A Nothing Trail of Silences

January (Festivids)
Relativism (Arrival)

August (VividCon)
Seven Years (Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra)
Shut Up and Drift (Pacific Rim)
Small Bill$ (Supernatural

October (Equinox Vids)
Work This Body (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle)

Overall thoughts:
Holy forking shirtballs, I made a lot of vids! For me, this is a lot of vids. Despite my general tendency to be dissatisfied with my own work, I am overall very pleased with my output. One of these is the most ambitious vid I've made, one is the most experimental, and at least two of them are amongst my favourites of my own vids.

Favorite vid of my own:
Seven Years or Small Bill$.

Hardest to make:
Seven Years. It's a vid I've been wanting to make for years. It's incredibly narratively dense. In addition, I made it in an extremely compressed timeframe, because VVC premieres were due shortly after I defended my PhD thesis. Which I did with ruptured eardrums. I lost a lot of my vid notes in a cross-country move, but I really want to write up some meta about just how many layers I put into this thing

Most underappreciated:
Small Bill$. It also has some chewy layers to it, but it features a non-major pairing. I started my headfirst dive into Supernatural in January 2018, and I got stuck on Benny. And how good Benny/Dean was. This was in S8 of a 14 season show, so most people who initially gave a fork have moved past it. It was also vidded shortly after I wrote a 25k Dean/Benny fic, and was weirdly influenced by that process. The vid played up a lot of the toxic behaviours and parallels I was using in the fic.

I was also hoping for more of a response on Seven Years, but the differential isn't as high.

Most successful:
The most successful in terms of 'did what I wanted it to do' was probably Seven Years. Most successful in terms of 'people actually watching it' was probably Shut Up and Drift. Most successful in terms of 'experimentation with vid form and also in comments' was Relativism.

My best vid:
Seven Years.

Most fun:
Work This Body has singing hippos. Enough said.

Things I learned this year:
A Good Thing: I am capable of doing better emotional work than I thought I was. Bonus: I need to trust my instincts about motion and flow, instead of second-guessing myself.
A Thing To Work On: I need to get better at killing my darlings - just because a section of a vid LOOKS shiny and moves well, it doesn't mean it serves the narrative purpose. Narrative can be more important.
A Thing That Just Is: FCPX is something I just have to deal with now. It exists. It's what is on my computer. FCP isn't coming back. I just have to live with it.

In 2019:
I hope I continue to vid! I have some concerns that the end of VividCon (rest in peace, my dear sweet friend) will lead to accidental vidding retirement. Maybe I'll try to collaborate with someone on something? I've never done a vid collaboration, and I wonder if being forced to externalize why I'm making the decisions I'm making will lead me to construct more coherent narratives.

After many years in writing retirement, I also wrote two fics!

Words of fiction that I wrote!
Wayfinding (Supernatural, Dean/Benny)
put color in your cheeks (Supernatural, Dean/Benny/Cas, NSFW)

Thoughts/Learning/Etc
I learned that I can still write non-scientific words! Also, that sweetestdrain is a really fantastic beta.

I am actually quite happy with these! Wayfinding came about as my thesis-stress release binge-watching of Supernatural also included live-tweeting. Once upon a time, a handful of my friends encouraged me to spend my day off writing a little Dean/Benny fic. It spiralled, and I spend the next couple of weeks alternating between thesis edits and feverishly writing Wayfinding. It turned out to be much longer, and have far more museums and rabbits than I had initially planned. It's a story that also means a lot more to me than I'd initially anticipated.

With regards to put colour in your cheeks, you know the thing where every single fic I've ever written has a smut-o-meter that tops out at 'forehead kiss' or 'holding hands?' (You probably don't. It's been a very long time since I wrote anything, and I doubt anyone has ever had an encyclopedic knowledge of my fic output.) That is no longer true! put colour in your cheeks is pretty much just porn and feelings.

Title: Monsters of the Cosmos
Fandom: Thor
Music: Monsters of the Cosmos - Symphony of Science
Summary: In the last century, black holes have gone from being mathematical curiosities to real objects in the cosmos.

This is a vid about Jane Foster and her one true love, Science. Also, Thor is there.


Links: Download 1080p mp4, 146 MB | Streaming (YouTube)

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Notes: For vividcon 2017. Warning for rapid cutting. Spot the physics metaphors! I've never gotten a chance to use event horizons and universal gravitation as metaphors before, so this was a ton of fun to make.

Title: Wow
Fandom: Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Music: Wow (TOKiMONSTA Remix) by Beck
Summary: (The course of true love never did run) smooth like a tidal wave.


