vidsongs, vid length, and vidding goals
One of the things renenet and I have done over the past few days, in addition to hanging out with my friends and celebrating Thanksgiving and marathoning all of Slings & Arrows (so. much. love. for that show), is listen to vidsongs. I made her listen to the song I want to vid for The Wire (I am so excited about vidding that show, seriously, so excited, I can't even tell you), I made her listen to the songs for all my bittersweet ultimately hopeful ensemble vid ideas about shows that begin with F, I made her listen to the song that I just decided within the last couple of weeks needs to be a Faith vid (and wow, there may be a post in my future about how I am simultaneously freaked out and weirdly calm about the idea of vidding Faith again), and in and around the listening and discussing I did some thinking about the shape of the songs and my goals for myself in the coming year.
Several of the songs currently in my vid queue are pretty long, and most of them I've already successfully edited down to a more reasonable length. But re-listening to some of the songs this weekend, I realized that in a couple of cases I need to un-edit them; the stories I want to tell with them are big enough to sustain a longer vid, and I want that longer vid. I worry, always, about longer vids coming across as pointless and self-indulgent (because, to be honest, that's how some longer vids come across to me); obviously a vid of any length can be pointless or self-indulgent, but I do think that the longer a vid goes on, the more likely it is to wear out its welcome (though of course we can all think of plenty of vids that defy those odds). And because I am in some ways a deeply lazy vidder, I prefer not to fight that particular uphill battle if I can possibly avoid it.
Anyhow. It had been awhile since I'd listened to most of these songs (I've been mainlining new-to-me CDs lately and ignoring my iTunes playlists), and it was interesting to re-listen to some of them and find myself thinking "I really do need that part after all" (mixed in with a generous amount of "Thank goodness I cut that bit"). I may have to go tinker with some of those edits, since renenet probably won't be up for a while yet.
The other thing I've been thinking about is the kind of vidding I want to do in the next year, the kind of vids I want to make. I'd been hoping to be able to spend lots of time vidding over the winter holidays, and now for various reasons it seems that that will probably not be possible, but I do want to start vidding again; I miss it. I've been doing all sorts of pre-vidding activities, like rewatching shows and making lots of notes - sous chef stuff, as sockkpuppett calls it - but I want to actually open up Premiere and start vidding again.
And... okay. One of my goals for myself a couple of years ago was to vid faster, to give myself permission to be messier, and while the "faster" part was only true for a while in a fairly limited sense, it was a good and useful experience. And it was nice to set some goals that had to do primarily with process rather than technique; it meant that I could send vids to the VVC Premieres show knowing in advance that they were not going to make a huge splash (Firefly het! Set to music I knew might be perceived as country!) and feeling fine about that because the vids had already fulfilled their primary purpose for me. And that was actually fun, not least in that I did not spend the two hours before Premieres feeling light-headed and ill with anticipation or feeling angry with myself for not having a vid in the show at all.
So I've definitely learned some things by working in a different way and on different kinds of vids. And now for the first time in a while I really want to get started on some of the vid ideas that I've had on tap for ages - literally for years, in some cases. "I want to make some big vids this year," was the way I put it to renenet. And by "big" I don't necessarily mean groundbreaking or even wildly popular or widely respected (although that would be thrilling), because those perceptions aren't things any of us can control, and we'd make ourselves crazy trying to design vids that would be recced and appreciated up and down the internets. I think about audience when I vid, obviously, because if I didn't care about audience and if I didn't want people to watch my vids I'd leave said vids on my own hard drive, or maybe show them to a few other people and leave it at that, but that's not really what I'm getting at here. I mean that I want to work on some vids that feel big to me: vids that tackle Big Ideas or Big Thematic Issues as well as Big Emotions; vids that delve into fandoms I share with a lot of people or that, if they're in smaller fandoms, might (if I get them right) appeal to people who don't know the show; vids that express my analytical tendencies as well as my capacity for glee.
I still have two vids-in-progress (by which I mean partially-filled timelines) that I haven't worked on in months, and as of this weekend I've decided to just set one of them aside. I may come back to it at some point, or it may turn out to be the first vid project ever that I abandon and don't finish. The other one I absolutely intend to finish, but I think I need to... not just not-think-about-it, because I've been doing that, but to actively think about and work on a different project for a while. In the middle of all this sous chef stuff, I need to clear a little space and just start cooking. And that may mean giving up some other fannish stuff for a while, or even some non-fannish stuff, like reading and knitting, because I miss this, and there's so much I want to be doing.
