vid meta: thoughts on accepting one's own style

[jarrow]

As I'm putting the finishing touches on my tenth vid (yay! double digits!) I've been thinking a lot about the development of a vidder's particular style and everything that comes with that. This is mostly a jumble of random tangents in my head that will most likely not resemble anything coherent on paper, but I'd like to jot it down all the same. I

Comments

[buffyann]

I think you're pointing at something we all are experiencing and wondering about. I'm a pretty new vidder too and I can say I share the same fears, questions etc as you do

[laurashapiro]

I'm interested in this post, because when I was a sophomore vidder I went through a whole style thing, too. In my case, I was worried that I didn't have a style of my own at all -- not that I was emulating others, but that there wasn't anything distinctively Laura about my vids. Apart from how they were character studies, mostly of women. To a cappella songs. Never mind. (:

What I wanted to know was whether I had an *editing* style, and frankly I'm still not sure whether I do or not. At the time, I definitely identified my creative style as a vidder, but it keeps changing as I try new stuff. In every case, though, while I may borrow an effect from another vidder, I feel like my ideas remain very much my own. And I have become a vidder of ideas, more than movement or fannish squee or emo or whatever.

Until this year, when I decided to be a vidder of fluff. (:

All of which navel-gazing to say: I recommend you don't worry about it, because as soon as you think you know what defines you, it'll change.

[absolutedestiny]

Having a style is overrated. If people don't like it they prejudge your work and if they do like it then you have to live up to it :P

[laurashapiro]

An excellent point!

[kiki_miserychic]

I think everything can influence a vidder. The music they grew up listening to, the movie they enjoy, the artists they admire, the people they associate with, the drinks they consume, the clothes they wear, everything. Every vidder is different from the way they look at a clip to how they decide to use motion. As my internal hippie new age guidance counselor would say, "everyone is a unique and beautiful flower

[mranderson71]

I think its important to stay true to your own editing caveats & habits when making a vid. If you start thinking that you should try something different just because you should, then thats probably only going to lead to some heartaches. It'll probably stop being fun (which it is supposed to be, dammit!) & start feeling like a chore to edit. Simply put, don't force it for the sake of forcing it & don't abandon what works for you. But if you want to try something different because you genuinely want to expand your skill base, then that is actually a good thing. At the end of the day no-one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to make vids, its a hobby so just enjoy it

[anoel]

I've been thinking about this as well as I think about my upcoming vid projects and how I want to learn and grow as a vidder. I don't think that incorporating things from other people's styles is necessarily bad or different from your own style. I think the important thing is that you have to love what the other vidder is doing and want to use it in your own vid because you want to love your vid as much as you love their vids. You don't want to vid a certain way because everyone else loves that way or because it's supposed to be an improvement but because it makes you happy and makes you love what vids can do and it works with your vid idea/song