Operation Awesome, part 1: this is love how it needs to be
If you guys had any idea how long I've waited to post this...well, actually, let me tell you.
2007 has somehow become The Year In Which I Do Ginormous Things For My Friends' Birthdays. Most of you will remember boi4eliza's birthday extravaganza in June. While I never specifically set out to do something large for chickwithmonkey as well at the time (because, you know, it's just Rachael, pssh), there was no way I could turn down the perfect idea when it struck me.
Like many of my vidding exploits, the blame for this one rests squarely on the shoulders of heresluck. Back around the time when I added her to my flist, she posted "In the Mirror," a vid that was a continuation of a project she'd started a few months before--she watched a show that her close friends loved without telling them and then made them a vid. All entirely in secret until the big reveal. "Wow," I thought when I read this, "that is exactly the kind of harebrained surprise I would do for someone." I filed the idea away in my pocket for safe-keeping and casually waited for the right opportunity to arise.
Seven months later, it did.
Okay, so, when I first met Rachael in 2001, she was a Scaper. (Once a Scaper, always a Scaper, but it was her Big Thing at the time.) She hadn't converted me to fandom yet (which she gets full credit for, btw) so watching this so-called Farscape held absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. Even after I got into Buffy and opened my mind to genre shows, I still was very much of the "puppets? aliens? heavy prosthetics? sci-fi? uh, no thanks" mentality. Little changed over the next six years. Being won over by BSG helped rid me of the notion that all sci-fi was cheesy and stupid, but I still wasn't looking to branch out and push it. Farscape was her thing, and I was fine with that. She never gave me any crap about it, so it wasn't an issue.
Fast forward to this past September at DragonCon. I did actually try to go to a Claudia Black panel since I'd heard such good things about her. I still didn't give a rip about Farscape (other than many of my friends loved it), but I guessed she, as a person, would be very entertaining and interesting. I never did get to see her, whether in a panel or the autograph room or anywhere else, but hearing such wonderful things about her in my friends' con reports opened my mind to the notion of maybe someday possibly trying Farscape. I finally put it on my list of shows to try, which was a very big step.
Then something serendipitous happened. While showing la_cspan my freshly uploaded DC pics over the phone at the bus stop on 9/6, she happened to mention seeing pics elsewhere of the hotel I stayed at and reiterated what my flist had all been saying--that it looked like Moya ("who's Moya?" "the ship in Farscape, dude.") She'd just finished watching season one and gave me a bunch of reasons why I'd probably like it better than I liked SGA (which she shoved down my throat 2 years ago to a lukewarm but pleasant reception). Considering Courtney is who got me started on BSG, HIMYM, and Lost, I give her recs heavy consideration. I confessed I was seriously considering it, and in that moment, my plan formed. For you see, the same time this was happening, announcement for the Sweet Charity auctions were popping up all over livejournal, and that gave me the perfect cover. I was going to watch Farscape myself in secret and make Rachael a birthday vid under the guise of buying her a SC vidder.
I needed the cover story because I honestly had no idea what kind of vid she wanted, and I didn't want to make her something she might be "eh" about. I can't just magically think of things I've never been exposed to that I know someone will like. I can hear about something and say, "oh my god, that's totally so-and-so," but I can't ever come up with the ideas myself. I'm not that kind of creative. For this, especially since I didn't know what would make for a good Farscape vid in the first place, I needed to know what was in her head. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right. Not right in the "here's a fandom-pleasing vid that you also might happen to like" way, but right in that it was made for her. The best way to do that, of course, was to flat out ask her what she wanted. But just like you can't casually ask your girlfriend what size ring she wears, it's very difficult to offhandedly drag a deep vid desire out of someone. So rather than be suspiciously subtle about it, I came out swinging. Having already downloaded season one and watched the first few episodes to make sure I didn't absolutely loathe it, I called Rachael up and said something like this:
"So, suppose--hypothetically--there was a fandom auction going on right now and someone hypothetically wanted to buy a vidder for someone who may or may not have a birthday approaching in the near future--specifically, say, a Farscape vidder. What do you think this hypothetical recipient might hypothetically want for a vid?"
She was moved by my generosity and fell right into the trap (ha! dumbass.) She promised to send over some pairing and song ideas soon. Excellent. Sure enough, a few days later I had two pairing ideas and a specific song mention. Bastard that I am, I innocently asked if she could pass along an mp3 (for me to send to the vidder, of course!) and even describe how she envisioned the vid (in relation to the lyrics). Because hey, this is Burger King and you can indeed have it your way! God, it was like taking candy from a baby. She laid out for me exactly what she wanted, totally oblivious to the fact I was almost halfway through season one and already taking notes for this vid I was making. Sucker.
(I also like how this has completely obliterated all trust she will EVER HAVE IN ME AGAIN \o/ *wins* )
Season one's a little slow anyway, and I tell ya, the end goal looked pretty far from where I was standing. I wasn't sure I could follow this through, truth be told. But then I heard her song, and it drove home once and for all that I was really going to do this. I absolutely adored her song. It grabbed me in my gut and left me speechless. It made me stop and close my eyes every time it came up in my playlist. Once I learned the lyrics, it brought tears to my eyes. This was a most fortunate development, folks. See, Rachael likes pretty much everything I listen to, but I don't necessarily like everything she listens to. For her to pick a song that I instantly fell in love with just sealed the deal. Oh yeah. I was totally making this vid, and I was going to love every second of it. I hadn't even met the POV character yet, and I didn't care. From that moment on, my first priority became this project.
I downloaded the other three seasons and The Peacekeeper Wars from torrents and went to work. You guys, this is ALL I'VE BEEN DOING with my free time for the last TWO MONTHS. No, REALLY. Have you noticed how I haven't been posting much, yet when I do, I talk about how busy I am and don't really specify why? Or the things I do specify aren't really the kinds of things that would render me so completely distracted? Yeah, I've totally been up to my EYEBALLS in Farscape. I watched the entire series (~92 episodes, timewise--76 hours total) in 40 days (averaging 15 hrs/week). And it has KILLED ME to not say anything! You don't even KNOW! It was SO HARD. I had to catch myself ALL THE TIME. I've had to be so sneaky about this! I'd watch episodes while chatting with a ton of Farscape lovers in a chatroom. I'd be watching when Rachael would call and I'd have to make up what I was doing at the time. I've pretended not to get references or not know who particular actors are. Oh! And get this! Remember how I wasn't able to get Round 2 of strangefandom up and running in time on my own and I asked Rachael to do it for me? I was too busy watching Farscape. If that isn't hilariously ironic, I don't know what is.
And it's a damn good thing I was really enjoying the show because I had to crank it out. I was on a frelling deadline! Her birthday is November 6th, I'm going to a convention Nov 2-5th, I needed at least a week to actually make the vid, and I only started watching the show on September 10th. I didn't have a whole lot of time to mess around! I watched episodes whenever I could. Every night after work. During commercial breaks of live tv shows. Those few days I was home sick. While I cruised Craig's List ads. When I had insomnia. WHENEVER. And there was only so much of my regular life I could put on hold for this. I still had work and band and my current shows and friends to hang with and some semblance of a life, which has been WAY busier than I normally am. You guys, I somehow did this around BOTH 9/15 and 10/15 busy season deadlines, multiple sexploits, debating Deal or No Deal, prepping SSF, major ebay selling, and our biggest band concert to date. I'm telling you, I have lived and breathed this show for the last two months, and holy crap, what a ride it's been. I'm going to make a separate post with spoilers and squee, so please hold all Farscape-specific comments until then :-)
But actually, I should've mentioned long before now that I wasn't alone in this project. I know myself pretty well, and there's no frelling way I could've done something this big and not told someone. But it was very important to me that the biggest Farscape fans I knew didn't know no matter what. The bigger reactions I could get from this, the better, and there were several key surprise reactions I was anticipating most (other than Rachael, of course, pipsqueaky, brynnmck, laurashapiro, and my other VVC friends). I didn't tell Rachael's fiance or any of her friends, nor did I tell most of mine. I did, however, end up telling a few very select people who had specific reason to know.
