if there's a book of jubilations we'll have to write it for ourselves

[usuallyhats]

I went to VidUKon! It was great! I was really ill! If I'd realised how bad my cold was I would have thought seriously about not going - I thought on Friday morning that I was into the getting better stage, but apparently not - which would've been a shame. :( At least I probably wasn't contagious anymore? But other than that, it was such a fantastic con. ♥ (All the playlists are up on the website, with links to the vids!)

I started the con by leaving my flat slightly late and spending the entire time walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus and sitting on the bus going I AM GOING TO MISS THE TRAIN EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE. And then I got to the station and sprinted to the platform just in time... to find out that my train was late. At least that meant I caught it? And I met many fangirls on it, and then we ran into frayadjacent at the station, and everything was the opposite of terrible. :D

The con opened with such_heights's GREAT intro vid, and then the first show was Vidder's Choice, always a lovely way to open! Some recs from that show:

Skeleton Key (Person of Interest) by isagel - I don't know this fandom at all, but this is a really great vid with some lovely editing!

Unsteady Ground (multifandom) by raven - so whenever I read or watch a fanvid by raven, the experience goes something like "this is really careful and lovely, and also I can't stop crying and I'm not entirely sure why". She has this knack of making things that are incredibly moving in quite a quiet, unshowy way, and this vid showcases that brilliantly. It's about land, and home, and belonging, and I love it. ♥

L.O.V.E. (Much Ado About Nothing (2012)) by purplefringe - incredibly charming and funny. THEIR FACES.

There were two Ponds vids, You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate by settiai and The Magic Position by such_heights, and they were both utterly delightful. ♥

Counting Stars (Wonder Woman) by beccatoria - DIANAAAA.

ABC (Sister Act) by cosmic_llin - so much joy!

Next up Was Fandom Still Loves You, 4:3, all about nineties shows! Aw. My favourites from this show were Baby I'm A Star (The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) by Franzeska, Goody Two Shoes (Due South) by laurashapiro and pipsqueaky, Everywhere (Paul Davro remix) (Xena) by frayadjecent and What About Everything (Babylon 5) by happyme.

That was the end of formal programming for the evening, but then there was an informal showing of the Aims Vid Album Project! I've been meaning to talk about this project for ages, and this seems like a good opportunity. It was such a great thing to be part of, and really wonderful to see it up on the big screen! I really love what a diverse collection of vids came out of it: big fandoms and small fandoms, old fandoms and new (and Doctor Who, which is, as ever, both), single fandoms and multifandom, character studies and theme vids and vids about relationships both romantic and not, two vids in the same fandom but with different tones and emphases... it was great. I was going to pick out a few recs, but I enjoy all the vids so much I couldn't choose! ♥ ♥ ♥

First thing on Saturday morning was the Best of Creaspace show, a collection of vids from the Russian vidding community. It was really interesting to see a set of vids from a community with slightly different priorities than the one I'm used to! As a community they seem to put a lot more emphasis on footage quality and effects (seriously, all the vids were SO SHINY) and on using multiple sources to create a new narrative rather than to comment on the sources themselves - for example, one vid used some footage from the boxing scenes from the first Ritchie Sherlock Holmes in amongst what looked like a more contemporary source, not as far as I could tell to contrast and compare them but because the vidder was creating a boxing sequence and that particular clip fitted the bill. The context of the original clip didn't seem to matter as much as the context it was being used for in that vid, whereas, for example, having recently watched one of the DS9 episodes raven used in Unsteady Ground helped enhance my understanding of that vid because I knew the context of the moment it was referencing.

Next up was Enemy Mine, the frenemies vidshow. I loved seeing Superstar (BtVS; Buffy/Faith) and Learn to Crawl (BSG; Starbuck/Kat) on the big screen! Of the new-to-me vids, my favourites were giandujakiss's multifandom vid, Come Out And Play, and beccatoria's Matches to Paper Dolls (The Great Queen Seondeok). (beccatoria also did a great job on selling The Great Queen Seondeok over breakfast earlier on Saturday, I really want to watch it now!)

The last show before lunch was Festivids, which I loved - admittedly I was involved in putting it together, but nevertheless... ;) I basically rec everything in this show (and have in fact recced some of them before! Er, that "part one" in the title turned out to be a bit optimistic, didn't it?).

Then lunch happened and I drank some lemsip and ate some delicious foods and felt sorry for myself for a bit.

After lunch was the Pride show. This was a really great show with an excellent variety of vids, I enjoyed it very much. My favourites from this show were Lantern (The Donald Strachey Mysteries) by isagel, Saving Me & You (Imagine Me & You/Saving Face) by purplefringe and Walking On The Sun (Lost Girl) by giandujakiss.

At this point I could go no further and retreated upstairs for a nap, meaning I missed the feedback panel and most of the Visions of a Dystopian Future show. :( But I woke up in time for the video games panel, which was really interesting. I'm not a gamer but I can definitely see that I might want to use video game footage in multifandom vids (or multimedia vids for eg DC comics fandoms), and now I feel like I have a good idea of how to go about it and how to get around the technical problems that might come up. There was also some good discussion of the philosophy of vidding games, eg, since the HUD is such a big part of the gaming experience, is it actually something that needs to be removed?

After this came dinner, om nom nom, and after dinner was the Eurovision show, a tradition that I really love. A few of the non-attending vidders had sent in little introductory vids about themselves and their countries, all of which were v. lovely. ♥ My memories of this show are a little fuzzy due to being ill, but all the vids were all excellent. I particularly enjoyed Pteryx's Multifandom Mashup 2013.

