Drowning in songvids
Aug. 18th, 2003 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI got back from Vividcon, the vidder's con, last night, and strangely, after three full days of vids, vids, and more vids, I want to a) watch more vids and b) make more vids. I left feeling inspired and eager to churn out more, even if there's really no audience for them, just because I was so inspired by everyone's work and enthusiasm. It was especially strange because I didn't actually think I'd have any fun at the con -- I'd left earlier than most because of flight planning and expense, so I missed some potentially fun programming, but I also thought it would be good to get out early. I'd expected to be alone most of the time because my main circle of friends wasn't there, but that only happened a couple of times. I've never really understood fans who don't go to some kind of con -- the idea of being around other fans in a closed environment, having lots of possibilities for discussions and forums and whatnot, seems to be the core of what fandom is about, so the idea that so many of the online vidders do this in isolation and don't consider going to a vidding con seems odd to me. Vidding is such a huge part of my fannish experience, too -- and having a con dedicated to vidding, while at first seeming kind of odd to me, has turned out to enhance my participation in fandom. I had communication from people who'd seen some of my vids in the shows last year, and this year, being there, I met a lot of folks I might otherwise never have had contact with, especially the few online folks who came.
I ended up not going to many panels, but the two I went to were really well done, and I especially enjoyed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melina123's look at what the professionals do. That stuff so interests me anyway, but she made some excellent choices of what to show to illustrate the kinds of things we as vidders can think about doing ourselves. There are no real resources for me to watch online vids, as I can't at work where we have a T1, nor at home because I have a dialup of crap, so my online viewing has been fairly limited. Most of what I'd seen in the past filled me with despair -- no story, no editing technique, no style, no substance. Dumbass crap vids where people let clips run forever, abuse special effects, choose the most hackneyed of songs. It's one reason I don't even try to make the effort to watch Buffy vids, because the ones I've often seen online were the worst offenders -- throwing clips at lines, no editing, stupid choices that follow the "if the line says my heart's on fire, by god, I better see flames" school of vidding thought. Gah. The best part of this con is seeing examples of online vids that transcend all the crap, where story and substance and style and technique all work together. I left feeling more hopeful than hopeless about the future of vidding, and that's a good thing. It's a bit isolating that I can't participate in the online channel yet, but at least this is a resource where I can still see some of what's being done, the really standout stuff.
The premier vid show rocked -- it's hard for me to recount all the excellent vids I saw. For the first time, this was a show where I was not bored, or wanted to gouge my eyes out with my badge holder, or stick chopsticks in my ears to make the noise go away. There were a few clunkers that disappointed me, but none where I would normally beg someone sitting next to me to kill me now. A Space: Above and Beyond vid was probably the one that left me the most disappointed, it was unfocused and confusing and not especially well edited, and used a song that felt really inapprorpriate to the subject material (one of the most common problems for what I think of as bad vids). Country for space or horror don't often mix, and I think only a really talented vidder who's thought carefully about the juxtaposition can make that kind of thing work. Another clunker for me was a Buffy vid to Fragile. Aside from the fact that for me,klia owns that song for her X-Files vid, it was really random and poorly executed. The overarching theme was great -- where the focus is never on the horror and wierdness of the Scooby lives, but on how fragile they are as people, but the vidder chose some bad clips and didn't seem to understand how to present the theme and tell the story. At times I thought, oh, she's trying to make me believe in Buffy and Xander as a couple, then not, then again, then someone else is the couple focus, then... it was a mishmash.
The highlights, though, were almost too numerous to mention. (I know I will go crazy trying to do the LJ user tags, so I'm not even gonna try at this point). Shalott's incredible Hannibal Lecter vid to Alannis Morisette's Uninvited was a standout, creepy and strange and jarring and insidious. And fucking gorgeous. Melina's excellent Robin of Sherwood vid was haunting and lovely. And Margie and Seah's Odyssey 5 vid to Poe's Haunted was totally haunting ("what the hell happened to the earth?!") and made me wish more than ever I'd bullied my friends to tape it for me when it was on pay television, which I don't have, every time they forgot to. I had really wanted to see the show, and I felt they gave me a gorgeous glimpse into it that will stay with me for a long time. My personal standout was Barkley's Stargate vid to a song from the Black Hawk Down soundtrack. I listen to that thing at least twice a week, sometimes more, and this vid, which focused on Teal'c, put visuals to the music in a way that made me feel like those were the images I get when I listen to it. On Friday,killabeez and I had run a panel on aesthetics, and we'd talked about synesthesia, a condition I have (where a person's sensory inputs are wired in a way that they get a different sensory experience than normal; say, people can taste sounds, or they see letters and numerals in a particular color, or in my case, I see images and colors for certain types of sounds in music, which can make for a very surreal experience). It was a lovely vid for me, and it was cool seeing images that map to how the music makes me feel and what I get from it as a sensory experience. I know little of the show, but I felt like I understood the vid. The show ended with Laura's Beatitudes, a lovely, lovely piece that gave closure to Buffy and honored it in a beautiful way. It's the kind of vid you want to show to people who don't get vids and say, see? This is what you can do. There were just so many other great vids, from Killa's Carmen Sandiego vid to Sandy and rache's charming Shanghai Knights/Noon vid and their shamefully hilarious Men, for Hornblower... and all of them so different, so varied, so interesting. I may have been frustrated once or twice, but I was never bored.
