Visual vocabularies
Very few of my vids have ever been discussed -- at least, anywhere that I knew about it -- and I've never been one of those vidders who gets rec'd/pimped a lot. So it was a huge surprise to me when yhlee wrote up some thoughts on my last VCR-made vid, My Beautiful Reward, for Firefly. She posted her thoughts to her LJ today and then dropped a link in the vidding LJ -- one of those places I always feel like I simply do not exist. It's rare for the online stuff to get noticed, but the old VCR stuff... that's even tougher.
I still made vids on VCRs for a long time after online vidding had become viable, and like most VCR vidders, my past work has been mostly marginalized because so few people have seen it, and newer fans don't seek out the past. If you weren't part of the cool kid clique of computer vidders and vidding cabals and whatever from back at the beginning of online vid communities, you sometimes feel as if you're worse than a newbie -- you're an oldie, with bad source and no effects, and your vids don't look cool, so you're not worthy, and all of that. It's something I've talked about with other old VCR vidders, that feeling like you're in some weird gray area between unheard-of newbie and irrelevant old-timer no one's heard from since the Civil War. Unless you're willing to spend the countless hours recutting your old vids (and not get much in the way of new stuff made), you can forget about people wanting to see your vids, even if you digitize them and put them up online. So having someone not just notice, but take the time to write up a review of an older vid, is like a hefty shot of vitamin B right in the ol' keister. It's a total pick-me-up, and makes me feel like it might even be worth remastering that vid with the good source (and allowing me to fix a problem that I've always wished I could fix, as well as get rid of that annoying static burst that now mars my master tape).
Too, I find commentary about work that I do really fascinating -- no matter if it's positive or negative. Sometimes the negative can be frustrating as hell if it's miles away from any kind of intentions I had, but that doesn't make it invalid. And in-depth commentary is so rare for anything, especially vids, that it's a true treat to hear someone dissect the art, think about the meaning behind it, speculate about the intentions. I really enjoy that, because it gives me perspective on what I'm doing I might not otherwise get. And that always helps you when you're working on your next project (at least, I think so).
It's also great to see comments like this because they're the antithesis of something that's been bothering me more than a little lately. When I first started out in media fandom, I encountered something that I had never really seen much in SF fandom -- there was a tendency among people to discount their input or mitigate their opinions by saying "I'm just a consumer, so I know my opinion doesn't matter" or something to that effect. Fanfic writers were becoming so lionized and inappropriately worshipped through the immediacy of the Net that those fans who didn't write (or, later, vid when it became something more people could do easily) really truly believed they had no right to state opinions, to participate in discussions. My abreaction to this got me into more than a few fights with other people. In relation to the growth of the negative BNF phenomenon (where before, being a BNF wasn't really that pejorative; SF cons have always had fan guests of honor to acknowledge people who contribute a lot to the community) solely because someone wrote fanfic, it served to make a lot of people feel like being "just a consumer" was a dirty word.
There really wouldn't be much of a fannish economy, or community, without the larger foundation of consumers. And by elevating writers or vidders above everyone else because they supply the fannish product, it leads people to believe that other important aspects of the community -- archives, capture sites, meta discussion pages, forums -- are somehow insignificant. And that leads to people believing that input methods -- feedback, recs, announcement lists, etc. -- are even less vital (and it doesn't help when producers can't be bothered to say a quick thank you for feedback or misuse their status on lists and forums to bully the "just consumers"). As vidding has grown in importance and availability as a fannish product, I've seen the level of input from the larger consumer base drop a lot. Most vids were shown at cons, and you had to connect to other fans to order tape collections, etc. The facelessness of vid distribution today, where we're basically all vending machines who spend a shitload of money to provide free product to the consumers, didn't exist; it was a more one to one transaction then, and at cons you were more likely to hear feedback from people about your vids.
