(no subject)
I am super behind on things! Pretend that this post is from before the big Yuletide reveal! And that there is a reason to use this many exclamation points!
I got two awesome stories this year!
Something in the Guns [The Walking Dead], which is a lovely character study of Andrea and Dale post 2x05;
Ms. Frizzle and the Van School for Gifted Boys [The Magic School Bus, Inception, Calvin and Hobbes, Torchwood/Doctor Who, BSG, Fringe], in which there is a multi-fandom field trip to the Large Hadron Collider. I don't think I need to tell you how happy that makes me!
I didn't bother doing the 'guess what I wrote!' thing this year, because one of the stories I wrote was in a fandom I have never mentioned (because that is how I roll, and the first sign of a fandom from me is often 'Hey, look, here's a vid in a thing that I enjoy!'), and other was pretty much jumping up and down and hollering about how I wrote it.
In other year-end thingies I am getting to after the year ends:
Vidding Meme!
February: L.E.S. Artistes [Terminator Movies, Sarah Connor, Festivids pinch hit]
August: Land's End [Doctor Who, River Song]
Gotta Boyfriend? [Scott Pilgrim vs the World]
We Rule the World [My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic]
My favourite video this year (of my own)
I always hate this question! I'm not a terribly good judge of my own work at the best of times, and I tend to end up being a bit ambivalent about most of my own creations. Probably PONIES make me most happy, though it did contribute to my biggest vidding fail of the year. I just -- get so much joy from ponies, and I got to play around with all sorts of silliness I wouldn't normally allow myself, like puns and ridiculously literal interpretations of passages.
Least favourite
I hate this question, too! It's especially hard when you only made four vids. Probably Gotta Boyfriend?, when you break it down. I wanted it to be a fun video where I got to do awesome fight scenes with amazing footage, and I think those bits work! There are a few passages, however, where I think I got a bit more serious, and those didn't work as well. I'm not sure if they are just weaker, or if they would be successful in a different vid, but they break it up in ways I wasn't necessarily intending.
Most successful
Comment-wise, definitely L.E.S. Artistes. I find these things often happen with my anon-work. :D Also, it made the recipient happy, and that is a roaring success to me!
Narratively and thematically, I think Land's End holds up fairly well, even considering it was done before the second half of S7. There were bits of meta I was playing with, where I thought some things might go, that seemed to pan out well, and I think the storytelling holds out rather all right. (Narrative in vids is not my strongest suite, so I am somewhat proud of that!)
Video most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion
Man, I always usually say that thing can't reallllly be under appreciated, or something like that. However, I was not expecting Gotta Boyfriend? to set a new record low. I mean, it's a movie that has a following, but wasn't super popular, so I wasn't expecting loads of comments. However, considering that last year I vidded an obscure mid-90s Canadian show about hockey that literally two people on my flist had seen... I was hoping that the Scott Pilgrim vid might at least meet that one for comments.
Most fun video
PONIES. PONIES WHO RULE THE WORLD. The last 45 seconds or so of Gotta Boyfriend? is probably the most fun I have had with a sequence, but overall Ponies win.
Video with single sexiest moment
Um. The single sexiest moment is in someone else's vid. Vids this year: 1) Sacrifice, time travel, and robots; 2) family vid/character vid/a dark and twisted fairy tale retelling; 3) cotton candy-flavoured, video game-inspired, martial arts showdowns with evil exes; 4) PONIES.
Edit: I am so replacing this question with 'Video with single most AWESOME moment' next year.
Biggest vid fail
Okay. So it's not anyone's fault that this happened. It's not the fault of the VVC people, it's not my encoding. It just happens. And these things do happen. But.
The desynchronization of the audio in my Ponies vid. That was in Premieres at VVC. And how it was also desynched on the discs. But it was desynched enough that beats kind of hit but it didn't make sense. Which of course made it drag. Which, I like to believe, was part of what led to a lot of the reception it had at vid review!
Hardest video to make
Man, none of the vids I made this year were hard like a lot of others have been. Some of them went back and forth in beta a bit, but there weren't too many huge structural changes. Others are virtually unchanged from first drafts. Perhaps this is why I don't have as much satisfaction with some of them this year? I didn't put in the same amount of work.
