heresluck.net

vid recommendations

last updated: October 24, 2006

Recs are alphabetical by vidder, then alphabetical by show. If you're looking for vids in a particular fandom, check the sidebar.

Every vid listed here has my enthusiastic recommendation; the ones I consider absolutely indispensable are highlighted.

Bear in mind that I tend to accumulate vids for weeks or months and then watch a lot of them all at once, so I am frequently way, way behind on the most recently released vids. If I watch something and like it, I try to remember to make a note of it here, but I do not pretend that this list is either timely or comprehensive.

AbsoluteDestiny

• One Angry Dwarf (The Incredibles): I had no idea that The Incredibles needed to be vidded until I saw this vid. Shows what I know.
• There Is Too Much Light in This Bar (Life on Mars): This vid kind of puts the '90s and the '70s in a blender. Except it's much, much better than that description makes it sound.
• I Enjoy Being a Girl (multi): Girls kick ass! Specifically, Buffy, Zoe, Veronica, Starbuck, and that chick from Alias kick ass!
• IWIWAL (multi anime): Don't we all. The first time I saw this vid, it made me laugh so hard I got the hiccups.

Bonibaru

• Believe (BtVS): Buffy kicks ass! ...you know, we really need more vids that I can describe that way.
• Breathe (BtVS): Probably my favorite of the BtVS vids here. I mean, come on, it focuses on Faith. I am nothing if not predictable.
• Hallelujah (Firefly): Mal loves his ship and his crew.

butterfly

• The Thunder Rolls (Brokeback Mountain): I love the fact that this vid tackles the movie from Alma's point of view. The color effects just add to the vid's gorgeous bleakness.
• Pavlov's Bell (due South): All about Fraser's relationship with RayK: how his history with Victoria and RayV affects this new partnership, how their bickering makes the sweet parts that much sweeter.

catatonic

• Baker Baker (BtVS): Addresses the aftermath of Buffy/Angel, the sense of loss and longing and regret that's so hard on Buffy; it gets good mileage out of really simple, quiet, but emotional shots.

charmaxupdated

• Boom Boom Ba (Xena): This may be the sexiest vid I have ever seen. Seriously. I'm not even a Xena fan, and I could watch this vid all day.

Corn Child

• Must Be Dreaming (Firefly): This vid gives a great sense of what it might be like to be inside River's head: all these perceptions and experiences jumbled up together, all these images and feelings that won't quite cohere. I also really admire the way the pace of the vid varies with the music: lots of fast cutting, lots of motion within the frame, but then these places where the vid pauses to linger on a particular image. Beautifully done.

Dualbunny

• Volcano Girls (BtVS): I love this vid's energy, the way it plays up the song's rhythms by lining up jump cuts and punches with beats and chords.
• Nervous Breakthrough (Veronica Mars): focuses on Veronica but pulls in all the show's important characters, that captures the look and feel of the show, and that uses effects and intercutting, not to mention the song's driving beat and syncopated rhythms, to keep things moving along.

Not linked from the site but well worth checking out are the vidlets from Dualbunny's Insane Vidding Project 2006 (still in progress).

• Black Black Heart (BtVS): This vid is largely about how Spike and his duster and how they are smokin' hot, but it's also a great condensation of a lot of his history and hang-ups, and the things Dualbunny does with motion and intercutting are brilliant.
• Spanish Doll (BtVS): Really captures Dru's weirdly compelling mix of creepy and wistful.
• Suburbia (BtVS): A moving portrait of Buffy—how she's been through so much, how she suffers and struggles and wants to quit sometimes, how she keeps fighting anyway.
• A Place in Time (Doctor Who): Rose! and the Doctor! This vidlet just fills me with glee. Also features the best imaginable handling of the Ninth/Tenth Doctor switcheroo.
• Cool Rider (Veronica Mars): Sells me on Logan/Weevil (even as it makes me laugh and laugh) for the length of the vidlet.

