festivids reveal (finally!): Cosmic Love
Title: Cosmic Love
Description: Fandom = Cosmic Love
Fandoms/Source: Florence and the Machine music videos [specifically Cosmic Love; Rabbit Heart; Drumming Song; No Light, No Light; Shake it Out; What the Water Gave Me], Multifandom Vidding (all Cosmic Love vids, see notes below for links)
Music: Cosmic Love Seven Lions Remix
Original unsigned video on DW/Vimeo
Signed video on YouTube:
Download Video as MP4
An enormous thank you to rhiannonhero for her as always invaluable insight as I edited this vid. And to Mithborien for the inspiring prompt. While I may have strayed from the prompt somewhat (and for that I apologize!), it inspired this vid entirely, and so I hope the vid captures the spirit at least!
Where to begin with this vid? Let's see. When I first singled out Mithborien's prompt, this wasn't the final vid I envisioned at all. I was excited to work with Florence and the Machine's music videos and was pretty sure I'd end up combining them with concert footage as the prompt suggested, because I love doing that sort of thing, and haven't really gone for it since my Sufjan/St. Vincent vid. But then I started thinking about the reasoning behind the prompt, the nugget of meta there. Mithborien had said something about how Florence and the Machine has inspired so many different vidders and so many of us have encountered her music first through vids. That's where I discovered her first, through Affably Evil's Cosmic Love Supernatural vid-- which is a vid that continues to just get to me like a punch in the gut every time. But in the last several years I've seen so many different vids set to Florence and the Machine, and I knew that I'd seen more than a handful of Cosmic Love vids specifically making the rounds, and so I set out to see what was out there.
That was perhaps my favorite part of the process--I discovered so many wonderful Cosmic Love vids once I went looking--with markedly different feel and purpose, and over such a wide range of sources. I was beyond thrilled to discover a Downton Abbey Cosmic Love vid and a Labyrinth Cosmic Love vid, both unexpected representatives of my personal fandom past and present. I should mention that I also discovered and used some beautiful multifandom Cosmic Love vids, which in themselves already spoke to the way the sentiments of Cosmic Love cross fandoms and source texts.
So once the idea came to me to actually use only all Cosmic Love vids, interspersed with Florence and the Machine, the question became what would be the logic for linking them together? I established one parameter to begin with--I wanted to respect the vids I was drawing from, not alter them too much, and I wanted to be clear from the outset that I was excerpting other vidders' work. I toyed with the idea of having an opening that actually screencapped YouTube and all these vids and their tremendous amounts of hits/comments etc., but I decided against it because a) that seemed a little heavy handed and b) it isn't all about popularity, especially for festivids with its small fandom focus. I mean, a Now Voyager Cosmic Love vid is not going to get the same amount of hits as a Twilight Cosmic Love vid, but how awesome that they both exist and both do their own thing in their own way?
But what this meant then was, in addition to leaving on watermarks etc., I wanted to whenever possible line up the exact moment of music and visual used in each original vid, which made the whole process a bit like an interesting jigsaw puzzle/logic game. Somehow I had to create some sort of narrative logic by selection while keeping original audio and video aligned. I think this would have been impossible/too confining except for two things: the Florence and the Machine footage allowed me to weave the fanvid excerpts into into the larger narrative of Florence as fangirl, and I'd decided to use the Seven Lions remix of Cosmic Love, which meant that there were whole sections of music that weren't in the original vids and thus I had more room to play in my own style.
[Incidentally, choosing the remix was a fun process; there's now an extended section of my soundcloud favorites that's full of Cosmic Love remix after Cosmic Love remix; you'd think it would get old but I still enjoy listening to it.]
Finally, the meta. It came so organically. I set out to make a vid that showed how much Florence resonates with fans in part because her preoccupations are fannish preoccupations/her videos already look like the kinds of images we love to work with, but what I found as I edited was that those shared preoccupations were actually at the heart of what fandom is about--fascination, awe, power, being transfixed, being swept away, and orchestrating collective celebration. She so neatly fills the role of fan individual and fan collective, and her videos combined with the Cosmic Love fanvids came together so easily to create a narrative of the journey of fannish love and frustration, of being swept up and transfixed and reveling in the ride of it.