Most unintentionally *telling* video
I don't know that there's one this year, other than the fact that half of them are supposed to just be fun. Last year, during the vid interview series I realized that so very, very many of my vids are about disconnection in some way or another. Disconnection, with a side of destiny and/or determination. Hence, more vids that are FUN. I decided I was going to make fun vids even if it drove me round the bend!
Things I've learned
- Get over yourself, and just vid.
- Not everyone picks up as much from a clip a fraction of a second long, because they haven't been staring at it endlessly and have its context memorized.
- Storyboarding things out can be of great help. I usually work organically, trying to see how things move into each other, because that is how my brain works. It can, however, be advisable to try to break it down into sections so you don't end up with one section way too long and rambly and then have to cram the important bits in at the end.
Things to work on
Getting over myself, and just vidding.
No, seriously. You are not your vids. I am not my vids! I need to be more aware if I am displacing other stressors onto my vids and how they are received, because otherwise I end up being a ridiculous person and being deeply, heartily embarrassed after the fact. There's no crying in baseball vidding. I seriously love and adore con crit, and there's no way that I will grow as a vidder without it, and I would be sad if people stopped giving it to me because of that time I was a ridiculous person.
MOVING ON. I also need to work about allowing myself to tacking projects that are more narratively dense. I sometimes get feedback that I can be a bit too... elliptical in my choices, that I expect people to read more from clips than they have time to visually. I need to let myself slow down and try to tell a story.
Vid projects I definitely want to get finished this upcoming year
Vid projects I want to finish this year include project that are vids! The vids that I would like to make are ones with images and music! I shall have to acquire fandoms with which to create them.
Maybe a humour vid, at some point! I haven't tried to make one of those! I may not always be funny, but gosh darn it, I always try.
There was another meme going around a while back where you could ask writers or vidders about any of their choices! I don't remember exactly how it went, but something about if you had choices at song/clip/word choice or characterization or intent, you could ask! In the off chance, you are interested, ask away! If you ask about anything I wrote in high school, however, my answer will likely be along the lines of "Well, at that point, I also thought it was a good idea to name myself after a snow cone/popsicle/etc."
I got two awesome stories this year!
Something in the Guns [The Walking Dead], which is a lovely character study of Andrea and Dale post 2x05;
Ms. Frizzle and the Van School for Gifted Boys [The Magic School Bus, Inception, Calvin and Hobbes, Torchwood/Doctor Who, BSG, Fringe], in which there is a multi-fandom field trip to the Large Hadron Collider. I don't think I need to tell you how happy that makes me!
I didn't bother doing the 'guess what I wrote!' thing this year, because one of the stories I wrote was in a fandom I have never mentioned (because that is how I roll, and the first sign of a fandom from me is often 'Hey, look, here's a vid in a thing that I enjoy!'), and other was pretty much jumping up and down and hollering about how I wrote it.
In other year-end thingies I am getting to after the year ends:
Vidding Meme!
February: L.E.S. Artistes [Terminator Movies, Sarah Connor, Festivids pinch hit]
August: Land's End [Doctor Who, River Song]
Gotta Boyfriend? [Scott Pilgrim vs the World]
We Rule the World [My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic]
My favourite video this year (of my own)
I always hate this question! I'm not a terribly good judge of my own work at the best of times, and I tend to end up being a bit ambivalent about most of my own creations. Probably PONIES make me most happy, though it did contribute to my biggest vidding fail of the year. I just -- get so much joy from ponies, and I got to play around with all sorts of silliness I wouldn't normally allow myself, like puns and ridiculously literal interpretations of passages.
Least favourite
I hate this question, too! It's especially hard when you only made four vids. Probably Gotta Boyfriend?, when you break it down. I wanted it to be a fun video where I got to do awesome fight scenes with amazing footage, and I think those bits work! There are a few passages, however, where I think I got a bit more serious, and those didn't work as well. I'm not sure if they are just weaker, or if they would be successful in a different vid, but they break it up in ways I wasn't necessarily intending.
Most successful
Comment-wise, definitely L.E.S. Artistes. I find these things often happen with my anon-work. :D Also, it made the recipient happy, and that is a roaring success to me!
