Katharine Scarritt

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Fan
Name: Katharine Scarritt
Alias(es): Thomas, Kat, K. Thomas
Type: fanzine editor, vidder, convention organizer
Fandoms: Star Trek, Pros, Blake's 7, Wiseguy, Homicide: Life on the Street, Babylon 5, Star Trek Voyager, MUNCLE, Forever Knight
Communities:
Other:
URL: AO3 profile
Thomas' Den
VCR era fanvids archived on the Internet Archive
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Katharine Scarritt was active in fandom since the mid-1980s.

She was a convention organizer (of IDICon), a fanzine editor, writer, and vidder.

She was one of the W.H.I.P.S. (aka the Houston Crowd) and together with her friend Mary Lowe, would hold ‘zine parties where fans could bring their zines to share and read. In addition to publishing their own zines, Katharine and Mary would publish zines for other fans in the Houston area via Shoestring Press, which they owned and operated.

Katharine passed away on March 12, 2022.[1]

Vidder

Starting in 1999, she produced the vid show for Escapade until Killa took over in 200x. She also served on the concom for the first Vividcon.

Katharine Scarritt also included one of her vids in the Escapade Vid Show Retrospective 1992-2001, organized by Kandy Fong. The 1998 Highlander vid included the song You Don't Believe by Zen 9 From Outer Space.

In 1998, Katharine offered an assessment of her reentry into vidding in the Media Cannibals Songtape #3 booklet:

The first songtape I ever saw was 'Desperado' done for Starsky & Hutch. Even though I was never an S&H fan, I was enchanted. When a year or so later I got into Blake's 7,1 had my first idea, and it came to me the way they still do - I'm minding my own business, listening to music, and PoofI images start unscrolling in my head. I did my first vids the hard way - timing the cuts, timing the music, assembling in order, then audio dubbing the music and hoping it came out all right Then I discovered video insert. I did mostly Blake's 7 and Professionals. After a few years, though, I got frustrated with the quality, both bad masters and uneven cuts, and flying erase heads, etc. were out of my reach at the time, so I stopped actively making vids. But after seeing MC #1 I got inspired again. Here's hoping to make up for lost time!

Used a JVC -960 and Sony SLHF 900. For the mixer, I used a Panasonic WJ-AVE5. Allies was done with a PAN AG1980. Ice was done from Hi-8 masters.

A year later, Katharine described her vidding process in the Media Cannibals Songtape #4 booklet:

I tend to find songs I love and want to vid, and then save them until I find the right fandom, which is definitely the case with the two Homicide vids. Luckily for me, the songs I had to finish this round were all handed to me on a silver platter, because since MC#3, I have discovered that there's possibly a point of learning more than you want to know (my great discovery is timecode). Cutting on the fly is often exciting, but in the long run, reliability is more satisfying, and timecode lets you worry less about whether the machine is going to behave, stopping on the right spot, etc., and more about clip timing, whether you should reorder things to see if they flow better, and so on. Unfortunately, the equipment is mostly out of my price range, but a bit of serendipity has made me co-owner of a Hi-8 editing deck with built-in timecode. My life will never be the same, and I can't wait until computer editing becomes truly affordable for home users.

Comments by Fans: Vids

B7, Pros, MUNCLE, good vids to good songs, unfortunately primitive equipment, so they are fuzzy. I especially like These Dreams (B7), and, well, ALL of her Pros ones: Land of Confusion, That's All (one of many I've seen to this song, but this one's my fav), In Too Deep, Secret Agent and more.[2]

A fan comment on Katharine's vidding:

I got to watch [Katharine's Pros vids on Media Cannibals Tape 4] being put together, and I have to tell you, you haven't lived until you've seen Katharine obsess about getting *just the right clip* in *just the right place*. I must've seen these vids about a hundred times over the course of the summer and I never got bored. My favorite of the two is "Nearly In Love", which fits in nicely with my theory that these boys are *not* doomed and are actually quite capable of having quite a lot of fun. It's upbeat and fast and snarky as hell and if you can say a vid has great characterization, you have to say it about this one. [3]

Katharine's Vids

Many of these VCR era fanvids are archived on the Internet Archive

Alien Nation

  • She's Such A Temptation (copies needed)
  • Looking For Space (copies needed)

Buffy

Blake's 7

Most were created in 1985.

Babylon 5

  • Ice (Babylon 5) (1998)
  • Perhaps Love (1990) (copies needed) - this may be a rough cut/draft

Homicide Life on the Street

1998-1999

Professionals

Some edited in 1988 and others with Media Cannibals 1998 and 1999)

MUNCLE

all created in 1991

Highlander

most in 1997

Smallville

Star Trek

Velvet Goldmine

edited in 2000

X-Files

  • Kung Fu Fighting by Split Enz (with Lady Kate) (The Lone Gunmen) (shown at the 2003 Vividcon Ensemble Cast vid show)
  • Tainted Love (with Pam) (X-Files) (1997)
  • The Moved The Moon (1990) (copies needed) - this may be a rough cut/draft

Katharine's Fiction

Forever Knight

Star Trek

Star Wars

Blake's 7

Professionals

The Sentinel

Katharine's Fanart

Editing Work

Con Chair

References

  1. ^ twitter.com/escapadecon, Archived version
  2. ^ comments by Sandy Hereld on Virgule-L, quoted with permission (November 1, 1994)
  3. ^ merryish commenting on Media Cannibals Songtape #4, posted to the Vidder mailing list Jan 27, 2000. Quoted with permission (25 March 2011)