Meet my co-conspirators:
1) la_cspan - This worked out to be a lovely mutually beneficial relationship because we both now had someone to talk to while we watched. Because really, it's always the most exciting the first time and good shows deserve SQUEE. I ran my idea by her the second I had it (we were on the phone, remember), and she was with me 100%. We've been swapping "OMG DID YOU SEE _______" emails almost on a daily basis for over a month (see next post). The most hilarious part is that even though she started an entire season ahead of me and stayed that way for several weeks, I actually PASSED her in season four and finished the series first! Crazy. And all this time she was posting squee and using icons and making references on lj AND EVEN QUOTING ME ANONYMOUSLY, YOU GUYS. AND I HAD TO KEEP QUIET. asdfas;ldfkjasdl;kfd. God, it was PAINFUL.
2) sweetestdrain - This happened by chance, actually. For the first few weeks, I was very set on Courtney being the only one who knew, but I think at some point I might've mentioned to someone else that I was doing some kind of secret project. (I'M WEAK, I ADMIT IT.) Since Morgan and I occasionally have our "vid secret" chats (like you do), I figured it was probably her. The following conversation transpired on 9/22:
jarrow: so, i know i told one person about my watch-a-show-in-secret plan
jarrow: and i think it was you. was it?
jarrow: i honestly CAN'T REMEMBER
*jarrow wins
sweetestdrain: it was not me!
jarrow: DAMNIT
sweetestdrain: but now i am curious
*sweetestdrain coughs
jarrow: now i have no idea who it was
sweetestdrain: ha!
jarrow: god, i totally suck
sweetestdrain: you could just, uh, ask everyone?
sweetestdrain: "hey, do you know my secret plan?"
jarrow: haha
jarrow: damnit damnit damnit
jarrow: ok well
jarrow: NEVERMIND
sweetestdrain: oh fine
sweetestdrain: be that way :)
*sweetestdrain is very good at keeping secrets, thanks
I pondered for a moment. I'd poked around Sweet Charity a bit looking for vidders I liked that I could bid on in case I ended up not liking the show enough to follow through with vidding it, and I remembered that Morgan didn't have Farscape listed. So, I figured that meant she hadn't watched it (or wasn't fannish about it) and wouldn't flip out over my secret, therefore wouldn't be bursting to tell other people. She was safe.
jarrow: okay, so
jarrow: my secret show
jarrow: is farscape
sweetestdrain: omg!
sweetestdrain: farscape!
sweetestdrain: OMG!
sweetestdrain: do you like? do you LOVE?
CLEARLY, I WAS MISTAKEN.
But this actually ended up working out much to my benefit, I soon realized. Now I not only had a co-watcher, I had a BETA. And since this was a vid project after all, that was probably a good thing to have. I felt like one of those RPG lead characters who goes through the fantasy world and magically meets people in all the roles he needs in the order he needs them. \o/ (Btw, where's my fucking wizard already? God.)
From: John Arrowsmith (jarrow272@hotmail.com)
Sent: Tue 9/25/07 11:11 AM
To: Courtney; Morgan
Just wanted to thank you two again for cheering me in on my secret project for Rachael. I am so excited to send her this vid (with credits at the END) and she'll watch it and love it and then go "WAIT WAIT...WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'VID BY JARROW'"? And it will be awesome in the best way. Oh yes. So of course, NO TALKY DE FARSCAPE on my lj! But know that I am watching and loving (up to 1.17, I think) and already taking notes and I will need LOTS of help, especially if I'm trying to get this done by November 6th (hahahahahaha asd;fjksd;fkasdlfjsd) Okay, by CHRISTMAS. But you know, generally kind of soon.
Btw Courtney, *points* this is my friend Morgan (sweetestdrain on lj). She is good at keeping secrets and is doing beta for me. Yay!
Morgan, *points* this if my friend Courtney (la_cspan) who encourages me to do evil things like Maneater, so she's generally pretty awesome. She's watching Farscape right now for the first time too (just finished s2) so we're squeeing together. And by "together" I mean I'm mostly hearing her vaguely talk about all the awesome that lies ahead of me while I try desperately to catch up and keep failing.
3) sdwolfpup - This is a funny story. Though I only vid with dvd quality now, I hadn't really put thought into how I was going to procure the dvd sets. I think in the back of my mind I always just assumed I'd get them from SDW somehow, but that wasn't my set plan from the beginning or anything. Around the time I was midway through season two (9/28), I casually hopped on Amazon.com to see how much they were. You know, just for kicks. I was enjoying the show and figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and buy the series for myself. You guys, these dvds run about $85 per season. Um. Okay, I like Farscape? But not THAT much. I don't pay that kind of money for any show unless the box set vibrates or something. This was the point at which I decided for sure to hit up SDW. Conveniently enough, mlyn and I were going to her house for some Guitar Hero that very weekend. Perrrrfect.
Within ten minutes of arriving, I went ahead and asked before I forgot. (Since I only see her about once a month, this was my only chance!) But I wanted to keep the secret, so I devised a clever ruse. "Hey, so, my glamourously unemployed roommate is watching a bunch of tv shows before school starts back up again, and he really wants to try Farscape, so I told him I'd see if I could borrow your dvds for a week or so." Totally failsafe plan!
Her reply: [pleasantly!] "Oh. No."
My recovery: "..." [gulp] "Okay, no problem! Thanks anyway!" [BRAIN EXPLODES]
See, it turns out that greensilver had bought SDW in the Sweet Charity auction and requested a Farscape vid. [headdesks] (Note to self: kill her later.) So, SDW needed to keep her dvds onhand for vidding purposes. She felt bad about it, though! So I was kind of internally hemorrhaging, as my only plan had now failed miserably and I was running short of time and options. There was only one thing left to do. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
"Can I talk to you for a second? We need to have a conversation." (I was drinking, like ya do, so it all came out WAY more overdramatic than I meant it to. I apologized later, hee.)
We went into the other room, and I told her the truth in an excited whisper. Looking back on it, I don't know why I went through the theatrics of sneaking off to talk about it all cloak and dagger (because obviously, mlyn knowing my scheme would be APOCALYPTIC, hee), but hey, it's more fun that way. SDW was very willing to help and asked if I could just borrow the seasons individually or in a few weeks after she was done with them. No problem. We arranged for her to bring them to my band concert, squeed a bit over season 2 goodness, and went back downstairs. Dvd dealer = secured. \o/
4) borjy - Well, since Matt lives on the other side of my wall and can hear me breathe, it'd be kind of impossible to keep this from him. Also, I tell him everything anyway. He'd seen some Farscape before, surprisingly, so I got to have some immediate squeeconversation about awesome things as I watched them.
5) drummerboy420 - My non-fannishly inclined coworker buddy who eats lunch with me. One day I really needed to vent. *g*
And that's it. No, really.
And believe me, there has been some hilarity keeping this from the rest of my friends. For instance!
At the fandom concert, brynnmck and mlyn and I were talking about my dirty sexploits, and Brynn said offhandedly, "yeah, John can't keep secrets." I swear, I ALMOST SAID, "hey, what about Farscape!" NOT YET, JOHN. GOD. I caught myself, but man! That one was close. I'd just watched the first half of The Peacekeeper Wars the night before (during my massage-induced insomnia), so I was silently cracking UP and trying to just nod and laugh and let her comment roll right on by. Oh, if only she'd known :-D (You were WRONG, HOAR!)
And THEN. Literally THE DAY BEFORE I WAS GIVING RACHAEL THE VID, she and I were gmail-chatting about conventions, la la la, and she brought up the fact that there are no more Farscape conventions except Creation's, which suck. And of course I knew all about Creation's Farscape convention that coming weekend, because it was in fact at the SAME TIME AND CITY as the Firefly convention James and I were going to, and were I not already conventionally occupied, I would have been there in a HEARTBEAT. Yeah, so I started to TELL HER THAT. Fortunately, I stopped myself before sending the message, but I did start typing it, and zomg. ONE MORE DAY, JOHN. ONE MORE DAY. BE STRONG. DON'T FRELL IT UP NOW.
So, yeah. Even though I cranked through the series as quickly as I could, I did get stalled a bit near the end with the band concert and getting sick. I didn't finish until 10/20, leaving me a whopping 11 days to rip the entire series, make clips, and build my vid before leaving for LA. Yikes o.O
SDW came through full force, lending me all the dvd sets in one fell swoop on 10/19 before going out of town for a week. The timing was perfect for both of us, and I couldn't be more grateful to her. But vidding Farscape presented me with an interesting tech problem: I didn't have room for it. Technically, yes, I could have made room on my hard drive, but I didn't want to. Ripping a 45-minute episode takes up about 1.7 GB, give or take. Farscape, then, would roughly be ~150 GB. My vidding external hard drive has a 500GB capacity but was already sitting at 400GB full. Each episode takes 10-15 minutes total to rip and convert, so a full season can take up to five hours. Since it takes so damn long, and since I don't know for sure that I won't vid shows again, I don't want to delete any of my past vob source files if I don't have to. (I currently have BSG, W&G, HP, and Closer.) That left me with only one option: I had to buy another hard drive.
(THE THINGS I DO FOR VIDDING. AND RACHAEL. GEEZ.)
This was actually an inevitability, just a matter of when. I decided to go big and got a whopping 1TB (1,000GB) drive--enough to house Farscape, everything I already had, and everything I have yet to vid in the next year with room to spare. I got it on sale from Best Buy's website and even paid for expedited shipping to get it here the same day SDW was giving me the dvds, heh. Because I was moving 400GB of source from my old drive to this one, it took absolutely forever to get things formatted and transferred and defragged and whatnot; about 20 hours of continuous running time, all told. It was quite a balancing act getting the hard drives situated while trying to simultaneously rip the dvds. I actually spent that entire weekend (10/20-21) ripping all 88 episodes while rewatching the entire show on fast-forward looking for clips. Yeah, you read that right. FULL. REWATCH. ONE. DAY. See, I'd made notes during my original viewing of all the obviously shippy stuff I needed, but filler? I had none. Crap. So, I had to. I was running out of time. The rewatch actually wasn't at all as volumous as it sounds, considering I got to skip anything that didn't take place on Moya and scrub through at either 2x or 4x. My brain was pretty fried by Sunday night, but it was a monumental leap of progress, so it was worth it. I went from having 20 clips to over 100, and I felt ready enough to dig in.
Between what Rachael had given me and what I'd filled in on my own, I saw the vid fairly clearly in my head from the start, but there was one piece that could go either way--the end. It could be a happy vid with closure or go way emo and remain open. I wasn't about to risk blowing the whole thing by guessing (incorrectly), so I decided to lie my ass off to Rachael yet again (anyone keeping a tally?) to find out. I emailed her on Monday (10/22) and pretended the mystery vidder had asked me how she wanted it to end. I used >> to offset the fake copied paragraph and everything. It was awesome. And she bought it, of course, and told me what she wanted (which, of course, wasn't what I would've gone with on my own). And I didn't know it then, but she saved me hours of grief and mental turmoil had I been forced to make that decision down the line in the editing process. Looking back on it now, getting her input on this one point was one of the best decisions I made in this whole process.
So, there I was. I had my clips, my song, my ending, and nine days left. After six very long weeks of prep, it was finally, finally time to actually start the frelling vid.
And then, disaster struck.
After I'd gotten everything ripped and rewatched and organized and defragged and was READY (Tuesday night, 10/23), I gave my computer a night off after working so hard all weekend. I came home from work Wednesday and booted-up to find...my laptop was now REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE THE NEW HARD DRIVE. The drive with 500GB of ripped vid source and every clip I'd ever used in a vid. The drive I'd just spent 3 days reformatting to NTFS and defragging and filling with files that I had worked with multiple times the night before. The drive that now, apparently, was completely foreign to my laptop. I turned things on and off. I checked my wires. I rebooted my computer. I reinstalled the software. Nothing was working. I kept getting the same message, that a USB device was hooked up but wasn't installed properly and couldn't be recognized. I was at a near PANIC. Seriously. Heart-pounding, breathing fast, freaking the fuck OUT and just trying to stay calm. There had to be a rational explanation for this. There HAD to be. It was a BRAND NEW DRIVE that was VERY MUCH working less than 24 hours before. I seriously did NOT HAVE TIME for this shit. The vid had to be done in NINE DAYS, you guys. The vid I had not yet STARTED. But I kept cool and worked the problem.
I'm no techie, but it had to either be the drive itself or my laptop, so therefore I guessed it was probably either a problem with the reformat I did or a faulty driver on my computer. But because I'd been playing files I'd put on the drive with no problem, I figured it was safe to say I reformatted the drive correctly. Must be a driver. I hoped. That seemed like an easy enough fix. So I hopped onto Iomega's website and dug into their help section to find:
"Windows XP provides all of the drivers needed to install your Iomega Hard Drive. Additional drivers are not needed and, therefore, are not available for download from the Iomega Web site."
[HEADDESK]
GREAT. THANKS A LOT, GUYS.
So I immediately dove into their "contact us" section to find my options were: 1) a phone call with a $30 charge, 2) email a tech guy and probably never hear back, 3) post on a forum nobody reads, or...OOH! 4) free, live one-on-one chat with a tech guy for folks under warranty! [!!!!] Chat ran until 8 pm Mountain time (weird) and it was...6:47 pm (pacific).
ASDLK;FASDKLFJASL;DFJSA
[OPENS CHAT, LOADS WINDOW, HURRY HURRY OMG HURRY]
I was second in the queue, so I sat there waiting and DYING INSIDE, praying my internet held out before it hit 7 o'clock. Then, like a beaming ray of sunshine, I see--Jeffery: Hi, how can I help you?
JEFFERY. OH, JEFFERY. GOLDEN MESSIAH OF TECH SUPPORT. SAVE MY HARD DRIVE'S IMMORTAL SOUL. (IN NINE MINUTES, PLZ.)
I quickly explained what was happening, and he said he'd seen it before (phew!) He gave me a very specific chain of actions to take (unplug this, turn this off, reboot this, turn this on, plug this in, etc) and said that should work. "If it doesn't, can I come back into chat?" Of course, he says! "Uh, well, I see you close in seven minutes, so...." Oh yeah, he says. He lost track of time. Crap. Well. We poked around in my device manager quickly just in case there was another source of the problem, but found nothing. He said he'd email me some ideas to try, but I never heard a thing. So, at this point I had pretty much left my vid's fate to a well-structured reboot, which I felt NOT SO CONFIDENT about, truth be told. I'd already tried a reboot, just this time I was supposed to do it with the drive unplugged.
It worked like a charm. I owe Jeffery cookies. (He said chocolate chip are his favorite; I asked.)
So after a near nervous breakdown, I was back in business. I gave Courtney a quick call to tell her my horror story, then decided to hunker down and get something productive done (now that I'd lost almost 3 precious hours of vidding time to crisis management). I'd been listening to the vidsong like a maniac for weeks, singing it to myself in the shower and around the house and all that, so opening Ulead and laying down the opening clip was an incredible experience. When I pushed play and finally saw in front of me what I'd seen in my head all this time, chills rushed through my whole body and my eyes kind of rolled back a little. I actually had to put my computer down for a minute and take deep breaths. It was the most physical reaction I've ever gotten from [my own] vidding. It was a vidding orgasm. That's the only way I can describe it. I emailed Courtney and Morgan in frantic all-caps, unable to calm down with how happy and excited I was to finally be getting there. I laid down the introduction and end credits and called it a night.
