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#i want to rewatch a bunch of vids from 2016
transrightsjimin · 3 years
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rewatched the yoonji run bts ep w my friend and it was so so nice to see this footage from 2016 where they were more awkward but also still hilarious and just... their skin looked unedited, like no excessive lightening / blurring filters and they all, esp jimin, appeared to be less skinny and ugh i miss that 😭 every time i see jimin now i just worry hes gonna faint and all the members now do these terrible 'diets' or detox nonsense from time to time. and just wfhdhdg the unedited melanin and their actual songs playing in run eps and not everything being strictly either brand endorsed or scripted or censored / blurred out?? its very good
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kuwdoravids · 2 years
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Year End Vid Review: 2021
Year-end round-up/meme 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 March Social Cues (The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia) New Best Friend (multi-source, The Sunshine One Loves The Grumpy One)
May Gasoline (The Witcher, Yennefer of Vengerberg) August Broodylicious (The Witcher, Geralt/Yen, Geralt/Jaskier, Geralt/Triss, Geralt/Renfri, Geralt/Duny) Disaster Party (Ted Lasso, ensemble)
October Trouble’s Coming (The Witcher 2: Assassination of Kings, Geralt of Rivia)
November The Call (The Matrix Trilogy, Neo/Trinity, Chosen One/Destiny) December ME! (The Witcher, Yennefer/Jaskier)
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Alright...for the navel-gazing run-down of thoughts/commentary and Witcher and non-Witcher vid ideas I'd love to tackle in the future, click onward:
Random process notes: Doing multi-source vids is exhausting but when I’m able to pull everything together, it’s so fucking rewarding. Also given enough blocks of time at once I am able to blitz through my timeline much faster than before because a lot of my ideas this past year I have been able to see, feel and understand so intuitively before I even make the first clip in my software. I think the most amount of time I spent on a vid was probably New Best Friend because there’s like 7 sources in there, and my Witcher 2 vid but only because I had a fuck of a time downloading all the source from Youtube. Once I had all my source there and clipped it was just… zoom zoom zoom. Done in days. Overall thoughts: 2021 was my first Year of Witcher Fannishness so no surprise that 6 out of my 8 vids are Witcher or include Witcher source. Including the video games! Well. One video game--the one fewer people have played. I did start a Witcher 3 vid but haven’t finished it to my liking. Overall I feel like the last decade of doing this hobby has made it so fucking easy for me to know how much work I will need to put into a project and it simplifies my process of whether or not to start that vid project. I used to start way more vids than I ever finished. I have a few vids I didn’t manage to start/finish in 2021 but it’s really way, way lower. I’m also very fucking proud of the thematic resonance I’m able to put into my vids. That used to be much harder for me and now it feels very natural to bring forth these ideas and sculpt on my timelines.
Favorite Vid: Hands down it is Gasoline, my Yennefer Witcher vid. I actually probably would not have made this vid if I hadn’t read the Witcher books and then rewatched the show and got another impression of how they were portraying the character. Digging more into the canon really made me appreciate what the writers were showcasing for her in the Netflix version. I adore how Yen refuses to be boxed in and tries to do everything to hold onto her ambition and sense of self, even when shit is falling apart. This is also the first vid where I feel like I managed to convey everything I wanted while also finding ways to use the music to play with visual themes and metaphors that support the thesis of the vid. I am so fucking proud and happy with how this vid flows and the way all the cross dissolves work in perfect harmony with the rest of the vid. This is probably one of my most favorite vids I’ve made in the last 5 years. Hardest to make: Probably New Best Friend but that’s only because I had to wrangle so many sources and clip so many scenes to get what I want. I also had a fucking time with Trouble’s Coming because that was video game source that had subtitles embedded in all the footage so I had to crop and re-size a bunch of frames and pray that it didn’t look like shit at the end. Most Under appreciated: I usually keep this question on my end-of-year meme responses but always feel weird about answering it. The more time goes on and vidding becomes more passe outside vidding circles, well.. it’s just…I feel like they’re all under appreciated? I honestly don’t know what my vids being appreciated would look like outside of premiering things at cons or exchanges/fests.