This was for me the epitome of something I've been telling Jessica, one of the con organizers, for some time, that I just believe vids is vids. I don't give a shit about fandoms (though like anyone else, I do enjoy seeing vids for my fandoms more than others, but it's not the driving force for me), I don't give a shit about genres, I just like vids and I don't get the folks who only will watch something in their own fandom. The people who came to Vividcon seem to also believe that vids is vids, and that was just so very cool. The only other con I go to, a slash con called Escapade, has gotten nastier and crappier about the vid show every year, where inevitably your vids get insulted and bitched about, and you get insulted, for bringing non-slash vids or not being in the "right" fandoms, and Vividcon was a great experience for me where I didn't have to feel defensive and just downright bad for doing what I do.
On Friday night, we had Club Vivid, where they played dance vids and rented a dance floor, showing the vids while we danced to them. I wish I hadn't been so sick, it would have been much fun to get drunk and dance and watch vids. And now I will never get the fucking Joxer's brother's rendition of Dancing in the Moonlight out of my head, thank you Melina, you bitch. I was horribly sick on Friday, and really fucked up our panel. Fortunately Killa stepped in and smoothed it right when I panicked -- I couldn't remember when she wanted to show her video footage and so was trying to move the panel too fast. I was shaking and shivering and not really on my game at all, and I'm pretty sure I turned what last year was the cool panel into the bad panel this year by my screwups. There's nothing worse than being sick at a con, I'll tell you what.
I took a break with D from our planned smackdown event over Ted on Queer Eye (mine! He's mine!) to watch them on Leno Friday night, and both of us were just shocked and angry at how Leno treated them. I don't know if NBC thought his antagonism to their makeover would be funny, or if it came naturally for Leno, or what, but I will never like that man again after that. I couldn't believe what a fucking asshat he was to them, and his constant complaining, nor his interruptions of Ted, nor how he made people vote whether to keep Thom's fabulous new set and green room. ASS. HAT. I was still seething on Sat. morning, so am glad that the vid shows put me back in a properly cheerful state.
It was hard to leave on Sunday after the review panel. I'm ambivalent over review panels. Having been ignored in them for years and years, it's nice to have had vids I've worked on discussed recently. But I also know what it's like to want to hear discussion of your vid and knowing you won't get it, and it's also often a place where some people get to go on way too long talking about their opinions, so I tend to get antsy and fidgety in them. And then the hotel screwed me over by having the airport shuttle leave without me, the rat bastards, but the lovely and wonderful Debchan rode, literally, to my rescue and drove me to the airport, even though neither of us knew how to get there. She saved my day from travelling hell.
Now I want to put in all the dvds and tapes (how cool is it that Kandy, one of the people who created fannish songvids back in the day, was there this year, and that she'd put together a tape of all these classic old, long-unavailable vids for trade? I can't wait to watch mine) and just watch vids till my eyes bleed. And go make even more.
I ended up not going to many panels, but the two I went to were really well done, and I especially enjoyed
melina123's look at what the professionals do. That stuff so interests me anyway, but she made some excellent choices of what to show to illustrate the kinds of things we as vidders can think about doing ourselves. There are no real resources for me to watch online vids, as I can't at work where we have a T1, nor at home because I have a dialup of crap, so my online viewing has been fairly limited. Most of what I'd seen in the past filled me with despair -- no story, no editing technique, no style, no substance. Dumbass crap vids where people let clips run forever, abuse special effects, choose the most hackneyed of songs. It's one reason I don't even try to make the effort to watch Buffy vids, because the ones I've often seen online were the worst offenders -- throwing clips at lines, no editing, stupid choices that follow the "if the line says my heart's on fire, by god, I better see flames" school of vidding thought. Gah. The best part of this con is seeing examples of online vids that transcend all the crap, where story and substance and style and technique all work together. I left feeling more hopeful than hopeless about the future of vidding, and that's a good thing. It's a bit isolating that I can't participate in the online channel yet, but at least this is a resource where I can still see some of what's being done, the really standout stuff.The premier vid show rocked -- it's hard for me to recount all the excellent vids I saw. For the first time, this was a show where I was not bored, or wanted to gouge my eyes out with my badge holder, or stick chopsticks in my ears to make the noise go away. There were a few clunkers that disappointed me, but none where I would normally beg someone sitting next to me to kill me now. A Space: Above and Beyond vid was probably the one that left me the most disappointed, it was unfocused and confusing and not especially well edited, and used a song that felt really inapprorpriate to the subject material (one of the most common problems for what I think of as bad vids). Country for space or horror don't often mix, and I think only a really talented vidder who's thought carefully about the juxtaposition can make that kind of thing work. Another clunker for me was a Buffy vid to Fragile. Aside from the fact that for me,
