2009 (and 2008): fannish year(s) in review
I didn't get around to doing this post for 2008, so I'm just going to fold in the bits of 2008 that I remember. Which, at this point? Not a lot.
general fannishness
I realized recently that for the past couple of years I've been feeling a bit adrift, fannishly speaking. There have been some shows on that I have very much enjoyed watching, and even that I've enjoyed reading other people's reactions to, but there haven't been very many shows I really wanted to discuss, to experience communally. There was a point at which vidding really was my fandom, and to some extent that's still true, in that VividCon is the fannish (and in many ways social) highlight of my year. But in the last couple of years, for various reasons, I haven't actually watched very many vids, and, outside of VividCon, I've watched almost no vids by people I don't already know. For a while I felt pretty guilty about this, but at this point I've pretty much accepted it. I would like to be watching more vids and sending feedback on them and making rec posts, but that is not where my time has been going.
my shows (and movie)
I've watched (and discarded) so many shows in the past couple of years that I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up leaving out something important, but here goes...
Battlestar Galactica lured me back for the first few episodes of S4; then I got bored and annoyed and stopped watching. I doubt I'll ever go back and finish the show. Which means I probably won't ever make the vids I was planning. Which is a bummer, because I still like the ideas, even if I'm too annoyed with the show to vid them myself. I suppose this means that if I can find a VividCon Auction volunteer who's willing to vid BSG, I have songs at the ready, so there's an upside.
I still don't think I'd describe myself as fannish about Castle, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it, particularly Castle's relationships with his mother and daughter. As I said in a different post, I love that Castle has no manpain whatsoever; he's a cheerful, successful guy whose core relationships are happy and healthy; he's a good dad; and although he clearly enjoys teasing Beckett, he is serious when it matters, he respects Beckett and her boundaries, and he's fundamentally a grownup. And everyone involved with the show seems to be having fun, which I appreciate.
I watched a few episodes of Crusoe at the end of 2008 (and made truepenny watch them with me, because that is the sort of friend I am), and oh god, they were dreadful. We did get a drinking game out of the experience, but to play we would have to watch the show again, which, no.
Doctor Who continued to amuse me up to the end of S4 (I love Donna), and of course there have been some absolutely stunning DW vids made over the past few years. I've never been especially fannish about the show, as I said a couple of years ago; I'm happy when it's there, but tend to forget about it when it's not. The end of S4, however, made me furious, and my reactions to this year's specials have ranged from "eh, whatever" to "...I want the last two hours of my life back" (End of Time, I'm looking at you). I'll be tuning in for Eleven, though, just in case Moffat manages to salvage the elements of the show I used to genuinely enjoy.
I hung in there through S1 of Dollhouse, thought the show was on an upward trajectory, watched the first, I don't know, three? episodes of S2, forgot to watch an episode, and realized a few weeks later that 1) I hadn't caught up on the show, and 2) I didn't miss it. I hear it's improved again, but I'm still feeling sufficiently meh about it that I'm going to wait until the end of the season and try to gauge overall reactions before I commit to spending any more time with it.
Friday Night Lights continues to blow my mind. S2 had some serious problems, but I was so hooked on the characters that I kept watching anyway, and then S3 made it all worthwhile - I don't think I've ever seen such an amazing comeback from a wobbly season. And thus far, S4 is living up to S3. I adore the show, period. That said, my reactions to that show are almost entirely emotional rather than intellectual, so I end up not posting about it much, because often I have nothing to say besides ::FLAIL:: (which obviously there's nothing wrong with, and I always love sharing reactions with kassrachel). This show is where a huge amount of my fannish energy is going; I keep having FNL vid ideas, some of which are actually viable, and I am really looking forward to rewatching from the beginning sometime this year.