Links: Download 1080p mp4, 184 MB | Streaming (YouTube)

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Notes: For dkwilliams in festivids 2016.

Title: Do No Harm
Fandom: Continuum
Music: Expectations - Sir Sly
Summary: I'm not a revolutionary.
Sonya Valentine.


Links: Download 720p mp4, 140 MB | Streaming (YouTube)

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Notes: For vividcon challenges 2016, Descent. This is the Sonya Valentine vid I've been wanting to make since I first saw the show. I have a lot of feelings about Sonya Valentine. And Sonya/Travis.

Title: Centuries
Fandom: Continuum
Music: Centuries - Fall Out Boy
Summary: Hearts and minds, guns and bombs


Links: Download (720p mp4 - 108 MB, 83 MB) | Streaming (YouTube) | Original Festivids Post (LJ/DW)

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Notes: For luvtheheavan, Festivids 2015.

Title: Trouble
Fandom: Despicable Me 1&2
Music: Trouble - P!nk
Summary: One big unicorn, strong and free, thought he was happy as he could be.

Links: Download (720p 190 MB mp4) | Streaming (YouTube)

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Notes: VividCon Premieres, 2014.

I am super behind on things! Pretend that this post is from before the big Yuletide reveal! And that there is a reason to use this many exclamation points!

I got two awesome stories this year!

Something in the Guns [The Walking Dead], which is a lovely character study of Andrea and Dale post 2x05;

Ms. Frizzle and the Van School for Gifted Boys [The Magic School Bus, Inception, Calvin and Hobbes, Torchwood/Doctor Who, BSG, Fringe], in which there is a multi-fandom field trip to the Large Hadron Collider. I don't think I need to tell you how happy that makes me!


I didn't bother doing the 'guess what I wrote!' thing this year, because one of the stories I wrote was in a fandom I have never mentioned (because that is how I roll, and the first sign of a fandom from me is often 'Hey, look, here's a vid in a thing that I enjoy!'), and other was pretty much jumping up and down and hollering about how I wrote it.

In other year-end thingies I am getting to after the year ends:

Vidding Meme!

February: L.E.S. Artistes [Terminator Movies, Sarah Connor, Festivids pinch hit]
August: Land's End [Doctor Who, River Song]
Gotta Boyfriend? [Scott Pilgrim vs the World]
We Rule the World [My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic]

( Babbling and bobbling. )

There was another meme going around a while back where you could ask writers or vidders about any of their choices! I don't remember exactly how it went, but something about if you had choices at song/clip/word choice or characterization or intent, you could ask! In the off chance, you are interested, ask away! If you ask about anything I wrote in high school, however, my answer will likely be along the lines of "Well, at that point, I also thought it was a good idea to name myself after a snow cone/popsicle/etc."

Title: Feel Good, Inc.
Fandom: Ocean's Eleven
Music: Feel Good, Inc. - Gorillaz
Summary: It's ephemeral style. (Don't stop, get it, get it.)

Links: Download (38 MB, DIVX, zipped) | Stream (YouTube)

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Notes: Made for BASCon 2010. Many thanks to elynross and hollywoodgrrl for beta, and indulging me as I took the opportunity to just try to do something fun.

Title: Glass
Fandom: Watchmen
Music: Glass - Bat for Lashes
Summary: The battle becomes blinding.

Links: Download (47 MB, DIVX, zipped) | Stream (YouTube)

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Notes: VVC 2010 Premiere. Many thanks to hollywoodgrrl and obsessive24 for beta.

VVC sure is creeping up, isn't it? I'm moderating a panel on motion this year (eep!), and am attempting to get things all put together. This is the description that's in the program:

An aesthetics panel on motion and movement, including approaches and techniques. At what point can we differentiate motion and movement used stylistically from that which is incorporated into the fabric of the narrative? We'll look at using smaller, unobtrusive movement to create continuity and unify a vid versus the use of larger 'impact' moment at musical or narrative crescendos, flowing movement versus the deliberately jarring, and creating internal rhythms as a compliment or counterpoint to music and storytelling.

Which I am starting to think might have been a bit optimistic for a 45 minute session. *G* So, guys, let's talk about motion! I'm synaesthetic with regards to music -- my senses are so awesome they couldn't be contained into neat little sense-boxes, so music itself has texture and movement to me -- which means I process vids a bit differently that some. I've got lots of things that are gradually drawing together, but it is not complete, and it makes me think about how much I love swirly-flowy motion vids.

So: What vids do you love with respect to motion and movement? Moments that took your breath away? Are there techniques or areas you think are of special interest?