The engagement is not the same, the conversations are disparate. But also it’s a pandemic and life is wonky for everyone everywhere. And large swaths of people do fandom differently and I’m also now primarily vidding a source that has a big fandom that's more about the gifs and fic. I never really expected much before but it feels different now.
I’m engaging with that fandom deeply and I’m making things that would be best seen and understood by people in the fandom but that fandom is not really… into vids? At least that's been my impression so far. It feels odd to feel so insecure about this now because I've been doing this for so long. But now that I have a new shiny thing I'm excited about and...idk. I used to care a lot less of what people thought or saw my vids, if they saw them at all. I mean those who did see them I knew they really got a lot out of them and that meant (and means) THE WORLD to me.
Not being so depressed about myself and self-worth has fucked me up in a different way than I anticipated when it comes to putting my creative works out into the world. I make my vids for me almost always first and foremost but have always loved it when people watch and catch on to the things I’m putting out there.
It just makes me nostalgic for earlier times when it felt like more people were watching vids, I guess, and I feel guilty and sad and old for feeling this way. I at least got some really good squee from someone who isn't a vidder or vid-watcher and saw what I was doing in my Witcher 2 vid so. That was really really really fulfilling to know that at least one person caught on to what I was trying to do. Validation. why do I need it now after not needing it this badly after so long?? If I were to pick a specific vid that was underappreciated, maybe Broodylicious? I found the saddest most depressing cover of Bootylicious AND SUNG BY A MAN. And I vidded it to Geralt of Broody Fucking Rivia. I mean maybe it's not that underappreciated. It has 400 hits on AO3 and two dozen kudos and a half dozen comments so some people definitely saw my ridiculousness. So maybe I don't know how to engage with what "under appreciated" means?? augh, why are brains like this.
Most successful: Disaster Party ! Because this is Ted Lasso and it premiered for VidUKon! And it was great to see everyone squee in the live chat reactions and I occasionally see it recced here and there, so that makes me positively happy. I should push myself more towards making vids for cons and exchanges because that’s where the engagement’s at but I’m so often out of sync with deadlines and things to send to places so it just hasn’t been much of a priority for me the last half dozen years. My best vid: The Call, my Matrix vid. I adore my editing, I adore the humor, I adore everything I managed to get into this vid. It makes me so happy. Most fun vid: At a glance it will probably be Disaster Party or New Best Friend but I think my Yen/Jaskier vid I made in December: ME! is probably the most fun. I got to really dig into vidding two parts of a duet and just run with the glee that the show gave me for actually going there with the characters. Hooooo boy, I did not expect the show to give me that. I fucking love it. Ergo vid. Things I learned in 2021: Being shameless about my adoration and desires will yield incredibly satisfying fanworks. It’s great that I’ve lost a ton of fucks. I still give some fucks… but not as many as I used to. Or if I do, it’s probably for different reasons than before, so it’s mostly a net positive in the end. In 2022: At the top of my to-vid list: I have a depression vid I want to make that goes in the opposite direction of Basket Case. I desperately need to make this and once I can settle my brain enough it’ll take me less than a week to get down, I’m sure of it. Witcher Shenanigans -I have 10 million Witcher vid ideas but I have to be careful about not starting too many otherwise I’m going to get lost amongst my WIPs.At the top of my to-vid Witcher pile: Fringilla/Francesa & Yen season 2 overview to a song I just fucking adore so much and is so musically expansive that it makes my heart squee.
-A hugely fluffy OT3 vid featuring Yen/Jaskier/Geralt vid that will be thick with the squee and multiple Witcher sources and a non-witcher source to continue the conversation the fandom has about the themes and tropes inherent in books and some show canons and that is missing or deflated in the Netflix version. This one I’m hesitant in starting because it’s going to be a lot of work and also I don’t know how crushed I will be if I post it and no one wants to talk to me about it. Which seems… silly. but that’s really a snag in my heart. I ought to pitch this to my feral darlings in the Geraskefer discord and let them cheer me on.