In conclusion, my life would be a hell of a lot less conflicted if I didn't have all these pesky demands on my time, like, you know, WORK. I love having a calling, but it is one motherfucker of a time suck. Sometimes I miss being an irresponsible slacker.
Several of the songs currently in my vid queue are pretty long, and most of them I've already successfully edited down to a more reasonable length. But re-listening to some of the songs this weekend, I realized that in a couple of cases I need to un-edit them; the stories I want to tell with them are big enough to sustain a longer vid, and I want that longer vid. I worry, always, about longer vids coming across as pointless and self-indulgent (because, to be honest, that's how some longer vids come across to me); obviously a vid of any length can be pointless or self-indulgent, but I do think that the longer a vid goes on, the more likely it is to wear out its welcome (though of course we can all think of plenty of vids that defy those odds). And because I am in some ways a deeply lazy vidder, I prefer not to fight that particular uphill battle if I can possibly avoid it.
Anyhow. It had been awhile since I'd listened to most of these songs (I've been mainlining new-to-me CDs lately and ignoring my iTunes playlists), and it was interesting to re-listen to some of them and find myself thinking "I really do need that part after all" (mixed in with a generous amount of "Thank goodness I cut that bit"). I may have to go tinker with some of those edits, since renenet probably won't be up for a while yet.
The other thing I've been thinking about is the kind of vidding I want to do in the next year, the kind of vids I want to make. I'd been hoping to be able to spend lots of time vidding over the winter holidays, and now for various reasons it seems that that will probably not be possible, but I do want to start vidding again; I miss it. I've been doing all sorts of pre-vidding activities, like rewatching shows and making lots of notes - sous chef stuff, as sockkpuppett calls it - but I want to actually open up Premiere and start vidding again.
And... okay. One of my goals for myself a couple of years ago was to vid faster, to give myself permission to be messier, and while the "faster" part was only true for a while in a fairly limited sense, it was a good and useful experience. And it was nice to set some goals that had to do primarily with process rather than technique; it meant that I could send vids to the VVC Premieres show knowing in advance that they were not going to make a huge splash (Firefly het! Set to music I knew might be perceived as country!) and feeling fine about that because the vids had already fulfilled their primary purpose for me. And that was actually fun, not least in that I did not spend the two hours before Premieres feeling light-headed and ill with anticipation or feeling angry with myself for not having a vid in the show at all.
So I've definitely learned some things by working in a different way and on different kinds of vids. And now for the first time in a while I really want to get started on some of the vid ideas that I've had on tap for ages - literally for years, in some cases. "I want to make some big vids this year," was the way I put it to renenet. And by "big" I don't necessarily mean groundbreaking or even wildly popular or widely respected (although that would be thrilling), because those perceptions aren't things any of us can control, and we'd make ourselves crazy trying to design vids that would be recced and appreciated up and down the internets. I think about audience when I vid, obviously, because if I didn't care about audience and if I didn't want people to watch my vids I'd leave said vids on my own hard drive, or maybe show them to a few other people and leave it at that, but that's not really what I'm getting at here. I mean that I want to work on some vids that feel big to me: vids that tackle Big Ideas or Big Thematic Issues as well as Big Emotions; vids that delve into fandoms I share with a lot of people or that, if they're in smaller fandoms, might (if I get them right) appeal to people who don't know the show; vids that express my analytical tendencies as well as my capacity for glee.
I still have two vids-in-progress (by which I mean partially-filled timelines) that I haven't worked on in months, and as of this weekend I've decided to just set one of them aside. I may come back to it at some point, or it may turn out to be the first vid project ever that I abandon and don't finish. The other one I absolutely intend to finish, but I think I need to... not just not-think-about-it, because I've been doing that, but to actively think about and work on a different project for a while. In the middle of all this sous chef stuff, I need to clear a little space and just start cooking. And that may mean giving up some other fannish stuff for a while, or even some non-fannish stuff, like reading and knitting, because I miss this, and there's so much I want to be doing.
In conclusion, my life would be a hell of a lot less conflicted if I didn't have all these pesky demands on my time, like, you know, WORK. I love having a calling, but it is one motherfucker of a time suck. Sometimes I miss being an irresponsible slacker.