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Songvid Rec and Review: Action vids, part one
Clearly the whole "once a week" thing was more of an estimate than anything else. I'm home sick again today, so I'm in the mood for bouncy-upbeat music and giggling. Hence action vids rather than, say, unrequited love vids. I'm really not as shallow sex-and-violencey as my previous post and this one would imply. Honest.
Some people believe that action vids are automatically "recruiter" vids -- vids you can show to people to interest them in a show -- but I don't agree. For one, action is probably the least likely thing to interest me in a show, and the vids I've found to be best for recruiting are actually ThatFangirl's "China" (B5) and Laura Shapiro's "Rook" (XF), both of which are slow and atmospheric and character-driven. Plus, just because a vid is mostly about action and fighting and jumping around and has fast cuts doesn't mean that it doesn't have an internal narrative, or that the clips don't make more sense in context. Some action vids are so fast-paced, in fact, that they make very little sense to someone who isn't very familiar with the source, familiar enough to place clips in half a second. (These vids should all be fun even if you don't know the source, but they might make more sense if you do.)
Wicked Amp's 'Fight' to 'Fur Elise - Techno Remix,' song by Vanessa Mae. One interesting thing about action vids is that they're much more likely to use music without words, like this vid.
I really love this vid. For me, it encapsulates a lot of what I liked about Buffy season three (almost all clips are from season three) -- there's a lot of action, but also the vidder has a sense of humor. So there are actually headshots with fun facial expressions, and clips of Faith jumping on her bed, and Giles getting hit in the head by the basketball, and stuff like that. All timed to the beat, of course.
I actually don't much like the opener of the vid. It starts with the Fur Elise phrase unaltered, and the clips are of a number of villains from season three, with their faces in black-and-white boxes and the rest of the frame in color. It's a little... strange. Especially since it doesn't include some of the big big bads of season three, like... the Mayor. But does include the Master. And for a season 3 themed vid, that feels weird to me. But I like the part immediately afterwards, with clips of Buffy on the beach in her dream with frames removed so that the shot jerks in time to the music, followed by Buffy waking up. And Buffy waking up is cut really neat, so that it's a shot of her already standing, her getting up, already standing, and so on -- linear is for wimps. It makes the vid start very Woke Up, Got Out of Bed -- this is Buffy's day.
The vid then goes straight into Buffy fighting -- at school, in the cemetery, in a dress, and all that. All really well timed. And then it opens into other characters, with a set of headshot clips of the good guys all looking surprised or shocked. This is mostly just to Fur Elise on speed -- the techno part starts at the last headshot, off of Buffy looking amused. And in comes Faith. Faith and Buffy fighting, Faith fighting, and then back to Buffy again, and it's all just really fabulously cut. With some fun effects. (There's a bit of everyone else fighting here, but mostly it's Buffy and Faith.)
My favorite moments in the vid starts at about 1:05, where Faith jumping on the bed is intercut with a neat transparency effect with Faith punching someone. Really well. To the beat. That's Faith right there, yah. And right after that follows my other favorite moment: that pan-around of socialist!Buffy (from "Anne," with the hammer and sickle) intercut with vamps getting dusted. It's so fabulous: determined Buffy, Buffy not taking shit. And it's somehow timeless.
The thing about this vid is that it's actually a character vid, really, as well as an action vid. It's all about the differences between Buffy and Faith and their attitudes towards violence. I mean, for me the two key sequences are the two I described: determined!Buffy and fun-loving!Faith. (I read it as: First, there was Buffy. Then Faith showed up, and she kicked ass and enjoyed it. They they had fundamental incompatibilities and fought a lot.) It's a lot of fun, but some of it makes much more sense within the context of the clips. Whee!
Available at Wicked Amp. No password. Avi - XVID format only. While you're there, Wicked Amp has another mostly-action vid, "Flight Plan."
Rob1's Smallville vid 'Freak No. 1' to 'Le Freak,' song by Chic.
This is FABULOUS and so friggin' fast cut and effects-heavy that there's practically no way to talk about it. The opener is very color-and-light heavy, and really fun -- the meteor shower and Club Zero. It's so much fun to just watch that it took me until just now to realize that that's, um, the backstory for our two main characters. How Lex and Clark got to Smallville. D'oh. (This is what I meant about context and narrative in action vids.)
The parts of the vid to the lyrics are actually really narrative, despite the speed and craziness and cutting and fun and dancing and whee. It starts with Chloe showing off the wall of weird, in a fabulous slow-mo with cuts to news articles. And from then Rob1 does a lot of the villains in the first two seasons, cutting between them in some fabulous ways. For example, it starts with Jeremy, the villain from the pilot, first appears like this: Chloe's on her computer, she looks something up, she looks at a yearbook, and we zoom through the face in the yearbook to Jeremy. Takes longer than to describe that to watch.
This vid makes great use of changing the speed of a clip, which means that some bits are super-fast, and some bits are slowed for effect, like Chloe's presentation of the wall of weird. And man, are some of the clips fast, like the clips at about 0:50 (if anyone can actually ID them all on the first viewing, I'll be incredibly impressed -- it's an incredible series of cuts). Woof. This vid has got fabulous momentum. I can't even begin to talk about all of the effects Rob1 uses -- side-by-side clips, where my particular favorite is of Clark setting the scarecrow on fire paired with a clip of Lex in his car. And sometimes one of the two clips freezes and the other doesn't, which is fun. He also removes frames from a scene to make it jerk to the beat, or repeats a motion again, because it's about motion and about momentum here. Frames are manipulated to spin, to bulge out, to do all sorts of whacky stuff. One cut actually shatters the previous frame into pieces, which would be incredibly corny for almost any show, but works so well for Smallville, because the show already does it all the time. And then there's a scene where the circle-of-Jor-El from the cave fills the zero on the matchbook of Club Zero. Or fills the big non zero at Club Zero. And the figures from the cave pulse black-and-white to color and back again. Whoa.
There are two sets of effects that I'm not a big fan of, though. That thing people do with clips starting small, turning over, and then flashing on the screen? That effect drives me bonkers. And I don't particularly like the side-by-side clips at 1:15, although the side-by-side clips later work for me.
This vid's also got a narrative, for me. It reads as the story of Lex and Clark, getting to Smallville in their different ways, doing their different stuff, and then getting all entangled -- I think the cave-symbol of the two of them being such a prominent part of the end of the vid is fairly explicit. Most of the time in the vid is spent on Clark fighting bad guys, but a lot of it is also spent with Clark and Lex hanging out, getting involved in each other's lives, and in a way becoming more like each other -- it ends with the beginning of season three clips of Clark, and the Club Zero clips of Lex, cut together with the cave symbols. (Also I'm a Clark/Lex shipper, so y'all may see something else entirely, but the cave-symbol thingy and the scarecrow-and-Lex side by side are pretty strong Clark/Lex indications, I think.)
Available at Media-cow. No password. .WMV only.
Imation's Angel vid 'Black Suits Comin',' song by Will Smith.
I think this vid has a fun concept -- Angel and the MoG as the MiB -- but I don't know if the amusement from the concept lasts through a second viewing. I think for for me part of the problem is that the clips themselves are cut well to the music, but internal moments (e.g. Doyle hitting the steering wheel) aren't, so it feels a little off -- the Angel clips seem slower and calmer than the music. And the high point of a clip might not hit the high point or the end of a lyric, which also affects my view of the clips as somehow a little out of sync. I think it might be a little over-literal, too, which can disrupt the narrative, because suddenly there has to be a clip of someone using an ID card to match that line.
Despite all that, it's a fun vid, at least for a single viewing. How much you like it after that depends on how you feel about A:tS and about the song and how action-y you like your action vids to be.
