azdak

I've had my eye out for some time for a fanvid that sums up Alias Smith and Jones for general audiences (I wouldn't recommend that anyone over the age of about 10 actually watch the series - it's the kind of thing where you really have to be a kid and imprint on it in order to appreciate it), but I would like to find something that gives even a little sense of its appeal. Thanks to the vagaries of the youtube algorithm, however, it wasn't until today that one finally showed up, immediately followed by two pretty close runners up, all three by the same vidder, RHCinderella (who along with her cowboy stuff also has a very good Hornblower vid). The first is called Missing Road and pulls off the remarkable trick of taking little moments scattered through 50-odd episodes and structuring them so that you not only get a summary of the series' main premise, you also get served up in 4 short minutes the kind of psychological insight into the characters that only long hours of obsessive fannish watching can glean from canon.



The second vid is completely different. It recontextualises clips from Alias Smith and Jones and Maverick to build a story around Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, and does it brilliantly. I've never seen an episode of Maverick, but after watching this, I've decided to commit to watching at least one. I note that while canonically Maverick did not teach Heyes to play poker, Doylistically he clearly inspired his hat (same showrunner, so I really don't think it's a coincidence).



The third vid, All the Gold in California, does a grand job of capturing the light-heartedness and humour of the series, not to mention the frustration of repeatedly coming close to a fortune but always having it slip between your fingers. This is probably the most "realistic" of the three in the sense of straightforwardly reflecting canon.



So there you have it, from no suitable vids to three (well, two and one bonus for those not too turned off by old TV westerns). You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Great Nirvana in Fire vid here on AO3: Secret

I don't imagine the audience for Andrew vids stretches much beyond my sister and toronto_gal, so here, for that very special audience, is Andrew's version of his "redemption arc", set to Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer. It's a rather bizarre little vid (well, not so little, actually - I'm afraid it's 25KB), but the basic idea works. In an Andrew-y sort of way. And I managed to cram in a lot more Spike than I would have thought narratively possible:-)

Urgh, I know I'm gonna regret this in the morning, but my sister says I should put up my first ever vidding effort because 'It's really rather lovely, for those of us who lust after Spike.' All I can say is please overlook the formal flaws and accept it as a piece of juvenilia. And I guess I can always delete this entry if I wake up in a cold sweat, wondering why the hell I did it (which is more than can be said for most of the errors of judgment I've made in my life. Hooray for lj, eh?). Embarrassing Spuffy vid.

Woo-hoo, I've finished my vid! It's Thin Lizzy's The Boys are Back in Town, and of course it's Angel and Spike and Spike and Angel and William and Angelus(with a few brief appearances by other characters). I'm feeling smug about it, because it is SO MUCH BETTER than my first ever effort, and because I got very worried halfway through that the idea wasn't going to work after all (there's not much text and I am very, very text-orientated, in vidding, as in theatre, as in life) but in the end it all worked. It's here.