New Vid: Espionage | Year Of The Rabbit

[jinkyo]

Watch on YouTube

CON.TXT 2021 - Premiere 6/26/2021
Fandom: Year of the Rabbit Music:
Espionage by Green Day
Description: Turn of the century London is full of dastardly villains and rotten cops.
Warnings: Visual Triggers, Sexual content, Graphic violence, Alcohol use, blood or gore, police / law enforcement

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/32228653

YouTube: https://youtu.be/bHk39ytUXVA

A quick, fun recruiter vid for Year of the Rabbit (Channel 4, IFC). I discovered the series through a screencap last year. Period piece, comedy, Black characters, I was interested.

Rec (anti-rec?): The show was a fun watch! Set in 1887 London, the 6 part series follows the crimefighting adventures of a trio of misfit cops. The characters are fantastic as are the costumes and locations. The plot was a bit convoluted and wonderfully bizarre - there was a villain called Brick Man...um, like a man-made of bricks who stabbed people. I was delighted by all of the "new" technology (electricity, phones, bicycles) and how they were played for laughs.

The anti-rec is that parts of the show were viscerally repellant for me. I'm not overly squeamish, I don't think, but Merrick (The Elephant Man) - FANTASTIC make-up- I squinted through many of his scenes. Murky John who lives in the sewer and makes his living from... things in the sewers...THINGS IN THE SEWER! Inspector Tanner has an unfortunate meeting with a bomb that leaves him in a face mask - like those US Civil War or WW1 era crude masks meant to cover bits that are missing. It creeped me out. Some of the dialogue is...really foul. Not curse words, just, extremely descriptive lines about deeply unappealing things and ideas. Finally, some of the characters just seemed really dirty and stinky. Sometimes the show is a bit too earthy/vulgar for my taste. (And yes, I am fully aware that I have "outraged old lady" morals about some things while being positively enthusiastic about others, like swamp slick omegas in heat.)

So, while I very much *did* enjoy the show, it was a difficult watch.

But - I was on a tight deadline for a CON.TXT vid (because I squeezed a 3rd video into my 2 vid edit window) and knew I could do a fun WTF!? style vid for Rabbit quickly.


Audio Edit

The score for the show is a wonderful, jazzy, snare-heavy percussive bit that worked very well for the wacky hijinks on-screen. I very much had Sabotage by the Beastie Boys in mind as a vid and audio template when I started. This was halted because I didn't have the time to build an audio edit. Next, I started poking around 60s and 70s film and TV scores for that jazzy sound and for a few days, was playing with a track from "The Sweeney". Eventually, the idea of something "Austin Powers-y" came to mind, so I spent a day listening to those soundtracks which is where I found Espionage by Green Day.

This was a fairly simple edit of stitching together the parts of the song with the most movement. Most importantly, I knew there was a "cool slo-mo" shot that I wanted to use and the song had a lovely audio bed for that shot.

One regret on this was not having the time or space to use soundbites. So are so many cheeky and hilarious little audio snippets that would be great for a fanvid!



Video Edit

This was planned as a short vid that got even shorter once I started laying down clips. This is the world of the vid, here are our heros, these are some of their sidekicks, and these are the villains they chase. The show has some beautiful visual effects and I greedily incorporated those where I could.

There is a sketched "mystery" plot in the vid, but at a minute and a half, viewers might pick up the narrative or not - the vid really is a barrage of What The Fuck imagery more than anything else.


Learns

Time constraints meant that I had to be more severe with clipping than usual. I often clip long or clip things that "might" come in handy. For this, clipping was limited to "what will I actually use? What clips does this vid need?" Which means I lost the great shots of the copper that has outgrown his tucking (crossdressing) days as well as some great clips of the street urchins.

I also made a real, Photoshop thumbnail for this one! The bulk of my thumbnails I make using my YouTube plugin. That process is to find a frame in the vid, preferably with a human face front and center, Then add bold text in a contrasting color. There is an appreciable downtrend in clicks when I'm even lazier and just use my own vid title screen as the thumb, as I discovered with the WandaVision vid. (I switched out that thumb and the hits "exploded")

Overall, this was a fun, palate-cleansing edit, the kind of edit that was much needed after a long spring season of production.

 

Comments

[sw33n3y]

Heh, this captured the zany fun of YotR. Some nice edits in there.

The bicycle 'chase' scene was a classic, wasn't it.:D

[jinkyo]

I adored every scene where Rabbit tried to use new technology! The first time he sees the bike on the wall was hilarious, and I audibly snorted at him trying to use "the stick".

[duskpeterson]

I like the selection of music!

[jinkyo]

Ha - I very much enjoyed the music search!