Euniceupdated

• Fragile (BtVS), co-vidded with Myrtle: There just aren't enough BtVS ensemble vids, and this one covers S2 so perfectly that it makes me sniffle every single time.
• Lullaby (Dead Poets Society): Beautiful and heartbreaking. If you haven't seen the movie, the vid will show you why you must; if you have, it'll make you want to watch it again.
• Running Down a Dream (SGA): John-centric; matches fast cuts and jump cuts and intercutting with an intensely viddable song.

fabella

• Thief (Invisible Man): Haunting exploration of Darien's experiences, structured in part around the recurring metaphor of the lab rat.

fenlings

• Black Black Heart (due South): This one's a little uneven (some of the literalisms are a bit much), but the song choice is so terrific for Fraser/Victoria that the vid as a whole really works for me.
• Needful (due South): This is a vid centered on Fraser and Fraser's isolation — not just how out of place he feels in Chicago but how fundamentally alone he is so much of the time — but it includes everyone who's meant something to him, who's been a part of his journey. The song's pensive, thoughtful, but ultimately passionate nature really works for Fraser, for me at least.

f1renze

• Prayer for the Dying (Angels in America): Captures both the pain and the rapture of the beautiful and intensely moving source material. God, this vid just kills me, and I mean that in the best possible way.
• Killing in the Name Of (BtVS): One of my favorite Faith vids; it's actually about both Faith and Wes, showing the parallels between them, as well as the dynamic of their relationship: from snotty hellraiser Slayer and stodgy Watcher to two damaged people who have done truly terrible things and are trying to figure out how to live with the consequences—and how to work with each other.
• Déjà Vu (Veronica Mars): My favorite Veronica Mars vid, and for that matter one of my favorite vids ever. It crystallizes an element of the Veronica/Lilly relationship that the show establishes but never makes explicit: the fact that Veronica's relationships with Duncan and (later) Logan are, as much as anything else, ways of being close to Lilly. f1renze integrates plot and character insight and a sense of impending breakdown into a gorgeous, seamless, terrifically moving whole.
• The Frug (Wonderfalls): Great overview of Jaye and of the show: quirky humor and snippy semi-detachment with real emotion and anxiety underneath.

Gwyneth

• Fraternité (Brotherhood of the Wolf): Gwyn's vids tend to emphasize storytelling, but here she takes an entirely different approach: she simply lets a series of the movie's striking and increasingly unsettling images unspool against each other over the song's vaguely dissonant background drone, ominous vocals, and trippy accelerating drums; and in doing so she captures the feel of the movie, its decadence and over-the-topness and bizarre beauty.
• Cannonball (Firefly): Gives us a sweeter, more vulnerable Mal than Firefly itself usually did, and makes it work.
• There's No Way Out of Here (multi): Brings together Scully, Buffy, and Nikita in a dark, painful triptych portrait of women who have to make choices even when there are no good choices left.
• Bright Future in Sales (Wonderfalls): Logical song choice for Jaye's slacker habits and snotty moods.

imation

• Black Suits Comin' (AtS): Works even for those of us who, like me, watch the show intermittently and therefore don't know it well. It's clever (probably even more clever than the context-deprived among us can properly appreciate), visually striking, and beautifully edited.

Kanzeyori

Kanzeyori does some of her best work with movie vids.

• In the Breakdown (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind): I haven't watched it since I first saw it, because I haven't seen the movie yet, but I was impressed.
• The Fragile (Fifth Element): I'd love to see this one on a big screen; it goes on a little long, but some of the editing is just spectacular.
• Sunburned (Hero): Condenses all the gorgeousness of the move Hero; juxtaposes moments of intense action with equally intense stillness.
• Gravity (Pirates of the Caribbean): Turns the movie from a comedy into something much darker and more dramatic; again, I think it runs a bit long, but it's well worth watching.

Killa

Email to get the password for the vid site. It's well worth it; as you might guess from the length of this list, it's pretty much impossible to go wrong with Killa's vids.