I spent Thursday night (10/25) putting together a first draft. It was messy, sure, but damnit, I filled that entire timeline in a night. (To be fair, it's only a 2-minute song, but it still felt really good to be that productive.) I sent it to Morgan and Courtney for thoughts and spent all day at work Friday making notes, typing up meta thoughts on the concept, and storyboarding ideas for when I got home. Friday night was spent completely ripping up what I'd done Thursday and revisioning the vid in the second draft. I spent all day Saturday discussing it with Morgan over top sekrit new AIM screennames and piecing together a partially modified third draft. What y'all need to realize is that while I am undoubtedly a multi-draft vidder, I've never done three different drafts in three days. I need time to step away from my vids and come back fresh to really say, "wow, that really looks like shit. I know how to fix it." I typically give myself 1-2 weeks between drafts. For my Starbuck vid, I think I took a whole month. But there just wasn't time. Yeah, I knew Rachael wouldn't really care if she got the vid late, but I was determined to make my deadline. (It's who I am. *g*) This vid was completely consuming my mind, so much so that I wasn't at all able to register that I'd be seeing James at a convention in a matter of days. I knew I had to have this done before my trip so I could clear my head and break out of tunnel vision. Unfortunately, the vid was giving me a run for my money and making me work damn hard for it.
I did two more drafts on Sunday, at which point I officially had to put it down for a day before I went insane. I'd lost any remaining shred of objectivity about it, as well as my sense of timing and what a basic cut should look like. I couldn't even watch my old vids in the same light, my brain was so fried. I was so hypersensitive to things being a frame off that I couldn't tell when something was on the beat anymore. It was kind of crazy. But fortunately, after a good night's sleep and a full day at work, I was able to come home on Monday (10/29) and make a few final touches in a snap after hearing Courtney's thoughts. (She saw drafts 1 and 5, quite a drastic difference. Heh.) I hadn't set food outside my house for 2.5 days, so a step back into the real world got me out of my haze. All had worked itself out, and I was finally happy with how it looked. I showed Morgan and Courtney the final export (version six!) and made plans to call Rachael Wednesday evening (10/31).
I knew getting her reaction would be easy, but documenting it required some delicate orchestration. More than anything, I wanted a way to record the audio of our phone call. I remembered on the bus home that my Mom had me download Skype so we could talk for free across the continent, and while we ironically have yet to actually do that, it provided the perfect solution to my problem! My desktop computer has the ability to record (in Goldwave) whatever I'm playing on it at the time, so Matt and I did a test-run, and sure enough, I could record the voice of whomever I called. PERFECT. But now I just had to get her to not think anything weird about me calling her on my computer. So I told her I wanted to figure out the software so I could call my Mom on Sunday, which is her birthday, and that worked out nicely since it's something I want to do anyway. But I only had about 30 minutes of prepaid calling time, and I knew it'd take Rachael at least that long to download the vid. Hmm.
I called her on my regular phone and told her I had a dilemma--I now had the link for her birthday vid and didn't want to wait; would she mind getting it early. She was thrilled, of course, so I forwarded her my sendspace download email, having changed the address on it to a fake one so she wouldn't notice it was me who uploaded it. She started downloading and we talked for the half hour or so while it progressed. She asked me who the vidder was, and I went on and on about how I didn't know if she'd recognize the name and I didn't want to risk there being preconceived notions (good or bad) about style and whatever, so I kept it out of the equation. She totally bought it. I even told her I hadn't even watched the vid yet because it was her present, not mine, so she should be first to see it. God, I'm such an asshole. "Well, we can watch it together!" she said. How sweet! (Heh.) She even asked if I knew anything at all about Farscape, so I gave a very surface (and partially inaccurate) rundown of the characters that was COMPLETELY BULLSHIT, which was HILARIOUS to me, though I had to play it sober. Oh my god, I was DYING inside. "Oh, and there's a frog." (Rygel, of course.) Amazing.
Right before the vid was done downloading, she asked if she could call me back in 5 minutes, and that was my perfect window to switch to the computer phone. Otherwise, that would've been kind of awkward. "Hey, before you watch the vid, let's switch phones!" Riiiight. So I said, ooh, send me an IM and I'll call you back on the computer. Perfect! Only...when I did call on the computer, I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. Better than the reverse, since it was recording perfectly, but it gave her no incentive to actually STAY on the phone and talk to dead silence. I was frantically IMing her saying NO, DON'T HANG UP....and, uh, go ahead and start the vid! I'll just fiddle with the wires. IT'S FINE, REALLY. Fortunately she trusts me (HAHA, SO MUCH FOR THAT) and just went along with it, and I stood there pacing in my room with my heart pounding in my chest listening to the song play over my speakers as she said the occasional "...aww!...yes...*gasp*" It was finally happening. After all this, she was finally watching my vid.
Then. THEN. The song ended, and I waited for the moment. THE MOMENT. The end credits. The big reveal. What I'd been waiting for. The moment of truth. And her reaction was PERFECT. It was EXACTLY what I thought it would be, and I was THRILLED. And I couldn't be more pleased that I recorded it, muahaha. So, picture this. It gets to the end and she's freaking out, and I'm trying to call her on my cell phone because dude, I wanted to talk to her about it! Only...I kind of forgot that while I had two phones, she only had the one. So I'm not really processing (in my state of euphoria) that she's not answering the phone because SHE'S ALREADY ON THE PHONE WITH ME. So I'm IMing her saying "PICK UP THE PHONE" and she's saying "I AM STILL ON THE PHONE WITH YOU, DUMBASS" into my speakers, and I'm cracking up realizing how stupid I am.
Seriously you guys, this is the best and funniest fucking shit I have EVER HEARD. I wish you could hear how hard it makes me laugh. Listen to this part of the conversation. No really, do it. It starts up at the end of the vid as the credits play and goes until I figured out the phone thing:
Rachael's reaction (right-click, save as)
Finally I hung up the internet call and we talked for real, and I told her as much as I could in the ten minutes we had before her tv show started.
her: "the vid was perfect. PERFECT. It was exactly what I saw in my head. You totally got the thing between them I wanted to see. How did you DO that! You haven't seen the show!"
me: "Well, obviously I watched all of it."
her: "You did not."
me: "I did, too! QUIZ ME."
That was when she confessed she never saw the last season and a half. Oh my god, I thought I was going to simultaneously die of shock and crack a rib laughing. HILARIOUS. What universe am I living in where I'VE seen more Farscape than Rachael?! But man, it felt so good telling her about the plan, and I'm excited for her to read all the little details here and talk to me about it when I get back from the convention. My heart is so full. She loved the vid. After all my stress and worry, she really loved it. That means the fucking world to me, y'all don't even know.
So, that's the story, folks. I did have some fears that, to anyone but Rachael and myself, the vid wouldn't live up to the story behind it, but really, I'm okay with that. I've made peace with the notion that this vid isn't going to shake up fandom or necessarily hit anyone's radar. That's not what it was designed for. This was a very intense and personal experience for me, and I walked away with a lot more to show for it than just the 2-minute vid you get to see. I have a new show I adore and a new fandom world to explore. I have a new special bond with Morgan and a new feather in the already very bizarre cap that is my friendship with Courtney (heh). I have the experience of vidding a short song--a slow song, at that--with a show I've only watched once. Never before have I vidded in a fandom where my audience knew more than I did about the source. It's intimidating to the point of frightening, truth be told.
But most importantly, I have the experience of giving her this gift. Of course it had to be me who made it. I told her I wouldn't have it any other way. And by some stroke of fortune, she loved it too. At this point, anyone else's approval is just icing on the birthday cake. That said, I hope you all do like it. I'll never forget this experience (and god, hopefully never repeat it), nor will I forget her priceless reaction and the joy of earning it. My apologies to everyone I've been distant from these last two months. I'm sure you can understand now what I've been going through. Thanks for reading all this, and I hope you enjoy what I've created. I had a hell of a ride making it.
I'm doing this in a three-post process: the explanation, the vid, and the spoilery squee. I'm posting the vid tonight, and I'll try to get the squee up before I go out of town. I'll have convention reporty goodness to share when I get back, so I want y'all to have something to munch on in the meantime. I look forward to reading whatever reactions you have upon my return. Thank you in advance for listening to my story.