After the first three eps of Heroes S3 I just couldn't bear to keep going. I would probably be bitter about this, except for how the show itself created within me a deep well of not caring.
jackiekjono got me hooked on Leverage fairly early on; it's one of my happy place shows. I have no particular desire to discuss it (I mean, honestly, what's to discuss?) but it's amusing and enjoyable and I adore Hardison, Parker, and Eliot. I really need to go searching out more Leverage vids; I know there are some good ones out there beyond the ones I saw at VividCon.
I started Life shortly before S2 started; I very much enjoyed S1, but was so bored by S2 that I quit watching. Also mildly disappointed. But mostly bored, which really is the kiss of death for me. I deal better with disappointment, actually; I can work up a lather of righteous indignation about that.
I mainlined all of Middleman in late 2008 and found it to be an absolute joy. (Wendy! Lacey! Noser!) I wish there'd been more of it, but I'm very happy with what we got and where the show left us. I'd still love to vid this show if the right song finds me.
Pushing Daisies sort of fell off my radar at some point; I don't remember whether I even watched any of S2. I probably will at some point - I did like the show - but it never quite clicked for me. Yeah, I don't know what that's about either.
The Star Trek reboot was kind of my stealth fandom; I saw it, I liked it, whatever; mostly it just reminded me that I should probably watch TOS at some point (more on that below). And then, having watched TOS, I kept thinking about the reboot! And then I started vidding the reboot, which of course just made me think about it more. And then the DVD came out, and I foisted it on everybody within grabbing distance who'd sit still long enough, and then truepenny and I talked about it for like six hours or something (...OMG I miss having insta-conversations about media with truepenny, you have no idea); thank goodness mirrorthaw is used to us.
So, yeah, renenet and I watched vast amounts of Star Trek (the original series) when she visited this summer (and then I finished up after she went home). She grew up on TOS reruns and watched TNG and Voyager in college; I'd never seen a single episode of TOS, and only a few random episodes of Voyager when I happened to be in the room while she was watching it. I found TOS more frustrating than anything (look, I didn't really watch TV until the '90s, okay? I'm used to narrative arcs and cameras that aren't bolted to the floor), but it was genuinely interesting to see where so many of our media SF tropes come from. Also, seeing K/S in action really put everything I know about contemporary slash into context.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles came closest to inspiring true fannishness in me - it was substantive enough - but it kind of caught me at a bad time for fannish investment, capslocky flail about the finale notwithstanding; the show actually demanded more of me intellectually than I felt I was always able to give it on a week to week basis. I did adore it, I'm still deeply bitter about its cancellation (a reaction that influenced my attitude towards Dollhouse S2), and I'm looking forward to rewatching at some point when my brain is more fully online.
my vids
Strength In You (Gilmore Girls, 2008)
Sea Fever (Slings & Arrows, 2009)
Story in a Nutshell (Wonderfalls, 2009)
...well, that does explain why I didn't feel any particular urge to do festivids. Heh.
All of these vids were pretty stress-free - a first for me. Strength in You took the longest, mostly because there was so much source to sort through: three full seasons of show, and lots of possible clips in each ep, since I was vidding the show's central relationship. So several months went into rewatching and logging clips, and then I ripped DVDs and clipped over the course of a month or so. And then the end of the semester happened, and I didn't work on the vid for two months. So I made the vid in about two weeks - two surprisingly laid-back weeks. No angst (beyond a few inevitable tech woes), no vid farr, just quietly working my way through the timeline. And wow, that was nice.
What really startled me was how easy it was to make Sea Fever. I did no pre-planning at all; I just ripped the DVDs and dived in. Admittedly, there are only 18 episodes, and there were lots of subplots I could just ignore, but still - I made the vid in a week. And it turned out to be the best thing I've done in ages, and possibly the most personal vid I've ever made: This is how I feel about my work; this is why I do what I do: because otherwise my life would be unbearably diminished.