I rarely heard people say things like "I'm not a vidder so I can't give you feedback on this vid." But today, I hear it all the time. Hardly anyone who isn't a vidder, hangs around with vidders, or who hasn't had some visual studies (either as an artist or through film studies) background seems willing to just share their feelings about a vid without tons of apology, or worse, self-deprecation. And few of us get the chance to develop that visual vocabulary unless we do take up vidding; so the gulf is even wider when people feel they have no right to their opinion. Somehow, through its ease of use and ubiquity in the online world, vidding has developed into this apparently rarefied skill that most "just consumers" think they have no right to comment on, as if "I really liked this" isn't good enough.
And sometimes, yeah, we make fun of people who say things like "nice use of vid clips" because the genericness of such comments doesn't really do much in terms of helping a vidder know where they succeeded or failed. But those comments mostly do come from the heart, of someone who really doesn't know the lingo but wants to say how they feel about the vid. They feel as if "I liked it" isn't enough, when in fact, that may be the only comment we get about a vid, so that simple statement could mean all the difference in how accepted or appreciated a vidder might feel. When I first started putting my vids online, the deafening silence was really discouraging. I was just this oldtime vidder with no name to most of these people, and they had no interest in checking my stuff out. But gradually I began to get a few comments here and there, and almost always, they are prefaced with "I don't know how to vid so I have nothing worthwhile to say, but I liked it." Often that's followed with surprisingly astute comments about something in particular that struck them. And they don't even realize they're making solid comments.
The thing is, most people don't write, either. But we grow up with writing, at least a little, in school, whereas we may never have the chance to build a visual vocabulary. You combine that with the general feeling that being only a viewer is such a lowly thing, and you get a frustratingly skewed fannish economy, where the traditional currencies of feedback and recs and reviews and discussions disappear, leaving the producers to keep spending exhorbitant sums to offer treats, yet get no reward in the way they might be used to, or have seen in things like responses to fanfic. In the real world, it's the person who does the good action who gets the treat as the reward; in fandom, it's the larger population, and the person who offers the treat may only have that one piece of "lame feedback" as their attagirl reward. Fandom is the only place I know of where everything is expected free of charge, at great cost to some of the artists, and no one has any obligation to provide anything in return. Vidding is extra weird because not only is there no produce/reward system, but the people who might want to provide a reward in the form of a thank you don't feel they have a right, simply because they don't know the methodology.
And I don't really know of a way to build that confidence in people that their comments, however feeble they might think they are, are usually more than welcome to most vidders (and especially to us oldtimers who came from VCR vidding and still feel like so much of our past is marginalized). In so many cases, in the places we announce vids, we will never hear a peep from the audience that's DLing the vids; some of those folks may simply not care, but a lot of them, I find, don't ever say anything because they're afraid to. That's a very difficult situation to overcome. People can be shy about sending comments to their favorite writers, but it's not because they feel they haven't got the right words to respond with -- it tends to be more of a starstruck thing. In vidding, though, it's not usually shyness, but a sense that by not being a vidder, they are unworthy or incapable of valuable responses. They don't have the right words, they think. They don't know the technical details or the methods used -- but heck, everyone knows what words on paper are.
Having someone write lengthy comments about one of my vids has been a huge treat; of course, someone might point out that she's a vidder herself, so it comes easily. Which is probably true, but I also don't believe that it's necessarily the way it has to be. I think anyone who watches movies, TV shows, as we fans do, has the ability to analyze or comment on a vid -- we just may not know we have that ability. Not everyone can go to Vividcon, or the review panels at some cons. But a lot of discussion has happened in LJs and elsewhere online, that can help people build at least a tiny bit of the vocabulary and style concepts most vidders use. It can't, however, overcome that feeling of "I'm just a viewer/not a vidder," and sadly, that's the truly difficult one to overcome. Saying "I liked this vid because it's really pretty and the way you used the effects made it feel creepy" is something most people can orient themselves to, but they have to believe they have a right to say it.
So I also think some of the work has to be done by vidders, just in terms of letting people know how much feedback of any kind is appreciated. People have to feel like they're not "just" consumers, but consumers who are the foundation of the fannish economy -- and that their currency of feedback is valuable. It's okay not to have the technical knowledge if you know what you like and don't like, because that's the basis for the opinion. Technical knowledge or experience is simply an additional aspect, but it doesn't make the feeling at the core any different: you like it or you don't. And that's really where responses to any kind of art begin.
