On vidding
It has been almost two whole years since I posted my first vid! As such, I have decided that this is going to be the year I stop being afraid of Real Vidders. Real Vidders are scarily talented and intelligent, and I sometimes feel awkward even leaving feedback for them. Even as a relative newbie, I fully realize that this is patently ridiculous; hence my decision to attempt to amend my awkward ways.
As part of this, I closed my eyes and made a thread at this year's Great Vidding Truth meme.
I didn't do a year end vidding meme because when I took a close look, my three vids totaled up to less than 8 minutes. I am, however, going to blather on a bit about
I think the vids I've done so far can be divided into two groups.
The first contains Unsteady Ground (Merlin, 2009), Mayday! (BSG, 2008), Ghosts (House, 2008), and Only (BSG, 2007).
The second contains What We Had (Doctor Who, 2008), Dying (Torchwood, 2007), Don't Panic (Heroes, 2007), Maybe This Time (Avatar, 2007), and Devotion (Life on Mars, 2007), as well as three technically completed vids that will never see the light of day, due to being shallow and/or awful.
This second group is not delineated by quality, despite including graveyard vids. The main delineating factor is rather how easily they came together. For the first set, the creative process was relatively straight forward. I started with an idea, and it came together relatively quickly. The final product is relatively similar to my initial idea, though infinitely better due to the awesomeness of my betas. The second group -- oh, goodness, the second group kicked my ass, and would not exist without the awesomeness of my betas. Some retained original stretches, others were pretty much set on fire and started again.
Thematically, I think this also helps identify some of my strengths and weaknesses as a vidder. I'm not bad with motion and musicality -- I've always been a visual thinker, and I've been able to read sheet music since I was six. Narrative requires a great deal more work on my part. The first group I consider to be connection-type vids. Unsteady Ground works within the framework of Arthurian legend. Ghosts was an experiment in cutting and anatomy, working within the two-episode finale arc. Only starts with a broad question -- what does it take before you're considered a person? -- and draws connections within canon.
What We Had and Maybe This Time are both what I'd consider to much more narrative. What We Had starts with a thesis, namely that there is a companion hierarchy, and therefore the Doctor can be kind of a jerk. Maybe This Time was supposed to be an internal dialogue for Zuko, as he gradually came to terms with the fact that he has made mistakes, that the Fire Nation itself had made mistakes. One of the vids on the pile-of-doom is a Heroes vid looking at the show's treatment of women through the first two seasons. (Note: I actually took a look at that one, and it possibly not as bad as I remember it being. Definitely not post-able, but not horrendous.)
There are obviously exceptions to this classification, and I have a general distaste for binomial classification. Dying was a connection-type vid, under the broader concept of the change brought by death and disaster, but it is second only to What We Had on the list of things that have made me consider punting my computer off my balcony.
Motion and connection-type vids come more easily to me than narrative. In my head, my vids even tend to have a three-dimensional structure. I sometimes get distracted following movement, and realize I've put together 30 seconds or more of things that flow quite nicely, but mean absolutely nothing. This is part of the problem with that same unposted Heroes vid, and an unposted Jack Harkness character study.
In the future, I think I'd like to try to do something narratively complex. I know I don't push the envelope technically, as the most complicated things I've done involve changing the blending mode or flopping the screen left to right. I sometimes feel that a lot of vidders are moving towards really amazing technical things, but for myself, I'd first like to work on improving my narrative.
I think I'm pleased with the progress I've made. I am most certainly still learning, with a lot of room to grow, and hope to always be improving. At the end of the day, however, I think I've acquitted myself fairly well, and I'm extremely happy that I decided to sacrifice my sanity to Final Cut Pro. It's a pastime that has inspired posts containing virtually nothing other than "Oh, goodness, whatever possessed me to take on a hobby that makes me want to stab myself in the face, repeatedly?", but I'm happy with what I've done, even proud of some, and I've met such amazing, fantastic, talented, creative people through it, and I love you all.
As part of this, I closed my eyes and made a thread at this year's Great Vidding Truth meme.
I didn't do a year end vidding meme because when I took a close look, my three vids totaled up to less than 8 minutes. I am, however, going to blather on a bit about
I think the vids I've done so far can be divided into two groups.
The first contains Unsteady Ground (Merlin, 2009), Mayday! (BSG, 2008), Ghosts (House, 2008), and Only (BSG, 2007).
The second contains What We Had (Doctor Who, 2008), Dying (Torchwood, 2007), Don't Panic (Heroes, 2007), Maybe This Time (Avatar, 2007), and Devotion (Life on Mars, 2007), as well as three technically completed vids that will never see the light of day, due to being shallow and/or awful.
This second group is not delineated by quality, despite including graveyard vids. The main delineating factor is rather how easily they came together. For the first set, the creative process was relatively straight forward. I started with an idea, and it came together relatively quickly. The final product is relatively similar to my initial idea, though infinitely better due to the awesomeness of my betas. The second group -- oh, goodness, the second group kicked my ass, and would not exist without the awesomeness of my betas. Some retained original stretches, others were pretty much set on fire and started again.
Thematically, I think this also helps identify some of my strengths and weaknesses as a vidder. I'm not bad with motion and musicality -- I've always been a visual thinker, and I've been able to read sheet music since I was six. Narrative requires a great deal more work on my part. The first group I consider to be connection-type vids. Unsteady Ground works within the framework of Arthurian legend. Ghosts was an experiment in cutting and anatomy, working within the two-episode finale arc. Only starts with a broad question -- what does it take before you're considered a person? -- and draws connections within canon.
What We Had and Maybe This Time are both what I'd consider to much more narrative. What We Had starts with a thesis, namely that there is a companion hierarchy, and therefore the Doctor can be kind of a jerk. Maybe This Time was supposed to be an internal dialogue for Zuko, as he gradually came to terms with the fact that he has made mistakes, that the Fire Nation itself had made mistakes. One of the vids on the pile-of-doom is a Heroes vid looking at the show's treatment of women through the first two seasons. (Note: I actually took a look at that one, and it possibly not as bad as I remember it being. Definitely not post-able, but not horrendous.)
There are obviously exceptions to this classification, and I have a general distaste for binomial classification. Dying was a connection-type vid, under the broader concept of the change brought by death and disaster, but it is second only to What We Had on the list of things that have made me consider punting my computer off my balcony.
Motion and connection-type vids come more easily to me than narrative. In my head, my vids even tend to have a three-dimensional structure. I sometimes get distracted following movement, and realize I've put together 30 seconds or more of things that flow quite nicely, but mean absolutely nothing. This is part of the problem with that same unposted Heroes vid, and an unposted Jack Harkness character study.
In the future, I think I'd like to try to do something narratively complex. I know I don't push the envelope technically, as the most complicated things I've done involve changing the blending mode or flopping the screen left to right. I sometimes feel that a lot of vidders are moving towards really amazing technical things, but for myself, I'd first like to work on improving my narrative.
I think I'm pleased with the progress I've made. I am most certainly still learning, with a lot of room to grow, and hope to always be improving. At the end of the day, however, I think I've acquitted myself fairly well, and I'm extremely happy that I decided to sacrifice my sanity to Final Cut Pro. It's a pastime that has inspired posts containing virtually nothing other than "Oh, goodness, whatever possessed me to take on a hobby that makes me want to stab myself in the face, repeatedly?", but I'm happy with what I've done, even proud of some, and I've met such amazing, fantastic, talented, creative people through it, and I love you all.