-Finish my Witcher 3 Wolf brothers vid. I used all of my own captured video game footage and I need to go re-play a few quests to get some extra shots that I didn’t get the first time I played.
-A season 2 Geralt vid but honestly no one will want to watch because Geralt is the most boring character of the damn fucking Netflix show. But I have this deep need to continue vidding him to this specific flavor of contemporary alt-rock. The vibes. I can see the vibes and can make them awesomer. Will anyone care? or want to watch? idk…
-A season 2 Yen vid but I don’t have a song yet. I fucking adore Yen with a passion of a thousand million suns.
Okay, non-Witcher vid ideas I have percolating:
-Book of Boba Fett. Song already picked out and am contemplating whether I want to nab Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels footage to add to the story. I probably will if I end up committing to this.
-I have a GORGEOUS INCREDIBLE VIDSONG I need to make for Foundation, Apple TV’s adaptation of Asimov. It’s… it’s so good and pretty and the song just. Is orgasmic for vidding. Honestly this will be a vid for me and 📷ohvienna and 📷findmeinthealps (even tho I don’t think Alps has even seen the show but I know they would love it the way I do)
-MYTHIC QUEST. God I fucking adore this show and need to vid Poppy and Ian.
-I also have a “Positive Masculinity” vid I really want to do but that’s multi-source and will take a lot of work wrangling the themes together. I have my source figured out already and a likely song but. Multi-source vids! Maybe I’ll aim to make this for a con. Anyway. Thank you for joining me in this 15th year of my vidding. What a fucking hobby!! How have I been doing this for this long??
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2017
Previously posted by LGN XYZ on Facebook
Hello there.
Proper writers and ‘bloggers’ and that will have done their 2017 write ups already. Fortunately, we’re crap, and so we’re doing it now. It’s not quite over, but it’s pretty much over. The year. And other things.
That was a terrible intro. Quick! Look to the past!
Chronology
We were going to just move through the year, like these things often do, but on second thoughts: balls to that. Our memory’s knackered and we’re tired, and some FUCKING CUNT IN ANOTHER FLAT is banging the floor like they do. So let’s just group things in vague themes and crack on.
Oh, this’ll be us talking about music, by the way. We should have said that at the beginning.
Making a bloody racket
We love a bloody racket in musical terms, and oh man do we miss going for a boogie to a bit of drum ‘n bass. It’s a great finisher. Back when dubstep was newish, it was fine and all, but a set had to finish with d’nb or it was a snore. Hip hop’s good and all, but in a club it’s a bit samey and mid-tempo unless you ramp up to a bit of d’nb.
Anyway, at the beginning of the year, Emeli Sandé – yes, Emeli Sandé – put out an absolute banger. Breathing Underwater (Matrix & Futurebound remix) is an absolutely euphoric belter. Love it.
And euphoric rackets brings us onto PC Music.
We were already grooving along to Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP. It’s a massive smash of fairly aggressively old/new sounding rave-ups.
It was from there, we think, we learned of your SOPHIE. In what will become a bit of a theme in this ramble, late to the party we discovered the PRODUCT stuff SOPHIE put out in 2015. Most especially we fell deeply, deeply in love with JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE, which is an absolute beauty of a track. A drumless banger. Listening to it daily. LOVE.
Back to Charlotte, 2017 was the year where she evidently was setting some self challenge of releasing a new track every week or so. Of her fifty-seven collaboration, the Mura Masa one is our fave. Whilst that steel pipe (drum? glockenspiel?) sound is so very now it’ll sound so very old in a year or two, 1 Night is an undeniable tune.
But Number 1 Angel – Charli’s album-in-all-but-artist-description ‘mixtape’ – was a bit of a revelation. In 2016, the people’s queen of x Carly Rae Jepsen won everything with her album-not-an-album Emotion Side B, and in 2017 Charles did the same. This prompted us to launch our catastrophic opening hour gambit for LGNXYZ02, but more of that later.
