Horsies and cowboys and guns, oh my
Even though I had a million things to do this weekend, I found myself hunched over the computer for hours on end, working feverishly to finish my Magnificent 7 vid for Escapade's vid show. (Though why I worked so hard to get it done rightthisweekend I don't know, considering that we don't even have info on where to send the vids and the deadline is but three weeks away... you'd think that having been on the vid comm for going on oh, 7 or 8 years, I'd have inside info, but you would be wrong.) Probably so that I could get beta input because it sucks, I'm pretty sure. And I've never made a Mag 7 vid without feochadn and she will probably watch it and get that tortured face she gets when she wants to say something negative and is searching for a polite way to tell me it sucks, but then she'll just tell me it sucks and I will cry and pout and then go, "Well, it's all I've got, so I'm showing it anyway."
And the worst part is that I don't even know why I'm torturing my own self over this stupid vid because if I've learned anything from showing two separate Mag 7 vids and one Tombstone vid at Escapade, a vid show that I'm growing increasingly dispirited about because of the pointless, calculated meanness and nastiness and general whinage that I addressed last year in this post, it's that the vid, no matter how good or bad, will elicit a response from all but three other people (you know who you are!) ranging from veiled dismissals about how meaningless my fandom is to outright "ew"s because it's a true Western. There are defintely more Mag 7 fans at the con than there were the last time we showed a Mag 7 vid there, but most of them are of the "Chris & Vin bad, Ezra or Buck good" variety, and I've even had people tell me Chris and Vin make them sick. Literally. Always one of those things that makes you feel encouraged to show your vid!
I think in the time since I made Stripped, my Fast and the Furious vid, I've pretty much forgotten how to vid. Or lost whatever small gift I had (and yes, I know the emphasis is on small). I couldn't really take the time to learn Final Cut, so I went back to iMovie for this, and that's okay because it's a pretty straightforward series with little movement. Most of the motion comes from people on horseback, so right now the vid feels like it's just people on horsies. Bleh. Or Vin tipping his hat, which I've come to realize he does about every five minutes. I kept struggling with how to create movement in a fairly static series, and how to judge length of cuts. Because it's often still, the movement that is important to get for the vid makes it harder to do short cuts, because you lose the significance of the motion. But the music is too fast and beat-driven to use longer cuts too often. I just couldn't get a handle on it, as if every skill I'd learned in 10+ years of being involved in vid-making had just poof! disappeared. Kind of dispiriting.
And especially dispiriting knowing that I'm going to have to listen to the usual craptastic comments after the con, not because they're judging the vid, but because they're judging the fandom. At Escapade if you're not doing the top 3 fandoms these days, or you're doing the wrong pairing in something well-liked (for instance, I wanted to do a Hornblower vid, but I know better than to bring a vid centered on Horatio and Pellew to the Archie-obsessed fans that predominate HH fandom), then you're pretty much guaranteed those smarmy, shitty remarks, even if you avoid comment sheets like I do. This is the hardest part about fannish vidding, to me -- dismissal of fandoms outright because they're not yours, without even giving the vidder a chance to prove herself. Some people are actually pretty darn good storytellers, even for fandoms people aren't familiar with (there were only about two people in the Vividcon audience two cons ago who knew Miracles, for instance, but most people liked feochadn's and my Darkness, Darkness and felt they understood the story), but there are always the people in the audience who won't even let you try to tell them a story. Either they just shut off because it's not my fandom, or they overintellectualize something as being impossible to understand because they don't know the fandom, even if there's no story to intellectualize and it's just very obvious, lightweight stuff.
So once I finished I found myself sitting there going, now, why did I bust my hump on this again? So I can be put down and insulted for my stupid Western fandom? So I can listen to post-con comments that make me feel small and worthless? I mean, I can make myself feel small and worthless on a daily basis, I don't need help from the mean crappy people who are taking over Escapade these days... I'm a *pro* at making myself feel bad ahead of time. When I was doing film criticism, I got really depressed about how quick to judge genre most other critics were. I'd go the press screenings and listen to the bigwig movie reviewers filing out, talking about the crappy things they'd say about a good solid action movie like the original First Blood -- just because it was action. Or science fiction -- I remember being the only person in town who had good things to say about Blade Runner when it came out, and then 10 years later they were falling all over themselves about it. All I could remember was thinking, "Yeah, I heard you when we were leaving the theatre, you ass, and you were excited about skewering it." Showing things at the Escapade vid show reminds me of that these days. If it's not Fargateville, you're pretty much guaranteed that a vocal group will disparage your fandom just because it's not the "right" fandom, and if you dare to show a Western... well, god have mercy on your little vidding soul.
