2006: my year in fandom
I did a version of this meme for 2004, though not of course for 2005 since I didn't produce any vids that year. Returning to it now, I find that, like laurashapiro, I'm inclined to meditate on my fannishness in general as well as my vids; some of what I've written here began as a comment to her post.
general fannishness
Laura wrote about posting less and becoming less fannish, and asked specifically: What I'm curious about is whether some of my friends are feeling this lack of impetus to post as well, and whether there's something we have in common which is making us less inclined to engage fannishly online. Is it that RL becomes too large and unwieldy? Are we just too busy? Or are there other factors at work?
I'd been thinking along similar lines. I noticed at some point this year that I was posting less in general than had been my wont, which made sense: I've been dealing with a lot of chaos elsewhere in my life - all the time-consuming stuff that goes with settling into a new job and a new house, making new friends, etc. So in that sense, yeah, being busy and dealing with unwieldy RL are definitely factors.
The fannish content has fallen off, I suppose, because I'm only following a couple of currently-airing shows (BSG, VMars), and I'm feeling only mildly fannish about them right now anyway. I have a lot of vid ideas, but they're mostly for older shows (or older seasons of current shows), so even though I know other people will share my enthusiasm about them, the impulse to post is a bit muted. I see a fair amount of squee about various things on my reading list - Supernatural, SGA, Heroes, and to some extent Dexter and The Office - but since these are shows I'm not watching, I'm feeling a bit out of the loop. I came into fandom via BtVS, at a time when the show was still airing and was HUGE, and then felt very involved with the Firefly love, and was welcomed into belated Farscape-love with open arms; feeling so out of sync with the main streams of my fannish friends is a new experience for me, and leaves me a bit melancholy. Then again, I am happy with the vids I've been making and planning, and so I don't really mind that my fannish contributions in terms of commentary and meta have been considerably diminished; I assume that eventually my interests and the fannish zeitgeist will intersect again, and until then I'll just keep fooling around with Premiere and seeing what I can come up with.
Another factor, I think, is that I've become so close to so many people through fannish activities that I'm more inclined to stay connected to those people personally, even if our fannish interests have diverged significantly, than to go looking for new people, even if those new people share more of my current obsessions. It takes a huge rush of overwhelming love for a show - like what I felt for BtVS and Firefly - to propel me out of my hermitlike state.
One thing that I've been thinking about a lot is how to integrate fannishness more fully into my life again; cesperanza is inspiring me in this regard. It's occurred to me that my times of greatest fannish productivity, especially around BtVS, happened when I was working on both fannish and analytical projects about the show. At the time, that was possible mostly because I was avoiding my dissertation. When I had to finish the diss, everything fannish came to a screeching halt. Now... I don't want to avoid my "real" work to make room for fannish analysis; I want to find a way to do both at once. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to manage that, but I'm becoming more and more certain that it's something I ought to try for; truepenny and I had a terrific conversation recently that is helping me imagine some possibilities.
vids I made this year
New Frontier (Firefly/Serenity)
Out Here (due South)
Tre Sorelle (Farscape)
I also remastered Window of Opportunity, Cat-Scan Hist'ry, and Thistledown Tears.
my favorite of my own vids this year
New Frontier. I just rewatched them all to be sure, and yeah, absolutely.
my best vid this year
New Frontier. I don't know that I have another vid like that in me, honestly. But I actually feel okay about that, because the vids I'm working on right now are completely different in tone and style and intent; it's an apple-to-platypus kind of thing to even compare them. New worlds to conquer and all that.
vid of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion
I think it would be tacky and disingenuous of me to say that any of them have been underappreciated; they've been appreciated beyond my most optimistic expectations. Tre Sorelle hasn't been seen by very many people, but that's just because I haven't posted it (because it pains me to watch it and therefore I refuse to post it until I've fixed it).
most fun video
Tre Sorelle, for sure, despite the many things wrong with it. It's just so shiny! And things blow up! Plus you can dance to it! And, as laurashapiro said, "You made it a lesbian ship!" Which... yeah, I pretty much did.
video with single sexiest moment
Probably Tre Sorelle, with Aeryn unzipping her vest. Because, seriously, it's Aeryn unzipping her vest.
vid with most climactic moment, sexual or not [borrowed from cesperanza]
Well... hmm. I'm actually pretty happy with the building-to-emotional-climax parts of both New Frontier and Out Here, and in fact both of them are in some ways exercises in piling climax on top of climax. But, in the spirit of cesperanza' s original usage, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the moment where Fraser and RayK thump the roof of the car in unison. That and the hat-tossing that comes right after it. I made katallison flail! My work here is done! Heh.
