Dear Festividder
Hello! A hearty welcome to the lovely person with excellent taste who’s thinking of making me a vid. (Welcome also to the excited people reading every single Dear FV letter. *waves*)
This year I’m going to keep this bit quite short, but I’ve rambled on terribly about my likes and dislikes in previous years so if you’re really curious or worried about something you can take a look at the ‘Dear Festividder’ tag on this journal.
Otherwise, believe me when I say anything goes. :) I love all these sources, so music choice, style, subject - whatever you want to vid is more than fine with me! There’s nothing in any of these sources I’d rather you avoided. Prompts are just suggestions, if you have a different idea - even if it’s completely unrelated to anything I’ve said in the request - then go for it.
Surprise me or give me exactly what I asked for, either way I’m going to be THRILLED. Vids! \o/
The bits in italic are the actual requests, such as they are, and the rest is mainly me rambling on about why I love these sources to be honest. :p Oh, and treats are very welcome!
The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot
80s Doctors shenanigans
I adored this to pieces, definitely my favourite part of all the 50th anniversary stuff (if not my favourite Who-related thing ever). The sort of love and joy and respect for the show and the fans that ran through it while still being completely daft and gently taking the piss was lovely. No idea how you'd vid it or even what kind of vid I'd like to see - there's obviously not huge amounts of footage to work with - so you have total free reign. I'd love something focused on the central three and their epic adventure (hee), but anyone else you want to include is fine with me, there's no part of this I don't love!
Foyle’s War
SAM <3
Sam is my favourite thing about Foyle’s War - I just love her a ridiculous amount - but a very close second is Sam and Foyle’s lovely, touching relationship, so something focusing on either their friendship or Sam alone, maybe how she grew and developed over the years would be particularly lovely. I’m probably fairly alone in genuinely really liking the post-war episodes - it’s beautifully filmed and atmospheric, I don’t mind Adam too much, you’ve got brilliant characters like Hilda, and I adore how much Sam enjoys being a spy and how terrible she is at it <3 - but I do love the war years in Hastings the best. If you wanted to focus on the war years and make more of a ensemble vid instead, that would also be fab.
I’ve often thought some unusual music would suit this source - something classical maybe, or choral, or instrumental, or period-appropriate - but that’s only a random suggestion, whatever music choice works for you works for me!
London 2012 Opening Ceremony
volunteers are the BEST
So yeah, I know it’s a bit random requesting this four years later when everyone’s moved on (and zero disrespect meant to Rio), but I watched the Imagine: One Night in 2012 documentary earlier this year and gah, just floods and FLOODS of tears. Then I watched it again recently and cried all over again. I have a deep and abiding love for what Danny Boyle pulled off in 2012 - and although yes, I know it cost ridiculous amounts of money, and there’s plenty one can and should criticise without even getting into the wider evils of the IOC and the modern Olympics - but the epic spectacle and the sheer joy of it never fails to move me. There’s something about celebrating all parts of Britishness without being jingoistic, and celebrating volunteers and being part of something bigger than yourself, and of course celebrating sport and the Olympics themselves (because despite everything, I am still an Olympics fan), that just hits dead centre of a Venn diagram of Things that Matter to Me.
If you wanted to incorporate some of the backstage stuff from the Imagine documentary into a vid, that would be AMAZING. (I can *cough* help if you have trouble getting hold of this - maybe go through cosmic-llin?) But honestly, anything at all you come up with for this one would make me happy.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (BBC, 2016)
loved the visuals and the incredibly joyous, cathartic ending of this version
Gah, this was so PRETTY. Thought the visuals of this version were just gorgeous, maybe not stunningly original but still found it to be one of the best-looking Dreams I’ve seen - I’m not usually a visual person, but found this really striking. Loved the performances too, great casting all round, so don’t really mind who/what you want to focus on - but my favourite thing about the whole production was that ridiculously joyful ending. I was a bit dubious about some of RTD’s choices while watching it for the first time, until we hit that incredible catharsis at the end - joy! freedom! dancing! love in all its wonderful varieties! - and everything fell into place. Pure Russell T Davies, and for once I mean it as a compliment. :p That kind of pure groundswell of emotion is the kind of thing he does better than anyone else. So yeah, I’d love to see a vid that captures a bit of that joy, if that’s the way your vidding muse takes you.
