaweed and saskatoon berries) and a truly stellar number of interesting, thoughtful, awesome contestants.
Why to watch: We all know the Bake Off model, but the Great Canadian Baking Show is somehow an even sweeter spinoff. The judges are interested and delighted by new flavors, and they don't get defensive when they don't know something. Instead, they're peering into the oven next to the contestants and speaking to them as peers. And are SO MANY good contestants on the show!
Season seven (!!) trailer:
Request details: Soooo I did make a vid for this show several years ago, but I was only able to use the first two seasons. Season SEVEN is airing now! There have been so many great bakers and so many great running around with cake montages and so many disastrous bakes that weren't in my vid! I love the energy in the tent and the way the contestants help each other and laugh together. I love the delightful and surprising successes, the way sometimes a technical bake just comes out and the baker doesn't even know why. I'd just like something sweet and fun about this show and these great bakers!
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
The story of Aila, a young Mi'kmaq girl, who sells drugs in order to pay truancy tax so that she and other children will not be sent to the residential school; when her money is stolen, she needs to get it back to pay the tax. Set in the 1960s and 70s.
Why to watch: Aila is the namesake for the Aila Test, Ali Nahdee's version of the Bechdel Test for Indigenous women characters. This film deals with many difficult and traumatic subjects (see content notes), but although it's about trauma that not the only tone in the film - it's also a supernatural teenage heist film, a story about defiance and humor in this cycle of trauma, a story about telling stories and making art, a story about forgetting and remembering and generational trauma. Aila is played by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, who also plays Elora on Reservation Dogs, and she is absolutely brilliant in this role.
Instead of the trailer, how about the only vid for this film that exists? This is created entirely with trailer footage:
Contains: suicide; a child killed by a drunk driver; colonial violence; the prison system; residential schools; police violence; onscreen attempted sexual assault; referenced sexual assault; alcoholism and drug abuse; grief; anti-gay slurs (used in reference to the prison system); the r-word.
Request details: Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs is SO GOOD as Aila, and I would love an Aila centric vid! I think there's also a lot of space here to tell a story about telling stories: a vidder could do a lot with the art and the animation in the film. A vid could also play with the central metaphor - a story about the residential school consuming and killing victims who then, as the undead, take down the villains. The skull and the skeletons in the woods and the gas mask and the monster. Aila in her mask peering around the hallways of the residential school and stealing back space for herself. Aila centered in the screen and confident in herself.
Jeff Barnaby talks a bit about the Listuguj raids and the documentary Incident at Restigouche as foundational to his filmmaking in this interview. In this interview, he also talks about why Rhymes for Young Ghouls is set in 1976, the year he was born: "these people, at that time, set the rest of us free."
They Cloned Tyrone
They Cloned Tyrone is scifi-comedy-mystery-conspiracy film that's doing some fun genre bending, dancing around Blaxploitation, satire, horror, comedy, and a little bit pulp.
Why to watch: John Boyega (Fontaine) and Teyonah Parris (Yo-Yo) and Jamie Foxx (Slick Charles) being cool! Intensely interesting visuals and vibes – this film is doing a lot with genre and period. Like, take a look at the first ten seconds of the trailer. Okay. Now: the characters have cell phones and make jokes about the Obamas. This film is set in the present day, but there are homages to Blaxploitation films, and there are canonical reasons for the interesting genre and setting. Also John Boyega in particular knocks this out of the PARK, threading this line between the comedy / satire setting and the underlying despair and hopelessness. Also like. Erykah Badu covered "Tyrone" with new, clone-related lyrics?
Teaser trailer, which is super spoilery after about 0:35:
Contains: racism, scientific experimentation on Black people, sex work, references to eugenics and mind control and generational breeding.
Request details: I finished watching this and IMMEDIATELY was like "please bring me this OT3 and please let them instigate several more revolutions." Also like, this film is so cool about genre and period and there are NO vids showing it off! I would love an OT3 vid, or a vid about the investigation, or a vid full of HIJINKS, or something that does some genre work (like reframing this film, taking the comedy out, what does this look like as a horror film), or a vid about just Fontaine or Yo-Yo. There are so many options here!
Mythbusters
A tv show about science and testing things out: can you make a lead balloon? Does a duct tape boat float? What happens if you jump in a falling elevator? Could that thing from that episode of CSI work? What about that Star Wars physics?
Why to watch: Science, silliness, building things, a cool team working together. Testing things from Hollywood and also from classic math class thought experiments.
There aren't any good trailers, so how about "is an axe or a gun the best way to kill zombies" instead:
Contains: varies depending on the episode, but there are WAY too many cops on this show. Also some myths lead to racist or sexist conversations or costuming.