ETA: sdwolfpup has an excellent post now about vidding feedback 101, that addresses the issue of people feeling like they don't have the "skills" to comment on vids, even if they really want to.
I still made vids on VCRs for a long time after online vidding had become viable, and like most VCR vidders, my past work has been mostly marginalized because so few people have seen it, and newer fans don't seek out the past. If you weren't part of the cool kid clique of computer vidders and vidding cabals and whatever from back at the beginning of online vid communities, you sometimes feel as if you're worse than a newbie -- you're an oldie, with bad source and no effects, and your vids don't look cool, so you're not worthy, and all of that. It's something I've talked about with other old VCR vidders, that feeling like you're in some weird gray area between unheard-of newbie and irrelevant old-timer no one's heard from since the Civil War. Unless you're willing to spend the countless hours recutting your old vids (and not get much in the way of new stuff made), you can forget about people wanting to see your vids, even if you digitize them and put them up online. So having someone not just notice, but take the time to write up a review of an older vid, is like a hefty shot of vitamin B right in the ol' keister. It's a total pick-me-up, and makes me feel like it might even be worth remastering that vid with the good source (and allowing me to fix a problem that I've always wished I could fix, as well as get rid of that annoying static burst that now mars my master tape).
Too, I find commentary about work that I do really fascinating -- no matter if it's positive or negative. Sometimes the negative can be frustrating as hell if it's miles away from any kind of intentions I had, but that doesn't make it invalid. And in-depth commentary is so rare for anything, especially vids, that it's a true treat to hear someone dissect the art, think about the meaning behind it, speculate about the intentions. I really enjoy that, because it gives me perspective on what I'm doing I might not otherwise get. And that always helps you when you're working on your next project (at least, I think so).
It's also great to see comments like this because they're the antithesis of something that's been bothering me more than a little lately. When I first started out in media fandom, I encountered something that I had never really seen much in SF fandom -- there was a tendency among people to discount their input or mitigate their opinions by saying "I'm just a consumer, so I know my opinion doesn't matter" or something to that effect. Fanfic writers were becoming so lionized and inappropriately worshipped through the immediacy of the Net that those fans who didn't write (or, later, vid when it became something more people could do easily) really truly believed they had no right to state opinions, to participate in discussions. My abreaction to this got me into more than a few fights with other people. In relation to the growth of the negative BNF phenomenon (where before, being a BNF wasn't really that pejorative; SF cons have always had fan guests of honor to acknowledge people who contribute a lot to the community) solely because someone wrote fanfic, it served to make a lot of people feel like being "just a consumer" was a dirty word.
There really wouldn't be much of a fannish economy, or community, without the larger foundation of consumers. And by elevating writers or vidders above everyone else because they supply the fannish product, it leads people to believe that other important aspects of the community -- archives, capture sites, meta discussion pages, forums -- are somehow insignificant. And that leads to people believing that input methods -- feedback, recs, announcement lists, etc. -- are even less vital (and it doesn't help when producers can't be bothered to say a quick thank you for feedback or misuse their status on lists and forums to bully the "just consumers"). As vidding has grown in importance and availability as a fannish product, I've seen the level of input from the larger consumer base drop a lot. Most vids were shown at cons, and you had to connect to other fans to order tape collections, etc. The facelessness of vid distribution today, where we're basically all vending machines who spend a shitload of money to provide free product to the consumers, didn't exist; it was a more one to one transaction then, and at cons you were more likely to hear feedback from people about your vids.
I rarely heard people say things like "I'm not a vidder so I can't give you feedback on this vid." But today, I hear it all the time. Hardly anyone who isn't a vidder, hangs around with vidders, or who hasn't had some visual studies (either as an artist or through film studies) background seems willing to just share their feelings about a vid without tons of apology, or worse, self-deprecation. And few of us get the chance to develop that visual vocabulary unless we do take up vidding; so the gulf is even wider when people feel they have no right to their opinion. Somehow, through its ease of use and ubiquity in the online world, vidding has developed into this apparently rarefied skill that most "just consumers" think they have no right to comment on, as if "I really liked this" isn't good enough.
