Video Filk Nostalgia
If you've been reading 
ohiblather's journal over the last week and today you know that Urban Tapestry has decided to take a number of old videos of concert footage, sort through them, digitize them and organize them into a DVD celebrating our 12 years together as a group. The resulting DVD won't be used for commercial purposes, but we will donate copies to Interfilk auctions for cons we're going to this year, with FilKONtario, appropriately as our home con, being the first.
As the official "keeper of the UT archives" through the years I've managed to gather a number of videos of UT concerts, taken by a number of videographers through the last 12 years (John Durno, Paul Kwinn, Glenn Simser and others). I've started to go through those tapes to get a sense of what conventions and what concerts are there before getting more specifically into what songs are there and which versions of songs are worthy of digitizing, etc.. Since John is doing the technical end of making the DVD for us he's been encouraging me to start making notes of what's on the videos and it's been a nostalgic jolt to sit over the last week and play through the videos and see how far we, and so many we know in filk, have come.
Here's some random things I found amazing and satisfying and wistful about watching these videos:
- Watching Debbie especially growing as a performer, going from quiet gal with the flute, to props and mugging to playing guitar to singing!
- Coming across the concert debuts of songs we now take for granted, like the first time we sang "The Lady" or "TechnoNerdboy" or "Puppies Cooked in Brine".
- Whoo, Scott Snyder playing the electric guitar with us at OVFF and ConChord! Watching the 1995 OVFF clip of "TechnoNerdboy" and "Web Surfin'" was especially fun, because that was the first time Scott had ever been on-stage at OVFF and it reminded me of his cool OVFF Toastmaster concert at the last OVFF :).
- Footage of Annie, Tim, Lissa and Phil taken at FKO 2000 the year they came over to surprise us six weeks after we had GoHed at the British filkcon :). Huge nostalgia value.
- Video footage of itty bitty Kwinn babies at Consonance in 2001. Those babelets just turned four this week!
- Turning my video camera on this quiet woman with long hair each time she sang at Didgeri Douze in England in 2000 because I liked her voice and music so much and I'd never heard her before. 'Twas Erica Neely, who I've been lucky enough to hear many times since :).
- Watching several "guys" who sang "Cuz He's A Guy" with us through the years caught on video-tape- Graham Leathers, Paul Kwinn, Mike Green, Harold Groot.
- A moth attacking Jodi while she sang "The Lady" at our ConChord concert in 2002 :). Well, it amused me :).
- A little bitty Lyanne Quirt singing with us at Toronto Trek in 1995. She must have been, like, 13 at the time. We were singing a song of hers called "Lwaxana Came Back".
- Another even bittier kid being thrown around on SteveMac's shoulders while he introduced our FKO concert in 1995. I'm sure that boy's a sturdy teenager by now :).
- Footage of Lloyd Landa- performing with Karen, arguing with me about tuning 12-strings, holding signs for our "Interjection" song. Such footage still gives the heart a twinge.
- Coming across footage of the very first time Deb, Jodi and I sang together as a trio. Whoa. It was during an "Intro to Filk" panel at Ad Astra in 1993. We sang my song "The Ancient Yearning".
- Footage of our very first concert as a group. It was a children's concert at Confusion in January 1994.
- Being intrigued by the number of songs we performed in concert through the years that we don't tend to sing anymore. Fascinating to hear those songs again.
- Noticing how Debbie's props keep changing in the various versions of "Neurotic Love Song" through the years. Frequently, if we lost the cartoons or forgot them, Deb would have to quickly make more cartoons :).
- Being initially disappointed that we didn't have any UT footage of us singing at the British filkcon in 2000 (it's because it was my video camera and I took all the footage) and then watching the video again and being SO MUCH HAPPIER that I had footage of everybody else who sang at that con :).
- Finding myself being very aware of audience reaction during our concerts and how it affected the energy of our performance. An interesting phenomenon to observe.
So, the game plan is to put these concerts in chronological order, choose one or two representative tracks from each concert to put on the DVD.
At present we have concert footage from Ad Astra '93, Confusion '94, FKO '94, Winnipeg WorldCon '94, FKO '95, Toronto Trek '95, OVFF '95, FKO '99, Consonance '01, ConChord '02 and The Gathering of The Fellowship '03.
So, here's my humble REQUEST. If anyone out there has Urban Tapestry footage from cons not mentioned above that you would be willing to send to me to receive in the next month that would be really, really cool. We're not in a position to pay you, since the DVD will never make money, but you would have our undying gratitude and a lavish mention and thanks on our DVD liner notes.
Speaking of videographers, besides John and Paul and Glenn, if you know you gave me any of the concert footage tapes mentioned above, please do remind me. If we choose to use anyone else's video footage or video clips with any other performers besides UT, we will be in contact with those people in the next several weeks to get permission.