vid that shifted my own perceptions of the characters
Out Here, absolutely. I started that vid from a place of enthusiasm but not so much personal engagement, and then somewhere along the way I started to feel for Fraser, and then I started to buy Fraser/RayK in this sort of visceral as well as intellectual way, and then I kind of fell in love with them and with the vid, and then suddenly I was looking at this half-finished vid saying "OMG they have to run off to Canada together and be happy!" and also "Where did all these emotions come from? When did I get so invested? WTF?" It was weird. Good, but weird. I'm still not a fan of the show, per se, but I've become very fond of the characters, and I get downright excited about them for the length of the vid.
hardest video to make
Out Here. Because I had to watch an entire show in secret to do it. You might have heard about that part. Also, boyslash, which, seriously, WTF was I thinking? And then there's the source, which is plagued by unhelpful visuals and crap DVD quality. This one was an uphill slog pretty much the whole way. But I got them to Canada in the end, so hey, me for the win. Also, renenet and sisabet liked it, and that was the whole point, and everything else is just frosting on this really improbable cake.
biggest disappointment
Tre Sorelle. I wanted, and needed, to rewatch the show for this one, and I just didn't have time, so the whole process was haphazard at best, and it showed in the results. At least a few of the things wrong with it are things I can fix, though, and I plan to do that sometime this year... hopefully after rewatching the show, which I want to do anyway for another vid.
biggest surprise
Out Here. Not just because it was originally intended as a surprise for renenet and sisabet, although yes, and not just because I surprised myself by developing a fairly serious affection for the characters, although again yes, but also because the reception of the vid was, for me at least, kind of mind-blowing. I mean, I was making this vid as a complete newcomer to a well-established fandom, so despite katallison's insistence that people would like it, I had no reason to believe that it would find an audience beyond the folks who know me personally. And yet it has, and, aside from a few unpleasant remarks about the pairing and about my newbie status, the responses from most folks within the fandom have been just astonishingly generous and supportive. Due South fandom: I may not want to live there, but I've found it a lovely place to visit.
most unintentionally telling video
Well, Out Here confirms all over again that I am a pudding-hearted sap, but I'm not sure that's ever been a secret.
new things I tried
Using new-to-me avisynth tech. Combining everything I knew about making an Idea Vid with everything I knew about motion. Using jump cuts. Using special effects beyond speed changes and zooms. Using instrumental sections rather than panicking about them (or cutting them out altogether). Exporting snippets to show people along the way rather than waiting until I had a complete draft. Combining a character study vid with boyslash (which involved trying to vid a whole new show). Making a dance vid.
The other thing that I suppose isn't wholly new but that I feel like I finally started to get this year is pacing; it was one of the biggest challenges of making New Frontier, and I applied pretty much everything I learned from it to Out Here as well, although the results there are in some ways less dramatic because of limitations endemic to the source.
stuff I learned
1. I can cut a lot faster than I thought I could.
1a. However, if I want to cut really fast, I have to know my source cold, and/or have a detailed clip inventory to help me find shots to keep packing in there; otherwise I'll get lazy and wave it off and then watch the vid two weeks later and be appalled at how freaking slow it is.
2. I can vid boyslash.
2a. It's even kind of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I'm planning on doing it again. God help me.
3. I really can hang a whole vid on a single big leap-of-faith metaphor; it wasn't just a one-time fluke. People will get it.
4. I can cut songs really, really ruthlessly, and in fairly complicated ways, and the vid is always better for it.
5. I really don't have a subtle bone in my vidding body -- given the choice between subtle and over-the-top I will pick over-the-top pretty much every time -- so I might as well just get my anvil on and go for it.
6. I can vid a song with non-English vocals (which gives me hope for eventually vidding an instrumental).
7. People really are happy to help: to cheerlead, to brainstorm, to problem-solve, to beta; I just have to ask.
for the coming year
I have another Firefly vid and a second due South on tap at the moment; after that I'll just have to see where my enthusiasms are taking me before I can decide what's next. I've been hankering to vid BtVS again lately, and I do have a backlog of ideas there. I'm still theoretically excited about my BSG ideas, but whether I get excited about actually making the vids will probably depend on whether the show grabs me again in the coming months; ditto Veronica Mars. I also have viable vid ideas for XF, Farscape, Gilmore Girls, and Lord of the Rings, not to mention a growing stack of movies. I want to have a vid for VVC Premieres this year. I want to get Tre Sorelle fixed up enough to be presentable. I'm contemplating the possibility of volunteering for the VVC auction; I have mixed feelings about it, but I think it would be an interesting challenge. (It has occurred to me that one possibility for the auction would be to offer either a made-to-order vid OR the chance to move an existing vid plan to the top of my vidding queue; I have no idea whether that would be as much fun to bid on, but it would be a lot less stressful for me.)
general fannishness
Laura wrote about posting less and becoming less fannish, and asked specifically: What I'm curious about is whether some of my friends are feeling this lack of impetus to post as well, and whether there's something we have in common which is making us less inclined to engage fannishly online. Is it that RL becomes too large and unwieldy? Are we just too busy? Or are there other factors at work?