Good opening clips, though -- the blipvert of L.A. traffic at night, and then zooming over the city on the opening note, and then Angel being announced in a "and now in the blue corner" sort of moment off of the first lyrics ("come, come on"). And the shot of Angel's soul-container breaking is used well.
Available at Konnekted Twin Videos. No password. .wmv only.
Nancy's Firefly vid 'Die Another Day,' song by Madonna.
I actually don't know entirely how I feel about this vid -- it's been sitting in my temporary playlist for a long time now. It uses a lot of long clips, or sequences of clips, which is unusual for an action vid. The beginning is certainly fun, and the clips of Serenity and fog and all to the long vibrato-y notes is nice. I like the first lyric/shot combination: Mal's face, blurred, as he opens his eyes to "I'm gonna wake up yes and no." But the long shot of Mal and Wash talking in the shuttle at around 0:35 seems out of place, in a way. It's such an incredibly long shot, and it's followed by another long shot of Mal and Wash in blindfolds. In some ways it doesn't work and I get bored, but in other ways it seems almost to work. I don't know.
I think part of my confusion is that it's actually very talky for a vid that's billed as an action vid -- long shots of Mal and Wash chatting don't really match what I expect from an action vid. And then otoh there are long shots of the fight to get Mal and Wash out. So ... *shrugs* It's not a vid for me, but it might be for someone else.
I'm not a big fan of the effect -- I don't know what it's called -- that has another shot come down at an angle from the corner; I find it distracting. It's only used once or twice, though.
I do like Niska paired to the bits of the song about Sigmund Freud, though. Heh.
There doesn't seem to be much of a narrative here (ymmv), other than the "Mal and company fighting people and surviving" that's sorta implicit in the title.
Available at The Tenth Muse. No password. .wmv only.
More to come.
Remember: just because a vidder's site is password protected is no reason to give up on ever seeing that vid. Vidders don't password-protect to keep you out; they password-protect to control bandwith, to keep TPTB out, and to make sure that everyone who downloads their vids knows that distributing them without the vidder's permission is not cool. It really is okay to ask a vidder for the password; they don't hate you, they don't care whether or not you're a BNF, and whatever you say will be fine.
Some people believe that action vids are automatically "recruiter" vids -- vids you can show to people to interest them in a show -- but I don't agree. For one, action is probably the least likely thing to interest me in a show, and the vids I've found to be best for recruiting are actually ThatFangirl's "China" (B5) and Laura Shapiro's "Rook" (XF), both of which are slow and atmospheric and character-driven. Plus, just because a vid is mostly about action and fighting and jumping around and has fast cuts doesn't mean that it doesn't have an internal narrative, or that the clips don't make more sense in context. Some action vids are so fast-paced, in fact, that they make very little sense to someone who isn't very familiar with the source, familiar enough to place clips in half a second. (These vids should all be fun even if you don't know the source, but they might make more sense if you do.)
Wicked Amp's 'Fight' to 'Fur Elise - Techno Remix,' song by Vanessa Mae. One interesting thing about action vids is that they're much more likely to use music without words, like this vid.
I really love this vid. For me, it encapsulates a lot of what I liked about Buffy season three (almost all clips are from season three) -- there's a lot of action, but also the vidder has a sense of humor. So there are actually headshots with fun facial expressions, and clips of Faith jumping on her bed, and Giles getting hit in the head by the basketball, and stuff like that. All timed to the beat, of course.
I actually don't much like the opener of the vid. It starts with the Fur Elise phrase unaltered, and the clips are of a number of villains from season three, with their faces in black-and-white boxes and the rest of the frame in color. It's a little... strange. Especially since it doesn't include some of the big big bads of season three, like... the Mayor. But does include the Master. And for a season 3 themed vid, that feels weird to me. But I like the part immediately afterwards, with clips of Buffy on the beach in her dream with frames removed so that the shot jerks in time to the music, followed by Buffy waking up. And Buffy waking up is cut really neat, so that it's a shot of her already standing, her getting up, already standing, and so on -- linear is for wimps. It makes the vid start very Woke Up, Got Out of Bed -- this is Buffy's day.