Number 1 Angel is so great, we’ve conspicuously not listened to her SECOND bloody album-not-an-album Pop 2 – that she casually threw onto the stack at the end of the year, forming a pair of “I call them mixtapes” 2017 bookends – because we’re a bit scared and want to have time to appreciate it / holy fuck it’s got a standard to live up to.
Soz.
Anyway, the first of the two had a very snazzy website put together showing off the producers. A bunch of your PC Music sorts – SOPHIE, A. G. Cook, Danny L Harle...
Huge Danny is another we’d sort of let slip by. He did a song with Jeppo a while back, and we thought it was okay, but we’re NOT INTERESTED in anything Emotion-era that falls outside the Emotion and Side B+ sets (what Lil Yachty advert song? Huh?) and so we paid little more attention.
Anyway, he produced one of the best on N1A, called ILY2, and with a penchant for initialisms this year he released an EP called 1UL. We gave it a listen, and moved on.
But then later in the year, we moved back. And gave it many more listens. The title track (another with that bloody plonky percussion sound) is a great wee thumper.
It takes us a while to catch on sometimes. Soz 2.
Taking a while to catch on
Two big ones we got to late in similar fashion were songs by Tinashe and Dua Lipa.
Again, we listened to the albums when people were wanging on about them, and didn’t give them enough time. That’s one of the drawbacks of streaming. When we were kids, if we took a punt on an album, that fucker was getting listened to. It took us a good while to learn to love Breakbeat Era, but we put the effort in and got there. Now, we’re flighty and don’t give things the time.
But we love a good music video. And these two have absolute belters of music videos.
Company, by your Tinashe, is an incredibly impressive performance video. A single room, a few people, some cheaty edits to cover the joins in a sweatily energetic and near-relentless routine, it’s fucking great. She looks amazing. And the song, it turns out, is absolutely magic. A smooth-as-anything r’n’b thumper, with a very enjoyable bleepy noise thrown in there. From 2016, but for us it’s a 2017 jam.
And your Dua snuck in an all-conquering number 1 hit and vaulted from alt-pop to pop-pop on the back of an all-time great music video for New Rules.
The minor flaws of the slightly wonky head-nod bit and the girl getting accidentally whipped in the face by someone’s hair only make this gem shine brighter. It feels like a home-grown triumph – don’t spoil it for us by telling us it cost $1mil and was directed by someone super-established. The choreography is tremendous, the look is great, but more than anything the core concept is so strong, it’s hard to think of a narrative vid and a song that go together so beautifully. It’s so good. We rewatched it a zillion times.
And from love of the song and video came a love of the song. And going back to a few of her previous singles too. Well done, all involved.
Music videos are important
Maybe in 2018 we’ll get back into making them.
Dua became a big hitter thanks to that incredible music video. And some existing big hitters released some big videos too.
Katy Perry launched what is apparently now trad to call an ‘era’ with an astonishing music video for Chained To The Rhythm. A proper megabudget job, but really, really darkly bleak and upsetting. What with political things as they were and are, it is still genuinely affecting to watch. A big shiny pop video has never been so harrowing. It was a real “oh fuck, she means business” moment, and did the job in creating a massive wave of publicity for her doing ‘woke pop’.
She then followed it with a song making a blunt non-metaphor about fucking. Didn’t do so well.
We quite like Bon Appetit, though, and Swish Swish did a Sound Of The Underground whereby it grew on us a thousand percent thanks to hearing it sounding massive at a disco (Unskinny Bop, natch). Astonishingly bad video, though, providing a peculiar seesaw end to the ‘era’.
And unfortunately clashing with Taylor Swift bringing out her own megabudget megavideo.
Look What You Made Me Do is pleasing if only for the fact that it was another underline that big pop stars are still in the business of spunking big money on big videos. High score for spectacle, with odd grade slipping due to the fact the rush to get it finished evidently left the first half slightly out of sync.
The song’s alright, but Ready For It...? is the real banger. We dig it. Haven’t given the album more than one listen, though. Maybe we’ll come back to it.