I'd been thinking along similar lines. I noticed at some point this year that I was posting less in general than had been my wont, which made sense: I've been dealing with a lot of chaos elsewhere in my life - all the time-consuming stuff that goes with settling into a new job and a new house, making new friends, etc. So in that sense, yeah, being busy and dealing with unwieldy RL are definitely factors.
The fannish content has fallen off, I suppose, because I'm only following a couple of currently-airing shows (BSG, VMars), and I'm feeling only mildly fannish about them right now anyway. I have a lot of vid ideas, but they're mostly for older shows (or older seasons of current shows), so even though I know other people will share my enthusiasm about them, the impulse to post is a bit muted. I see a fair amount of squee about various things on my reading list - Supernatural, SGA, Heroes, and to some extent Dexter and The Office - but since these are shows I'm not watching, I'm feeling a bit out of the loop. I came into fandom via BtVS, at a time when the show was still airing and was HUGE, and then felt very involved with the Firefly love, and was welcomed into belated Farscape-love with open arms; feeling so out of sync with the main streams of my fannish friends is a new experience for me, and leaves me a bit melancholy. Then again, I am happy with the vids I've been making and planning, and so I don't really mind that my fannish contributions in terms of commentary and meta have been considerably diminished; I assume that eventually my interests and the fannish zeitgeist will intersect again, and until then I'll just keep fooling around with Premiere and seeing what I can come up with.
Another factor, I think, is that I've become so close to so many people through fannish activities that I'm more inclined to stay connected to those people personally, even if our fannish interests have diverged significantly, than to go looking for new people, even if those new people share more of my current obsessions. It takes a huge rush of overwhelming love for a show - like what I felt for BtVS and Firefly - to propel me out of my hermitlike state.
One thing that I've been thinking about a lot is how to integrate fannishness more fully into my life again; cesperanza is inspiring me in this regard. It's occurred to me that my times of greatest fannish productivity, especially around BtVS, happened when I was working on both fannish and analytical projects about the show. At the time, that was possible mostly because I was avoiding my dissertation. When I had to finish the diss, everything fannish came to a screeching halt. Now... I don't want to avoid my "real" work to make room for fannish analysis; I want to find a way to do both at once. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to manage that, but I'm becoming more and more certain that it's something I ought to try for; truepenny and I had a terrific conversation recently that is helping me imagine some possibilities.
vids I made this year
New Frontier (Firefly/Serenity)
Out Here (due South)
Tre Sorelle (Farscape)
I also remastered Window of Opportunity, Cat-Scan Hist'ry, and Thistledown Tears.
my favorite of my own vids this year
New Frontier. I just rewatched them all to be sure, and yeah, absolutely.
my best vid this year
New Frontier. I don't know that I have another vid like that in me, honestly. But I actually feel okay about that, because the vids I'm working on right now are completely different in tone and style and intent; it's an apple-to-platypus kind of thing to even compare them. New worlds to conquer and all that.
vid of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion
I think it would be tacky and disingenuous of me to say that any of them have been underappreciated; they've been appreciated beyond my most optimistic expectations. Tre Sorelle hasn't been seen by very many people, but that's just because I haven't posted it (because it pains me to watch it and therefore I refuse to post it until I've fixed it).
most fun video
Tre Sorelle, for sure, despite the many things wrong with it. It's just so shiny! And things blow up! Plus you can dance to it! And, as laurashapiro said, "You made it a lesbian ship!" Which... yeah, I pretty much did.
video with single sexiest moment
Probably Tre Sorelle, with Aeryn unzipping her vest. Because, seriously, it's Aeryn unzipping her vest.
vid with most climactic moment, sexual or not [borrowed from cesperanza]
Well... hmm. I'm actually pretty happy with the building-to-emotional-climax parts of both New Frontier and Out Here, and in fact both of them are in some ways exercises in piling climax on top of climax. But, in the spirit of cesperanza' s original usage, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the moment where Fraser and RayK thump the roof of the car in unison. That and the hat-tossing that comes right after it. I made katallison flail! My work here is done! Heh.