And then Premieres! First of all, if you have ever had a feeling about Star Trek and haven't already seen Long Live, cosmic_llin's premiere, GO, GO NOW, WATCH IT AT ONCE. (If you haven't ever had a feeling about Star Trek... this vid will probably fix that. And if you have seen it before but have stopped reading this in order to watch it again, I congratulate you on your excellent life choices. ;))

I had a vid premiering, for the first time, which was v. exciting! I even dressed up accordingly. :D It was a really fun experience, partly because I hadn't actually watched it for a while and it was nice to discover that I definitely like it. ;D

The standard was really high this year - all the vids were really great - but here are some recs for a few that I especially loved:

Ne Me Quitte Pas (Pushing Daisies) by purplefringe - so so delightful and fun and cute!

We Got The Power (Tomb Raider 2013) by isagel

Counting Stars (MCU Phase 2) by such_heights

Movement in the Breach (Pacific Rim) by brokenmnemonic

I'll Run (out of time) (Revolutionary Girl Utena) by beccatoria

Starkville (Xena) by frayadjacent

And that was Saturday! The first show on Sunday was Same Song, Different Source, which is another show where I just want to rec EVERYTHING. OK, trying to narrow it down... I enjoyed both the vids to Watershed (one Merlin and one ATLA): they're both excellent vids and they're really interesting in terms of what they do with the song. frayadjacent's Whale Rider vid, Sons and Daughters, is so beautiful and moving. chaila's West Wing vid, Handlebars (Hail to the Chief) was new to me and just FANTASTIC. I adore both the original Starships!, by bironic, and the monochromatic remix, by jetpack_monkey. And both the "We Go Together"s - Star Trek XI and watersports - were hugely fun. :D

Next up was the very enjoyable Constructed Realities show, highlights of which included trelkez's Vividcon Premieres2012 intro vid, raven's lovely Welcome to Night Vale vid, We Were Born in a Summer Storm, kiki_miserychic's Morgana vid Devil Said, and two excellent crossover femslash vids, Hurricane by laurashapiro (Starbuck/Aeryn Sun) and Hands Away by beccatoria and chaila (Sarah Connor/Olivia Dunham).

Before lunch was a fascinating and wide-ranging panel, Academic Hats, on writing vidding into the literature; the history of fandom, or rather, the histories; explaining vidding to academics ("Star Trek exists. Fanfic exists. Women have VCRS." - charloween), and lots of other things. Charloween showed an example of a political "scratch video" made in the UK in the 80s as an anti-Thatcher protest, which was fascinating because it was clearly using a very similar audiovisual language to vidding, and in fact really reminded me of this Spooks vid from last year's Festivids. There was also discussion of how exactly we define a vid - is it in the form, or the fannish intention or engagement of the creator, etc? It was a panel that could easily have run for twice as long and still found things to talk about.

After lunch was the final panel, The Year in Vidding, which was a really fun and relaxed chat about trends in vidding, what's happened in the last year and what we'd like to see next year. ("A Wonder Woman film!") There was also a lot of discussion about the loss of a central "home" for vidding, and about posting vids on various platforms - tumblr, twitter, AO3 etc. Very enjoyable!

And finally, the Fantasy show! This was the perfect show to end on - emotional but uplifting, and really well put together. Also, the final vid in the show (Creating Something Beautiful (Studio Ghibli)), as well as being amazing in itself, was all about bringing joy to other people by creating things, so so appropriate. ♥

(I had a vid in this show! Which I totally forgot about, leading to a slightly confusing moment of "hey, that looks familiar, what fandom is it? ...OH YES." when it actually appeared on screen. /o\)

For this show, I rec everything! (Again.) But especially Party in the Midlands (Legend of the Seeker) by milly, a vid that never fails to make me happy (I REALLY want to rewatch LotS now) and The Adventure (Harry Potter) by trelkez, which made me cry.

So that was VidUKon! Loveliest and friendliest of cons, I wish it lasted all year. ♥ ♥ ♥

Comments

[walkthegale]

While I'm obv sorry you were ill, I'm glad you came anyway! And I hope you're feeling much better now!! ♥!

[raven]

This is such a lovely post! I'm sorry you were so ill, but very happy you made it anyway. :) And I'm delighted you like Unsteady Ground - it is a vid that is very close to my heart. :)

[usuallyhats]

I am, thank you! And I'm glad too. :D

[usuallyhats]

♥ I'm glad I made it too! I love Unsteady Ground so much, it's so beautiful and moving. :)

[beccatoria]

Thank you so much for all the recs and I LOVED your premiere! <3

I'm really glad you came even though I'm obviously sorry to hear that you were sick!

Anyway, the point being, I really loved reading this - made me remember how great I think the weekend went, overall. I just felt like there was a really nice atmosphere this year (not that there wasn't last year, but I think I was a bit more frazzled and didn't notice as much last year!). Everyone was super friendly and helpful and willing to roll with stuff and have a good time.

[usuallyhats]

You're welcome, and thank you! <3

I definitely felt that too - it was such a lovely, warm, relaxed weekend. Glad you felt less frazzled and got to enjoy it more this year. <3

[redcirce]

So many vid recs to check out! I'm excited. And lucky you getting to see Superstar on the big screen- it's one of my favorites and I remember back in the day being so thrilled when renenet responded to my fangirl email.

[usuallyhats]

Hope you enjoy them! :D And yeah, it's such a great vid. ♥