klia owns that song for her X-Files vid, it was really random and poorly executed. The overarching theme was great -- where the focus is never on the horror and wierdness of the Scooby lives, but on how fragile they are as people, but the vidder chose some bad clips and didn't seem to understand how to present the theme and tell the story. At times I thought, oh, she's trying to make me believe in Buffy and Xander as a couple, then not, then again, then someone else is the couple focus, then... it was a mishmash.The highlights, though, were almost too numerous to mention. (I know I will go crazy trying to do the LJ user tags, so I'm not even gonna try at this point). Shalott's incredible Hannibal Lecter vid to Alannis Morisette's Uninvited was a standout, creepy and strange and jarring and insidious. And fucking gorgeous. Melina's excellent Robin of Sherwood vid was haunting and lovely. And Margie and Seah's Odyssey 5 vid to Poe's Haunted was totally haunting ("what the hell happened to the earth?!") and made me wish more than ever I'd bullied my friends to tape it for me when it was on pay television, which I don't have, every time they forgot to. I had really wanted to see the show, and I felt they gave me a gorgeous glimpse into it that will stay with me for a long time. My personal standout was Barkley's Stargate vid to a song from the Black Hawk Down soundtrack. I listen to that thing at least twice a week, sometimes more, and this vid, which focused on Teal'c, put visuals to the music in a way that made me feel like those were the images I get when I listen to it. On Friday,
killabeez and I had run a panel on aesthetics, and we'd talked about synesthesia, a condition I have (where a person's sensory inputs are wired in a way that they get a different sensory experience than normal; say, people can taste sounds, or they see letters and numerals in a particular color, or in my case, I see images and colors for certain types of sounds in music, which can make for a very surreal experience). It was a lovely vid for me, and it was cool seeing images that map to how the music makes me feel and what I get from it as a sensory experience. I know little of the show, but I felt like I understood the vid. The show ended with Laura's Beatitudes, a lovely, lovely piece that gave closure to Buffy and honored it in a beautiful way. It's the kind of vid you want to show to people who don't get vids and say, see? This is what you can do. There were just so many other great vids, from Killa's Carmen Sandiego vid to Sandy and rache's charming Shanghai Knights/Noon vid and their shamefully hilarious Men, for Hornblower... and all of them so different, so varied, so interesting. I may have been frustrated once or twice, but I was never bored. This was for me the epitome of something I've been telling Jessica, one of the con organizers, for some time, that I just believe vids is vids. I don't give a shit about fandoms (though like anyone else, I do enjoy seeing vids for my fandoms more than others, but it's not the driving force for me), I don't give a shit about genres, I just like vids and I don't get the folks who only will watch something in their own fandom. The people who came to Vividcon seem to also believe that vids is vids, and that was just so very cool. The only other con I go to, a slash con called Escapade, has gotten nastier and crappier about the vid show every year, where inevitably your vids get insulted and bitched about, and you get insulted, for bringing non-slash vids or not being in the "right" fandoms, and Vividcon was a great experience for me where I didn't have to feel defensive and just downright bad for doing what I do.
On Friday night, we had Club Vivid, where they played dance vids and rented a dance floor, showing the vids while we danced to them. I wish I hadn't been so sick, it would have been much fun to get drunk and dance and watch vids. And now I will never get the fucking Joxer's brother's rendition of Dancing in the Moonlight out of my head, thank you Melina, you bitch. I was horribly sick on Friday, and really fucked up our panel. Fortunately Killa stepped in and smoothed it right when I panicked -- I couldn't remember when she wanted to show her video footage and so was trying to move the panel too fast. I was shaking and shivering and not really on my game at all, and I'm pretty sure I turned what last year was the cool panel into the bad panel this year by my screwups. There's nothing worse than being sick at a con, I'll tell you what.
I took a break with D from our planned smackdown event over Ted on Queer Eye (mine! He's mine!) to watch them on Leno Friday night, and both of us were just shocked and angry at how Leno treated them. I don't know if NBC thought his antagonism to their makeover would be funny, or if it came naturally for Leno, or what, but I will never like that man again after that. I couldn't believe what a fucking asshat he was to them, and his constant complaining, nor his interruptions of Ted, nor how he made people vote whether to keep Thom's fabulous new set and green room. ASS. HAT. I was still seething on Sat. morning, so am glad that the vid shows put me back in a properly cheerful state.
It was hard to leave on Sunday after the review panel. I'm ambivalent over review panels. Having been ignored in them for years and years, it's nice to have had vids I've worked on discussed recently. But I also know what it's like to want to hear discussion of your vid and knowing you won't get it, and it's also often a place where some people get to go on way too long talking about their opinions, so I tend to get antsy and fidgety in them. And then the hotel screwed me over by having the airport shuttle leave without me, the rat bastards, but the lovely and wonderful Debchan rode, literally, to my rescue and drove me to the airport, even though neither of us knew how to get there. She saved my day from travelling hell.
Now I want to put in all the dvds and tapes (how cool is it that Kandy, one of the people who created fannish songvids back in the day, was there this year, and that she'd put together a tape of all these classic old, long-unavailable vids for trade? I can't wait to watch mine) and just watch vids till my eyes bleed. And go make even more.