Request details: Mythbusters started out as low-pressure tv for me – I started watching it with
thingswithwings when we were making a giant multi vid about Yuletide, because it was something that definitely wasn't going in the vid so I didn't have to think about clipping. We recently started a rewatch of fun bits and have been enjoying it again, so this is my nostalgia request! I have forgotten a lot of the details so It's fun to see myths again, and also it's fun to watch everyone working together to do absolutely ridiculous things like attach rockets to cars or drop cars from helicopters or make boats out of duct tape or frozen newspaper. I enjoy their low-budget, we're-shopping-at-Mr-S's-and-trying-to-find-cheap-used-cars start, and I also enjoy the later season go big or go home moments. I'd enjoy hijinks, falling down, building-things-and-working-together, team appreciation, or a vid about the build team or Adam and Jamie or both. Kari, Scottie, Grant, and Adam are my faves, and I also really appreciate Jamie's intense weirdness.Crossover opportunity: Mythbusters Jr is also a fun time and they go to a lot of the same filming locations! Also it's in HD and Adam gets to mentor a bunch of smart kids.
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is an Africanfuturist animated anthology short film series with a bunch of different directors and writers – every episode has a different scifi concept and different style of animation.
Why to watch: This is a fun, short time commitment tv show with a lot of cool animation styles. The short films are all animated by Triggerfish (a South African computer animation studio). The different short films have different characters, themes, and styles, but a lot of them develop really cool worldbuilding and characters in just ten or fifteen minutes.
Request details: So I just think these are all really nifty and I'm interested in what a vid that encompasses several of them could do! Maybe a vid about the futures / universes they imagine, or about the anxieties or journeys of the kids at the center of most of them? There are also some interesting themes around social media, around spirits, or around identity or growing up that could be fun to explore using just a few of them.
Trigger notes: the title / intro screen of the episodes (the first three seconds when it says Kizazi Moto) is enough of a glitch effect to bother me. Episode two ("Mkhuzi: The Spirit Racer") is an animation style that has too much bright flashiness for me. Episode two is also the least interesting to me in terms of plot, but if it's interesting to you please try to avoid the parts of it that are super saturated color flashing. Episode three ("Moremi") has some moments of frame rate fuckery.
amauryguichon (the chocolate guy) (Tiktok Youtube Instagram)
Amaury Guichon is the guy you might have seen on tiktok who makes giant chocolate sculptures that are completely edible (and reportedly delicious). He's made furniture, animals, plants, functioning tools, foods that look like other foods, and all sorts of fun stuff.
Why to watch: Amaury's process is sort of meditative to watch; he usually posts video of the process of making something new, and you spend the whole time going "what is he making? Are those feathers?" and then at the end it comes together. The videos on youtube are the best quality, but really the best way to watch his work is in an unlabeled video reposted somewhere that you come across, so you don't know in advance what he's making.
That said, here's a recent one on youtube:
Request details: I was introduced to Amaury Guichon via his Netflix show, School of Chocolate, which is interesting because it's a reality show competition that's about learning – students don't get kicked off the show for failing, they get opportunities to learn more about a specific technique. It's fun if you like that kind of reality tv! Later, though, when I got back into tumblr I found myself really enjoying thirty seconds of Amaury sculpture as I scrolled down my feed for the puzzle of it: what's it going to be, how is he doing that, why, what's that for? And the glorious moment of reveal, when the chocolate suddenly becomes a wood log, or a dragon, or a clock. I'd love a vid about the process of art coming together, or a vid that's about using tools in ways they're not meant to be used (the first time you see him use a lathe on a piece of chocolate is like WHAT). This could be a really cool vid about discovery and exploration and art!
blumineck (tumblr youtube tiktok)
blumineck is the guy you might see around tumblr or tiktok or youtube, testing out some cool movie trick shot like firing six arrows at once, and then doing it again while hanging upside down.
Why to watch: he's a pole dancer by profession and an archer for fun and he has a great time testing out implausible things. As I was writing this letter I realized that he's kind of an archery-specific mythbuster? Like, he's delighted to discover new cool things and say that something in a film is actually plausible. His videos are mostly short and feature a surprise hanging-from-a-pole section.
Request details: It probably explains a lot about me to know that I was obsessed with this archer who wrote at great length about the cool archery in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings? Anyway I just really appreciate that blumineck has a hobby in "doing weird parkour archery and finding out if that Legolas shot could happen in real life." There's also a bunch of pole dancing that could go in this vid – cool weird body movements and hilarious curving arrows and things falling down. Maybe a sort of dancy vid or a sort of actiony vid or something about experimentation?
