In keeping with the networked structure of our collective brain, this post forks off from heyiya's Cylon meta and virtual vidshow (you can read my reviews of the older vids she picked in my previous BSG recs post). It's my rendering of an emergent BSG vidding meme that has been circulating between heyiya, beccatoria, kiki_miserychic and I, building on work already underway in the fandom at large. My first purpose here is gleefully to announce heyiya's new vid:

vidder(s): heyiya
title: Sons and Daughters
music: The Decemberists
focus: Cylons
availability: download (divx), vimeo
summary: A downloadable history.
comments:This is the BSG vid about futurity and biotechnology that I have always craved. It began life as one of those lightning bolts of musical inspiration: Alexis heard the song and instantly SAW its future, and when she played it for me it was similarly revelatory. I'm utterly in awe of her for tackling the ambitious project herself -- as her second vid! -- rather than delegating it to Sweet Charity or somesuch. My experience collaborating on this was comparable to my Sweet Charity commission: I offered elaborate feedback and recommendations from an early stage of the process, largely focused on creating and refining the vid's overall structure, while Alexis did all the MAGIC. The most difficult thing about vidding this song, from where I sat, was the sparsity of variable lyrics (the three actual verses run out at about 1:20, and the rest is just assorted repetitions) -- lacking that narrative crutch was a major headache, especially given the abstraction of the thematic material. So IMNSHO I'm particularly proud of the clarity of its construction, because believe me, we spent a long time floundering with the second half (Alexis almost always obeyed my suggestions in the end :P). I don't necessarily want to discuss the content of the vid, because my better half already meta'd, and from my perspective it contains, in itself, its entire thesis. There is nothing, nothing about it that I don't love to a profound and overwhelming degree. It will make you feel like a Cylon.

vidder(s): beccatoria
title: there's a war going on for your mind, laura
music: The Flobots
focus: everything
availability: download, imeem
summary: Laura Roslin and the Cylon Hybrid engage in a rap battle.
comments: Another vid that I (and Alexis) beta'd, but in this case only very lightly. This one, as far as I can tell, emerged fully formed from Becka's brilliant brain. What I did contribute was saying to her, when she couldn't figure out where to go after the first half, "That old woman's voice? That's the Hybrid talking." Kaboom. This vid is a tour de force. It spans the entire series to date in a collage of associative, fast-paced fragments, relentlessly astonishing in their resonances with the lyrics, striking in their political tenor. But my very favorite aspect is its self-reflexive correlation of broadcast media technologies and networked Cylon communication through editing (the interpolation of the Hybrid) and effects (visual static). And of course Laura is at the center of it all.

vidder(s): kiki_miserychic
title: so say we all (Handlebars)
music: The Flobots
focus: season 4.0
availability: download (temporary), vimeo
summary: I can ride my bike with no handlebars.
comments: I take no credit whatsoever for this one, for the record, but it intersects with this lineage because it was Becka's inspiration to vid The Flobots. kiki_miserychic's psalm of season 4.0 is more meditative: fast cutting and motion punctuate its deliberate pacing only sparingly, to great effect. But it shares the sort of hallucinatory juxtaposition of The Flobots' evocative lyrics with a flow of surprising scenes. Likewise, an awareness of media and politics is woven throughout. "I can show you how to scratch a record / I can take apart the remote control / And I can almost put it back together" exemplifies what I love most about this vid, and the entire swath from "I can design an engine" through "I can split the atoms of a molecule" makes me jump up and down in delight. And finally, the endings of the song and the season are MFEO.

One thing I especially enjoy about watching post-4.0 BSG vids is witnessing how different artists use the finale's stunning final shot. Along with the three above, you can see two more examples in beccatoria's Tricks and our Tomorrow series -- I'd give Tricks the award for being cleverest (it's the only one that doesn't place the closing shot as pretty much the closing shot of the vid), but each does something original and lovely with the footage.

Another interesting trend in evidence here is the metatextual framing of vids as artifacts that exist within the source's universe. heyiya had the genius idea of staging Sons & Daughters as output of the Cylon historical database, and I suggested that she convey that conceit in the credits. Becka formatted her epic as a transmission from the Hybrid to Laura. And kiki_miserychic told me after the fact that she was independently conceiving of Handlebars as a sort of audiovisual hymn sung by the Hybrid (I recommend listening to the lead male rapper as the voice of the Cylon God in both cases). There are certainly other vids with self-reflexive framing devices, usually by way of meta-commentary on media technologies (see, for example, Jackie K's If You Were In My Movie, wherein the vid is Daria's school project, and wistful_fever's Documentary, wherein the vid is a video made for one actor by another), but I think BSG and other Sci-Fi open up a whole alternate set of exciting possibilities in this vein. A case in point: after we had this discussion, kiki_miserychic went on to create a femslashy Cylon download:

vidder(s): kiki_miserychic
title: Memory Vid
music: "Teach Me How to Drown" by Unto Ashes
focus: Caprica/Athena
availability: download (temporary), vimeo