2007 has somehow become The Year In Which I Do Ginormous Things For My Friends' Birthdays. Most of you will remember boi4eliza's birthday extravaganza in June. While I never specifically set out to do something large for chickwithmonkey as well at the time (because, you know, it's just Rachael, pssh), there was no way I could turn down the perfect idea when it struck me.
Like many of my vidding exploits, the blame for this one rests squarely on the shoulders of heresluck. Back around the time when I added her to my flist, she posted "In the Mirror," a vid that was a continuation of a project she'd started a few months before--she watched a show that her close friends loved without telling them and then made them a vid. All entirely in secret until the big reveal. "Wow," I thought when I read this, "that is exactly the kind of harebrained surprise I would do for someone." I filed the idea away in my pocket for safe-keeping and casually waited for the right opportunity to arise.
Seven months later, it did.
Okay, so, when I first met Rachael in 2001, she was a Scaper. (Once a Scaper, always a Scaper, but it was her Big Thing at the time.) She hadn't converted me to fandom yet (which she gets full credit for, btw) so watching this so-called Farscape held absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. Even after I got into Buffy and opened my mind to genre shows, I still was very much of the "puppets? aliens? heavy prosthetics? sci-fi? uh, no thanks" mentality. Little changed over the next six years. Being won over by BSG helped rid me of the notion that all sci-fi was cheesy and stupid, but I still wasn't looking to branch out and push it. Farscape was her thing, and I was fine with that. She never gave me any crap about it, so it wasn't an issue.
Fast forward to this past September at DragonCon. I did actually try to go to a Claudia Black panel since I'd heard such good things about her. I still didn't give a rip about Farscape (other than many of my friends loved it), but I guessed she, as a person, would be very entertaining and interesting. I never did get to see her, whether in a panel or the autograph room or anywhere else, but hearing such wonderful things about her in my friends' con reports opened my mind to the notion of maybe someday possibly trying Farscape. I finally put it on my list of shows to try, which was a very big step.
Then something serendipitous happened. While showing la_cspan my freshly uploaded DC pics over the phone at the bus stop on 9/6, she happened to mention seeing pics elsewhere of the hotel I stayed at and reiterated what my flist had all been saying--that it looked like Moya ("who's Moya?" "the ship in Farscape, dude.") She'd just finished watching season one and gave me a bunch of reasons why I'd probably like it better than I liked SGA (which she shoved down my throat 2 years ago to a lukewarm but pleasant reception). Considering Courtney is who got me started on BSG, HIMYM, and Lost, I give her recs heavy consideration. I confessed I was seriously considering it, and in that moment, my plan formed. For you see, the same time this was happening, announcement for the Sweet Charity auctions were popping up all over livejournal, and that gave me the perfect cover. I was going to watch Farscape myself in secret and make Rachael a birthday vid under the guise of buying her a SC vidder.
I needed the cover story because I honestly had no idea what kind of vid she wanted, and I didn't want to make her something she might be "eh" about. I can't just magically think of things I've never been exposed to that I know someone will like. I can hear about something and say, "oh my god, that's totally so-and-so," but I can't ever come up with the ideas myself. I'm not that kind of creative. For this, especially since I didn't know what would make for a good Farscape vid in the first place, I needed to know what was in her head. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right. Not right in the "here's a fandom-pleasing vid that you also might happen to like" way, but right in that it was made for her. The best way to do that, of course, was to flat out ask her what she wanted. But just like you can't casually ask your girlfriend what size ring she wears, it's very difficult to offhandedly drag a deep vid desire out of someone. So rather than be suspiciously subtle about it, I came out swinging. Having already downloaded season one and watched the first few episodes to make sure I didn't absolutely loathe it, I called Rachael up and said something like this:
"So, suppose--hypothetically--there was a fandom auction going on right now and someone hypothetically wanted to buy a vidder for someone who may or may not have a birthday approaching in the near future--specifically, say, a Farscape vidder. What do you think this hypothetical recipient might hypothetically want for a vid?"
She was moved by my generosity and fell right into the trap (ha! dumbass.) She promised to send over some pairing and song ideas soon. Excellent. Sure enough, a few days later I had two pairing ideas and a specific song mention. Bastard that I am, I innocently asked if she could pass along an mp3 (for me to send to the vidder, of course!) and even describe how she envisioned the vid (in relation to the lyrics). Because hey, this is Burger King and you can indeed have it your way! God, it was like taking candy from a baby. She laid out for me exactly what she wanted, totally oblivious to the fact I was almost halfway through season one and already taking notes for this vid I was making. Sucker.
(I also like how this has completely obliterated all trust she will EVER HAVE IN ME AGAIN \o/ *wins* )
Season one's a little slow anyway, and I tell ya, the end goal looked pretty far from where I was standing. I wasn't sure I could follow this through, truth be told. But then I heard her song, and it drove home once and for all that I was really going to do this. I absolutely adored her song. It grabbed me in my gut and left me speechless. It made me stop and close my eyes every time it came up in my playlist. Once I learned the lyrics, it brought tears to my eyes. This was a most fortunate development, folks. See, Rachael likes pretty much everything I listen to, but I don't necessarily like everything she listens to. For her to pick a song that I instantly fell in love with just sealed the deal. Oh yeah. I was totally making this vid, and I was going to love every second of it. I hadn't even met the POV character yet, and I didn't care. From that moment on, my first priority became this project.
I downloaded the other three seasons and The Peacekeeper Wars from torrents and went to work. You guys, this is ALL I'VE BEEN DOING with my free time for the last TWO MONTHS. No, REALLY. Have you noticed how I haven't been posting much, yet when I do, I talk about how busy I am and don't really specify why? Or the things I do specify aren't really the kinds of things that would render me so completely distracted? Yeah, I've totally been up to my EYEBALLS in Farscape. I watched the entire series (~92 episodes, timewise--76 hours total) in 40 days (averaging 15 hrs/week). And it has KILLED ME to not say anything! You don't even KNOW! It was SO HARD. I had to catch myself ALL THE TIME. I've had to be so sneaky about this! I'd watch episodes while chatting with a ton of Farscape lovers in a chatroom. I'd be watching when Rachael would call and I'd have to make up what I was doing at the time. I've pretended not to get references or not know who particular actors are. Oh! And get this! Remember how I wasn't able to get Round 2 of strangefandom up and running in time on my own and I asked Rachael to do it for me? I was too busy watching Farscape. If that isn't hilariously ironic, I don't know what is.
And it's a damn good thing I was really enjoying the show because I had to crank it out. I was on a frelling deadline! Her birthday is November 6th, I'm going to a convention Nov 2-5th, I needed at least a week to actually make the vid, and I only started watching the show on September 10th. I didn't have a whole lot of time to mess around! I watched episodes whenever I could. Every night after work. During commercial breaks of live tv shows. Those few days I was home sick. While I cruised Craig's List ads. When I had insomnia. WHENEVER. And there was only so much of my regular life I could put on hold for this. I still had work and band and my current shows and friends to hang with and some semblance of a life, which has been WAY busier than I normally am. You guys, I somehow did this around BOTH 9/15 and 10/15 busy season deadlines, multiple sexploits, debating Deal or No Deal, prepping SSF, major ebay selling, and our biggest band concert to date. I'm telling you, I have lived and breathed this show for the last two months, and holy crap, what a ride it's been. I'm going to make a separate post with spoilers and squee, so please hold all Farscape-specific comments until then :-)
But actually, I should've mentioned long before now that I wasn't alone in this project. I know myself pretty well, and there's no frelling way I could've done something this big and not told someone. But it was very important to me that the biggest Farscape fans I knew didn't know no matter what. The bigger reactions I could get from this, the better, and there were several key surprise reactions I was anticipating most (other than Rachael, of course, pipsqueaky, brynnmck, laurashapiro, and my other VVC friends). I didn't tell Rachael's fiance or any of her friends, nor did I tell most of mine. I did, however, end up telling a few very select people who had specific reason to know.
