Hieroglyfics Recs

Rodney always wanted to be a Mountie! The clip choice is good and often utterly brilliant (I laughed out loud when the line about visiting Vancouver was matched with a shot of The Alien Planet That Somehow Always Looks Like Vancouver) and the internal timing is well done. My one criticism is that I think it would have benefited from judicious cutting - the song’s extremely long, and it felt to me as though the vidder was reaching for clips to use during the long dialogue section. To me, it’s a sort of “reverse” vid in that rather than re-interpreting the show through the song, it illustrates the song using the show.

This is a faux trailer for a nonexistent movie: McKay and Sheppard do Ocean’s Eleven. Fabulous use of a wide variety of source material, and put together really well.

Scenes from Epiphany are used to imply an AU history for John and how he met Rodney and came to Atlantis, and there’s some astonishing vid-manip work.

“They Built This City on Rock and Roll,” dude! Effects galore, sparkles and goofy faces. This made me giggle and grin with its utter cheesetasticness. The best part is the scream at the end.

Oh, Rodney. This is Rodney, his failures and his triumphs, his self-recrimination and his glee. Yay.

What do Michael, Teyla (The Gift), John (Conversion), and Elia (Instinct) have in common? Heh. No science was harmed in the making of this vid, but it was sure bent a little - then again, SGA does that regularly, doesn’t it. This is hilarious, and the clip choice rocks like a rocking thing.

SGA vid set to the Muppet Show theme song. If the Hermiod cameo doesn’t make you laugh out loud, there is no hope for you.

Lim’s vids push the boundaries of what I consider fanvids; they are technically brilliant, but because I am not a particularly sophisticated vid fan, they tend to go over my head. But I really like this one, set to “I Saved The World Today” by the Eurythmics, partly because of the very cool use of color and effects and stuff I don’t even know how to describe, and partly because it takes in everyone in Atlantis, from Caldwell to Kavanagh, sending the implicit message that everyone is an important part of the bigger team that is Earth’s presence in the Pegasus galaxy.

This is a remake of one of her earlier vids, and now contains spoilers through Tao of Rodney. I like the way she’s played with the colors, and the way the internal sync works - the movements to the beat are really cool. The message is a little mixed, as Rodney is not exactly strictly a scientist here, but it’s funny and makes me ♥ Rodney all over again.

Sheppard (Flanigan) gen/het pastiche vid. (It’s hard to describe this with my predefined categories!) I guess you’d call this a constructed reality vid: Joe Flanigan as James Bond, set to the Bond theme (as used in Casino Royale), with clips from SGA, Thoughtcrimes, and other Flanigan appearances. The technical aspects are uneven - there are a few odd aspect-ratio blips, and some of the timing seems off to me - but the clip selection is extremely clever, and the effect is brilliant.

Oh, this cracks me up! These short vids are made to the audio of what appear to be 1950s era PSAs. The clip selection and timing is genius, and the freeze-frames make me giggle. And hey, black and white again, although obviously the effect is intended to heighten the period effect. I can’t wait to see the promised third and fourth parts.

Coincidentally, two black-and-white Sheppard vids came out within a few days of each other. Lim’s vid was maybe a little too abstract for me, the literalist non-viddy person, though it’s clearly a technical masterpiece. I prefer this vid simply because I get a clearer narrative from it: to me, at least, this is a rather martial vid about John’s responsibility as military protector and defender of Atlantis. Things I particularly like are the repeated image of John and his dogtags, and the altered speed in some clips which gives more of an urgent, frantic feel that matches parts of the music. It’s a surprisingly long vid; I say surprising because I generally prefer shorter vids, but I didn’t notice the length of this one.

I don’t actually like the song much, and at nearly 5 minutes it’s (IMHO) far too long, but the clip choices (and, er, partner choices) for each verse are brilliant, and the storyline is fabulous and funny. I mean, John/Kolya! John/Zelenka! John/Bimbo Of The Month! There’s even a flash of John/Hermiod, for crying out loud!

Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Dex. Rodney’s got a crush on John, and he’s jealous of Ronon. The Ronon section was just yay.

As I’ve said before, I have difficulty following vids unless they have clear narratives, and this one is actually a constructed narrative, with bits of text superimposed on images both from SGA and other sources, including the vidder’s own shots. Interesting and well-done.

Team humor vid which is quite silly, but does a clever job with the dialogue snippets. I admit that one reason I like this is that it’s very short - just over a minute, not so long that the single joke gets old. I’d probably like it more if I had ever watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The combination of sad music and lots of shots of Rodney looking wistful is wonderful.

Teyla character piece. Homage to a strong woman.

Ensemble, crossover with SG1. This one is cool because it uses clips from behind-the-scene specials - it’s kind of a meta-vid about the creation of the shows we watch.

Ensemble. I interpreted this as Atlantis and the Ancients “speaking” across time to the Earth team, although I guess you could consider it John/Atlantis - I saw it as much more of a team thing, though. [ Email merryish @ anyroad.org for password.]

Ensemble humor. West Side Story retold in the SGA-verse. Hilarious.

Ensemble gen, crossover with Xanadu, humor. Totally cool and totally wacko. I especially liked the segue into Elizabeth’s appearance in Before I Sleep - that’s the point at which I mentally went, “oh YEAH!” Like Olivia’s passing the torch of Atlantis to Elizabeth, to entirely mangle a metaphor.

Rodney character piece, humor. I especially loved the use of repetition, fast cuts, and OMG the use of the WRAITH, hee!