Now that we've assimilated her, you can expect further experimental vidlets along these lines to materialize soon... ;D


more techno-futuristic BSG vids

vidder(s): aycheb
title: Babies
music: Pulp
focus: eponymous
availability: download
summary: Love is the plan, the plan is… Shameless plagiary of James Tiptree Jnr, sexual conflict, evolutionary theory and gratuitous space porn.
comments: This is the best (and probably only) BSG vid [before 2008] focused on reproduction as a theme (my obsession). First of all, it mobilizes one of my favorite vidding modes: the perverse juxtaposition of an upbeat song with violent and disturbing imagery. It's done with special subtlety and complexity in this case -- because aycheb perfectly captures the subtlety and complexity of how reproduction operates in BSG. Hera, in particular, is simultaneously the profound miracle of love that the song implies, and the harbinger of the post-human apocalypse. And, as the song implies, she's the biological product of Helo and Sharon's lovemaking, but just as much the techno-spawn of Gaius and Six's Cylon future. I adore how the vid is structured around images of (bio)technology (like Gaius's lab and the resurrection ship), and including Kara and Leoben's anti-romance in parallel underlines the death drive that runs uneasily within these couplings.

vidder(s): crickets
title: Karma Police
music: Radiohead
focus: Final Four
availability: download (temporary), imeem, youtube
summary: For a minute there they lost themselves.
comments: A retrospective look at the atrocities the F4 committed against Cylons in the name of humanity, accentuating the magnitude of their coming out trauma. Aggressive colorizing and texturizing of the footage adds to the sense of extreme disorientation, but what really sells it for me is the vid's beautifully executed closing disintegration into the Cylon signal.

vidder(s): m_a_r_i_k_s
title: Lord's Prayer
music: E Nomine
focus: Cylons, Gaius
availability: download, youtube
summary: When I first heard this song the initial idea was to make a vid about the cylons mostly and their conflict with humanity through the aspect of their faith. Turned out they're much more connected to their "parents", than I thought. :)
comments: A rollicking goth-creepy meditation on the staggering violence committed in the name of faith. Summoning a much darker Cylon POV than "Sons & Daughters," this vid emphasizes, though the interchangeability of the seven models and their kinship with centurions and raiders, how fundamentalism can turn people into killing machines.

vidder(s): bop_radar
title: Southside
music: Moby
focus: Lee, Kara, Sharon, Helo
availability: download, imeem
summary: The idea for this vid came from Lee Adama's 'we're not a civilisation, we're a gang' speech sparking with a memory I had of Moby saying this song was about street gangs in a post-apocalyptic future.
comments: This upbeat action vid does a glorious job of depicting our favorite pilots' journeys as a high-speed chase across the universe. bop_radar froths a loosely linear chain of charged character moments into a generous helping of space battles, displaying a deft touch and expert attention to motion.

And now, inspired by daybreak777's BSG character study recs...

BSG female character studies
[there are more Starbuck, Roslin, and Kendra vids in my first recs post -- and I'm still searching for the great Cain vid]

vidder(s): beccatoria
title: Ghosts
music: Set the Fire to the Third Bar - Snow Patrol feat. Martha Wainwright
focus: Caprica Six (Caprica/head!Gaius, Caprica/Tigh, Caprica/D'Anna)
availability: download, imeem
summary: Caprica Six is a love letter no one has ever read.
comments: This vid takes very seriously the problem of how, visually, to tell the story of a love affair with someone who doesn't exist, and in the process conveys a sense of almost unbearable longing. The song is haunting (NB: there is no second bar) and consequently much vidded, I know (there's a stunning Jack/Ianto version by sol_se, and apparently a Kara/Lee rendition as well); you should watch this even if you think it's already defined for you, because Becka really sells it. She created a Byzantine, impressionistic structure, which I nonetheless find eloquent and fluid -- I don't think only because I became very intimate with it in the course of betaing. I can't even highlight favorite moments because so much of it is just breathtaking. Moreover, the vid feels IMPORTANT to me, an indictment of how much time BSG as a show (and often as a fandom) spends with Gauis and his wet dreams and how little considering their relationship from Caprica's POV. Here is her story: the incredible emotional and physical violence she endures in her fruitless quest for a partner who can match her bottomless capacity for love. It's sobering how different her fantasy lover is from Gaius and Gaius's (take note of how sparingly actual Gaius is used -- because it's not about him).

vidder(s): aycheb
title: Safe From Harm
music: Massive Attack
focus: Laura Roslin
availability: download (divx), imeem
summary: Laura dreams.
comments: It's a travesty that I didn't see this vid until recently, when par_avion sat me down with it. I love it more and more each time I watch it -- it makes me FEEL the loss and the rage that Laura feels. It's particularly effective how the vid is anchored in her physical frailty, contrasting that with her ferocious power of spirit. Telling her story largely chronologically stitches a convincing case out of the escalating atrocities for a totally coherent and moving interpretation of Laura -- not making her actions justifiable, but certainly comprehensible.