Narratively and thematically, I think Land's End holds up fairly well, even considering it was done before the second half of S7. There were bits of meta I was playing with, where I thought some things might go, that seemed to pan out well, and I think the storytelling holds out rather all right. (Narrative in vids is not my strongest suite, so I am somewhat proud of that!)
Video most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion
Man, I always usually say that thing can't reallllly be under appreciated, or something like that. However, I was not expecting Gotta Boyfriend? to set a new record low. I mean, it's a movie that has a following, but wasn't super popular, so I wasn't expecting loads of comments. However, considering that last year I vidded an obscure mid-90s Canadian show about hockey that literally two people on my flist had seen... I was hoping that the Scott Pilgrim vid might at least meet that one for comments.
Most fun video
PONIES. PONIES WHO RULE THE WORLD. The last 45 seconds or so of Gotta Boyfriend? is probably the most fun I have had with a sequence, but overall Ponies win.
Video with single sexiest moment
Um. The single sexiest moment is in someone else's vid. Vids this year: 1) Sacrifice, time travel, and robots; 2) family vid/character vid/a dark and twisted fairy tale retelling; 3) cotton candy-flavoured, video game-inspired, martial arts showdowns with evil exes; 4) PONIES.
Edit: I am so replacing this question with 'Video with single most AWESOME moment' next year.
Biggest vid fail
Okay. So it's not anyone's fault that this happened. It's not the fault of the VVC people, it's not my encoding. It just happens. And these things do happen. But.
The desynchronization of the audio in my Ponies vid. That was in Premieres at VVC. And how it was also desynched on the discs. But it was desynched enough that beats kind of hit but it didn't make sense. Which of course made it drag. Which, I like to believe, was part of what led to a lot of the reception it had at vid review!
Hardest video to make
Man, none of the vids I made this year were hard like a lot of others have been. Some of them went back and forth in beta a bit, but there weren't too many huge structural changes. Others are virtually unchanged from first drafts. Perhaps this is why I don't have as much satisfaction with some of them this year? I didn't put in the same amount of work.
Most unintentionally *telling* video
I don't know that there's one this year, other than the fact that half of them are supposed to just be fun. Last year, during the vid interview series I realized that so very, very many of my vids are about disconnection in some way or another. Disconnection, with a side of destiny and/or determination. Hence, more vids that are FUN. I decided I was going to make fun vids even if it drove me round the bend!
Things I've learned
- Get over yourself, and just vid.
- Not everyone picks up as much from a clip a fraction of a second long, because they haven't been staring at it endlessly and have its context memorized.
- Storyboarding things out can be of great help. I usually work organically, trying to see how things move into each other, because that is how my brain works. It can, however, be advisable to try to break it down into sections so you don't end up with one section way too long and rambly and then have to cram the important bits in at the end.
Things to work on
Getting over myself, and just vidding.
No, seriously. You are not your vids. I am not my vids! I need to be more aware if I am displacing other stressors onto my vids and how they are received, because otherwise I end up being a ridiculous person and being deeply, heartily embarrassed after the fact. There's no crying in baseball vidding. I seriously love and adore con crit, and there's no way that I will grow as a vidder without it, and I would be sad if people stopped giving it to me because of that time I was a ridiculous person.
MOVING ON. I also need to work about allowing myself to tacking projects that are more narratively dense. I sometimes get feedback that I can be a bit too... elliptical in my choices, that I expect people to read more from clips than they have time to visually. I need to let myself slow down and try to tell a story.
Vid projects I definitely want to get finished this upcoming year
Vid projects I want to finish this year include project that are vids! The vids that I would like to make are ones with images and music! I shall have to acquire fandoms with which to create them.
Maybe a humour vid, at some point! I haven't tried to make one of those! I may not always be funny, but gosh darn it, I always try.
There was another meme going around a while back where you could ask writers or vidders about any of their choices! I don't remember exactly how it went, but something about if you had choices at song/clip/word choice or characterization or intent, you could ask! In the off chance, you are interested, ask away! If you ask about anything I wrote in high school, however, my answer will likely be along the lines of "Well, at that point, I also thought it was a good idea to name myself after a snow cone/popsicle/etc."