Selena Gomez’s Bad Liar was a leftfield anti-pop pop smash that we liked and grew to like more. We’ve not given this video many rewatches because we find it faintly unsettiling in its own way (is she digitally de-aged in it? What’s going on?)
And switching musical directions in the reverse, Lorde came back with a surprise disco banger in Green Light. Again we weren’t sure at first, again it grew on us, again we played it at LGN. Our initial judgement is often pretty shaky.
What isn’t shaky however is our enduring love for Ariana Grande. LGN was in part built on a night round one of our houses, singing along to Spotify, accidentally playing Problem on loop and loving it. Confident outspoken feminist queen of casually shutting down douchebags whilst releasing banger after banger.
This year, the hundredth single off of Dangerous Woman, again an awesome video grew our love for a song. Everyday is a song that more or less passed us by on the album. But seeing her grooving around in her big puffer jacket whilst diverse snogging kicks off around her in the really fun video made it move up onto our faves list. She’s the best.
We’re not going to be able to say anything in this superficial and pointless ramble to do justice to the fucking awful nightmare of what happened in Manchester, so we shan’t try. It’s heartbreaking, and the One Love response had us in tears.
Memory
George Michael died last Christmas, and as with David Bowie and Prince, it shamefully took his death for us to dig back into his music. And in George’s case, fuck we remembered some belters. Freedom ‘90 is an incredible tune, and one we played to triumphantly finished LGN04. His cover of As with Mary J Blige is ace. Multiple Wham! megasmashes which should have been on our playlist all along, apologetically we remembered them.
We also reminded ourselves what an incredible album Music Box is. Can’t remember what inspired us to have a bit of a Mariah Carey dig – perhaps just closing with her as queen of Christmas in the last 2016 LGN, and then rehearsing the lyrics to Hero when we wanted to close with it this year. A very, very strong closer. So good we chose it twice.
And you know who else we rediscovered this year? All Saints, mate. We saw them live (supported by Melanie C and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, thankyouverymuch) and it was everything. They looked incredible, they sounded incredible, they played the old hits and the new hits, they looked like they were having a fun old time of it, it was brilliant. We never saw them way back when, but this was pretty unbeatable. They played Chick Fit, which made us happy as that is an underrated smash. And they made us check out the new album. AGAIN, something we slept on when we first heard it, but One Strike is a top tier groover. Hurrah.
The joy of being part of a pop crowd
The All Saints gig was at Kew Gardens, and we were wary of it being a yummy mummy sitdown picnic fest. Which it was, but with a dancing area right in front of the stage, which meant we could get right in a wee crowd of heroes to boogie around like it was an awesome club gig.
AND SPEAKING OF AWESOME CLUB GIGS. We saw Yelle. For the somethingth time, always great, and this time in Canada.
We were a bit wary early on as the support DJs were kicking out some ace danceable tunes and the crowd was extremely sparse, an the venue inside was very swish and new which can sometimes be a bit of an atmosphere cooler. But when they came on, the crowd packed the dancefloor and it went off. Banger after banger after banger. Yelle chucked out a bunch of singles in 2017, all ace, all massive live, adding to a set of just the best fun jumping around pop joy. Love love love.
We were in Canadia for a hol, but deliberately coincided it with Tegan & Sara doing a hometown Con X show. This wasn’t a rave-up, was in a big modern concert hall, stripped down and partially acoustic-y. But was the joy of being a part of another sort of crowd. A crowd that love Tegan & Sara. T&S spent two albums doing the big pop thing, and it seems like they’ve had enough of it for now.
On stage and in interviews, they’ve spoken of how they wanted to be prominent queer voices in the mainstream, but now want to retreat a bit because the mainstream is gross. They spoke of playing big festival and support slots with the audience not really giving a shit. So here they were, playing a big small show for an audience who really gave a shit. It was wonderful.
Two days later, and well over a day without sleep, we were back in London, in another big modern concert hall, seeing Camille at the Barbican. Camille is someone you really should see live. Her albums are often beautiful, and floaty, and dreamily lovely. Live, she turns it into a big thumping dance performance. We can’t describe it without making it sound several times more shit than it is; it isn’t shit at all. It’s clatteringly, physically brilliant.