Robot Wars UK (1998-2016)
robot carnage and the total destruction of people’s carefully crafted hopes and dreams <3
I had no idea that I’d missed Robot Wars until it came back and I was suddenly walking around with this massive grin on my face for days. Love how the show and everyone taking part in it hits that sweet spot between not taking it seriously but not taking the piss either; love how all the roboteers help each other out despite the fact it’s meant to be a competition; and love how when the machine that someone’s spent months and months of work and thousands of pounds on is utterly destroyed within 90 seconds, their reaction is always completely cheerful and unbothered. (I know I said prompts are only suggestions, but yeah, I do expect to see some robot destruction please!)
I nominated the old and new series together because it’s pretty much the same show by Festivids’ standards, but if you wanted to concentrate only on the newest (shiny, HD) series, that’s fine with me - my memory’s pretty fuzzy on the old series tbh!
Strictly Come Dancing UK
sparkles! glitter! group hugs! the Love of Dance!
Oh, adorable show of friendship and glitter and dancing and dreams, I love it all. Even the panto bits. (Especially the panto bits. <3) I know decent source for older series can be hard to get hold of, and you probably already have an idea in mind if you offered this fandom, so please, make that! Whether you want to focus on a particular series/couple/pro/celeb or throw absolutely everything in there, or whether you want to just focus on the dancing or include other elements of the show too, it’s all good with me. If you can capture the sheer joy and love of dancing, that would be amazing.
Vera (2011)
Vera plus hat plus windswept Northumberland scenery
I only discovered this show this year but absolutely fell in love with it, especially DCI Vera Stanhope and her HAT and how she is totally The Boss and all her warm-but-prickly relationships with her minions. I kind of love how old-fashioned so much of the show is - grumpy older detective with an alcohol problem - yet with various modern twists and great characters, and it kind of subverts your expectations a lot of the time. Plus all the beautiful shots of the stunning scenery in one of my favourite parts of the world; quite frankly, as long as there’s a shot of Vera, in her hat, staring pensively over sea or moor or river at some point, I will be very happy!
You Rang M’Lord?
Ivy and her adorably earnest face or Sissy and *her* adorably earnest face
One sentence plug: Downton Abbey, but with jokes and realistic lesbians.
I am a huge Su Pollard fan - no, really - so an Ivy vid would make me very happy; I kind of feel something goofy or silly could work, with Ivy’s constant wide-eyed shock at the strange goings-on of the upper classes. But I do love Sissy too - who doesn’t love an androgynous, socialist lesbian in a 1920s-set show who actually gets to be and act on all of those things - so a tribute to Sissy would also be fab. Or Ivy/Sissy, or something ensemble...anything really!
[I don’t normally plug my shows too hard in these letters - I’m too lazy to go hunting for gifs and how often does someone actually get converted, when you get right down to it? - but news broke of Jimmy Perry’s death the very weekend I was writing this and it made me weirdly emotional and really glad I nominated this show, so I have to write this, even if no one reads it. Because ‘You Rang, M’Lord?’ was the show Jimmy Perry got right.
Not so much in terms of quality - the pacing’s terrible, some of the acting’s pretty ropey, one episode is horribly racist, and it’s nowhere near as funny as pretty much every other show Perry & Croft wrote together (I’m really selling it here, aren’t I?) - but the stuff that P&C did better than anyone else, they absolutely nailed in this one. Because Jimmy Perry was a socialist, and an idealist, and a progressive; almost everything he wrote with David Croft was subversive, anti-establishment, anti-British-class-system and full of anger, albeit hidden under a lot of gentle, old-fashioned humour and innuendo. The trouble is, his ideals were often also buried under a hell of a lot of staggering racism (‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’), terrible/non-existent writing for women (‘Dad’s Army’), some casual xenophobia and very confused ideas about women’s sexuality (‘Hi-de-hi’), and that thing a lot of British sitcom writers did in the 1970s/80s, where grotesque characters spout abhorrent filth and we’re meant to find this funny as well as repulsive. (e.g. Williams’ homophobic bullying in ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ is clearly meant to be grotesque and yet another way to demonstrate what an unlikeable little tit he is, but we still have to listen to it and watch the audience laugh at it, which is less than fun.)