• Magic Carpet Ride (Firefly): This is very possibly my favorite Firefly vid ever. It's not a comedy vid exactly, but it captures the sweetness and silliness of the show and at the same time some of its visual scope in a way that I just adore. I mean, how a vid can be this charming and still feature shots of the Reaver ship, I have no idea, but it just works. There are some damn good Firefly vids out there that I love because they break my heart into teeny tiny little pieces, but this vid just makes me smile and smile.
• Busted (Hard Core Logo), co-vidded with Bone: Actually sells me on the idea of a Hard Core Logo vid set to a Matchbox 20 song, which is quite a trick.
• History Repeating (Highlander), co-vidded with Luminosity: Intense Amanda vid.
• Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Highlander), co-vidded with Melina: Amusing Amanda vid.
• Puttin' on the Ritz (multi-source), co-vidded with tzikeh: A dance showcase that looks absolutely effortless.
• Closer (Star Trek OS): One of only two Star Trek vids I've ever found interesting.
• Dante's Prayer (Star Trek OS): The other Star Trek vid I've ever found interesting.
• Coming Up From Behind (Witchblade): I think this is the first vid of Killa's that I saw; I was instantly smitten, ignorance of the show notwithstanding. Kicks ass, takes no prisoners.
• Not Only Human (X-Files), co-vidded with Laura Shapiro: Scully's confrontation with the alien and the divine. My favorite X-Files vid and one of my all-time favorite vids, period.
• My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder (X-Men), co-vidded with Taselby: Never fails to make me howl with laughter: leather-jacketed Wolverine = angsty grunge singer!
• These Two Arms (Xena): Makes Xena look like a show I'd want to watch, which is really a trick.

Laura Shapiro

Laura does a lot of things well as a vidder, but I'm particularly fond of her thoughtful character studies.

• Barcelona (BSG): Sharon tries to find the meaning of mercy.
• A Day Like Today (BSG): Lee tries to connect with the people around him.
• Late Model Love (BtVS): Buffy's got car boy trouble. Hilarious!
• Some Fantastic (BtVS): Xander's desperately cheerful in the face of a life that pretty much sucks.
• Tell Me (BtVS): Faith tries to get inside Buffy's skin.
• Transparent (BtVS): Willow grows up.
• Goody Two Shoes (due South), co-vidded with Pipsqueak: My love for this vid cannot be textually rendered. Every slashy moment Fraser ever had with your Ray of choice, he had with the other Ray too. Seriously. This vid proves it.
• Wonder of Birds (due South), co-vidded with Morgan Dawn: All about how the Fraser/RayK partnership, well, flies. Definitely on my Top Ten Favorite Vids Of All Time list.
• Mixed Nuts (Farscape): It's possible that the phrase "wacky romp" was invented in anticipation of this vid.
• Suspended in Gaffa (Farscape): Chiana may be the only character in the history of ever for whom Kate Bush's bizarre vocal stylings are 100% appropriate.
• Not Only Human (X-Files), co-vidded with Killa: Scully's confrontation with the alien and the divine. My favorite X-Files vid and one of my all-time favorite vids, period.
• Rook (X-Files): Mulder's journey.

Luminosity

Luminosity does some of the best and most interesting work around. Differences in our styles notwithstanding, I've probably learned more from her than from any other single vidder.

• Prophecy (AtS): Deals with Wesley and the possible aftermath of the choices made by Angel at the end of AtS season 4.
• Whatever (AtS), co-vidded with sisabet: 1) proves Angel is gay; 2) makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
• More Human Than Human (BSG): Absolutely stunning vid about—you guessed it—the Cylons.
• Meet Me on the Other Side (BtVS): Lovely Spike/Buffy elegy.
• Scooby Road (BtVS): This is Buffy—the character and the show—vidded to The Beatles' Abbey Road. All of Abbey Road. The whole freaking thing. It is an absolutely tremendous undertaking, the most ambitious vid project in the history of vidding, and it's amazing. Not all of it works equally well, at least for me; but that's inevitable, I think, with a project of this magnitude, and it is certainly a vid whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you care about BtVS at all, you really must see this so-much-more-than-just-a-vid.
• Ecstatic Drum Trip (Farscape): Captures the essence of Farscape, and particularly John's journey, like no other vid I have ever seen or hope to see; this one went on my all-time favorites list the first time I saw it, and I'm still finding new things in it every time I watch.
• Serenity (Firefly): Mal's still looking for peace. This vid makes me miss my show with a deep and abiding ache.
• Ability to Swing (Highlander): Dead sexy (and I don't watch or care about the show).
• Don't Panic (Highlander): Gorgeous.
• A Hero's Tale (Highlander): Laugh-out-loud funny.
• History Repeating (Highlander), co-vidded with Killa: Intense Amanda vid.
• I'm Not A Virgin Anymore (Highlander): See above re: laugh-out-loud funny.
• Time Bomb (Life on Mars): Frantic and yet somehow light-hearted; Sam's just trying to cope.
• Bricks (Supernatural): This is the first (and thus far only) Supernatural vid that has made me even remotely interested in the show. A lot of what got me is the music itself, the driving beat with Aretha's voice layered over it, and the way Lum matches it to all these moments of impact, yet varies the pace enough to give us room to breathe. My overall sense is of simultaneous weariness and intensity: This is the job; it never lets up.

