The Untamed – Abstract Trailer

For my videographic abstract trailer I decided to work with fan videos for The Untamed, rather than with The Untamed itself. I did not try to be comprehensive, but just chose five of my favorite The Untamed fan videos (and ones that I thought would work well for this) in combination with two of my own videos.

I was somewhat torn by how to work with these pieces—how much to cut into and control them. My strong impulse was to leave them intact because what is a vid if not its editing? (Well, and its song, so I’m disrupting that too!)

In the past I’ve made one video/vid which was almost like a deformation, in which I attempted to keep both song and structure as much as I could. I brought together a plethora of vids made from a wide range of fandoms to Florence and the Machine’s “Cosmic Love,” and attempted to keep the visuals from the vids with their original musical association, selecting from where they appeared in each fan vid in relation to the song (though this was complicated somewhat by the fact that I was using a remix of the song :D) Within this structure, I attempted (with the connecting thread of Florence herself) to create an emotional and even semi-narrative flow & meta argument about fandom.

But that approach is very restrictive and can only get you so far, so in the spirit of videographic experimentation, I’ve decided to take a looser approach here and see what poetic exploration might teach me about vidding, transcultural fandom, and The Untamed. I’m happy with how the trailer came out, and excited to dig into the larger piece, which I believe will feature a careful dosage of multiscreen images as well… Stay tuned for that!