Meet my co-conspirators:
1) la_cspan - This worked out to be a lovely mutually beneficial relationship because we both now had someone to talk to while we watched. Because really, it's always the most exciting the first time and good shows deserve SQUEE. I ran my idea by her the second I had it (we were on the phone, remember), and she was with me 100%. We've been swapping "OMG DID YOU SEE _______" emails almost on a daily basis for over a month (see next post). The most hilarious part is that even though she started an entire season ahead of me and stayed that way for several weeks, I actually PASSED her in season four and finished the series first! Crazy. And all this time she was posting squee and using icons and making references on lj AND EVEN QUOTING ME ANONYMOUSLY, YOU GUYS. AND I HAD TO KEEP QUIET. asdfas;ldfkjasdl;kfd. God, it was PAINFUL.
2) sweetestdrain - This happened by chance, actually. For the first few weeks, I was very set on Courtney being the only one who knew, but I think at some point I might've mentioned to someone else that I was doing some kind of secret project. (I'M WEAK, I ADMIT IT.) Since Morgan and I occasionally have our "vid secret" chats (like you do), I figured it was probably her. The following conversation transpired on 9/22:
jarrow: so, i know i told one person about my watch-a-show-in-secret plan
jarrow: and i think it was you. was it?
jarrow: i honestly CAN'T REMEMBER
*jarrow wins
sweetestdrain: it was not me!
jarrow: DAMNIT
sweetestdrain: but now i am curious
*sweetestdrain coughs
jarrow: now i have no idea who it was
sweetestdrain: ha!
jarrow: god, i totally suck
sweetestdrain: you could just, uh, ask everyone?
sweetestdrain: "hey, do you know my secret plan?"
jarrow: haha
jarrow: damnit damnit damnit
jarrow: ok well
jarrow: NEVERMIND
sweetestdrain: oh fine
sweetestdrain: be that way :)
*sweetestdrain is very good at keeping secrets, thanks
I pondered for a moment. I'd poked around Sweet Charity a bit looking for vidders I liked that I could bid on in case I ended up not liking the show enough to follow through with vidding it, and I remembered that Morgan didn't have Farscape listed. So, I figured that meant she hadn't watched it (or wasn't fannish about it) and wouldn't flip out over my secret, therefore wouldn't be bursting to tell other people. She was safe.
jarrow: okay, so
jarrow: my secret show
jarrow: is farscape
sweetestdrain: omg!
sweetestdrain: farscape!
sweetestdrain: OMG!
sweetestdrain: do you like? do you LOVE?
CLEARLY, I WAS MISTAKEN.
But this actually ended up working out much to my benefit, I soon realized. Now I not only had a co-watcher, I had a BETA. And since this was a vid project after all, that was probably a good thing to have. I felt like one of those RPG lead characters who goes through the fantasy world and magically meets people in all the roles he needs in the order he needs them. \o/ (Btw, where's my fucking wizard already? God.)
From: John Arrowsmith (jarrow272@hotmail.com)
Sent: Tue 9/25/07 11:11 AM
To: Courtney; Morgan
Just wanted to thank you two again for cheering me in on my secret project for Rachael. I am so excited to send her this vid (with credits at the END) and she'll watch it and love it and then go "WAIT WAIT...WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'VID BY JARROW'"? And it will be awesome in the best way. Oh yes. So of course, NO TALKY DE FARSCAPE on my lj! But know that I am watching and loving (up to 1.17, I think) and already taking notes and I will need LOTS of help, especially if I'm trying to get this done by November 6th (hahahahahaha asd;fjksd;fkasdlfjsd) Okay, by CHRISTMAS. But you know, generally kind of soon.
Btw Courtney, *points* this is my friend Morgan (sweetestdrain on lj). She is good at keeping secrets and is doing beta for me. Yay!
Morgan, *points* this if my friend Courtney (la_cspan) who encourages me to do evil things like Maneater, so she's generally pretty awesome. She's watching Farscape right now for the first time too (just finished s2) so we're squeeing together. And by "together" I mean I'm mostly hearing her vaguely talk about all the awesome that lies ahead of me while I try desperately to catch up and keep failing.
3) sdwolfpup - This is a funny story. Though I only vid with dvd quality now, I hadn't really put thought into how I was going to procure the dvd sets. I think in the back of my mind I always just assumed I'd get them from SDW somehow, but that wasn't my set plan from the beginning or anything. Around the time I was midway through season two (9/28), I casually hopped on Amazon.com to see how much they were. You know, just for kicks. I was enjoying the show and figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and buy the series for myself. You guys, these dvds run about $85 per season. Um. Okay, I like Farscape? But not THAT much. I don't pay that kind of money for any show unless the box set vibrates or something. This was the point at which I decided for sure to hit up SDW. Conveniently enough, mlyn and I were going to her house for some Guitar Hero that very weekend. Perrrrfect.
Within ten minutes of arriving, I went ahead and asked before I forgot. (Since I only see her about once a month, this was my only chance!) But I wanted to keep the secret, so I devised a clever ruse. "Hey, so, my glamourously unemployed roommate is watching a bunch of tv shows before school starts back up again, and he really wants to try Farscape, so I told him I'd see if I could borrow your dvds for a week or so." Totally failsafe plan!
Her reply: [pleasantly!] "Oh. No."
My recovery: "..." [gulp] "Okay, no problem! Thanks anyway!" [BRAIN EXPLODES]
See, it turns out that greensilver had bought SDW in the Sweet Charity auction and requested a Farscape vid. [headdesks] (Note to self: kill her later.) So, SDW needed to keep her dvds onhand for vidding purposes. She felt bad about it, though! So I was kind of internally hemorrhaging, as my only plan had now failed miserably and I was running short of time and options. There was only one thing left to do. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
"Can I talk to you for a second? We need to have a conversation." (I was drinking, like ya do, so it all came out WAY more overdramatic than I meant it to. I apologized later, hee.)
We went into the other room, and I told her the truth in an excited whisper. Looking back on it, I don't know why I went through the theatrics of sneaking off to talk about it all cloak and dagger (because obviously, mlyn knowing my scheme would be APOCALYPTIC, hee), but hey, it's more fun that way. SDW was very willing to help and asked if I could just borrow the seasons individually or in a few weeks after she was done with them. No problem. We arranged for her to bring them to my band concert, squeed a bit over season 2 goodness, and went back downstairs. Dvd dealer = secured. \o/
4) borjy - Well, since Matt lives on the other side of my wall and can hear me breathe, it'd be kind of impossible to keep this from him. Also, I tell him everything anyway. He'd seen some Farscape before, surprisingly, so I got to have some immediate squeeconversation about awesome things as I watched them.
5) drummerboy420 - My non-fannishly inclined coworker buddy who eats lunch with me. One day I really needed to vent. *g*
And that's it. No, really.
And believe me, there has been some hilarity keeping this from the rest of my friends. For instance!
At the fandom concert, brynnmck and mlyn and I were talking about my dirty sexploits, and Brynn said offhandedly, "yeah, John can't keep secrets." I swear, I ALMOST SAID, "hey, what about Farscape!" NOT YET, JOHN. GOD. I caught myself, but man! That one was close. I'd just watched the first half of The Peacekeeper Wars the night before (during my massage-induced insomnia), so I was silently cracking UP and trying to just nod and laugh and let her comment roll right on by. Oh, if only she'd known :-D (You were WRONG, HOAR!)
And THEN. Literally THE DAY BEFORE I WAS GIVING RACHAEL THE VID, she and I were gmail-chatting about conventions, la la la, and she brought up the fact that there are no more Farscape conventions except Creation's, which suck. And of course I knew all about Creation's Farscape convention that coming weekend, because it was in fact at the SAME TIME AND CITY as the Firefly convention James and I were going to, and were I not already conventionally occupied, I would have been there in a HEARTBEAT. Yeah, so I started to TELL HER THAT. Fortunately, I stopped myself before sending the message, but I did start typing it, and zomg. ONE MORE DAY, JOHN. ONE MORE DAY. BE STRONG. DON'T FRELL IT UP NOW.
