spankulert

Dear vidder,

Thank you for making me (or considering making me) a festivid! I love festivids and I love people doing what they want creatively, so -- apart from a triggers and subtitles request below -- feel free to use anything below as a jumping off point or to ignore it altogether.

General Preferences

I love all sorts of vids: character studies, vids that explore themes, vids that make visual or emotional connections across disparate aspects of a source, campy comedy vids, experimental vids, shippy vids, and probably things I'm forgetting.

In terms of audio, I like vids to a wide range of music, including music I wouldn't normally listen to, as well as to audio other than music (for example, spoken word, sound effects). Country is a bit risky, and I hate Tom Petty. My all time favourite artists are Beyoncé, the Indigo Girls, and Stevie Wonder. Other artists I like include SZA, Little Simz, Kendrick Lamar, Sleater-Kinney, Team Dresch, Joni Mitchell, Cat/Jusuf Stevens, Cyndi Lauper, Neko Case, The Magnetic Fields, Doechii, Whitney Houston, Elton John, Stromae, Nina Simone, and ADG7.

I think using a few lines of source dialogue in a vid can solidify a vid's thesis, and I love when dialogue from separate moments in the source interact with each other in a vid to create new meaning. I also love how sound effects/diagetic sound from the soure material can amplify the feeling of a vid. So please do feel free to use these elements if you want to! That said, I don't like there to be too much overlap between dialogue and vocals, and I am most accustomed to vids with no dialogue, so if that's not your jam it's totally fine with me.

I am visually distracted by text on screen so I prefer minimal or no stylistic song-lyrics unless the visuals are very simple. I'm happy to have music in languages other than English and don't require translated subtitles unless you think they're important for the vid (I will understand a bit of French, nothing else). I don't hear song lyrics readily so vids that rely heavily on connections to lyrics don't always work for me, though having some connections to lyrics can anchor the meaning of the vid or have great comedic effect. 

Triggers and subtitles requests

I've become a bit sensitive to strongly flashing/strobing lights as a migraine trigger/amplifier. Some is OK but I'd rather not have more than a second or two at a time, or have it be very high dark/light contrast (total black to bright white). I don't have any other physical triggers but I would like you to warn for them as indicated in the festivids guidelines. 

Please don't include depictions of sexual assault or like, Game of Thrones-level violence and gore in your vid for me. Anything else is fine but please warn for emotional triggers which are also described in the guidelines for the exchange.

Lots of people benefit from subtitles so if you are up for making them then I think soft subtitles are great. I don't require them and would prefer if they weren't burned into the video unless you think they're important for the vid, e.g. to communicate the central point of the vid with non-English audio.

Now onto the specific fandoms!

Indigo Girls

The Indigo Girls are the musical act I've loved the longest and were central to my queer awakening back in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember when "Shame on You" was big on the radio -- I was 16 years old and didn't care for it. But I went to Lilith Fair the next year and saw them perform live, and they were so energetic and charismatic I fell in love and have never stopped. To this day I find Amy Ray incredibly appealing. When I nominated this I wrote RPF because I'm happy to have RPF content in addition to performances, but I'd love for music videos and live performances to be included as well. During covid lockdown I treasured their livestream performances and would enjoy having snippets of those included in a vid, though they are not all that visually exciting so I wouldn't expect lots of them. 

Music-wise, anything by the IG is obviously great. My unpopular Indigo Girls opinion is that the 2000s were their best decade and Become You, All That We Let In, and Poseidon and the Bitter Bug are my favourite albums of theirs. I weirdly don't listen to that much other music in their genre, but I'd be very happy for you to vid them to a different indie-folk-rock act. I have enjoyed Amy Ray's solo excursions into post-punk and country music, and back in the day I listened to the Butchies, who collaborated with Amy Ray, as much as the Indigo Girls. I think rock or blues music as well as folk or folk-rock would suit them well.

There is loads of source material to use, including stuff on their official youtube channel. Last year a documentary about the Indigo Girls was released and it is a treasure trove of archival footage -- it would be possible to make an IG vid from this documentary alone.I have uploaded a DVD rip of this doc -- it's called It's Only Life After All -- which you can get from bingeling .

Maggie Cheung Films

Maggie Cheung is one of my very favourite actors, and I particularly enjoy that she excels at so many types of performances, including but not limited to: sombre character role, cultural avatar, bounty-hunter with a heart of gold, and adorable snake-woman. My favourite performances of hers are in As Tears Go By, In the Mood for Love, Green Snake, The Heroic Trio, and The New Dragon Gate Inn. One idea -- you can take this or leave it -- would be to choose a song with a big tonal contrast between verse and chorus, and to use her more serious roles for one and her over-the-top roles for the other. But please feel free to take this wherever you like, and if you want to focus on one type of performance that is also fine!