Meghannew

• Close Up (Firefly): A really terrific River Tam character study; great song choice, well-chosen effects that highlight what it's like to be inside River's head. There are some obvious similarities to Corn Child's "Must Be Dreaming" — both are set to Frou Frou songs — but "Close Up" is, I think, a harsher, darker vid.

Melina

Email to get the password for the vid site.

• Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (Highlander), co-vidded with Killa: Amusing Amanda vid.
• Bawitdaba (The Shield): This vid's a musical and stylistic departure from most of Melina's other vids, but wow, she really makes it work. Heavy, harsh, unrelenting, and totally gripping (even though I've never seen the show and don't think I'd care for it).

Merry

• Hello (SGA): Under normal circumstances, my degree of interest in this fandom would pretty much have to be measured in the negative numbers, but Merry does such spectacular things with it that, for the length of this vid, I am 100% on board. The way she uses every tiny little sound in the song and plays it up with exactly the right visual... Wow.

Morgaine

• Gangster's Paradise (BtVS): Fantastic Faith vid with counterintuitive but totally appropriate song choice.
• SheBangs (BtVS): This song choice should not work for Buffy/Faith. It really shouldn't. And yet, at least for me, it does.

Morgan Dawn

• Ghost (Doctor Who): The Doctor's past is catching up with him—and with Rose.
• Wonder of Birds (due South), co-vidded with Laura Shapiro: All about how the Fraser/RayK partnership, well, flies. Definitely on my Top Ten Favorite Vids Of All Time list.

obsessive24

• PostBlue (Firefly/Serenity): Simon and River and everything they do to and for each other. You can spin this as crazy space incest, but it works just fine as a look at two damaged, desperate people with a long and complicated history of affection and protection and pain.

Pipsqueak

• Happy Girl (BtVS): The best Tara tribute I've seen.
• Ordinary (BtVS): Absolutely heartbreaking (in that good way) Willow vid. This one's for the underappreciated teenage geekgirl in all of us.
• Reasons Why (BtVS): A psychologically insightful and very moving portrait of Tara's struggles to be herself.
• Goody Two Shoes (due South), co-vidded with Laura: My love for this vid cannot be textually rendered. Every slashy moment Fraser ever had with your Ray of choice, he had with the other Ray too. Seriously. This vid proves it.

Rowena

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer [abridged] (BtVS): Squeezes the entire series into 3:21. It's set to the William Tell Overture. It made me chuckle. A lot. It also made me say "wow"; the clip choices and the editing are really, really smart.
• Move Your Feet (BtVS): "Once More With Feeling" set to a dance-pop hit, and it works beautifully. Flashy, sassy, and a lot of fun.
• Pluto (BtVS): Amazing Faith vid that uses some great effects (and a freaky Bjork song) to defamiliarize the visuals from the body-switching eps; yeah, you've seen these clips before, but not like this. Serious wow factor.
• Part of the Queue (Veronica Mars): Character study of Logan Echolls, and especially of the ways in which being Aaron Echolls' son has affected him—and by "affected," I mean "seriously damaged." Stylish, intense, and frequently very creepy.