New love
In a not dissimilar fashion, Chela’s Bad Habit video is worth a look. It came out this year, and has the handclaps and odd clothing and weird dance moves that aren’t a million miles from Camille’s show. We’d never heard of Chela before, but liked this song and video. And it prompted us to look into what else she’d done.
And holy fuck, she’s incredible. No album, a bunch of scattered singles over a few years, but such tunes. And so captivating to watch. It helps that she’s beautiful, but it extra helps that she’s got fully awesome seemlingly-DIY dance moves. We watched the video to Romanticise a million times. More than New Rules. It’s just her grooving around in a single shot, a few digital paint splashes here and there, but it’s fucking great, and the song is an absolute bop. A megabop.
We were hyper obsessed with Romanticise for weeks, playing it pretty much daily. It’s SO GOOD. And in the past week or so, we’ve gone the same for Handful Of Gold. Go and watch it, again and again. We can only hope Chela decides to pop over to London this year, because we will be there with our shapes ready to be thrown. She’s fucking great.
Four discos
Oh aye. We put on some discos.
In 2016, there were three LGNs. In 2017, there were four.
For LGN04, Saturday 4th February, we moved to sunny Dalston and the Moustache Bar Dalston and had a good old time. The now trad quiet beginning, and hopeless flyering of the empty streets, gave way to a busy crowd by the end. Someone requested Martha and went nuts for it when we played it, which was ace.
LGN05 was just one month later, on Satuday 11th March. We felt bad for the few people who came early doors, and we made a real mistake running out to futilely flyer again rather than start a dancefloor amongst ourselves. But again it came good, chums arrived, and the crowd again filled in at the end and was so happy singing along we did a double finish (there’s little better than having a crowd belting out Hero AND It’s All Coming Back To Me Now one after the other).
And then the Let's Get Nuts crew had a bit of a crisis meeting. It’d become very stressful, three of us organising a disco together, and we were getting a bit narked with each other. We had all sorts of extra-disco things to worry about, and rather than break up as chums, we decided to break up as a disco. Or at least go on hiatus, like your One Directions or your Sleater-Kinneys.
But here at LGN XYZ, we really needed the continuing distraction, and so spun off to do basically the same thing, just with fewer people prepping it and poking at the iPad. Our LGN chums still chums, they thankfully came along to provide incredible and invaluable dancing support.
We approached The Victoria and they gave us a post-gig slot on Friday 19th May. Like absolute idiots, we figured we’d inherit something of a built-in audience – the venue being home to G R R L S and PINK GLOVE, and us following a Two Piece Records gig. We kind of didn’t, and had another harrowingly quiet beginning as people were spread out within the actually-pretty-big pub.
But again – AGAIN – it came good.
Our chums kept us going early doors. A heroic solo-discoer was there throughout and encouraged our riot grrly tendancies. And a trio of Charlotte and Jeppo lovers cheered our alt-pop hearts. By the end, we had people strutting to Shamir and raving it up to N-Trance.
You can read about LGNXYZ01 in a separate post where we blethered on about that, and about LGNXYZ02, which on Friday 10th November brought us back to The Star of Kings, in our follow-up jibber.
And so that was that
2017, in bits of music there.
Run The Jewels probably deserve a mention too, as they keep our ear into a bit of hip-hop, whilst we’ve drifted away from paying much attention otherwise. Kanye’s still on heavy rotation. Lizzo popped out a couple of new bops. And Fiona Apple’s 2012(!) album The Idler Wheel... remains our go-to when we’re not feeling big and poppy and want to feel some feels and sing along with something sadder.
And in fact, let’s finish with something really emotional.
Annie Hardy, from your Giant Drags, put out an album called Rules at the beginning of the year. It packs a fucking whallop. Her partner and baby died the years before, and some of the songs are about that. It’s a record that can really kick the shit out your heart.
Start 2018 as you mean to go on.
This was an odd way to end this long and rambling post, wasn’t it? Ah well, it’s happened now.
Happy new year. x
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