And sometimes, yeah, we make fun of people who say things like "nice use of vid clips" because the genericness of such comments doesn't really do much in terms of helping a vidder know where they succeeded or failed. But those comments mostly do come from the heart, of someone who really doesn't know the lingo but wants to say how they feel about the vid. They feel as if "I liked it" isn't enough, when in fact, that may be the only comment we get about a vid, so that simple statement could mean all the difference in how accepted or appreciated a vidder might feel. When I first started putting my vids online, the deafening silence was really discouraging. I was just this oldtime vidder with no name to most of these people, and they had no interest in checking my stuff out. But gradually I began to get a few comments here and there, and almost always, they are prefaced with "I don't know how to vid so I have nothing worthwhile to say, but I liked it." Often that's followed with surprisingly astute comments about something in particular that struck them. And they don't even realize they're making solid comments.
The thing is, most people don't write, either. But we grow up with writing, at least a little, in school, whereas we may never have the chance to build a visual vocabulary. You combine that with the general feeling that being only a viewer is such a lowly thing, and you get a frustratingly skewed fannish economy, where the traditional currencies of feedback and recs and reviews and discussions disappear, leaving the producers to keep spending exhorbitant sums to offer treats, yet get no reward in the way they might be used to, or have seen in things like responses to fanfic. In the real world, it's the person who does the good action who gets the treat as the reward; in fandom, it's the larger population, and the person who offers the treat may only have that one piece of "lame feedback" as their attagirl reward. Fandom is the only place I know of where everything is expected free of charge, at great cost to some of the artists, and no one has any obligation to provide anything in return. Vidding is extra weird because not only is there no produce/reward system, but the people who might want to provide a reward in the form of a thank you don't feel they have a right, simply because they don't know the methodology.
And I don't really know of a way to build that confidence in people that their comments, however feeble they might think they are, are usually more than welcome to most vidders (and especially to us oldtimers who came from VCR vidding and still feel like so much of our past is marginalized). In so many cases, in the places we announce vids, we will never hear a peep from the audience that's DLing the vids; some of those folks may simply not care, but a lot of them, I find, don't ever say anything because they're afraid to. That's a very difficult situation to overcome. People can be shy about sending comments to their favorite writers, but it's not because they feel they haven't got the right words to respond with -- it tends to be more of a starstruck thing. In vidding, though, it's not usually shyness, but a sense that by not being a vidder, they are unworthy or incapable of valuable responses. They don't have the right words, they think. They don't know the technical details or the methods used -- but heck, everyone knows what words on paper are.
Having someone write lengthy comments about one of my vids has been a huge treat; of course, someone might point out that she's a vidder herself, so it comes easily. Which is probably true, but I also don't believe that it's necessarily the way it has to be. I think anyone who watches movies, TV shows, as we fans do, has the ability to analyze or comment on a vid -- we just may not know we have that ability. Not everyone can go to Vividcon, or the review panels at some cons. But a lot of discussion has happened in LJs and elsewhere online, that can help people build at least a tiny bit of the vocabulary and style concepts most vidders use. It can't, however, overcome that feeling of "I'm just a viewer/not a vidder," and sadly, that's the truly difficult one to overcome. Saying "I liked this vid because it's really pretty and the way you used the effects made it feel creepy" is something most people can orient themselves to, but they have to believe they have a right to say it.
So I also think some of the work has to be done by vidders, just in terms of letting people know how much feedback of any kind is appreciated. People have to feel like they're not "just" consumers, but consumers who are the foundation of the fannish economy -- and that their currency of feedback is valuable. It's okay not to have the technical knowledge if you know what you like and don't like, because that's the basis for the opinion. Technical knowledge or experience is simply an additional aspect, but it doesn't make the feeling at the core any different: you like it or you don't. And that's really where responses to any kind of art begin.
ETA: sdwolfpup has an excellent post now about vidding feedback 101, that addresses the issue of people feeling like they don't have the "skills" to comment on vids, even if they really want to.