SDWolfpup

• Cold Cold Water (BSG): The best Starbuck character study I've ever seen.
• Fix You (BSG): This vid freaks me out in the best of all possible ways. They just want to help!
• United States of Spike (BtVS): I love Spike, but that doesn't mean I have to take him seriously all the time.
• Woman King (Deadwood): An intense character study that feels meaningful to me even though I don't know the show at all.
• Moving Right Along (Farscape): A John-and-D'Argo best-friends vid that manages to be both deeply silly and surprisingly moving.
• Fast Cars (Life on Mars): I love the relentless beat, the jump cuts and little flashy-displacement effects that show just how lost Sam's feeling, the shift from literal to metaphorical fast cars, and the sense, near the vid's end, of suspended action, of things yet to come.

Seah & Margie

Seah & Margie make vids that absolutely blow my mind. I have learned a lot about vidding from watching their vids over and over and over and over and then once more to grow on.

• Jerusalem (BSG): Finally they vid a show I watch! This vid is both intensely emotional and a wonderfully thoughtful exploration of the connections between three intriguing female characters (Starbuck, Boomer, Roslin), and thus goes right to the heart of my interest in the show.
• Kryptonite (Invisible Man): Tells me everything I need to know about the relationship between the two lead characters of a show that I'd never seen when I first saw the vid.
• Big Red Boat (Joan of Arcadia): Charmed everyone at VividCon 2004; it's sweet and earnest and funny and, well, charming—even for those of us who didn't watch the show.
• Walking on the Ground (multi-source): The best meta-vid in the history of EVER.
• Haunted (Odyssey 5): Blew everyone away at VividCon 2003, and with good reason. Once again, it doesn't matter if you've never seen the show (I still haven't); watch and learn, kids.

Shalott

Shalott and I have, as far as I can tell, no significant fandom overlap, so I don't always connect with her vids as personally or emotionally as I do with vids for shows I know. But her work is always smart, and beautifully put together, and entirely worth watching.

• Mundian To Bach Ke (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), co-vidded with hafital: I can watch this one over and over again for its remarkable use of color and motion.
• A Day in the Life (Dead Zone), co-vidded with Speranza: Four minutes and thirty seconds and never a dull moment. This vid is practically a textbook example of how to use the music, how to wring everything out of it that's there. Which, yeah, it helps if you start with one of the weirdest and most complicated songs ever recorded. But the combination of music and visuals just so totally works: the increasingly surreal images as the orchestra goes nuts... it's just exactly right.
• Zebra (due South): Not quite my take on RayK, but I love the kinetic energy and tight editing.
• Bukowski (House): Asshole and control freak—yeah, that's House.
• Would You? (Ocean's 11): Captures the movie's humor and its visual flash.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous (Smallville): Makes me chuckle even though (or possibly because) I don't care about the show at all.
• Rumble (SGA), co-vidded with Speranza: Makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.
• Jig of Life (Witchblade): Shalott has described this vid as "the Witchblade lays claim to Sarah's soul," and it's just as creepy as that description suggests; I responded especially to the rhythm and tempo of the cutting, and to the remarkable use of the song's nuances of sound.

sisabet

sisabet is one of my favorite vidders, period. We push each other to do better. Plus, I totally watched due South in secret and then made a vid for her and renenet. sisabet really likes that story.

• Two Words (AtS): A brilliant, complex send-off for Angel: the series.
• Whatever (AtS), co-vidded with Luminosity: 1) proves Angel is gay; 2) makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
• Closer (BtVS/AtS): if you haven't seen this one, you have clearly been living under a rock, and you should fix that, even if you're not a fan of Angel/Spike.
• Peacekeeper (BtVS): Possibly my favorite Buffy vid ever. Uses images from "Restless" to structure a remarkable exploration of Buffy's quest to understand the source of her power and the role of her friends in helping her deal with that power.
• Icebound Stream (due South): Takes the two most gorgeous eps of the show (the Victoria's Secret two-parter), adds polar bears (yes, really), sets the whole thing to jittery, weirdly compelling music, and ends up being one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
• SOS (Farscape): A gorgeous portrait of John circa S3.
• Weeping Willow (Invisible Man): Captures some of the scary intensity of which the show was capable.
• Ring Them Bells (Kill Bill): An amazingly beautiful vid; it's so slow, and quiet, and the effect is just perfect—the stillness, the focus on the individual frames. It makes melancholy out of violence, because that stillness puts the focus on the characters: not violence but the people who commit it, not violence but its aftermath.
• Without You I'm Nothing (Smallville): Oh, if only the show had the complexity of this vid.