But ‘You Rang M’Lord?’ pretty much nailed it. Best way I can describe the show is yeah, a gentle piss-take of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs and other shows of that ilk - despite being written 20 years before DA was thought of, because British period drama has changed that little over the decades. it’s about an aristocratic English family and their servants, set in 1927. But unlike most period dramas, even now, it engages with the awkward, unequal relationship between master and servant (ohh, the episode with the servants’ picnic <3); it engages with inequality and the class system and how the life of a maid is actually one of back-breaking labour, no time off, and a constant risk of sexual assault from her employers; and unlike virtually all British period-set shows, it even engages with Empire, with the lovely Lady Lavender (dowager aunt, think Maggie Smith gone wrong) and her oft-repeated refrain of “I thought the family made all its money from slavery, George?”.
It’s full of socialism, it’s full of great characters, it’s beautifully researched with fabulous sets and costumes, it’s got the best female characters P&C ever wrote (okay, bar a couple of missteps), and best of all it has Sissy.
credit: hedgehogglovepuppet.tumblr.com
This is Sissy (and her girlfriend Penelope). One of the best queer female characters I’ve ever seen in an inter-war period show, particularly coming from two heterosexual men born in the early 1920s and writing in the 90s. She dresses in men’s clothing, hangs out with her girlfriend in gay bars of 1920s London, treats the servants like human beings instead of walking bits of furniture, runs for local government on a socialist platform and once elected starts fighting for birth control clinics, runs soup kitchens and turns her family’s factory into a workers’ collective. <3 This show has a huge number of flaws, but totally worth it for Sissy. The one time Jimmy Perry got it absolutely right.]
This year I’m going to keep this bit quite short, but I’ve rambled on terribly about my likes and dislikes in previous years so if you’re really curious or worried about something you can take a look at the ‘Dear Festividder’ tag on this journal.
Otherwise, believe me when I say anything goes. :) I love all these sources, so music choice, style, subject - whatever you want to vid is more than fine with me! There’s nothing in any of these sources I’d rather you avoided. Prompts are just suggestions, if you have a different idea - even if it’s completely unrelated to anything I’ve said in the request - then go for it.
Surprise me or give me exactly what I asked for, either way I’m going to be THRILLED. Vids! \o/
The bits in italic are the actual requests, such as they are, and the rest is mainly me rambling on about why I love these sources to be honest. :p Oh, and treats are very welcome!
The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot
80s Doctors shenanigans
I adored this to pieces, definitely my favourite part of all the 50th anniversary stuff (if not my favourite Who-related thing ever). The sort of love and joy and respect for the show and the fans that ran through it while still being completely daft and gently taking the piss was lovely. No idea how you'd vid it or even what kind of vid I'd like to see - there's obviously not huge amounts of footage to work with - so you have total free reign. I'd love something focused on the central three and their epic adventure (hee), but anyone else you want to include is fine with me, there's no part of this I don't love!
Foyle’s War
SAM <3
Sam is my favourite thing about Foyle’s War - I just love her a ridiculous amount - but a very close second is Sam and Foyle’s lovely, touching relationship, so something focusing on either their friendship or Sam alone, maybe how she grew and developed over the years would be particularly lovely. I’m probably fairly alone in genuinely really liking the post-war episodes - it’s beautifully filmed and atmospheric, I don’t mind Adam too much, you’ve got brilliant characters like Hilda, and I adore how much Sam enjoys being a spy and how terrible she is at it <3 - but I do love the war years in Hastings the best. If you wanted to focus on the war years and make more of a ensemble vid instead, that would also be fab.
