Big Eden vid, Henry/Dean, Henry/Pike. This vid follows Henry as he moves from his New York life, to Big Eden and his relationships there: with his grandfather, with Dean, with the people of Big Eden, and ultimately with Pike. I particularly like how each section is self-contained in the narrative but follows from the previous bit and leads into the next logically and coherently.
Sharpe’s a hero. The music would be a little jarring were it not for the sad truth that the battle scenes in the series are all set to really inappropriate music, la la la. The clips are nicely chosen and it’s actually cut to the beat, unlike 99% of the junk I watched on YouTube while searching for Sharpe vids.
Boromir gen. The perfect combination of music, lyrics, and clips to tell Boromir’s story. Waaah.
Sharpe/Teresa. Okay, this is my true OTP in this fandom. I adore Teresa, the commander of the Spanish guerillas; she is tough and smart and strong and not beautiful in a conventional sense. This vid spoils her arc, but it’s not exactly a surprise in the movies.
Supernatural vid. This is the one in which Dean and Sam watch various incarnations of “their show” on TV, set to various TV show theme songs. If you’re in SPN, you’ve seen it already, I’m sure; if you’re like me, and don’t know which one is Dean and which one is Sam, you might enjoy it anyway if meta games appeal to you. I love the way this vid recontextualizes the show into multiple show-lets of differing genre, using both theme music and clip choice. I only recognized a few of the themes, not being a TV watcher, but I could instantly tell what type of show each was - the police drama, the soap, the sci-fi (okay, everyone ought to recognize the Twilight Zone theme!)
I KNOW. It’s been out for over a year, and I kind of hated it when I first watched it, because the music just makes me want to put my hands over my ears and scream. Not my thing. But every once in a while I seekritly rewatch it, because it’s so incredibly well done. All the matching between an actor’s gesture or motion as one character and his or her identical gesture as another - wow. So here, I’m reccing it, okay? Because it’s great. But I still hate the music.
Girls kicking ass hilariously juxtaposed with a sweetness-and-light Rogers and Hammerstein musical song. I am only familiar in passing with the fandoms (Alias, BSG, Veronica Mars, Firefly, Buffy) but that totally doesn’t matter. Funny and sexy and makes me want to pump my fist in the air and yell, “chicks ROCK!”
Multifandom paean to the costume drama - its costumes and its drama and its sheer (and sequinned, and lacy) sexiness. I’m stunned by the number of sources, some which seem unlikely but work so well in the vid. My favorite part is the twirling sequence that begins about a third of the way through. And the kissing. Don’t forget the kissing!
Multifandom boykissing and girlkissing! That is, boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls. It gives me a nice happy gooshy feeling, and I love the way the clips are matched to the lyrics. Also, it’s hot.
Keen Eddie vid. I know almost nothing about this show, which didn’t stop me from loving this fabulous vid. Two desperately dissimilar guys, clearly thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, having a bang-up time.
This is a set of vids in various fandoms to the old Schoolhouse Rock songs. My favorites are the Supernatural “Noun” vid and the Heroes “Interjection” vid. These vids are not so much for fans of the source fandoms as they are for fans of Schoolhouse Rock.
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.
Fraser/every woman on the show! Hee, maybe you could consider this a bit of a constructed reality vid as well: Fraser as suave and sexy Lothario! Cutting a swath through the entire female population of Chicago! It’s fabulous and OMG hot, and it ends with a slashy implication, so, yay!
Heroes, Niki, Claire, Monica gen, PG, vid. This is an awesome vid of the Heroes women moving from cowed and dependent to strong, empowered, and kick-ass. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a constructed reality vid, because the show’s not quite like that. Oh, well. I’d watch this show. And I’d watch this vid. A lot.
An older vid, remastered by Gwyn_r. Some of my favorite S1 and S2 scenes in here, and I’ve always liked the song.
“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.
Multifandom slashy vid. Everybody’s doing it, doing it, doing it, and what’s really fun is how they’re doing the same things in the same ways in all our fandoms! Awesome clips, perfect timing.
OMG AWESOME. “Oh, I’m ready for it, come on bring it!” is a great theme for Harry. Haha, Voldemort, Harry’s sick of your motherfucking snakes on his motherfucking plane! Actually less cracky than you might think.
Oh, Rodney. This is Rodney, his failures and his triumphs, his self-recrimination and his glee. Yay.
This awesome vid makes me flail with delight. I can’t imagine the technical artistry required to make a shippy vid about two characters who share only a tiny amount of screentime, whose relationship is 95% fanon, but SD Wolfpup has pulled it off beautifully. As constructed reality, it makes perfect narrative sense. I love it!
