Throwback Thursday #2

[brightly_lit]

Gahhh, my friends page is full of such wonderful stuff today, especially in amilliondays! Most of you are talking about t.v. and music and show, and you know I'll be talking about that a lot in coming weeks, but for now I'll blab more about gishwhes, because it's my favorite event of the year and it's still not over for me mentally (fegvep!! coming soon).

Gradually managing to catch up, on lj and everywhere else, after gishwhes! Our house wasn't quite the wreck it's been in past years; just some clutter, mostly, that cleaned up quick. One year there was food coloring on the bathroom walls and an entire tray full of gingerbread; at least it's not that bad this time around!

I promised in amilliondays that I'd post my gishwhes items from this year, but since it's Throwback Thursday, I figured I would post my items from past years, since that's certainly a thing that's made me happy in the past, and I'm not sure I was brave enough back then to post my items! It'll also serve as an introduction to this year's items inasmuch as maybe it'll show you why I'm so pleased with my growth as a video-maker, because my first year's videos ... pretty basic. I've learned a lot, thanks to gishwhes. It's the only time of year I make videos, and I have an absolute ball at it. I was a film major once. That dream seemed long dead, but for 15 seconds at a time for one week out of the year, I get to delve into it!

The item was: VIDEO. It turns out that jellyfish will be big winners in global warming. Create a PSA to help the humans prepare for a future with jellyfish overlords. 23 points

Fun with Windows Movie Maker, which it turns out isn't the virtually useless video editing program I thought it was! I only learned that this year. The transitions still aren't the best, but with enough creativity and experimentation, you can make them look pretty good. This was me just starting out using the program:

Jellyfish PSA:

VIDEO. Tweed Porn. Let's see it with an appropriate porn sound track played on a lone kazoo. (No nudity required.) 23 points

LOL--I like that no nudity is REQUIRED. Merely SUGGESTED, maybe? Were I to do it now, I'd do a lot more with the visuals. ... Then again, the dimly lit room, cruddy camerawork and close-up is rather suggestive of porn. Still, I adore this one, because we totally went for it, Patty's kazoo-porn-music is hilarious, and the whole team came up with ideas for the script, most especially SpringLea, queen of puns.

Don't make me get the lint roller!

VIDEO. Which is faster: a baby learning to crawl or a turtle? Let's see a race. 26 points

An otherwise almost completely uninvolved last-minute member of our team (who kind of seemed offended by the whole idea of gishwhes--it seemed like the person who talked her into joining hadn't actually told her what she was signing up for) happened to have a crawling-age baby, the guy on our team who has virtually every object you could ever want somewhere on his property happened to have a turtle (we named him on the spot so we could cheer him on in the race), so we managed to get this item! Toby, dude ... maybe you should have trained more.

Baby vs. Turtle Race

IMAGE. Gingerbread Villages are always so cute and quaint. Make a gingerbread village that shows urban blight: needle exchanges, prostitution, heavy police presence, etc. 97 points

Here's the source of all that food coloring and gingerbread! If you look closely, you can see all sorts of unsavory details ....

http://i.imgur.com/XgR0O7e.jpg

I'm loving all the amilliondays happy, people!! And seeing what used to float your boat/still does. <3

Comments

[kalliel]

I couldn't tell you why, but "entire tray of gingerbread" made me laugh. I love that that sentiment bookends this post. XD And I remember the jellyfish PSA! Which is great. You're so right, though--your camerawork and what you do with WMM has totally transformed, beginning with this PSA and coming up through the tweed porn (which is SO so low-q porny, ahahaha YES) and then the Sinscreen commercial this year. Just WOW. So awesome. Hoorah for gishwhes and its week of madness / aple reason to strut your stuff in all possible ways!

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

THE GINGERBREAD. Here's what I said to Milly below on the topic: lol gingerbread tray. I discovered in doing that item that the gingerbread people generally use for gingerbread houses is entirely different from that used for eating, because, ya know, it has to be LOAD-BEARING. So it wasn't exactly something that could be eaten, but you hate to throw away that much of something that's technically food ... but that's what eventually happened, alas. But I kinda had to let it get a little stale and try to nibble a bit first. ;->

I'm glad you think I'm growing as a 15-second-filmmaker. ;-D The first year I was just so anxious about actually completing an item, any item (and learning how to use the freakin' software) that I didn't pay much attention to artfulness in filming apparently. ;-P But now as a seasoned veteran of gishing, I have an idea how long each thing will take (and I know I'm not gonna win or get in the coffee-table book or anything), so I really plan it out and do everything I want with it. Thanks for your sweet words, bb. <3

gishwhes really exercises long-dormant muscles! Giving one a chance to do stuff one hasn't thought about in a long time, but deep down has missed. :-*

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

You know what, there's no greater joy than watching someone achieve something, GISHWHES allows us to achieve something. It may be silly, it may be irreverent, or it may be sentimental but it's a damned fine thing to know that one week out of the year we're gonna be pushing ourselves to create and enjoy and just jump in feet first! Thank you for this, I adore Tweed Porn, just AWESOME, and I dunno why but "entire tray of gingerbread" just made me giggle!

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Yeah!! I LOVE how gishwhes makes you really ACCOMPLISH stuff--and you don't have any time to second-guess yourself or think better of it--you just have to go out there and do it, and another thing, and another thing! Just goes to show a person how much they can accomplish in a week if they put their minds to it; it's really inspiring and motivating for me that way.

Glad you enjoyed! I'm loving this event in the comm. :-)

lol gingerbread tray. I discovered in doing that item that the gingerbread people generally use for gingerbread houses is entirely different from that used for eating, because, ya know, it has to be LOAD-BEARING. So it wasn't exactly something that could be eaten, but you hate to throw away that much of something that's technically food ... but that's what eventually happened, alas. But I kinda had to let it get a little stale and try to nibble a bit first. ;->

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

LOL you know I'd never thought of the logistics and practicalities of creating a ginger bread house, but now that's to you I have pub quiz knowledge :D

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

Ah, these are SO GREAT. Jellyfish PSA will forever be one of my favorites. I loved that I just came into your room from whatever I'd been doing and you had just DONE it, all on your own, and it was GENIUS. And hilarious. Ah, I just watched it again and I always have to watch it at least twice. :-D :-D

I am proud to have my tweed porn kazoo serenade in your shuffle. And we've done some awesome stuff in GISHWHES since then, but Baby vs. Turtle is kind of one of the most accessible entries; I find it's a good way to explain what GISWHES is to confused coworkers.

You are amazing, and I loved hearing your memories and your process, even if I was there for much of it-- it adds so much. <3

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Aw, you are so great. Thank you, bb!

Yeah, Baby vs. Turtle does kind of sum it up.

You were such a big part of half these items! And your generous reactions made the rest of them worth it. <3 <3

[jj1564.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your wonderful vids, "Don't make me get the lint roller!" made me laugh, and I love that Toby the turtle barely moved at all! The urban gingerbread scene is awesome, it must have taken ages to do all that!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you did this year :)

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you! I'm still really going through it, but tonight's a good night, so I'm trying to get as much ljing done tonight as possible. Maybe I'll even be able to get started on those!

(heeee, the lint roller line always gets me. Oh, SpringLea.)