So, yeah. Even though I cranked through the series as quickly as I could, I did get stalled a bit near the end with the band concert and getting sick. I didn't finish until 10/20, leaving me a whopping 11 days to rip the entire series, make clips, and build my vid before leaving for LA. Yikes o.O
SDW came through full force, lending me all the dvd sets in one fell swoop on 10/19 before going out of town for a week. The timing was perfect for both of us, and I couldn't be more grateful to her. But vidding Farscape presented me with an interesting tech problem: I didn't have room for it. Technically, yes, I could have made room on my hard drive, but I didn't want to. Ripping a 45-minute episode takes up about 1.7 GB, give or take. Farscape, then, would roughly be ~150 GB. My vidding external hard drive has a 500GB capacity but was already sitting at 400GB full. Each episode takes 10-15 minutes total to rip and convert, so a full season can take up to five hours. Since it takes so damn long, and since I don't know for sure that I won't vid shows again, I don't want to delete any of my past vob source files if I don't have to. (I currently have BSG, W&G, HP, and Closer.) That left me with only one option: I had to buy another hard drive.
(THE THINGS I DO FOR VIDDING. AND RACHAEL. GEEZ.)
This was actually an inevitability, just a matter of when. I decided to go big and got a whopping 1TB (1,000GB) drive--enough to house Farscape, everything I already had, and everything I have yet to vid in the next year with room to spare. I got it on sale from Best Buy's website and even paid for expedited shipping to get it here the same day SDW was giving me the dvds, heh. Because I was moving 400GB of source from my old drive to this one, it took absolutely forever to get things formatted and transferred and defragged and whatnot; about 20 hours of continuous running time, all told. It was quite a balancing act getting the hard drives situated while trying to simultaneously rip the dvds. I actually spent that entire weekend (10/20-21) ripping all 88 episodes while rewatching the entire show on fast-forward looking for clips. Yeah, you read that right. FULL. REWATCH. ONE. DAY. See, I'd made notes during my original viewing of all the obviously shippy stuff I needed, but filler? I had none. Crap. So, I had to. I was running out of time. The rewatch actually wasn't at all as volumous as it sounds, considering I got to skip anything that didn't take place on Moya and scrub through at either 2x or 4x. My brain was pretty fried by Sunday night, but it was a monumental leap of progress, so it was worth it. I went from having 20 clips to over 100, and I felt ready enough to dig in.
Between what Rachael had given me and what I'd filled in on my own, I saw the vid fairly clearly in my head from the start, but there was one piece that could go either way--the end. It could be a happy vid with closure or go way emo and remain open. I wasn't about to risk blowing the whole thing by guessing (incorrectly), so I decided to lie my ass off to Rachael yet again (anyone keeping a tally?) to find out. I emailed her on Monday (10/22) and pretended the mystery vidder had asked me how she wanted it to end. I used >> to offset the fake copied paragraph and everything. It was awesome. And she bought it, of course, and told me what she wanted (which, of course, wasn't what I would've gone with on my own). And I didn't know it then, but she saved me hours of grief and mental turmoil had I been forced to make that decision down the line in the editing process. Looking back on it now, getting her input on this one point was one of the best decisions I made in this whole process.
So, there I was. I had my clips, my song, my ending, and nine days left. After six very long weeks of prep, it was finally, finally time to actually start the frelling vid.
And then, disaster struck.
After I'd gotten everything ripped and rewatched and organized and defragged and was READY (Tuesday night, 10/23), I gave my computer a night off after working so hard all weekend. I came home from work Wednesday and booted-up to find...my laptop was now REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE THE NEW HARD DRIVE. The drive with 500GB of ripped vid source and every clip I'd ever used in a vid. The drive I'd just spent 3 days reformatting to NTFS and defragging and filling with files that I had worked with multiple times the night before. The drive that now, apparently, was completely foreign to my laptop. I turned things on and off. I checked my wires. I rebooted my computer. I reinstalled the software. Nothing was working. I kept getting the same message, that a USB device was hooked up but wasn't installed properly and couldn't be recognized. I was at a near PANIC. Seriously. Heart-pounding, breathing fast, freaking the fuck OUT and just trying to stay calm. There had to be a rational explanation for this. There HAD to be. It was a BRAND NEW DRIVE that was VERY MUCH working less than 24 hours before. I seriously did NOT HAVE TIME for this shit. The vid had to be done in NINE DAYS, you guys. The vid I had not yet STARTED. But I kept cool and worked the problem.
I'm no techie, but it had to either be the drive itself or my laptop, so therefore I guessed it was probably either a problem with the reformat I did or a faulty driver on my computer. But because I'd been playing files I'd put on the drive with no problem, I figured it was safe to say I reformatted the drive correctly. Must be a driver. I hoped. That seemed like an easy enough fix. So I hopped onto Iomega's website and dug into their help section to find:
"Windows XP provides all of the drivers needed to install your Iomega Hard Drive. Additional drivers are not needed and, therefore, are not available for download from the Iomega Web site."
[HEADDESK]
GREAT. THANKS A LOT, GUYS.
So I immediately dove into their "contact us" section to find my options were: 1) a phone call with a $30 charge, 2) email a tech guy and probably never hear back, 3) post on a forum nobody reads, or...OOH! 4) free, live one-on-one chat with a tech guy for folks under warranty! [!!!!] Chat ran until 8 pm Mountain time (weird) and it was...6:47 pm (pacific).
ASDLK;FASDKLFJASL;DFJSA
[OPENS CHAT, LOADS WINDOW, HURRY HURRY OMG HURRY]
I was second in the queue, so I sat there waiting and DYING INSIDE, praying my internet held out before it hit 7 o'clock. Then, like a beaming ray of sunshine, I see--Jeffery: Hi, how can I help you?
JEFFERY. OH, JEFFERY. GOLDEN MESSIAH OF TECH SUPPORT. SAVE MY HARD DRIVE'S IMMORTAL SOUL. (IN NINE MINUTES, PLZ.)
I quickly explained what was happening, and he said he'd seen it before (phew!) He gave me a very specific chain of actions to take (unplug this, turn this off, reboot this, turn this on, plug this in, etc) and said that should work. "If it doesn't, can I come back into chat?" Of course, he says! "Uh, well, I see you close in seven minutes, so...." Oh yeah, he says. He lost track of time. Crap. Well. We poked around in my device manager quickly just in case there was another source of the problem, but found nothing. He said he'd email me some ideas to try, but I never heard a thing. So, at this point I had pretty much left my vid's fate to a well-structured reboot, which I felt NOT SO CONFIDENT about, truth be told. I'd already tried a reboot, just this time I was supposed to do it with the drive unplugged.
It worked like a charm. I owe Jeffery cookies. (He said chocolate chip are his favorite; I asked.)
So after a near nervous breakdown, I was back in business. I gave Courtney a quick call to tell her my horror story, then decided to hunker down and get something productive done (now that I'd lost almost 3 precious hours of vidding time to crisis management). I'd been listening to the vidsong like a maniac for weeks, singing it to myself in the shower and around the house and all that, so opening Ulead and laying down the opening clip was an incredible experience. When I pushed play and finally saw in front of me what I'd seen in my head all this time, chills rushed through my whole body and my eyes kind of rolled back a little. I actually had to put my computer down for a minute and take deep breaths. It was the most physical reaction I've ever gotten from [my own] vidding. It was a vidding orgasm. That's the only way I can describe it. I emailed Courtney and Morgan in frantic all-caps, unable to calm down with how happy and excited I was to finally be getting there. I laid down the introduction and end credits and called it a night.