The vid then goes straight into Buffy fighting -- at school, in the cemetery, in a dress, and all that. All really well timed. And then it opens into other characters, with a set of headshot clips of the good guys all looking surprised or shocked. This is mostly just to Fur Elise on speed -- the techno part starts at the last headshot, off of Buffy looking amused. And in comes Faith. Faith and Buffy fighting, Faith fighting, and then back to Buffy again, and it's all just really fabulously cut. With some fun effects. (There's a bit of everyone else fighting here, but mostly it's Buffy and Faith.)
My favorite moments in the vid starts at about 1:05, where Faith jumping on the bed is intercut with a neat transparency effect with Faith punching someone. Really well. To the beat. That's Faith right there, yah. And right after that follows my other favorite moment: that pan-around of socialist!Buffy (from "Anne," with the hammer and sickle) intercut with vamps getting dusted. It's so fabulous: determined Buffy, Buffy not taking shit. And it's somehow timeless.
The thing about this vid is that it's actually a character vid, really, as well as an action vid. It's all about the differences between Buffy and Faith and their attitudes towards violence. I mean, for me the two key sequences are the two I described: determined!Buffy and fun-loving!Faith. (I read it as: First, there was Buffy. Then Faith showed up, and she kicked ass and enjoyed it. They they had fundamental incompatibilities and fought a lot.) It's a lot of fun, but some of it makes much more sense within the context of the clips. Whee!
Available at Wicked Amp. No password. Avi - XVID format only. While you're there, Wicked Amp has another mostly-action vid, "Flight Plan."
Rob1's Smallville vid 'Freak No. 1' to 'Le Freak,' song by Chic.
This is FABULOUS and so friggin' fast cut and effects-heavy that there's practically no way to talk about it. The opener is very color-and-light heavy, and really fun -- the meteor shower and Club Zero. It's so much fun to just watch that it took me until just now to realize that that's, um, the backstory for our two main characters. How Lex and Clark got to Smallville. D'oh. (This is what I meant about context and narrative in action vids.)
The parts of the vid to the lyrics are actually really narrative, despite the speed and craziness and cutting and fun and dancing and whee. It starts with Chloe showing off the wall of weird, in a fabulous slow-mo with cuts to news articles. And from then Rob1 does a lot of the villains in the first two seasons, cutting between them in some fabulous ways. For example, it starts with Jeremy, the villain from the pilot, first appears like this: Chloe's on her computer, she looks something up, she looks at a yearbook, and we zoom through the face in the yearbook to Jeremy. Takes longer than to describe that to watch.
This vid makes great use of changing the speed of a clip, which means that some bits are super-fast, and some bits are slowed for effect, like Chloe's presentation of the wall of weird. And man, are some of the clips fast, like the clips at about 0:50 (if anyone can actually ID them all on the first viewing, I'll be incredibly impressed -- it's an incredible series of cuts). Woof. This vid has got fabulous momentum. I can't even begin to talk about all of the effects Rob1 uses -- side-by-side clips, where my particular favorite is of Clark setting the scarecrow on fire paired with a clip of Lex in his car. And sometimes one of the two clips freezes and the other doesn't, which is fun. He also removes frames from a scene to make it jerk to the beat, or repeats a motion again, because it's about motion and about momentum here. Frames are manipulated to spin, to bulge out, to do all sorts of whacky stuff. One cut actually shatters the previous frame into pieces, which would be incredibly corny for almost any show, but works so well for Smallville, because the show already does it all the time. And then there's a scene where the circle-of-Jor-El from the cave fills the zero on the matchbook of Club Zero. Or fills the big non zero at Club Zero. And the figures from the cave pulse black-and-white to color and back again. Whoa.