I made Story in a Nutshell the same way I made Sea Fever, and for the same reasons: really limited source to begin with, and the nature of the vid meant I could fly through the clipping because there just wasn't that much to clip (and of course the song is barely a minute long, which helps). This one took only two weeks start to finish, and that was with the irrational one-week hiatus in the middle where I convinced myself that the first fifteen seconds were going to be difficult (they were not).
new things I tried
Well, the wing-and-a-prayer thing wasn't entirely new, but I hadn't done it in a while; I've been relying heavily on clip databases for years now, and for good reasons. I think that it would be a mistake to conclude that I am somehow magically no longer a slow vidder, but it was nice to find that, under the right circumstances, with the right source, I can just start scrubbing through the source and throwing stuff on the timeline with no notes and no plans and come up with something watchable. So, yeah, most of the new things I tried had to do with process rather than content.
I suppose it could be said that Sea Fever is the logical apotheosis of my experiments with extended metaphor, but I can't honestly say that that was something I tried - that was what the song gave me, so I worked with it. I didn't fully realize until I was nearly done with the vid just how metaphorical it was; I didn't pick the song for the metaphor - the song struck me as right for the show because of the emotion that the metaphor conveys.
stuff I learned
Pretty much all the things I've figured out in the past couple of years - and mostly in the months since VVC '09 - have had very little to do with vidding strategies or even vidding process and much more to do with my own mindset (which is frequently a mess) and hangups (which are many).
One thing that I already knew but that it was really good to be reminded of is that, as much as I want to broaden my vidding skill set in terms of effects and shiny stuff, there is absolutely no reason to be dissatisfied with a plain and simple vid, carefully cut and made with love; that kind of a vid can make people just as happy, and can get just as thoughtful and generous a reception, as a vid with bells and whistles.
And - okay, I'm going to recapitulate some stuff from a conversation I had with sdwolfpup a while back: After making a couple of emotionally intense vids and running right up against deadlines to do it, I needed vids to be easy for a while; that was important to me. I needed to not hyperventilate my way through the Premieres show. So the vids I've made in the past three years were the right kind of vids for me to be making; they were easy, relatively speaking; they were restful.
But one of the things that I've had to face over the last couple of years is my own dissatisfaction with the responses to those vids -- other peoples' responses, but also my own responses. For a while, every new vid I made was my favorite of my own vids, at least temporarily. That hasn't been true for a while, and I miss it. I miss making vids that help me figure something out, or that express an insight with a clarity I can't achieve in words. I also miss vidding in big fandoms that I personally care about; I haven't done much of that in a long while. I miss the charge of doing it, and I miss the level of response when I've done it. As someone who vids to share ideas and enthusiasm, I don't like the feeling that I'm mailing letters into the void; I find it intensely frustrating. I am not one of those vidders who vids for herself and doesn't care what other people think; if I didn't care what other people think, I wouldn't post my vids on the internet. And so, after a certain point, I find it really frustrating to put out several small fandom vids in a row, vids that have a very limited audience simply by virtue of the source. Vidding in big fandoms has its dangers too, of course; I know perfectly well that I will want to sink into the earth if the next few vids I have on tap, which are in pretty big fandoms, don't go over reasonably well. But, you know, I can turn any vidding choice into something fraught with stress and emotional danger, so whatever. These days, I'm feeling like it would be okay to get stressed out over a vid I really care about.
One of the things I have had to confront is that making easy restful stress-free vids has been a way of aggressively not dealing with my fear of trying something complex. My current vid ideas are a lot more demanding than the vids I've made in the last couple of years; they demand more of me in terms of thoughtfulness and technical know-how, and they will probably demand more of viewers. (Though that's hardly difficult - I'm not sure how my recent vids could demand less of viewers.) And, you know, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to pull it off.
I have also had to confront the fact that I have been using "I'm soooooo busy" as an excuse not to vid, and that's absurd. I mean, sure, yes, I'm busy. I don't know a vidder who isn't. If vidding matters to me, and it does, I need to try to make time for it. And maybe it won't be a lot of time, but it could be more time than NO time, which is how much time I have spent on it in the last eight months. I mean, I've done some rewatching and audio editing and other sous chef stuff, but - until the last week or so - not very much actually buckling down and putting the goddamn clips on the goddamn timeline. And that has to do with being scared. And, as with so many problems of this nature, the only way out is through.
goals for the coming year
So I'd like to push through that fear and get to the part where I actually make some vids that I'm happy with.