My favorite moment of the vid, now that all is send and done, is the moment Castiel hits Florence and she (and River) fall through the stained glass; I like to think of us as Castiel and Florence and in that moment, the ones hitting and falling, and then she's caught by the collective (and that's us as well!) Indeed as I vidded and found myself searching for redheaded or brunette characters (Hermione, Anna, Sarah) I found I was playing with a blurring between Florence as fangirl stand in and as character stand in, but then that's fitting given our blurred identification with characters. So that's why in the end I see a direct line between me/us/ the viewers/Florence, and not only Hermione and Sarah but Cas and Dean etc., between subject and object of fan love.
So, that was some rambling meta. I hope that the video speaks for itself and I'm happy if viewers get all sorts of things from it, especially since I see myself in this vid as a sort of curator, maybe, with the creative production so much the vision of the many vidders whose work I drew from. So I'll close with a big thank you to all the vidders whose work was both the inspiration and the raw material (and the hearts and guts) of this vid.
A huge part of the joy and fun of making this vid was watching all of these wonderful vids. Here they all are, so that you can do the same!
cosmic love;; R&H by wickedcrickets
Cosmic Love Jareth/Sarah by orringtonrose
Cosmic Love (Team Free Will versus the Agents of Fate) by Affably Evil
cosmic love | damon + elena by catouroyx
Cosmic Love - Multifandom by PeipMiau04
Sherlock + John - ♪ 'Cosmic Love' by Amy Kinley
Cosmic Love (Kirk/Spock) by ImaginarySanity
Downton Abbey: Cosmic Love by vickyp94
Twilight || Cosmic Love by Weazerrr
brian & justin | cosmic love by moustdash
[B]tvs & Ats // Cosmic Love by ButtnJamz323
Now, Voyager | Cosmic Love by theanglophile
Doctor Who ~ Amy/Rory - Cosmic Love by KaraRoseVids
Cosmic Love - River/Eleven by shadow243ali
Multifandom ♥ Cosmic Love by fizcus
the stars, the moon | danaerys & drogo by IdtProductions2
Lucrezia & Cesare (Cosmic Love) by ceeAndolino
Henry/Anne (The Tudors) - Cosmic Love by DayJolie80
Harry Potter // Cosmic Love by SmotheredFlame16
This entry was originally posted at http://lola.dreamwidth.org/97858.html. Comments welcome here or there.
Description: Fandom = Cosmic Love
Fandoms/Source: Florence and the Machine music videos [specifically Cosmic Love; Rabbit Heart; Drumming Song; No Light, No Light; Shake it Out; What the Water Gave Me], Multifandom Vidding (all Cosmic Love vids, see notes below for links)
Music: Cosmic Love Seven Lions Remix
Original unsigned video on DW/Vimeo
Signed video on YouTube:
Click to viewDownload Video as MP4
An enormous thank you to rhiannonhero for her as always invaluable insight as I edited this vid. And to Mithborien for the inspiring prompt. While I may have strayed from the prompt somewhat (and for that I apologize!), it inspired this vid entirely, and so I hope the vid captures the spirit at least!
Where to begin with this vid? Let's see. When I first singled out Mithborien's prompt, this wasn't the final vid I envisioned at all. I was excited to work with Florence and the Machine's music videos and was pretty sure I'd end up combining them with concert footage as the prompt suggested, because I love doing that sort of thing, and haven't really gone for it since my Sufjan/St. Vincent vid. But then I started thinking about the reasoning behind the prompt, the nugget of meta there. Mithborien had said something about how Florence and the Machine has inspired so many different vidders and so many of us have encountered her music first through vids. That's where I discovered her first, through Affably Evil's Cosmic Love Supernatural vid-- which is a vid that continues to just get to me like a punch in the gut every time. But in the last several years I've seen so many different vids set to Florence and the Machine, and I knew that I'd seen more than a handful of Cosmic Love vids specifically making the rounds, and so I set out to see what was out there.
That was perhaps my favorite part of the process--I discovered so many wonderful Cosmic Love vids once I went looking--with markedly different feel and purpose, and over such a wide range of sources. I was beyond thrilled to discover a Downton Abbey Cosmic Love vid and a Labyrinth Cosmic Love vid, both unexpected representatives of my personal fandom past and present. I should mention that I also discovered and used some beautiful multifandom Cosmic Love vids, which in themselves already spoke to the way the sentiments of Cosmic Love cross fandoms and source texts.