There are two sets of effects that I'm not a big fan of, though. That thing people do with clips starting small, turning over, and then flashing on the screen? That effect drives me bonkers. And I don't particularly like the side-by-side clips at 1:15, although the side-by-side clips later work for me.
This vid's also got a narrative, for me. It reads as the story of Lex and Clark, getting to Smallville in their different ways, doing their different stuff, and then getting all entangled -- I think the cave-symbol of the two of them being such a prominent part of the end of the vid is fairly explicit. Most of the time in the vid is spent on Clark fighting bad guys, but a lot of it is also spent with Clark and Lex hanging out, getting involved in each other's lives, and in a way becoming more like each other -- it ends with the beginning of season three clips of Clark, and the Club Zero clips of Lex, cut together with the cave symbols. (Also I'm a Clark/Lex shipper, so y'all may see something else entirely, but the cave-symbol thingy and the scarecrow-and-Lex side by side are pretty strong Clark/Lex indications, I think.)
Available at Media-cow. No password. .WMV only.
Imation's Angel vid 'Black Suits Comin',' song by Will Smith.
I think this vid has a fun concept -- Angel and the MoG as the MiB -- but I don't know if the amusement from the concept lasts through a second viewing. I think for for me part of the problem is that the clips themselves are cut well to the music, but internal moments (e.g. Doyle hitting the steering wheel) aren't, so it feels a little off -- the Angel clips seem slower and calmer than the music. And the high point of a clip might not hit the high point or the end of a lyric, which also affects my view of the clips as somehow a little out of sync. I think it might be a little over-literal, too, which can disrupt the narrative, because suddenly there has to be a clip of someone using an ID card to match that line.
Despite all that, it's a fun vid, at least for a single viewing. How much you like it after that depends on how you feel about A:tS and about the song and how action-y you like your action vids to be.
Good opening clips, though -- the blipvert of L.A. traffic at night, and then zooming over the city on the opening note, and then Angel being announced in a "and now in the blue corner" sort of moment off of the first lyrics ("come, come on"). And the shot of Angel's soul-container breaking is used well.
Available at Konnekted Twin Videos. No password. .wmv only.
Nancy's Firefly vid 'Die Another Day,' song by Madonna.
I actually don't know entirely how I feel about this vid -- it's been sitting in my temporary playlist for a long time now. It uses a lot of long clips, or sequences of clips, which is unusual for an action vid. The beginning is certainly fun, and the clips of Serenity and fog and all to the long vibrato-y notes is nice. I like the first lyric/shot combination: Mal's face, blurred, as he opens his eyes to "I'm gonna wake up yes and no." But the long shot of Mal and Wash talking in the shuttle at around 0:35 seems out of place, in a way. It's such an incredibly long shot, and it's followed by another long shot of Mal and Wash in blindfolds. In some ways it doesn't work and I get bored, but in other ways it seems almost to work. I don't know.
I think part of my confusion is that it's actually very talky for a vid that's billed as an action vid -- long shots of Mal and Wash chatting don't really match what I expect from an action vid. And then otoh there are long shots of the fight to get Mal and Wash out. So ... *shrugs* It's not a vid for me, but it might be for someone else.
I'm not a big fan of the effect -- I don't know what it's called -- that has another shot come down at an angle from the corner; I find it distracting. It's only used once or twice, though.
I do like Niska paired to the bits of the song about Sigmund Freud, though. Heh.
There doesn't seem to be much of a narrative here (ymmv), other than the "Mal and company fighting people and surviving" that's sorta implicit in the title.
Available at The Tenth Muse. No password. .wmv only.
More to come.
Remember: just because a vidder's site is password protected is no reason to give up on ever seeing that vid. Vidders don't password-protect to keep you out; they password-protect to control bandwith, to keep TPTB out, and to make sure that everyone who downloads their vids knows that distributing them without the vidder's permission is not cool. It really is okay to ask a vidder for the password; they don't hate you, they don't care whether or not you're a BNF, and whatever you say will be fine.