I must be nuts, or masochistic. Or both. I should know better by now. I guess I just wanted to make another vid with my pretty cowboys in love. But showing it at that audience... probably not worth the torment I've put myself through. And it probably sucks, but I'd love to think that the vid itself will be judged by its worth -- good or bad -- and not the fandom, though I know that's impossible these days.
And the worst part is that I don't even know why I'm torturing my own self over this stupid vid because if I've learned anything from showing two separate Mag 7 vids and one Tombstone vid at Escapade, a vid show that I'm growing increasingly dispirited about because of the pointless, calculated meanness and nastiness and general whinage that I addressed last year in this post, it's that the vid, no matter how good or bad, will elicit a response from all but three other people (you know who you are!) ranging from veiled dismissals about how meaningless my fandom is to outright "ew"s because it's a true Western. There are defintely more Mag 7 fans at the con than there were the last time we showed a Mag 7 vid there, but most of them are of the "Chris & Vin bad, Ezra or Buck good" variety, and I've even had people tell me Chris and Vin make them sick. Literally. Always one of those things that makes you feel encouraged to show your vid!
I think in the time since I made Stripped, my Fast and the Furious vid, I've pretty much forgotten how to vid. Or lost whatever small gift I had (and yes, I know the emphasis is on small). I couldn't really take the time to learn Final Cut, so I went back to iMovie for this, and that's okay because it's a pretty straightforward series with little movement. Most of the motion comes from people on horseback, so right now the vid feels like it's just people on horsies. Bleh. Or Vin tipping his hat, which I've come to realize he does about every five minutes. I kept struggling with how to create movement in a fairly static series, and how to judge length of cuts. Because it's often still, the movement that is important to get for the vid makes it harder to do short cuts, because you lose the significance of the motion. But the music is too fast and beat-driven to use longer cuts too often. I just couldn't get a handle on it, as if every skill I'd learned in 10+ years of being involved in vid-making had just poof! disappeared. Kind of dispiriting.
And especially dispiriting knowing that I'm going to have to listen to the usual craptastic comments after the con, not because they're judging the vid, but because they're judging the fandom. At Escapade if you're not doing the top 3 fandoms these days, or you're doing the wrong pairing in something well-liked (for instance, I wanted to do a Hornblower vid, but I know better than to bring a vid centered on Horatio and Pellew to the Archie-obsessed fans that predominate HH fandom), then you're pretty much guaranteed those smarmy, shitty remarks, even if you avoid comment sheets like I do. This is the hardest part about fannish vidding, to me -- dismissal of fandoms outright because they're not yours, without even giving the vidder a chance to prove herself. Some people are actually pretty darn good storytellers, even for fandoms people aren't familiar with (there were only about two people in the Vividcon audience two cons ago who knew Miracles, for instance, but most people liked feochadn's and my Darkness, Darkness and felt they understood the story), but there are always the people in the audience who won't even let you try to tell them a story. Either they just shut off because it's not my fandom, or they overintellectualize something as being impossible to understand because they don't know the fandom, even if there's no story to intellectualize and it's just very obvious, lightweight stuff.
So once I finished I found myself sitting there going, now, why did I bust my hump on this again? So I can be put down and insulted for my stupid Western fandom? So I can listen to post-con comments that make me feel small and worthless? I mean, I can make myself feel small and worthless on a daily basis, I don't need help from the mean crappy people who are taking over Escapade these days... I'm a *pro* at making myself feel bad ahead of time. When I was doing film criticism, I got really depressed about how quick to judge genre most other critics were. I'd go the press screenings and listen to the bigwig movie reviewers filing out, talking about the crappy things they'd say about a good solid action movie like the original First Blood -- just because it was action. Or science fiction -- I remember being the only person in town who had good things to say about Blade Runner when it came out, and then 10 years later they were falling all over themselves about it. All I could remember was thinking, "Yeah, I heard you when we were leaving the theatre, you ass, and you were excited about skewering it." Showing things at the Escapade vid show reminds me of that these days. If it's not Fargateville, you're pretty much guaranteed that a vocal group will disparage your fandom just because it's not the "right" fandom, and if you dare to show a Western... well, god have mercy on your little vidding soul.
I must be nuts, or masochistic. Or both. I should know better by now. I guess I just wanted to make another vid with my pretty cowboys in love. But showing it at that audience... probably not worth the torment I've put myself through. And it probably sucks, but I'd love to think that the vid itself will be judged by its worth -- good or bad -- and not the fandom, though I know that's impossible these days.