I spent Thursday night (10/25) putting together a first draft. It was messy, sure, but damnit, I filled that entire timeline in a night. (To be fair, it's only a 2-minute song, but it still felt really good to be that productive.) I sent it to Morgan and Courtney for thoughts and spent all day at work Friday making notes, typing up meta thoughts on the concept, and storyboarding ideas for when I got home. Friday night was spent completely ripping up what I'd done Thursday and revisioning the vid in the second draft. I spent all day Saturday discussing it with Morgan over top sekrit new AIM screennames and piecing together a partially modified third draft. What y'all need to realize is that while I am undoubtedly a multi-draft vidder, I've never done three different drafts in three days. I need time to step away from my vids and come back fresh to really say, "wow, that really looks like shit. I know how to fix it." I typically give myself 1-2 weeks between drafts. For my Starbuck vid, I think I took a whole month. But there just wasn't time. Yeah, I knew Rachael wouldn't really care if she got the vid late, but I was determined to make my deadline. (It's who I am. *g*) This vid was completely consuming my mind, so much so that I wasn't at all able to register that I'd be seeing James at a convention in a matter of days. I knew I had to have this done before my trip so I could clear my head and break out of tunnel vision. Unfortunately, the vid was giving me a run for my money and making me work damn hard for it.
I did two more drafts on Sunday, at which point I officially had to put it down for a day before I went insane. I'd lost any remaining shred of objectivity about it, as well as my sense of timing and what a basic cut should look like. I couldn't even watch my old vids in the same light, my brain was so fried. I was so hypersensitive to things being a frame off that I couldn't tell when something was on the beat anymore. It was kind of crazy. But fortunately, after a good night's sleep and a full day at work, I was able to come home on Monday (10/29) and make a few final touches in a snap after hearing Courtney's thoughts. (She saw drafts 1 and 5, quite a drastic difference. Heh.) I hadn't set food outside my house for 2.5 days, so a step back into the real world got me out of my haze. All had worked itself out, and I was finally happy with how it looked. I showed Morgan and Courtney the final export (version six!) and made plans to call Rachael Wednesday evening (10/31).
I knew getting her reaction would be easy, but documenting it required some delicate orchestration. More than anything, I wanted a way to record the audio of our phone call. I remembered on the bus home that my Mom had me download Skype so we could talk for free across the continent, and while we ironically have yet to actually do that, it provided the perfect solution to my problem! My desktop computer has the ability to record (in Goldwave) whatever I'm playing on it at the time, so Matt and I did a test-run, and sure enough, I could record the voice of whomever I called. PERFECT. But now I just had to get her to not think anything weird about me calling her on my computer. So I told her I wanted to figure out the software so I could call my Mom on Sunday, which is her birthday, and that worked out nicely since it's something I want to do anyway. But I only had about 30 minutes of prepaid calling time, and I knew it'd take Rachael at least that long to download the vid. Hmm.
I called her on my regular phone and told her I had a dilemma--I now had the link for her birthday vid and didn't want to wait; would she mind getting it early. She was thrilled, of course, so I forwarded her my sendspace download email, having changed the address on it to a fake one so she wouldn't notice it was me who uploaded it. She started downloading and we talked for the half hour or so while it progressed. She asked me who the vidder was, and I went on and on about how I didn't know if she'd recognize the name and I didn't want to risk there being preconceived notions (good or bad) about style and whatever, so I kept it out of the equation. She totally bought it. I even told her I hadn't even watched the vid yet because it was her present, not mine, so she should be first to see it. God, I'm such an asshole. "Well, we can watch it together!" she said. How sweet! (Heh.) She even asked if I knew anything at all about Farscape, so I gave a very surface (and partially inaccurate) rundown of the characters that was COMPLETELY BULLSHIT, which was HILARIOUS to me, though I had to play it sober. Oh my god, I was DYING inside. "Oh, and there's a frog." (Rygel, of course.) Amazing.
Right before the vid was done downloading, she asked if she could call me back in 5 minutes, and that was my perfect window to switch to the computer phone. Otherwise, that would've been kind of awkward. "Hey, before you watch the vid, let's switch phones!" Riiiight. So I said, ooh, send me an IM and I'll call you back on the computer. Perfect! Only...when I did call on the computer, I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. Better than the reverse, since it was recording perfectly, but it gave her no incentive to actually STAY on the phone and talk to dead silence. I was frantically IMing her saying NO, DON'T HANG UP....and, uh, go ahead and start the vid! I'll just fiddle with the wires. IT'S FINE, REALLY. Fortunately she trusts me (HAHA, SO MUCH FOR THAT) and just went along with it, and I stood there pacing in my room with my heart pounding in my chest listening to the song play over my speakers as she said the occasional "...aww!...yes...*gasp*" It was finally happening. After all this, she was finally watching my vid.
Then. THEN. The song ended, and I waited for the moment. THE MOMENT. The end credits. The big reveal. What I'd been waiting for. The moment of truth. And her reaction was PERFECT. It was EXACTLY what I thought it would be, and I was THRILLED. And I couldn't be more pleased that I recorded it, muahaha. So, picture this. It gets to the end and she's freaking out, and I'm trying to call her on my cell phone because dude, I wanted to talk to her about it! Only...I kind of forgot that while I had two phones, she only had the one. So I'm not really processing (in my state of euphoria) that she's not answering the phone because SHE'S ALREADY ON THE PHONE WITH ME. So I'm IMing her saying "PICK UP THE PHONE" and she's saying "I AM STILL ON THE PHONE WITH YOU, DUMBASS" into my speakers, and I'm cracking up realizing how stupid I am.
Seriously you guys, this is the best and funniest fucking shit I have EVER HEARD. I wish you could hear how hard it makes me laugh. Listen to this part of the conversation. No really, do it. It starts up at the end of the vid as the credits play and goes until I figured out the phone thing:
Rachael's reaction (right-click, save as)
Finally I hung up the internet call and we talked for real, and I told her as much as I could in the ten minutes we had before her tv show started.
her: "the vid was perfect. PERFECT. It was exactly what I saw in my head. You totally got the thing between them I wanted to see. How did you DO that! You haven't seen the show!"
me: "Well, obviously I watched all of it."
her: "You did not."
me: "I did, too! QUIZ ME."
That was when she confessed she never saw the last season and a half. Oh my god, I thought I was going to simultaneously die of shock and crack a rib laughing. HILARIOUS. What universe am I living in where I'VE seen more Farscape than Rachael?! But man, it felt so good telling her about the plan, and I'm excited for her to read all the little details here and talk to me about it when I get back from the convention. My heart is so full. She loved the vid. After all my stress and worry, she really loved it. That means the fucking world to me, y'all don't even know.
So, that's the story, folks. I did have some fears that, to anyone but Rachael and myself, the vid wouldn't live up to the story behind it, but really, I'm okay with that. I've made peace with the notion that this vid isn't going to shake up fandom or necessarily hit anyone's radar. That's not what it was designed for. This was a very intense and personal experience for me, and I walked away with a lot more to show for it than just the 2-minute vid you get to see. I have a new show I adore and a new fandom world to explore. I have a new special bond with Morgan and a new feather in the already very bizarre cap that is my friendship with Courtney (heh). I have the experience of vidding a short song--a slow song, at that--with a show I've only watched once. Never before have I vidded in a fandom where my audience knew more than I did about the source. It's intimidating to the point of frightening, truth be told.
But most importantly, I have the experience of giving her this gift. Of course it had to be me who made it. I told her I wouldn't have it any other way. And by some stroke of fortune, she loved it too. At this point, anyone else's approval is just icing on the birthday cake. That said, I hope you all do like it. I'll never forget this experience (and god, hopefully never repeat it), nor will I forget her priceless reaction and the joy of earning it. My apologies to everyone I've been distant from these last two months. I'm sure you can understand now what I've been going through. Thanks for reading all this, and I hope you enjoy what I've created. I had a hell of a ride making it.
I'm doing this in a three-post process: the explanation, the vid, and the spoilery squee. I'm posting the vid tonight, and I'll try to get the squee up before I go out of town. I'll have convention reporty goodness to share when I get back, so I want y'all to have something to munch on in the meantime. I look forward to reading whatever reactions you have upon my return. Thank you in advance for listening to my story.