In terms of process, I think I'm in a pretty good place for now; I know what kind of prep work helps me get started vidding, I have a tech setup that's working remarkably well, and I have a truly amazing support system: people who provide encouragement and get enthusiastic about drafts, who help me think through what I'm doing. (You know, I think maybe my vidding buddies are my fandom.)
Thinking about the time issue: I'd like to make time every week to do at least a little bit of vid-related work, preferably not just sous chef stuff but also opening up Premiere and throwing down some clips or fiddling around with what's already on the timeline.
In terms of specific projects... I have a couple of ideas that are going to require me to open up AfterEffects and really learn at least a few things about that program, which I'm rather looking forward to. I'd like to finish my Buffy rewatch and finally (finally finally!) get started on my long-delayed Buffy vid collaboration with laurashapiro. As part of the Wire Vidding Cabal, I am morally obligated to produce a Wire vid this year. I want to finally finish the Firefly vid that I've had on my hard drive for three years now, and maybe start the new Firefly vid idea that followed me home this fall. I would love for any one of these vids to be my VVC Premieres vid, but we'll see how the timing goes; after the last couple of years, I think it might actually be more important to me to release a vid right after finishing it than to hold something in reserve for Premieres, although if I'm productive enough to do both, that would be fantastic.
And I should end by saying that I'm actually feeling hopeful about vidding right now; I have a full draft of one vid that's currently in beta, and though there's a lot of work left to do on it, I think it's entirely possible that I could be posting a new vid before the end of the month (although I make no promises). And I've got another timeline almost half full - and the clips are pretty random at the moment, but I'm starting to see some patterns emerge, and for right now I'm content to just keep sifting through the clips until more stuff falls into place. All of which is to say that, for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling some real momentum in terms of vidding. It's a good feeling. No wonder I've missed it.
general fannishness
I realized recently that for the past couple of years I've been feeling a bit adrift, fannishly speaking. There have been some shows on that I have very much enjoyed watching, and even that I've enjoyed reading other people's reactions to, but there haven't been very many shows I really wanted to discuss, to experience communally. There was a point at which vidding really was my fandom, and to some extent that's still true, in that VividCon is the fannish (and in many ways social) highlight of my year. But in the last couple of years, for various reasons, I haven't actually watched very many vids, and, outside of VividCon, I've watched almost no vids by people I don't already know. For a while I felt pretty guilty about this, but at this point I've pretty much accepted it. I would like to be watching more vids and sending feedback on them and making rec posts, but that is not where my time has been going.
my shows (and movie)
I've watched (and discarded) so many shows in the past couple of years that I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up leaving out something important, but here goes...
Battlestar Galactica lured me back for the first few episodes of S4; then I got bored and annoyed and stopped watching. I doubt I'll ever go back and finish the show. Which means I probably won't ever make the vids I was planning. Which is a bummer, because I still like the ideas, even if I'm too annoyed with the show to vid them myself. I suppose this means that if I can find a VividCon Auction volunteer who's willing to vid BSG, I have songs at the ready, so there's an upside.
I still don't think I'd describe myself as fannish about Castle, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it, particularly Castle's relationships with his mother and daughter. As I said in a different post, I love that Castle has no manpain whatsoever; he's a cheerful, successful guy whose core relationships are happy and healthy; he's a good dad; and although he clearly enjoys teasing Beckett, he is serious when it matters, he respects Beckett and her boundaries, and he's fundamentally a grownup. And everyone involved with the show seems to be having fun, which I appreciate.
I watched a few episodes of Crusoe at the end of 2008 (and made truepenny watch them with me, because that is the sort of friend I am), and oh god, they were dreadful. We did get a drinking game out of the experience, but to play we would have to watch the show again, which, no.