I’ve often thought some unusual music would suit this source - something classical maybe, or choral, or instrumental, or period-appropriate - but that’s only a random suggestion, whatever music choice works for you works for me!
London 2012 Opening Ceremony
volunteers are the BEST
So yeah, I know it’s a bit random requesting this four years later when everyone’s moved on (and zero disrespect meant to Rio), but I watched the Imagine: One Night in 2012 documentary earlier this year and gah, just floods and FLOODS of tears. Then I watched it again recently and cried all over again. I have a deep and abiding love for what Danny Boyle pulled off in 2012 - and although yes, I know it cost ridiculous amounts of money, and there’s plenty one can and should criticise without even getting into the wider evils of the IOC and the modern Olympics - but the epic spectacle and the sheer joy of it never fails to move me. There’s something about celebrating all parts of Britishness without being jingoistic, and celebrating volunteers and being part of something bigger than yourself, and of course celebrating sport and the Olympics themselves (because despite everything, I am still an Olympics fan), that just hits dead centre of a Venn diagram of Things that Matter to Me.
If you wanted to incorporate some of the backstage stuff from the Imagine documentary into a vid, that would be AMAZING. (I can *cough* help if you have trouble getting hold of this - maybe go through cosmic-llin?) But honestly, anything at all you come up with for this one would make me happy.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (BBC, 2016)
loved the visuals and the incredibly joyous, cathartic ending of this version
Gah, this was so PRETTY. Thought the visuals of this version were just gorgeous, maybe not stunningly original but still found it to be one of the best-looking Dreams I’ve seen - I’m not usually a visual person, but found this really striking. Loved the performances too, great casting all round, so don’t really mind who/what you want to focus on - but my favourite thing about the whole production was that ridiculously joyful ending. I was a bit dubious about some of RTD’s choices while watching it for the first time, until we hit that incredible catharsis at the end - joy! freedom! dancing! love in all its wonderful varieties! - and everything fell into place. Pure Russell T Davies, and for once I mean it as a compliment. :p That kind of pure groundswell of emotion is the kind of thing he does better than anyone else. So yeah, I’d love to see a vid that captures a bit of that joy, if that’s the way your vidding muse takes you.
Robot Wars UK (1998-2016)
robot carnage and the total destruction of people’s carefully crafted hopes and dreams <3
I had no idea that I’d missed Robot Wars until it came back and I was suddenly walking around with this massive grin on my face for days. Love how the show and everyone taking part in it hits that sweet spot between not taking it seriously but not taking the piss either; love how all the roboteers help each other out despite the fact it’s meant to be a competition; and love how when the machine that someone’s spent months and months of work and thousands of pounds on is utterly destroyed within 90 seconds, their reaction is always completely cheerful and unbothered. (I know I said prompts are only suggestions, but yeah, I do expect to see some robot destruction please!)
I nominated the old and new series together because it’s pretty much the same show by Festivids’ standards, but if you wanted to concentrate only on the newest (shiny, HD) series, that’s fine with me - my memory’s pretty fuzzy on the old series tbh!
Strictly Come Dancing UK
sparkles! glitter! group hugs! the Love of Dance!
Oh, adorable show of friendship and glitter and dancing and dreams, I love it all. Even the panto bits. (Especially the panto bits. <3) I know decent source for older series can be hard to get hold of, and you probably already have an idea in mind if you offered this fandom, so please, make that! Whether you want to focus on a particular series/couple/pro/celeb or throw absolutely everything in there, or whether you want to just focus on the dancing or include other elements of the show too, it’s all good with me. If you can capture the sheer joy and love of dancing, that would be amazing.
Vera (2011)
Vera plus hat plus windswept Northumberland scenery
I only discovered this show this year but absolutely fell in love with it, especially DCI Vera Stanhope and her HAT and how she is totally The Boss and all her warm-but-prickly relationships with her minions. I kind of love how old-fashioned so much of the show is - grumpy older detective with an alcohol problem - yet with various modern twists and great characters, and it kind of subverts your expectations a lot of the time. Plus all the beautiful shots of the stunning scenery in one of my favourite parts of the world; quite frankly, as long as there’s a shot of Vera, in her hat, staring pensively over sea or moor or river at some point, I will be very happy!