Hacks (TV 2021)

I only recently started watching this despite it being on my list since it started airing. I've watched to the end of S3 as of writing and will fully catch up well before go-live. I love it! It's so good! The performances are incredible -- there are so many good comedic actors on that show, it's just astonishing. Also that budget? The cinematography is excellent! The writing! The music! I think this is one of the best US shows currently airing. The sets look so good! I could go on. I love Deborah and Ava's relationship and would enjoy a vid focusing on that -- or on either of them individually -- but I also enjoy the side characters, especially Kiki, Kayla, and Jimmy. A vid about Kayla and Jimmy would be awesome. I'd also really enjoy a Deborah character vid. I'm pretty invested in Deborah and Ava's relationship but have no strong feelings about that relationship necessarily being romantic or sexual. In any case I do also enjoy their chemistry with their other love interests/one night stands so feel free to include those if you like. 

I love the music on the show and I think a vid to something disco or disco-y could be really fun. Or "Sweet Love" by Anita Baker!


Novels and Short Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin is my favourite fiction writer and I've read almost everything in this category that she's written -- the main exceptions being City of Exile/Illusions and the Orsinia stories. Central to my love of Le Guin's fiction is the longing for a more expansive view of what our world could be, for freedom, and for authentic community and connection. I love her Hainish cycle and Earthsea series and would be happy with a vid that only focuses on one of them, or on her other work, or some combination thereof. My favourite works of hers are The Dispossessed, Always Coming Home, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, and The Compass Rose. On the night she died I re-read "The Day Before the Revolution", and it lives close in my heart. 

In terms of existing adaptations of Le Guin's work: I don't care for either Earthsea adaptation, though I suspect the Studio Ghibli one would be easier to use than the Sci-Fi one (I don't want white Ged). I only learned that the A&E adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven exists when doing research for this letter, but I do quite like the PBS adapatation from 1980, and I recall seeing it existed in full on YouTube a few years ago. 

Speaking of adaptations, her musical collaborations could offer some cool options for vid audio: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/adaptations (it's at the bottom of the page).

Many of my favourite works of hers are short stories and I could see a vid that funcions like a short story collection, with itty bitty vidlets featuring dancing ants, an Australian housewife finding a UFO crash site, a darkness box, and creepy trees (these are just random examples of semi-remembered stories).

But please go in any direction you like with this -- book vids are an absolute feat and I have no interest in constraining you, only offering suggestions if they're useful.

Babel -- R.F. Kuang

I loved this novel so much. The way that Robin is torn between criticizing the way that academia is intertwined with systems of power and oppression on one hand, and reveling in (at times) genuine freedom and life-of-the-mind that it affords him, at least at first. I was really moved by this aspect of the story and it resonated strongly with me. I also loved that the story involved genuine collective action and coalition-building among people with different lives but connected interests. I loved that it dealt seriously with the question of violence as a strategic and moral question -- this is all too rare in western fiction, which IME either revels in violence or takes an ill-examined "you're just as bad as the oppressor" position. I also loved the way the world-building used the idea of things being lost in translation as the source of magic. I disagree with people who complain that the book is preachy.

As with all my book vid requests, I'm happy for you to take this any direction that suits you. I think if there were ways to depict the magic system, that would be really cool.

Steerswoman Series -- Rosemary Kirstein

I love this series so much. I ship Rowan/Bel but I don't require a shippy vid by any means. My favourite book in the series is The Outskirters Secret, because of said ship, because I love stories where groups of people travel across a landscape on a quest, and last but not least because it is easily the best, most accurate atmospheric science I've encountered in any fiction (I am an expert). A vid about Rowan inventing the field of dynamical meteorology would be the absolute shit. No pressure, lol.

밤에 피는 꽃 | Knight Flower

YAY this show. I love the characters, especially the four leads. The two main het ships, like, doubled the number of het ships I love! Though my very favourite relationship is the friendship between Yeo-hwa and Yeon-sun. They are darlings. Honestly happy for you to vid anything for this show, as I enjoyed the antagonists and supporting characters as well.

Nickel Boys [SAFETY]

This movie was beautiful. I appreciated how it managed the difficult task of showing horrific racist violence without objectifying the victims. I was skeptical of the first-person POV in the film going in, but after a few minutes I completely forgot about it. It worked so well. I loved all the interstitial shots which I think lend themselves to a lot of different uses and interpretations.

東方三俠 | The Heroic Trio [SAFETY]

This movie is bananas but I love it. I especially love Maggie Cheung's character, what an absolute scene-stealer in a cast of scene-stealers! Also Michelle Yeoh's hair. And Michelle Yeoh's coat. And Michelle Yeoh's strut. Not a fan of the child harm and the beheading cage, or the professor. The final fight scene makes me cackle with joy.

负负得正 | Land of Broken Hearts [SAFETY]

This movie is so cool! The last half hour or so was pure dopamine for me. Go in any direction, I love it all. Also Zhu Yilong is so attractive, gosh. Just a general comment.