Festivids 2021

Festivids are revealed!

turquoisetumult made my excellent vid for The Fall, a strange pair. Again, very solid audio editing and a great take on the core of the movie, highly recommended.

I made three vids. Black Sun was my assignment for nicasio_silang, a Star Trek: Picard vid. Yes, I made a vid for this show even though I didn't actually like it that much.

I made Wait for Me for such_heights using music from Hadestown. I'm honestly surprised there weren't more Hades vids this year! I had thought about trying to cut in the audio from the game, but given the style of music I picked I was worried it wouldn't go together very well. 

And I frantically cut together Sailing for Adventure as a Muppet Treasure Island treat for skygiants with not much time left before reveals--including adding thirty seconds to the start of the vid by cutting in more music from another song. This one got a huge response I wasn't expecting, which makes me happy.

Happy Festivids to one and all! I'm already looking forward to next year.

[vid] Black Sun (Star Trek: Picard)

source: Star Trek: Picard
audio: Death Cab for Cutie, "Black Sun"
length: 4:51
download: 302MB on MediaFire

summary: 
There is a role of a lifetime

And there's a song yet to be sung
And there's a dumpster in the driveway
Of all the plans that came undone

AO3 page | tumblr post | YouTube link

Lyrics on AZ Lyrics

Watch on YouTube

I didn't actually like S1 of Picard that much--it's by far my least favorite of the Kurtzman Treks and definitely has the weakest writing. But I associate Death Cab for Cutie with Star Trek more or less indelibly thanks to "Grapevine Fires," and once the image of "role of a lifetime" came to me I knew I had to make this vid to get it out of my head. Thanks to Festivids and nicasio_silang for giving me that chance. There's a certain appropriateness to using Ben Gibbard's divorce song from his divorce album to this show, I have to admit. And as I have said multiple times, I have guarded hopes for S2, when Michael Chabon won't be involved.

[vid] Wait for Me (Hades)

source: Hades (video game 2018)
audio: Hadestown Off-Broadway cast, "Wait for Me"
length: 3:24
download: 211MB on MediaFire

summary: Wait for me, I'm coming too

AO3 page | tumblr post | YouTube link

Lyrics on AZ Lyrics

Watch on YouTube

I saw Hadestown at the NYTW in the summer of 2016 and loved it; I saw it on Broadway two years later and honestly didn't love it quite as much. It's still excellent and incredibly moving, but the flashy money sets and above all what they did to the Hermes role when they cast Andre de Shields left me a little cold. Andre de Shields is great, but I don't think he's actually good as Hermes and I do think he was a stunt casting to bring in the punters. Which is a fair choice, but I liked Hermes much better the first time around.

Which is why this is the version of the cast album I have, and though I thought about trying to find a completely different song for this vid, in the end the gravitational pull of the show was too hard to resist and I didn't really try. I wondered whether the contrast between going down to Hades in the song and trying to get up and out in the game would be too much, but people seem to have dealt with that just fine. I was also influenced by this essay from Amal el-Mohtar on the resonances between the show and the game, which I was not very good at playing initially but which I was obsessed with anyway. I picked it up again after making the vid and there are still new lines after getting the secret ending! And I still haven't unlocked all the Erebus content.

[vid] Sailing for Adventure (Muppet Treasure Island)

source: Muppet Treasure Island
audio: Klaus Badelt, "Fog Bound/He's a Pirate"
length: 2:00
download: 126MB on MediaFire

summary: On the big blue wet thing.

AO3 page | tumblr post | YouTube link

Watch on YouTube

My brother and I rewatched Muppet Treasure Island over Thanksgiving and it is pretty definitively the best adaptation of Treasure Island. Thus when it popped up on people's requests I was primed to make this vid. I cut together two tracks from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack when the first one proved too short, and even then I was frantically jettisoning clips just as fast as I was adding them to try to hit all the beats I wanted while making the vid faster-paced. (Me watching every single test export: "Faster! More intense!") I think I did okay, and I'm glad so many people have enjoyed it.