You Rang M’Lord?
Ivy and her adorably earnest face or Sissy and *her* adorably earnest face
One sentence plug: Downton Abbey, but with jokes and realistic lesbians.
I am a huge Su Pollard fan - no, really - so an Ivy vid would make me very happy; I kind of feel something goofy or silly could work, with Ivy’s constant wide-eyed shock at the strange goings-on of the upper classes. But I do love Sissy too - who doesn’t love an androgynous, socialist lesbian in a 1920s-set show who actually gets to be and act on all of those things - so a tribute to Sissy would also be fab. Or Ivy/Sissy, or something ensemble...anything really!
[I don’t normally plug my shows too hard in these letters - I’m too lazy to go hunting for gifs and how often does someone actually get converted, when you get right down to it? - but news broke of Jimmy Perry’s death the very weekend I was writing this and it made me weirdly emotional and really glad I nominated this show, so I have to write this, even if no one reads it. Because ‘You Rang, M’Lord?’ was the show Jimmy Perry got right.
Not so much in terms of quality - the pacing’s terrible, some of the acting’s pretty ropey, one episode is horribly racist, and it’s nowhere near as funny as pretty much every other show Perry & Croft wrote together (I’m really selling it here, aren’t I?) - but the stuff that P&C did better than anyone else, they absolutely nailed in this one. Because Jimmy Perry was a socialist, and an idealist, and a progressive; almost everything he wrote with David Croft was subversive, anti-establishment, anti-British-class-system and full of anger, albeit hidden under a lot of gentle, old-fashioned humour and innuendo. The trouble is, his ideals were often also buried under a hell of a lot of staggering racism (‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’), terrible/non-existent writing for women (‘Dad’s Army’), some casual xenophobia and very confused ideas about women’s sexuality (‘Hi-de-hi’), and that thing a lot of British sitcom writers did in the 1970s/80s, where grotesque characters spout abhorrent filth and we’re meant to find this funny as well as repulsive. (e.g. Williams’ homophobic bullying in ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ is clearly meant to be grotesque and yet another way to demonstrate what an unlikeable little tit he is, but we still have to listen to it and watch the audience laugh at it, which is less than fun.)
But ‘You Rang M’Lord?’ pretty much nailed it. Best way I can describe the show is yeah, a gentle piss-take of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs and other shows of that ilk - despite being written 20 years before DA was thought of, because British period drama has changed that little over the decades. it’s about an aristocratic English family and their servants, set in 1927. But unlike most period dramas, even now, it engages with the awkward, unequal relationship between master and servant (ohh, the episode with the servants’ picnic <3); it engages with inequality and the class system and how the life of a maid is actually one of back-breaking labour, no time off, and a constant risk of sexual assault from her employers; and unlike virtually all British period-set shows, it even engages with Empire, with the lovely Lady Lavender (dowager aunt, think Maggie Smith gone wrong) and her oft-repeated refrain of “I thought the family made all its money from slavery, George?”.
It’s full of socialism, it’s full of great characters, it’s beautifully researched with fabulous sets and costumes, it’s got the best female characters P&C ever wrote (okay, bar a couple of missteps), and best of all it has Sissy.
credit: hedgehogglovepuppet.tumblr.com
This is Sissy (and her girlfriend Penelope). One of the best queer female characters I’ve ever seen in an inter-war period show, particularly coming from two heterosexual men born in the early 1920s and writing in the 90s. She dresses in men’s clothing, hangs out with her girlfriend in gay bars of 1920s London, treats the servants like human beings instead of walking bits of furniture, runs for local government on a socialist platform and once elected starts fighting for birth control clinics, runs soup kitchens and turns her family’s factory into a workers’ collective. <3 This show has a huge number of flaws, but totally worth it for Sissy. The one time Jimmy Perry got it absolutely right.]