FFMVAs, Terminator 3, Carnivàle and Smallville
The second annual FFMVA winners (round 1 - board winners) announced today. The link to Fan Forum is here, but there's no overall announcement thread for the awards.
All television shows that have a board on FF are open to video submissions. A vidder can enter up to 4 vids per show, and one vid is chosen by the moderators of each board, to represent that board in the next round of the awards, which is more like a standard vid awards with various "vidding" categories such as editing, effects, etc.
I find the FFMVAs a very interesting phenomenon, in which one could be a shameless multi-fandom whore, which is why I plan to go back to it every year. Having the board moderators judge the first round is perhaps the most interesting aspect, because as buffyann was saying earlier, sometimes the mods are quite experienced in terms of vidding, while others come at it from a layperson's angle. Either way, it's a great way to observe how "forum fandom culture" and "vidding culture" intersect.
Got 4 out of 6, which incidentally is the same ratio as last year.
- Angel - Blindfold - yes
- Gilmore Girls - Maybe Tomorrow - no
- Queer as Folk - Come Undone - no
- Smallville - Change and Freestyler - yes (Change)
- Ugly Betty - Steady as She Goes - yes
- Young Americans - Girls and Boys - yes (there was only that one entry :D )
Unlike last year, however, the slash vids seem to be more accepted this year. (Last year's two that didn't make it were respectively Strangest Land for House and My Way for The OC, while none of the four winning vids were slash.) QAF notwithstanding (the gay is canon anyway), both the Ugly Betty and Smallville vids are gay-themed. Albeit the former is not so much "gay" as it is "camp", and the latter can arguably not be seen as slash at all. So perhaps there's not as much progress as I thought.
The second round is more like a regular vidding awards. The judges will have vidding backgrounds and try to judge impartially across fandoms. Of course, that's always been an interesting phenomenon in itself, because one would think that particular source materials really give vidders of certain shows a lot more leverage over vidders of other shows. Not to mention the degree that knowledge of context will play into judgment.
All of the above is why I LOVE the FFMVAs. It really demonstrates exactly how subjective awards processes can get. And I'm not just talking about vidding awards or forums here, either. I really do believe it's a microcosm of much larger systems - in fandom, in the entertainment industry, in the business world... Sometimes I think we get lulled into a sense of security, thinking that merit is merit; well, merit ain't exactly objective. You can get consensus within a group of people, but that's about the best you can do, regardless of the situation.
Watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines with my friend today, on account of dirty!dazed!Nick Stahl. (Check up pictures of him on IMDB and you'll quickly realise that he's at his hottest when he's playing a dirty!dazed!carnie.)
What we realised? T3 is Carnivàle 70 years in the future. I defy you to tell me differently! Nick Stahl is still dirty and dazed and wearing the same clothes, and it ends with a big-arse nuclear war. If you squint hard enough, Claire Danes and Clea Duvall have pretty much the same hair. And in the place of circus freaks you now have robots. And Arnie. Pretty damn elegant, really.
Second revelation: one of the nuclear launch shots toward the end of T3 is the same shot as the one used in season 4 of Smallville, where Lex has his "worst fear" hallucination. Note: not just two-shots-that-are-similar, but the exact same shot.
Conclusion: T3 is awesome. :D