This is going to prove to be a convoluted but very satisfying project. It will be interesting to boil a dozen or more videos down to one DVD.
ohiblather's journal over the last week and today you know that Urban Tapestry has decided to take a number of old videos of concert footage, sort through them, digitize them and organize them into a DVD celebrating our 12 years together as a group. The resulting DVD won't be used for commercial purposes, but we will donate copies to Interfilk auctions for cons we're going to this year, with FilKONtario, appropriately as our home con, being the first.As the official "keeper of the UT archives" through the years I've managed to gather a number of videos of UT concerts, taken by a number of videographers through the last 12 years (John Durno, Paul Kwinn, Glenn Simser and others). I've started to go through those tapes to get a sense of what conventions and what concerts are there before getting more specifically into what songs are there and which versions of songs are worthy of digitizing, etc.. Since John is doing the technical end of making the DVD for us he's been encouraging me to start making notes of what's on the videos and it's been a nostalgic jolt to sit over the last week and play through the videos and see how far we, and so many we know in filk, have come.
Here's some random things I found amazing and satisfying and wistful about watching these videos:
- Watching Debbie especially growing as a performer, going from quiet gal with the flute, to props and mugging to playing guitar to singing!
- Coming across the concert debuts of songs we now take for granted, like the first time we sang "The Lady" or "TechnoNerdboy" or "Puppies Cooked in Brine".
- Whoo, Scott Snyder playing the electric guitar with us at OVFF and ConChord! Watching the 1995 OVFF clip of "TechnoNerdboy" and "Web Surfin'" was especially fun, because that was the first time Scott had ever been on-stage at OVFF and it reminded me of his cool OVFF Toastmaster concert at the last OVFF :).
- Footage of Annie, Tim, Lissa and Phil taken at FKO 2000 the year they came over to surprise us six weeks after we had GoHed at the British filkcon :). Huge nostalgia value.
- Video footage of itty bitty Kwinn babies at Consonance in 2001. Those babelets just turned four this week!
- Turning my video camera on this quiet woman with long hair each time she sang at Didgeri Douze in England in 2000 because I liked her voice and music so much and I'd never heard her before. 'Twas Erica Neely, who I've been lucky enough to hear many times since :).
- Watching several "guys" who sang "Cuz He's A Guy" with us through the years caught on video-tape- Graham Leathers, Paul Kwinn, Mike Green, Harold Groot.
- A moth attacking Jodi while she sang "The Lady" at our ConChord concert in 2002 :). Well, it amused me :).
- A little bitty Lyanne Quirt singing with us at Toronto Trek in 1995. She must have been, like, 13 at the time. We were singing a song of hers called "Lwaxana Came Back".
- Another even bittier kid being thrown around on SteveMac's shoulders while he introduced our FKO concert in 1995. I'm sure that boy's a sturdy teenager by now :).
- Footage of Lloyd Landa- performing with Karen, arguing with me about tuning 12-strings, holding signs for our "Interjection" song. Such footage still gives the heart a twinge.
- Coming across footage of the very first time Deb, Jodi and I sang together as a trio. Whoa. It was during an "Intro to Filk" panel at Ad Astra in 1993. We sang my song "The Ancient Yearning".
- Footage of our very first concert as a group. It was a children's concert at Confusion in January 1994.
- Being intrigued by the number of songs we performed in concert through the years that we don't tend to sing anymore. Fascinating to hear those songs again.
- Noticing how Debbie's props keep changing in the various versions of "Neurotic Love Song" through the years. Frequently, if we lost the cartoons or forgot them, Deb would have to quickly make more cartoons :).
- Being initially disappointed that we didn't have any UT footage of us singing at the British filkcon in 2000 (it's because it was my video camera and I took all the footage) and then watching the video again and being SO MUCH HAPPIER that I had footage of everybody else who sang at that con :).
- Finding myself being very aware of audience reaction during our concerts and how it affected the energy of our performance. An interesting phenomenon to observe.
So, the game plan is to put these concerts in chronological order, choose one or two representative tracks from each concert to put on the DVD.
At present we have concert footage from Ad Astra '93, Confusion '94, FKO '94, Winnipeg WorldCon '94, FKO '95, Toronto Trek '95, OVFF '95, FKO '99, Consonance '01, ConChord '02 and The Gathering of The Fellowship '03.
So, here's my humble REQUEST. If anyone out there has Urban Tapestry footage from cons not mentioned above that you would be willing to send to me to receive in the next month that would be really, really cool. We're not in a position to pay you, since the DVD will never make money, but you would have our undying gratitude and a lavish mention and thanks on our DVD liner notes.
Speaking of videographers, besides John and Paul and Glenn, if you know you gave me any of the concert footage tapes mentioned above, please do remind me. If we choose to use anyone else's video footage or video clips with any other performers besides UT, we will be in contact with those people in the next several weeks to get permission.
This is going to prove to be a convoluted but very satisfying project. It will be interesting to boil a dozen or more videos down to one DVD.