Gift Vid: Skynet: Life in the Balance - for ghost lingering

[chaila]

Title: Skynet: Life in the Balance
Recipient: ghost lingering
Vidder: seekingferret
Music: Philip Glass, "The Grid," from Koyaanisqatsi
Summary: "John Henry processes more information in a minute than we do in a lifetime. A millisecond for a supercomputer like this, it's almost like forever to us."

~Matt Murch, ZeiraCorp

A musical essay on Skynet

Notes: Warning for effects that probably count as strobing, albeit fairly slowly. Thanks for chaila for beta help.

Link: Link to signed vid post.

Comments

[ghost_lingering]

OMG, I don't even know where to start. You vidded Skynet! This is awesome!!! I love how you've done it so that it slowly builds on what's come before; it's less about narrative and more about themes and variations. (Not that you would have any way of knowing this, but it reminded me of a thing I did in college of animations to The Goldberg Variations; your vid is much better than my dabbling.) This is also great because it's distinctly not a human narrative. You focus on information, on patterns, not on people or emotional moments. And I love how you use the visuals -- the pressure gauge comes to mind -- to relay narrative. So there still are clearly critical moments in Skynet's development happening, turning points that bring us from the traffic lights to the post-apocolyptic world, but they are non-human turning points.

I'm sure I'll have more to say on this later, but I really love it and I'm thrilled that someone took me up on the challenge to vid Skynet. <3 Thank so much you!!!!!!!

[seekingferret]

:D I'm so glad you appreciated it. It's a really weird vid and I wasn't sure what kind of reaction it would get.

The show does a great job, in the early parts at least, of representing Skynet as having completely non-anthropic senses and ambitions and needs. It was fascinating to focus on that part of the show, to stop making it about people vs. Terminators and to look at the macro effects guiding the more globally significant narratives. And Koyaanisqatsi was perfect for that.

[seekingferret]

Also, your mention of the Goldberg Variations has me musing about a project. Do you think we could pull it off?

32 Variations, 32 fandoms, 32 performers, 32 vidders? I mean, I own 6 different full recordings of the Variations already...

[ghost_lingering]

YES.

I was actually thinking about how a GV series would look for vidding -- different fandoms for each of the variations? the same fandom different characters? the same character? the same actor different roles? the same theme different films/tv shows? SO MANY OPTIONS.

I only have two versions I think, but I've certainly listened to others -- I'm sure that finding 32 different variations would be easy(ish) enough. The fandoms -- so many options! But the the 32 vidders is the stumper ... well, two down, thirty to go, right? o_O I'm game for trying to pull it off if you are.

[sanguinity]

Tentative in, here.

[ghost_lingering]

hahaha, I am going to count that as an ALL IN.

Thinking about it, I think you'd have to format it similar to how Big Bangs are formatted. Turn in drafts of x number of vids/minutes every month until a final deadline at the end.

I think you'd either get 32 vidders who have become a tight knit group at the end or you'd get 32 vidders who have all smashed their computers in rage. WHO KNOWS.

[sanguinity]

Count it as you like. Getting me to behave like I've committed is another thing. :-P

Those options aren't exclusive!

[seekingferret]

That's certainly one way to format it. The other way is to not have any deadline and just have a signup list of variations and check off variations as someone completes them. Maybe claiming a variation gives you exclusivity for a three month period?

I dunno, I'm just always in favor of figuring out lower pressure ways to do things as well as higher pressure ways. With the Big Bang-style approach, if we don't get 32 vidders right away, it loses the urgency instantly. With a more relaxed approach we can start small and gain vidders one at a time as they see a neat project and have time to make a vid for it.

[ghost_lingering]

Oh, yes! That actually sounds better. It is also looser in that you wouldn't *have* to cap it at 32 if there were more than 32 vidders interested. ...which of course there would be, clearly. (or possibly not) I think regular check-ins would be cool though, perhaps in part because I'm a deadline motivated person. (If Losing Our Religions had just been a thing I thought of with no deadlines it might never have gotten made, much less posted.)

I have been contemplating what fandom I would want to claim and that is really where things are getting tricky for me. So many fandoms, so many variations!

[seekingferret]

I know, so many options!

I know I'd want there to be a C.J. Cregg variation, because of "The Long Goodbye". I'm not really sure which variation, though. I think in the episode they only play the aria.



Anyway, should we set up a community to start planning this?

[ghost_lingering]

Definitely! (Comm name = Goldberg Vidderations?) (Which is more vidder+iteration than vid+variation, but it sounds better than other things, possibly?) (Terrible puns, I haz them.)

I'm already working on a C.J. Cregg vid so I leave that variation up to someone else, but I can see the West Wing in general being good fodder for the project. There are some interesting (and some too-on-the-nose) ideas I can see for that show in the context of the variations.

FYI, my e-mail is ghost (dot) lingering (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to chat about this more before starting a comm? e-mail is easier for me to respond to most days than dw comments.

[chaila]

I wondered if anyone would tackle the tall order of a Skynet vid! It's an interesting choice to do it as a Skynet point of view vid and focus on the patterns and the bird's eye view (so to speak!), and not even use the Terminators, which makes this feel very detached and mechanical. And there's definitely a sense of time slowed down, or a few moments drawn out, and how Skynet would "see" and process things.

[seekingferret]

Yeah, Skynet looms over everything in the show, but it's not exactly obvious how to sketch out its story since the main characters in the show certainly don't understand its purposes. It was fun to make this vid, and I appreciated your help!

[colls]

I felt like I just watched a computer being born and start walking about on stumbling legs. Such a wonderful meta vid.

the time stopping effect must've been so exhausting to do!

[seekingferret]

Thank you!