So once the idea came to me to actually use only all Cosmic Love vids, interspersed with Florence and the Machine, the question became what would be the logic for linking them together? I established one parameter to begin with--I wanted to respect the vids I was drawing from, not alter them too much, and I wanted to be clear from the outset that I was excerpting other vidders' work. I toyed with the idea of having an opening that actually screencapped YouTube and all these vids and their tremendous amounts of hits/comments etc., but I decided against it because a) that seemed a little heavy handed and b) it isn't all about popularity, especially for festivids with its small fandom focus. I mean, a Now Voyager Cosmic Love vid is not going to get the same amount of hits as a Twilight Cosmic Love vid, but how awesome that they both exist and both do their own thing in their own way?
But what this meant then was, in addition to leaving on watermarks etc., I wanted to whenever possible line up the exact moment of music and visual used in each original vid, which made the whole process a bit like an interesting jigsaw puzzle/logic game. Somehow I had to create some sort of narrative logic by selection while keeping original audio and video aligned. I think this would have been impossible/too confining except for two things: the Florence and the Machine footage allowed me to weave the fanvid excerpts into into the larger narrative of Florence as fangirl, and I'd decided to use the Seven Lions remix of Cosmic Love, which meant that there were whole sections of music that weren't in the original vids and thus I had more room to play in my own style.
[Incidentally, choosing the remix was a fun process; there's now an extended section of my soundcloud favorites that's full of Cosmic Love remix after Cosmic Love remix; you'd think it would get old but I still enjoy listening to it.]
Finally, the meta. It came so organically. I set out to make a vid that showed how much Florence resonates with fans in part because her preoccupations are fannish preoccupations/her videos already look like the kinds of images we love to work with, but what I found as I edited was that those shared preoccupations were actually at the heart of what fandom is about--fascination, awe, power, being transfixed, being swept away, and orchestrating collective celebration. She so neatly fills the role of fan individual and fan collective, and her videos combined with the Cosmic Love fanvids came together so easily to create a narrative of the journey of fannish love and frustration, of being swept up and transfixed and reveling in the ride of it.
My favorite moment of the vid, now that all is send and done, is the moment Castiel hits Florence and she (and River) fall through the stained glass; I like to think of us as Castiel and Florence and in that moment, the ones hitting and falling, and then she's caught by the collective (and that's us as well!) Indeed as I vidded and found myself searching for redheaded or brunette characters (Hermione, Anna, Sarah) I found I was playing with a blurring between Florence as fangirl stand in and as character stand in, but then that's fitting given our blurred identification with characters. So that's why in the end I see a direct line between me/us/ the viewers/Florence, and not only Hermione and Sarah but Cas and Dean etc., between subject and object of fan love.
So, that was some rambling meta. I hope that the video speaks for itself and I'm happy if viewers get all sorts of things from it, especially since I see myself in this vid as a sort of curator, maybe, with the creative production so much the vision of the many vidders whose work I drew from. So I'll close with a big thank you to all the vidders whose work was both the inspiration and the raw material (and the hearts and guts) of this vid.
A huge part of the joy and fun of making this vid was watching all of these wonderful vids. Here they all are, so that you can do the same!
cosmic love;; R&H by wickedcrickets
Cosmic Love Jareth/Sarah by orringtonrose
Cosmic Love (Team Free Will versus the Agents of Fate) by Affably Evil
cosmic love | damon + elena by catouroyx
Cosmic Love - Multifandom by PeipMiau04
Sherlock + John - ♪ 'Cosmic Love' by Amy Kinley
Cosmic Love (Kirk/Spock) by ImaginarySanity
Downton Abbey: Cosmic Love by vickyp94
Twilight || Cosmic Love by Weazerrr
brian & justin | cosmic love by moustdash
[B]tvs & Ats // Cosmic Love by ButtnJamz323
Now, Voyager | Cosmic Love by theanglophile
Doctor Who ~ Amy/Rory - Cosmic Love by KaraRoseVids
Cosmic Love - River/Eleven by shadow243ali
Multifandom ♥ Cosmic Love by fizcus
the stars, the moon | danaerys & drogo by IdtProductions2
Lucrezia & Cesare (Cosmic Love) by ceeAndolino
Henry/Anne (The Tudors) - Cosmic Love by DayJolie80
Harry Potter // Cosmic Love by SmotheredFlame16
This entry was originally posted at http://lola.dreamwidth.org/97858.html. Comments welcome here or there.