Doctor Who continued to amuse me up to the end of S4 (I love Donna), and of course there have been some absolutely stunning DW vids made over the past few years. I've never been especially fannish about the show, as I said a couple of years ago; I'm happy when it's there, but tend to forget about it when it's not. The end of S4, however, made me furious, and my reactions to this year's specials have ranged from "eh, whatever" to "...I want the last two hours of my life back" (End of Time, I'm looking at you). I'll be tuning in for Eleven, though, just in case Moffat manages to salvage the elements of the show I used to genuinely enjoy.
I hung in there through S1 of Dollhouse, thought the show was on an upward trajectory, watched the first, I don't know, three? episodes of S2, forgot to watch an episode, and realized a few weeks later that 1) I hadn't caught up on the show, and 2) I didn't miss it. I hear it's improved again, but I'm still feeling sufficiently meh about it that I'm going to wait until the end of the season and try to gauge overall reactions before I commit to spending any more time with it.
Friday Night Lights continues to blow my mind. S2 had some serious problems, but I was so hooked on the characters that I kept watching anyway, and then S3 made it all worthwhile - I don't think I've ever seen such an amazing comeback from a wobbly season. And thus far, S4 is living up to S3. I adore the show, period. That said, my reactions to that show are almost entirely emotional rather than intellectual, so I end up not posting about it much, because often I have nothing to say besides ::FLAIL:: (which obviously there's nothing wrong with, and I always love sharing reactions with kassrachel). This show is where a huge amount of my fannish energy is going; I keep having FNL vid ideas, some of which are actually viable, and I am really looking forward to rewatching from the beginning sometime this year.
After the first three eps of Heroes S3 I just couldn't bear to keep going. I would probably be bitter about this, except for how the show itself created within me a deep well of not caring.
jackiekjono got me hooked on Leverage fairly early on; it's one of my happy place shows. I have no particular desire to discuss it (I mean, honestly, what's to discuss?) but it's amusing and enjoyable and I adore Hardison, Parker, and Eliot. I really need to go searching out more Leverage vids; I know there are some good ones out there beyond the ones I saw at VividCon.
I started Life shortly before S2 started; I very much enjoyed S1, but was so bored by S2 that I quit watching. Also mildly disappointed. But mostly bored, which really is the kiss of death for me. I deal better with disappointment, actually; I can work up a lather of righteous indignation about that.
I mainlined all of Middleman in late 2008 and found it to be an absolute joy. (Wendy! Lacey! Noser!) I wish there'd been more of it, but I'm very happy with what we got and where the show left us. I'd still love to vid this show if the right song finds me.
Pushing Daisies sort of fell off my radar at some point; I don't remember whether I even watched any of S2. I probably will at some point - I did like the show - but it never quite clicked for me. Yeah, I don't know what that's about either.
The Star Trek reboot was kind of my stealth fandom; I saw it, I liked it, whatever; mostly it just reminded me that I should probably watch TOS at some point (more on that below). And then, having watched TOS, I kept thinking about the reboot! And then I started vidding the reboot, which of course just made me think about it more. And then the DVD came out, and I foisted it on everybody within grabbing distance who'd sit still long enough, and then truepenny and I talked about it for like six hours or something (...OMG I miss having insta-conversations about media with truepenny, you have no idea); thank goodness mirrorthaw is used to us.
So, yeah, renenet and I watched vast amounts of Star Trek (the original series) when she visited this summer (and then I finished up after she went home). She grew up on TOS reruns and watched TNG and Voyager in college; I'd never seen a single episode of TOS, and only a few random episodes of Voyager when I happened to be in the room while she was watching it. I found TOS more frustrating than anything (look, I didn't really watch TV until the '90s, okay? I'm used to narrative arcs and cameras that aren't bolted to the floor), but it was genuinely interesting to see where so many of our media SF tropes come from. Also, seeing K/S in action really put everything I know about contemporary slash into context.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles came closest to inspiring true fannishness in me - it was substantive enough - but it kind of caught me at a bad time for fannish investment, capslocky flail about the finale notwithstanding; the show actually demanded more of me intellectually than I felt I was always able to give it on a week to week basis. I did adore it, I'm still deeply bitter about its cancellation (a reaction that influenced my attitude towards Dollhouse S2), and I'm looking forward to rewatching at some point when my brain is more fully online.
my vids
Strength In You (Gilmore Girls, 2008)
Sea Fever (Slings & Arrows, 2009)
Story in a Nutshell (Wonderfalls, 2009)
...well, that does explain why I didn't feel any particular urge to do festivids. Heh.
All of these vids were pretty stress-free - a first for me. Strength in You took the longest, mostly because there was so much source to sort through: three full seasons of show, and lots of possible clips in each ep, since I was vidding the show's central relationship. So several months went into rewatching and logging clips, and then I ripped DVDs and clipped over the course of a month or so. And then the end of the semester happened, and I didn't work on the vid for two months. So I made the vid in about two weeks - two surprisingly laid-back weeks. No angst (beyond a few inevitable tech woes), no vid farr, just quietly working my way through the timeline. And wow, that was nice.
What really startled me was how easy it was to make Sea Fever. I did no pre-planning at all; I just ripped the DVDs and dived in. Admittedly, there are only 18 episodes, and there were lots of subplots I could just ignore, but still - I made the vid in a week. And it turned out to be the best thing I've done in ages, and possibly the most personal vid I've ever made: This is how I feel about my work; this is why I do what I do: because otherwise my life would be unbearably diminished.
I made Story in a Nutshell the same way I made Sea Fever, and for the same reasons: really limited source to begin with, and the nature of the vid meant I could fly through the clipping because there just wasn't that much to clip (and of course the song is barely a minute long, which helps). This one took only two weeks start to finish, and that was with the irrational one-week hiatus in the middle where I convinced myself that the first fifteen seconds were going to be difficult (they were not).
new things I tried
Well, the wing-and-a-prayer thing wasn't entirely new, but I hadn't done it in a while; I've been relying heavily on clip databases for years now, and for good reasons. I think that it would be a mistake to conclude that I am somehow magically no longer a slow vidder, but it was nice to find that, under the right circumstances, with the right source, I can just start scrubbing through the source and throwing stuff on the timeline with no notes and no plans and come up with something watchable. So, yeah, most of the new things I tried had to do with process rather than content.
I suppose it could be said that Sea Fever is the logical apotheosis of my experiments with extended metaphor, but I can't honestly say that that was something I tried - that was what the song gave me, so I worked with it. I didn't fully realize until I was nearly done with the vid just how metaphorical it was; I didn't pick the song for the metaphor - the song struck me as right for the show because of the emotion that the metaphor conveys.
stuff I learned
Pretty much all the things I've figured out in the past couple of years - and mostly in the months since VVC '09 - have had very little to do with vidding strategies or even vidding process and much more to do with my own mindset (which is frequently a mess) and hangups (which are many).
One thing that I already knew but that it was really good to be reminded of is that, as much as I want to broaden my vidding skill set in terms of effects and shiny stuff, there is absolutely no reason to be dissatisfied with a plain and simple vid, carefully cut and made with love; that kind of a vid can make people just as happy, and can get just as thoughtful and generous a reception, as a vid with bells and whistles.
And - okay, I'm going to recapitulate some stuff from a conversation I had with sdwolfpup a while back: After making a couple of emotionally intense vids and running right up against deadlines to do it, I needed vids to be easy for a while; that was important to me. I needed to not hyperventilate my way through the Premieres show. So the vids I've made in the past three years were the right kind of vids for me to be making; they were easy, relatively speaking; they were restful.
But one of the things that I've had to face over the last couple of years is my own dissatisfaction with the responses to those vids -- other peoples' responses, but also my own responses. For a while, every new vid I made was my favorite of my own vids, at least temporarily. That hasn't been true for a while, and I miss it. I miss making vids that help me figure something out, or that express an insight with a clarity I can't achieve in words. I also miss vidding in big fandoms that I personally care about; I haven't done much of that in a long while. I miss the charge of doing it, and I miss the level of response when I've done it. As someone who vids to share ideas and enthusiasm, I don't like the feeling that I'm mailing letters into the void; I find it intensely frustrating. I am not one of those vidders who vids for herself and doesn't care what other people think; if I didn't care what other people think, I wouldn't post my vids on the internet. And so, after a certain point, I find it really frustrating to put out several small fandom vids in a row, vids that have a very limited audience simply by virtue of the source. Vidding in big fandoms has its dangers too, of course; I know perfectly well that I will want to sink into the earth if the next few vids I have on tap, which are in pretty big fandoms, don't go over reasonably well. But, you know, I can turn any vidding choice into something fraught with stress and emotional danger, so whatever. These days, I'm feeling like it would be okay to get stressed out over a vid I really care about.
One of the things I have had to confront is that making easy restful stress-free vids has been a way of aggressively not dealing with my fear of trying something complex. My current vid ideas are a lot more demanding than the vids I've made in the last couple of years; they demand more of me in terms of thoughtfulness and technical know-how, and they will probably demand more of viewers. (Though that's hardly difficult - I'm not sure how my recent vids could demand less of viewers.) And, you know, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to pull it off.
I have also had to confront the fact that I have been using "I'm soooooo busy" as an excuse not to vid, and that's absurd. I mean, sure, yes, I'm busy. I don't know a vidder who isn't. If vidding matters to me, and it does, I need to try to make time for it. And maybe it won't be a lot of time, but it could be more time than NO time, which is how much time I have spent on it in the last eight months. I mean, I've done some rewatching and audio editing and other sous chef stuff, but - until the last week or so - not very much actually buckling down and putting the goddamn clips on the goddamn timeline. And that has to do with being scared. And, as with so many problems of this nature, the only way out is through.
goals for the coming year
So I'd like to push through that fear and get to the part where I actually make some vids that I'm happy with.
In terms of process, I think I'm in a pretty good place for now; I know what kind of prep work helps me get started vidding, I have a tech setup that's working remarkably well, and I have a truly amazing support system: people who provide encouragement and get enthusiastic about drafts, who help me think through what I'm doing. (You know, I think maybe my vidding buddies are my fandom.)
Thinking about the time issue: I'd like to make time every week to do at least a little bit of vid-related work, preferably not just sous chef stuff but also opening up Premiere and throwing down some clips or fiddling around with what's already on the timeline.
In terms of specific projects... I have a couple of ideas that are going to require me to open up AfterEffects and really learn at least a few things about that program, which I'm rather looking forward to. I'd like to finish my Buffy rewatch and finally (finally finally!) get started on my long-delayed Buffy vid collaboration with laurashapiro. As part of the Wire Vidding Cabal, I am morally obligated to produce a Wire vid this year. I want to finally finish the Firefly vid that I've had on my hard drive for three years now, and maybe start the new Firefly vid idea that followed me home this fall. I would love for any one of these vids to be my VVC Premieres vid, but we'll see how the timing goes; after the last couple of years, I think it might actually be more important to me to release a vid right after finishing it than to hold something in reserve for Premieres, although if I'm productive enough to do both, that would be fantastic.
And I should end by saying that I'm actually feeling hopeful about vidding right now; I have a full draft of one vid that's currently in beta, and though there's a lot of work left to do on it, I think it's entirely possible that I could be posting a new vid before the end of the month (although I make no promises). And I've got another timeline almost half full - and the clips are pretty random at the moment, but I'm starting to see some patterns emerge, and for right now I'm content to just keep sifting through the clips until more stuff falls into place. All of which is to say that, for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling some real momentum in terms of vidding. It's a good feeling. No wonder I've missed it.