vid that shifted my own perceptions of the characters
Out Here, absolutely. I started that vid from a place of enthusiasm but not so much personal engagement, and then somewhere along the way I started to feel for Fraser, and then I started to buy Fraser/RayK in this sort of visceral as well as intellectual way, and then I kind of fell in love with them and with the vid, and then suddenly I was looking at this half-finished vid saying "OMG they have to run off to Canada together and be happy!" and also "Where did all these emotions come from? When did I get so invested? WTF?" It was weird. Good, but weird. I'm still not a fan of the show, per se, but I've become very fond of the characters, and I get downright excited about them for the length of the vid.
hardest video to make
Out Here. Because I had to watch an entire show in secret to do it. You might have heard about that part. Also, boyslash, which, seriously, WTF was I thinking? And then there's the source, which is plagued by unhelpful visuals and crap DVD quality. This one was an uphill slog pretty much the whole way. But I got them to Canada in the end, so hey, me for the win. Also, renenet and sisabet liked it, and that was the whole point, and everything else is just frosting on this really improbable cake.
biggest disappointment
Tre Sorelle. I wanted, and needed, to rewatch the show for this one, and I just didn't have time, so the whole process was haphazard at best, and it showed in the results. At least a few of the things wrong with it are things I can fix, though, and I plan to do that sometime this year... hopefully after rewatching the show, which I want to do anyway for another vid.
biggest surprise
Out Here. Not just because it was originally intended as a surprise for renenet and sisabet, although yes, and not just because I surprised myself by developing a fairly serious affection for the characters, although again yes, but also because the reception of the vid was, for me at least, kind of mind-blowing. I mean, I was making this vid as a complete newcomer to a well-established fandom, so despite katallison's insistence that people would like it, I had no reason to believe that it would find an audience beyond the folks who know me personally. And yet it has, and, aside from a few unpleasant remarks about the pairing and about my newbie status, the responses from most folks within the fandom have been just astonishingly generous and supportive. Due South fandom: I may not want to live there, but I've found it a lovely place to visit.
most unintentionally telling video
Well, Out Here confirms all over again that I am a pudding-hearted sap, but I'm not sure that's ever been a secret.
new things I tried
Using new-to-me avisynth tech. Combining everything I knew about making an Idea Vid with everything I knew about motion. Using jump cuts. Using special effects beyond speed changes and zooms. Using instrumental sections rather than panicking about them (or cutting them out altogether). Exporting snippets to show people along the way rather than waiting until I had a complete draft. Combining a character study vid with boyslash (which involved trying to vid a whole new show). Making a dance vid.
The other thing that I suppose isn't wholly new but that I feel like I finally started to get this year is pacing; it was one of the biggest challenges of making New Frontier, and I applied pretty much everything I learned from it to Out Here as well, although the results there are in some ways less dramatic because of limitations endemic to the source.
stuff I learned
1. I can cut a lot faster than I thought I could.
1a. However, if I want to cut really fast, I have to know my source cold, and/or have a detailed clip inventory to help me find shots to keep packing in there; otherwise I'll get lazy and wave it off and then watch the vid two weeks later and be appalled at how freaking slow it is.
2. I can vid boyslash.
2a. It's even kind of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I'm planning on doing it again. God help me.
3. I really can hang a whole vid on a single big leap-of-faith metaphor; it wasn't just a one-time fluke. People will get it.
4. I can cut songs really, really ruthlessly, and in fairly complicated ways, and the vid is always better for it.
5. I really don't have a subtle bone in my vidding body -- given the choice between subtle and over-the-top I will pick over-the-top pretty much every time -- so I might as well just get my anvil on and go for it.
6. I can vid a song with non-English vocals (which gives me hope for eventually vidding an instrumental).
7. People really are happy to help: to cheerlead, to brainstorm, to problem-solve, to beta; I just have to ask.
for the coming year
I have another Firefly vid and a second due South on tap at the moment; after that I'll just have to see where my enthusiasms are taking me before I can decide what's next. I've been hankering to vid BtVS again lately, and I do have a backlog of ideas there. I'm still theoretically excited about my BSG ideas, but whether I get excited about actually making the vids will probably depend on whether the show grabs me again in the coming months; ditto Veronica Mars. I also have viable vid ideas for XF, Farscape, Gilmore Girls, and Lord of the Rings, not to mention a growing stack of movies. I want to have a vid for VVC Premieres this year. I want to get Tre Sorelle fixed up enough to be presentable. I'm contemplating the possibility of volunteering for the VVC auction; I have mixed feelings about it, but I think it would be an interesting challenge. (It has occurred to me that one possibility for the auction would be to offer either a made-to-order vid OR the chance to move an existing vid plan to the top of my vidding queue; I have no idea whether that would be as much fun to bid on, but it would be a lot less stressful for me.)