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Terrestrial Human

Build Your Own: AMV, FMV

Dragoncon is one of the biggest media parties every year, based solidly in Fandom from its origins to its current incarnation, and encompassing one of the largest collections of creative folks from the US. One aspect of that creativity is expressed within the AMV or FMV competition, an event many cons have taken up. In its simplest form an Anime Music Video or Fan Music Video contest encourages you to take some video footage, either created by you or extracted from a favorite show or film and give it a song for a soundtrack. It rapidly gets more complicated than that, as you select the best scenes, try to match the lip movement to the song lyrics, and finally try to tell a unique story from these component parts. But even if you only achieve the first level, you have created something that has never before existed, which is always a good thing. I should also mention that the source laws for fair use have changed this past year, so you are allowed to rip your video segments directly from the DVDs if you want to now.

The DragonCon AMV 2010 is now over, and you can see the winners at that site (and maybe one or two at the end of this post). But the competition for 2011 just got serious this past October 1st, when the Fandom Music Video Awards went live. They are accepting contest entrants in three phases, or rounds: October 1st to December 31st, now underway, January 15th through April 15th for round two, and May 1st to July 31st for round three. Each round shall have its winners, and the finalists will be part of the con itself. The first video in the next segment includes some rules, hints, and trips. The others are a few of last years winners, starting with the Best In Show winner Building Steam, made from video from Steam Boy and the soundtrack being Steampunk band Abney Park’s Building Steam. Good Luck!

Steampunk TV Show

This one comes as Webisodes, which is rapidly becoming the norm as the various flavors of multimedia converge. And some of the folks involved have had a hand in blurring the lines between the various media delivery types for previous shows, like the narrator Amanda Tapping who launched the first episode of Sanctuary online, with the numbers of viewers convincing Sci-Fi to spring for an actual season of the show. So now the Steampunk story of Riese: Kingdom Falling can be enjoyed online, and again there is a good chance the numbers will determine whether the program makes the jump to regularly produced series. Another example of this style of programming launches its web site today; The Minds Eye Series also has a lot to offer. That one is Fantasy rather then Steampunk, but both of these shows bypass typical Big Media companies (at least the worst aspects of them) and bring their stories straight to the audience to see if they can win a big enough share to survive as a series.

I had to grin when I noticed an actor or two as well as some of the production staff was coming from the Sanctuary team as well, and those who were not were equally professional. They are not the first group to do this style of Pilot creation, but they have had more success at it than most. The principle here is to do two contradictory things, and do both of them so well that you create an audience for the show that makes the network eager to add it to their lineup. First, you must create an episode so compelling, and a cast of characters so interesting and engaging, that the audience cannot wait to see what happens next. Second, you must do it while spending as close to no money as possible while having the highest production values.

One of the tricks that actually allows you to accomplish both of these goals is to only shoot the action scenes with the least amount of FX, substituting narration for the bits you don’t have the budget to film. This allows you to concentrate what budget you do have into costumes, props, background, cinematography, and the other details that show the quality of the finished product you intend to achieve. The narration segments must move the story forward with whatever visual footage can be put together that infers, rather than shows, the events being described. This technique has previously been used to bridge missing segments in archival footage (like many Doctor Who stories from the 60s and 70s), but now folks have figured out it can be used to present new offerings as well in an effective manor.

I do appreciate that this is the first actively SteamPunk TV program I have run across so far, and I intend to support it. There are SteamPunk precursor programs, like Legend, Brisco County Junior, or Wild Wild West, each of which took place in the right era and depended on scientific development (and sometimes SuperScience) in order to resolve their plotlines. But this is the first time I have watched video that had many of the protagonists wearing brass goggles with leather clothing of a distinctly SteamPunk flavor, and I am seriously looking forward to more episodes of this series.

Holiday Specials

Word is out the Doctor Who Christmas Special will air in the US this year on the same day it does in the UK; December 25th! Usually it lags over here by several months, but last year they did announce that Torchwood would air here 5 hours after it aired in London. As it turned out that didn’t happen, although the lag was no where near as long as it could have been. We will see if they keep the promise of same day release this year or not.

There are two other SF holiday specials to look forward to as well. Eureka and Warehouse 13 have been announced as running back to back on Tuesday, December 7th, beginning at 9PM Eastern/Pacific time.

Thanks to Airlock Alpha and Slice of SciFi for the heads up on the specials.

Source Code trailer

Duncan Jones did a brilliant movie called Moon, and if this trailer is any indication he is about to do it again with his new film Source Code. Scheduled to be released on April 15th, this is a story about a time traveling soldier who is out to stop terrorists and hopefully save the girl. But he only has eight minutes at a time to pull it off, and at the end of each eight minute segment he dies, unless he can finally get it right.