Heroes, Sylar gen. The metaphor is perfect, the vid perfectly creepy. This is not a vid I’d recommend for anyone who hasn’t watched the series (season 1 only), both because of spoilers and because a lot of the sense of the vid depends on the viewer’s knowlege of context, but if you’re a Heroes fan, it’s amazing.
Fraser and RayV friendship, Fraser/RayK, vid. I am very narrative-oriented when it comes to vids, and this one has a clear and engaging narrative, moving from Fraser “learning to fly” in Chicago with Vecchio, and then passing on his experience and knowledge to Kowalski. I think the change of POV works well here. Also, it doesn’t hurt that I adore Tom Petty. Nor that I wrote a F/K story with the same title, la la la.
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.
Hornblower, Horatio/Archie, hankie warning, spoilery for the series. This is beautiful and sad. Waah.
Hornblower, completely gen and absolutely hilarious. To the Mortal Kombat theme song, and, hee! It goes on a little long - I would have cut a few repetitions - but the timing with the marching and cannonfire and especially the shouting is very clever.
Hornblower, Bush/Kennedy. I like this vid partly because I love the song, and partly because, GUH. Gorgeous men making eyes at each other.
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.
Ensemble (Fraser, RayK, Maggie, Bob, Frannie, and Dief/Ante :-), G, vid. I can’t believe a vid is making me all misty-eyed, but this is just…awww. There are all sorts of nice moments, like Fraser and Bob walking together in rhythm to the song, and the Dief/Ante is just…awww. Follow the download instructions carefully. File is .mp4 - I played it in VLC.
Kind of an unrequited Ray/Fraser vibe going on here, a little sweet, a little sad. I like the way the clips of the Riv are used to anchor the beginning and end (and there’s a lovely section in the middle that she called ‘car porn’ when I commented on it!) and the use of successive clips with Ray and Fraser in the same relative positions, which underlines the way they’re always together.
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.
Ray Vecchio/Irene Zuko. This is a vid based on the episode “Juliet is Bleeding”, and boy, does the song fit perfectly. I actually didn’t like the episode much - I found it too stiff, maybe, and too much like any cop show rather than good old quirky due South - and maybe that’s why I like this vid: it puts together all of the good parts, the strong emotion and the relationships and Ray Vecchio yay! And Irene Zuko! And angry glances between Ray and Frank!
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!
Fraser/RayK, RayK/Stella, RayK/Luanne, RayK/Maggie, G, vid. The narrative here is very clear: Fraser watches Ray get involved with women who don’t love him like he does. I really liked how each section was about a different woman in Ray’s life - and poor Fraser, watching Ray run after them and get hurt.
Sheppard/McKay, Sheppard/Dex. Rodney’s got a crush on John, and he’s jealous of Ronon. The Ronon section was just yay.
Set to “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” performed by Robbie Williams and Rupert Everett; it’s a languid, big-band jazzy song, and the clips are relatively long, so the overall effect is very relaxed and smooth. The cutting isn’t necessarily to the beat, but the action within the clips is nicely synched to the beat, which I really liked. Maybe it’s overly literal, but I need narrative, so literal works for me.
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.
Battlestar Galactica, various pairings, R. This one totally wowed me even though I’ve only seen a single episode of the show and only vaguely recognized most of the characters (and didn’t recognize most of the clips). I thought the frantic pace and the choice of clips went really well with the song (which I didn’t really like, but…I have to say, it’s effective). It’s an incredible visual tour of a gritty world.
Fraser/RayK/RayV-ish. [It’s more F/K and F/V, not really F/K/V. But the only way I can see it as gen is if I ignore the sequence of clips from Vault and MotB.]
Their summary: Fraser has two Rays…and boy, does he drive them nuts. Okay, I like the music, so that’s a start. But oh, man, this is so funny and well done. The clip choices are brilliant, particularly the mirroring of similar actions from both Ray seasons (the eyeglasses! the opening doors! the HANDING UP OUT OF UNDERGROUND YAY!). I thought the ‘pound note’ went a little obvious, but oh, the ‘don’t smoke’ with the gun KILLED ME. And only the briefest hint of Ms. Fraser with the ‘makeup’ line - nice avoidance of the obvious there. And the Fraser thumbs up mirrored by RayV, and the Fraser licking mirrored by RayK! I think this is my new favorite vid, ever. If you are in DS fandom don’t miss it.
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.
Snape and others, humor. This is a pretty old one, but it still cracks me up.
Ensemble, due South crossover with Men With Brooms, humor. Curling! Beavers! CANADA! This is great, and the editorial comments are priceless.
Angst. The intercut footage of arctic scenes and polar bears is really cool.
Teyla character piece. Homage to a strong woman.