vidder(s): jarrow
title: Falling From the Sky
music: Vast
focus: Starbuck (seasons 1 + 2)
availability: download (xvid), imeem
summary: A deeper look at the many pilots Starbuck has failed, including herself.
comments: It's perhaps a perverse reading of a story about failure, but my favorite aspect of this unique portrait of Starbuck as a professional is the sense of her competence, even in the face of loss (such a departure from many other vids that depict her tailspin toward self-destruction). jarrow expertly uses flashback effects to evoke a tight POV, and deploys motion with a virtuosity that befits a vid about flying, culminating in the exhilarating vertigo of its big finish.

vidder(s): laurashapiro
title: Barcelona
music: Jewel
focus: Sharon (Athena/Helo, Boomer/Chief)
availability: download, imeem
summary: Sharon and the meaning of mercy.
comments: That's our emo kid! A Cylon coming out story before that was cool, this vid takes Sharon on a journey concluding in her -- and her human community's -- acceptance of her kinship with machines. I appreciated the sensual editing, with long crossfades and superimpositions, and the moments in Sharon's life accented on the choruses of "let me fly" punctuated the story perfectly.

vidder(s): nicole_anell
title: Jolene
music: The White Stripes (covering Dolly Parton)
focus: Cally (Cally/Chief, and if you're me also Cally/Boomer)
availability: download (wmv), imeem
summary: "The Ties That Bind" constructed the Chief being a Cylon like a romantic/sexual betrayal, and it knocked all the sub right out of my subtext, and I couldn't even conceive a universe where that's not awesome.
comments: In an astonishingly complex mobilization of the iconic (and let's not forget girlslashy) song, this vid renders Cally's literal rivals for the Chief's affections (Boomer and later Tory) as a metaphor for Cylonicity itself -- the aspect of her partner that is truly taking him away from her. This can't have been an easy motif to construct visually, and the fact that (to me at least) it read with total clarity is a testament to the elegant and layered editing. When, around 0:30, the first repetition of the refrain shifts us from Boomer as lover to Boomer as Cylon sleeper agent my mouth dropped open, and the next 30 seconds are chilling in their incongruous brutality. And then, while I keep trying to pinpoint particularly effective moments in the long transitional section (~1:10-1:50), I just can't, because each time I watch it I appreciate the details more -- it weaves disparate conflicts of their past and the Chief's dawning awareness of his Cylon identity into the perfect bridge to Cally's suspicions of Tory. On first viewing, I found the loose non-linear structure slightly muddling, but the rich intercutting of heterogenous moments really grew on me, and I think the limited footage and metaphorical theme demanded it.

vidder(s): sabaceanbabe
title: Nobody Knows
music: Pink
focus: Racetrack (fanonical Racetrack/Helo, Racetrack/Kat, and so on if you really squint)
availability: download, streaming
summary: This song spoke to me of a woman who was interrupted in living her life by something over which she had no control, nor would she ever have control of it.
comments: Let me get this out of the way: I hate the song choice. It's relentlessly earnest, and that almost never works for me (even in girlslash vids). Plus, I'm convinced by dualbunny's thesis that Starbuck IS Pink, but Racetrack, for all that she's awesome, is just NOT. That said, I think this is an exemplar of strategies for vidding minor characters, because sabaceanbabe turns Racetrack's fleeting appearances in the background into the story itself: the loneliness of being the one nobody notices. The vid raised my familiar ire about BSG's throwaway women in a very satisfying way, and made me happy that Racetrack is (miraculously!) still with us. She's so pretty!

vidder(s): hollywoodgrrl
title: The Greatest
music: Cat Power
focus: Kat (Kat/Kara)
availability: download (wmv), youtube
summary: This vid is dedicated to the two greatest Viper Jocks in the Colonial Fleet: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace and Louanne "Kat" Katraine. Live fast, die young.
comments: An elegy for one (two?) of our favorite dead lesbians. This vid quietly captures how brutal it is to be a girl pilot -- and I think foregrounding Kat is a clever tactic in this operation, since she's so many of the things that Starbuck is, without Starbuck's privilege of exceptionality (and resurrection).

vidder(s): notpiecebypiece
title: All Fall Down
music: One Republic
focus: Tory (Tory/Laura)
availability: imeem
summary: It's about how Tory was always there for Roslin but when Tory needed Roslin, she wasn't there and Tory had to go through all her shit alone. Poor abandoned Tory.
comments: notpiecebypiece disavows that this is "Serious Vidding," which is a sign of the vidding times: burgeoning popularity, visibility, and artistic achievement alongside widening hierarchies of distinction. Let this be a reminder of the value of vids without ambitions beyond feeding our Id vortex in our psychic living rooms. It's not flashy, but it offers a lucid, original, and important interpretation of an otherwise quite opaque character AND HER DEFINING LESBIAN CRUSH. It's utterly shameless, and fills me -- perhaps me more than anyone ever -- with ardent and flaily joy.

The BSG vids I've enjoyed but not reviewed are in this playlist -- let me know if I've missed anything important (that's not hetshippy or boy-focused)?