Smut Cutter

• What Really Happened (Once Upon A Time In Mexico): When I first saw that somebody had set a vid for this movie to a Bon Jovi song, I thought "that person is on crack." By the time I finished watching the vid, I was thinking "on the other hand, it's obviously the good crack." Stylish, a little tongue-in-cheek, and a really good time.

sweetestdrain

• You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk (BSG): Okay, I have absolutely no objectivity about this vid at all, because sweetestdrain made it for me and dualbunny, but I just adore it. Every time I watch it, I giggle madly and say "awwwww" and make flappy hands of glee. Because: Lee! He's so twelve! He's so sweet and earnest and emo and colossally stupid! And Starbuck is so hot! And this vid is so awesome!
• Circles (Dead Like Me): I find this vid utterly charming and I don't even know the show; fans of DLM have told me the vid absolutely nails some crucial stuff about the main character.
• Scared (Firefly): This is a Mal-centric vid that nevertheless works in most of the rest of the ensemble to some degree, and thus gets at lot of different aspects of Mal: all those different relationships, all the things that combine to make him who he is. The love for Mal just shines through every tiny little bit of this vid.

Vrya

Vrya's vids are like nobody else's, and they're gorgeous. She was making sound mixes and fanart collages before she started vidding, and she uses strategies from those media to great effect in her vids.

• Bright Side (BtVS): An improbably (but delightfully) light-hearted look at S6.
• Killer (BtVS): Takes on the relationship between Willow and Warren by working out the thematic and visual parallels between the characters.
• Schism (BtVS): The essential Spike vid; it captures so much about him with such insight and style that I really can't imagine vidding the character again after seeing it.
• Sleep Alone (BtVS): Vrya repeats, layers, and combines scenes and images into something entirely new, and sets it all to dreamy, hypnotic music. The vid's tremendously effective even if (like me) you don't have the slightest emotional investment in Buffy/Angel.

Wendy

• Sleepwalker (BtVS): A serious, insightful vid about Xander's feelings for Buffy.
• Yodel (BtVS): BtVS + Sound of Music = unbelievably funny.
• Blank (Queer as Folk): Shiny fandom! Sweet vid!
• Elevation (Queer as Folk), co-vidded with f1renze: Also shiny, and so very stylish; amazing in its control of tempo and motion.

whereistheluv

• Colorblind (Veronica Mars): The color effects here are utterly amazing from a tech point of view, but they also do a lot of thematic and emotional work: showing just how isolated Veronica is, how cut off from her own life. I don't know how well this one will work for folks who haven't seen the show, but I found it tremendously moving.

Wicked Amp

• Break Me Off A Switch (BtVS/AtS): My favorite of Wicked Amp's vids; covers Faith's brief arc on AtS S4. Sharp use of special effects, plus some great editing.
• Flight Plan (BtVS/AtS): A bit difficult for me to follow since I'm not familiar with most of AtS S4, but beautifully put together.
• Fight (BtVS): A fairly slight but really well-edited BtVS S3 vid in which people, well, fight (and Giles gets knocked in the head with a ball, and Faith jumps up and down on her bed); my favorite thing about this vid is the way it captures the mood of BtVS: cute yet techno, action-y yet funny. Yep, that's my show.

Zen

• Rebels of the Sacred Heart (Boondock Saints): If you haven't already seen the movie, this vid will make you want to. Guns! Crosses! Two boozy violent totally charming guys!
• Please Please Please (Hard Core Logo): In theory, this is a Lord King Bad Vid. Most LKBVs don't work for me, because they're set to songs that make me want to hide under the bed, but this? This is set to The Smiths. I love it. Joe Dick may be a badass punk rocker, but really he just wants Billy to love him back OMG!