VVC 2013: more panels

[heresluck]

CHILL THE FUCK OUT (mod: sisabet)

I wanted to go to this panel so much, but it was scheduled opposite my vidshow! I was vocal enough about this that
lapillus took pity on me and offered to VJ my show. \o/

The presentation was mostly a series of reminders of stuff that's basic common sense, but they are reminders that I need regularly, so for me, at least, it was valuable. Some of the things that sisabet mentioned are things that I'm already conscientous about, like eating food that is actually food. Others are things that I know but keep having to re-learn periodically. Some of the points that particularly resonated with me:

• Avoidance: decreases stress temporarily but increases it long-term.
• Being productive is important, but being busy can be a form of procrastination: “I can’t do X, I’m too busy with other things.”
• It's easy to temporarily distract oneself from stress; it's more valuable (and often more difficult) to deal with the root cause of the stress.
• For those of us who use vidding as a creative outlet that helps us cope with the other stresses of life, creative blocks become a vicious cycle: our coping strategy has turned on us!
• There are lots of reasons a vid might not get the response we hoped for. Maybe the fandom is small; maybe the vid didn’t reach the right audience. Fandom is changing; maybe the audience that used to be on LJ has moved (to Tumblr, to YouTube); maybe the vid's aesthetic isn't what this audience is into right now.
• “There is no minimum requirements of vids per year to be a vidder.” I am seriously considering writing this on a post-it note and sticking it on my monitor.

A Matter of Perspective (mods:
greensilver &
sweetestdrain)

This was not quite the panel I was expecting, partly because I loved the vidshow so much (more on that in a different post) and really wanted the panel to be about those vids and partly because I already know what the types of POV are and how to signal them to the audience. So I'm pretty sure I was not the target audience for this panel. Even so, I really would have liked to see the vids from the show used as examples in the panel; I spent a lot of the panel trying to figure out what the link was between the vidshow and the panel (aside from the title), and honestly I never figured it out.

But I still took notes, because that's how I roll.

Types of POV:

• First person singular
• Dual POV: a vid that shares POV or switches POV once or more between two characters
• Multiple or ensemble POV: divides focus among many characters; any character can be the “I” or it can shift from character to character
• Vidder/meta/audience POV: POV is outside the vid

Methods for establishing POV:

• Song choice: should suit the character; makes it easier for audience to connect. Strong I statements early in the vid help to establish it.
• Lyrics: Map out verses in relation to the character
• Clip choice: “I” should show us the POV character; framing can help too-close-ups direct our focus
• Entwined dual POV: both characters are the I. Consider balance: does one “speak” more than the other
• POV shift: can make this move with careful clip choice, motion that moves our attention from one character to the next. It helps to switch at a natural transition points (not mid-verse but at the start of a new verse or chorus) and to include the other character on “you” (as appropriate) to help signal the switch.
• Ensemble POV: varies depending on song’s structure, number of characters shown in vid. Consider objectives: does each character need a verse or a specific section? (Four characters, each gets a line of each verse?) Should it be entwined POV where the vid drifts seamlessly between characters?

Examples:

• obsessive24, "Disarm": establishes POV through "I," "you," using clips in which Draco's moving to keep attention on him, zooming in on clips in which Draco's in the background
• 
  fan_eunice, "Forever Young": the vid’s about Richie, but it’s Duncan’s perspective on Richie-and in some ways it’s also a meta vid, the vidder’s perspective on Richie.
• sisabet &
  sweetestdrain, “On the Prowl”: the “I” hits on the credits, signaling that the vid will be from the vidders's point of view
• “Don’t Call Me Baby” handles the Leia-to-Han transition very effectively: the transition happens between chorus and verse, with shots of both of them, and by the time the words kick back in a) there are multiple shots in a row of Han; b) one of them is a classic “reveal” shot.

In the course of the panel there was an audience debate about first vs third person that, as I said to
kass at the end of the panel, made me want to point out why heterodiegetic and homodiegetic are much more useful terms in this context, but wow, that can of worms was really not worth opening.


Fancy Credits! (mod:
dualbunny)

My takeaway from this panel can be summed up in one sentence: Dualbunny has forgotten more about AE than I will ever know.


absolutedestiny's Song Choice panel was one of the highlights of my weekend and requires its own post.

Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth