thoughts on visual fanwork in two very different fandoms
I figure with everyone away at Vividcon I can post about my shameful little secret, which is: I don't really like (most) vids. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because SGA has a lot of vidders and a lot of vids, and also because it has led me into some tangential thoughts about fanart and other visual derivatives.
My first fandom (and by fandom I mean, in which I became aware of the existence of fanfic and erotic fanfic and slash, and read and wrote it) was Harry Potter, which at least when I became active was not a very "viddish" fandom. Part of it, I think, is the privileging of the original source (books) over the movies, part of it is that there were only two movies = 3 hours of source video, which didn't even show some of the characters from later books that are popular in slash, and part of it is that vidders can't age up the kids in a vid as writers do in stories. And then when the third movie came out, its depiction of Sirius and Remus was quite different from most people's mental pictures.
And in fact I think that this is true of most characters, even Snape, whose depiction by Alan Rickman wooed the fangirls no end (including me) but who I think is in most people's heads not Rickman, although based on him, because Snape is skinnier and younger and beakier. Harry is similarly usually based on Radcliffe but not him, because we've been slashing 17-year-old Harry for years before Radcliffe caught up to legality. And so on. I think the only characters that are heavily identified physically with their actors in the collective gestalt are probably Lucius Malfoy and Minerva McGonagall - I draw this conclusion from fanart, mostly, and I realize that YMMV wildly. (For example, I know many of those who were in the fandom pre-movies see Lucius with short hair, and I would not be surprised if those who joined the fandom after the PoA movie do see Remus as David Thewlis.)
Now that I'm in a fandom which is visual-medium based, and it's totally different. Rodney McKay really is David Hewlett (physically), even though there is a clear difference in the way Hewlett 'acts' McKay and how he is himself or in other roles. There actually seems less separation between John Sheppard and Joe Flanigan, to me, based on seeing him in interview, partly because Sheppard has fewer overt signature characteristics (I'm sure there's a term for this but I don't know it - what I mean is that McKay has a certain obvious body language and speech pattern which is not Hewlett's own, but Flanigan "out of character" still could be Sheppard, much of the time).
The thing is, I like fanart, although not as much as fanfic. In HP, fanart is usually not photorealistic, and although often the characters are based on the actors, they are clearly not the actors. So I see, say, undunoops's fantastic Snape/Lupin drawings, and see Snape and Lupin, not Rickman and Thewlis. But when I look at a manip of McKay and Sheppard, I first think, "ooh, hot, McKay and Sheppard," and then I think, "ooh, weird, Hewlett and Flanigan, hmm." It just skates too close to RPF for my comfort, which is not to say that I disapprove of RPF, but that it doesn't interest me - that the reason I want McKay and Sheppard to have sex with me each other is because I am interested in them as characters, I'm interested in McKay and Sheppard, not in Hewlett and Flanigan. I haven't seen much non-photorealistic fanart in SGA (except for the adorable sketch brevisse sent me, which I'm going to try to scan and put up, because it's cute!) but the thing is, Hewlett is McKay - you can't draw "your McKay" and have him look nothing like Hewlett, because that guy there is who he is. I mean, I still love looking at pictures of Flanigan/Sheppard, because he is TEH SEXXORS, but the explicit stuff makes me feel a little twitchy.
Ok, back to vids. There have been some HP vids, but the only one that I really liked is that "I'm Too Sexy" one (I wish I knew who did it) which focuses on Snape, Lockhart, and Lucius all flouncing around. Not really a shippy vid, but a cute and funny one. But mostly - well, there was a Harry/Draco one that I watched and thought, 11-year-old boys, ugh. There was that "Hot For Teacher" one that I watched and thought, 11-year old boys and 11-year old girls, perving on 50-something Rickman, ugh. So I thought my dislike for vids was based on the movie characters just not matching up with the characters in my head.
SGA has a very active vid community, and when cathexys sent me S1 on DVD she also included a selection of vids, many of which I watched. And I was surprised that I didn't really like most of them, even though the characters in the vids are necessarily the characters in my head. But there are a few that I liked, and when I set them out and thought about them, and thought about "I'm Too Sexy," I think I figured out why.
I'm not much of a music person. You might notice I almost never have "current music" set; that's because I can't listen to music while working or writing, it just distracts me too much, and I don't actually own many CDs. I listen mostly to NPR radio, which here plays folk-rocky AAA stuff like Dave Matthews and Lyle Lovett. I don't even know most of the songs these vids use. I think that's part of it.
But also, the vids that I like tell stories. I think that's because I like stories that tell stories; that is, I like plot, I like sequence, I like things happening, rather than moment-in-time vignettes. The thing is, most songs are more about capturing an emotion, an idea, than telling a story (and songs which literally tell stories are so self-contained that illustrating them with images is plodding and pointless), so using a song to tell a story with images (rather than illustrating the sense of the song with images) is pretty difficult, I think. A lot of the time I will watch a vid and think, oh, there is the scene from Hide and Seek where John throws Rodney off the balcony, rather than thinking, this scene is showing John and Rodney's relationship. (Obviously shippy vids have to work harder, because there are very few scenes of on-camera smooches, and hee, I can't say none, can I?)
To Have and Not To Hold by Danvers (sdraevn: her website) is more of an emotion song than a story song but still the vid is an absolute gem, a succession of angsty shots of McKay looking at Sheppard, and the story of unrequited love that he can't even talk about just comes through like whoa. Others I like are Mamoru's (mamoru22: her website) Space Taxi, which goes for the obvious joke and is intercut with scenes from a sort of Star Trek meets Teletubbies parody, and Cartoon Heros, which breaks the fourth wall deliberately and is almost a meta-vid, in my opinion.
There was a post linked on metafandom not too long ago asking writers if they saw movies in their heads when they wrote. Me, I don't. I hear voices, but I don't see movies. And I don't see movies when I read, either; I hear the voices, but I don't get the visuals, or rather, I get the visuals but only in a very vague and nonspecific sense. So I don't really "see" Joe Flanigan as John Sheppard when I read (although I hear his voice!) and maybe that's why I am more comfortable with fanfiction than I am with fanart, in this fandom where the characters are inextricably linked to the actors who play them.
My first fandom (and by fandom I mean, in which I became aware of the existence of fanfic and erotic fanfic and slash, and read and wrote it) was Harry Potter, which at least when I became active was not a very "viddish" fandom. Part of it, I think, is the privileging of the original source (books) over the movies, part of it is that there were only two movies = 3 hours of source video, which didn't even show some of the characters from later books that are popular in slash, and part of it is that vidders can't age up the kids in a vid as writers do in stories. And then when the third movie came out, its depiction of Sirius and Remus was quite different from most people's mental pictures.
And in fact I think that this is true of most characters, even Snape, whose depiction by Alan Rickman wooed the fangirls no end (including me) but who I think is in most people's heads not Rickman, although based on him, because Snape is skinnier and younger and beakier. Harry is similarly usually based on Radcliffe but not him, because we've been slashing 17-year-old Harry for years before Radcliffe caught up to legality. And so on. I think the only characters that are heavily identified physically with their actors in the collective gestalt are probably Lucius Malfoy and Minerva McGonagall - I draw this conclusion from fanart, mostly, and I realize that YMMV wildly. (For example, I know many of those who were in the fandom pre-movies see Lucius with short hair, and I would not be surprised if those who joined the fandom after the PoA movie do see Remus as David Thewlis.)
Now that I'm in a fandom which is visual-medium based, and it's totally different. Rodney McKay really is David Hewlett (physically), even though there is a clear difference in the way Hewlett 'acts' McKay and how he is himself or in other roles. There actually seems less separation between John Sheppard and Joe Flanigan, to me, based on seeing him in interview, partly because Sheppard has fewer overt signature characteristics (I'm sure there's a term for this but I don't know it - what I mean is that McKay has a certain obvious body language and speech pattern which is not Hewlett's own, but Flanigan "out of character" still could be Sheppard, much of the time).
The thing is, I like fanart, although not as much as fanfic. In HP, fanart is usually not photorealistic, and although often the characters are based on the actors, they are clearly not the actors. So I see, say, undunoops's fantastic Snape/Lupin drawings, and see Snape and Lupin, not Rickman and Thewlis. But when I look at a manip of McKay and Sheppard, I first think, "ooh, hot, McKay and Sheppard," and then I think, "ooh, weird, Hewlett and Flanigan, hmm." It just skates too close to RPF for my comfort, which is not to say that I disapprove of RPF, but that it doesn't interest me - that the reason I want McKay and Sheppard to have sex with me each other is because I am interested in them as characters, I'm interested in McKay and Sheppard, not in Hewlett and Flanigan. I haven't seen much non-photorealistic fanart in SGA (except for the adorable sketch brevisse sent me, which I'm going to try to scan and put up, because it's cute!) but the thing is, Hewlett is McKay - you can't draw "your McKay" and have him look nothing like Hewlett, because that guy there is who he is. I mean, I still love looking at pictures of Flanigan/Sheppard, because he is TEH SEXXORS, but the explicit stuff makes me feel a little twitchy.
Ok, back to vids. There have been some HP vids, but the only one that I really liked is that "I'm Too Sexy" one (I wish I knew who did it) which focuses on Snape, Lockhart, and Lucius all flouncing around. Not really a shippy vid, but a cute and funny one. But mostly - well, there was a Harry/Draco one that I watched and thought, 11-year-old boys, ugh. There was that "Hot For Teacher" one that I watched and thought, 11-year old boys and 11-year old girls, perving on 50-something Rickman, ugh. So I thought my dislike for vids was based on the movie characters just not matching up with the characters in my head.
SGA has a very active vid community, and when cathexys sent me S1 on DVD she also included a selection of vids, many of which I watched. And I was surprised that I didn't really like most of them, even though the characters in the vids are necessarily the characters in my head. But there are a few that I liked, and when I set them out and thought about them, and thought about "I'm Too Sexy," I think I figured out why.
I'm not much of a music person. You might notice I almost never have "current music" set; that's because I can't listen to music while working or writing, it just distracts me too much, and I don't actually own many CDs. I listen mostly to NPR radio, which here plays folk-rocky AAA stuff like Dave Matthews and Lyle Lovett. I don't even know most of the songs these vids use. I think that's part of it.
But also, the vids that I like tell stories. I think that's because I like stories that tell stories; that is, I like plot, I like sequence, I like things happening, rather than moment-in-time vignettes. The thing is, most songs are more about capturing an emotion, an idea, than telling a story (and songs which literally tell stories are so self-contained that illustrating them with images is plodding and pointless), so using a song to tell a story with images (rather than illustrating the sense of the song with images) is pretty difficult, I think. A lot of the time I will watch a vid and think, oh, there is the scene from Hide and Seek where John throws Rodney off the balcony, rather than thinking, this scene is showing John and Rodney's relationship. (Obviously shippy vids have to work harder, because there are very few scenes of on-camera smooches, and hee, I can't say none, can I?)
To Have and Not To Hold by Danvers (sdraevn: her website) is more of an emotion song than a story song but still the vid is an absolute gem, a succession of angsty shots of McKay looking at Sheppard, and the story of unrequited love that he can't even talk about just comes through like whoa. Others I like are Mamoru's (mamoru22: her website) Space Taxi, which goes for the obvious joke and is intercut with scenes from a sort of Star Trek meets Teletubbies parody, and Cartoon Heros, which breaks the fourth wall deliberately and is almost a meta-vid, in my opinion.
There was a post linked on metafandom not too long ago asking writers if they saw movies in their heads when they wrote. Me, I don't. I hear voices, but I don't see movies. And I don't see movies when I read, either; I hear the voices, but I don't get the visuals, or rather, I get the visuals but only in a very vague and nonspecific sense. So I don't really "see" Joe Flanigan as John Sheppard when I read (although I hear his voice!) and maybe that's why I am more comfortable with fanfiction than I am with fanart, in this fandom where the characters are inextricably linked to the actors who play them.