Vidding sucks, man
Jul. 10th, 2004 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI wish sometimes I did not have the vidding gene. I don't have a gaming gene, so I've never understood the appeal of anything from Myst to whatever that Windows computer game my friends love that comes with solitaire. I cannot for the life of me understand how to gamble -- which is probably a good thing, since I don't understand the appeal of it anyway. Hell, I've never even bought a lottery ticket. But instead I seem to have gotten extra gene markers for the dreaded diseases of writing and vidding. When I work on vids, I get consumed by them and want to work on them constantly, at least on the computer now. Before, on the vcrs, I would get consumed too, but mostly because you had to go through complex hoops to set it up so it was best to keep going while you could, but at times it was relatively easy to put it away and just not work on it for a while.
I have like 100 different ideas floating around in my head for vids I've thought about for years, and now I keep getting distracted by newer thoughts. A while ago I was talking to my dear friend Keiko Kirin about this peculiar idea I had of doing a requiem for the Jossverse, since Angel had just ended, and we both were caught up in the excitement of the idea. But I couldn't find any right music -- all the gorgeous requiems in my classical collection always have lots of pie jesus and domines and stuff like that in them. But I was listening to Sigur Ros the other day, and I just fell in love with Olsen Olsen as a perfect song for this idea -- it's certainly a bit brighter and... well, not perky, exactly, but livelier than your traditional requiem, but then I think maybe this is just too weird, the whole thing. Only I think about it all the damn time. It would be hard work -- the song has to be edited because it's eight freakin' minutes long, and it'll be a huge-ass file even edited, and then there's the effort of meshing three visually different shows well. Not that you can't do this -- my old vid There's No Way Out of Here used X-Files, Buffy, and Nikita, shows with fairly different sensibilities, and they looked fine. But Angel is different visually from Buffy, plus there's the letterboxing, and Firefly is radically different from both. I think I'm probably crazy for wanting to do this, but I can't stop visualizing it in my head, nor listening to the song. I should probably do a poll -- Am I insane? Is this a stupid idea? Should I be put down? Vote here!
And then there's the digitizing of vids. A while ago I got one of those jabbing little mails I hate so much, where the person is whining about why can't you make these older tape vids available to me in the format Iiiii waaaantttt. Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be flattering, but I hate that it's never accompanied by anything except whining, and always has to have a jab at how, gee, there might be six LFN vids on that one tape, but I only want one, and I'm not going to go to the trouble to get it on your sucky little tape, please do it now at my convenience because I'm flattering you by requesting it. To which I always want to say, blow me. But don't, because, you know, kinder gentler Gwyneth. I don't think there's much of an audience for LFN vids anyways -- it's such a peculiar fandom in that it's one of those feral fandoms that sprung up only online, and the people who were in it participated nowhere else, and didn't even know they were in fandom! Vids have not been much a part of their fannish world, which I found out the hard way when I tried to communicate with them about what I had available. But I keep thinking maybe it would be worth digitizing (not digitally remastering, just making digital copies of the old vids) all of the LFN ones and slapping them on a dvd -- though I'm not sure, considering how many people left the fandom and online communities once the show was over. There are so few LFN vidders it's not funny, and most of those folks, because they have no idea there are things like fannish songvids, make strange little "movies" that have none of the usual conventions of fannish songvids. So this might be a lot of effort for absolutely no reward (not that there's any reward for vidding anyway, but still). And it'd have to be disc, because I can't afford to put up many vids on my site. I'm stalled out on all the LFN vids I want to make, because of how Warner is treating the dvd releases -- at first they weren't going to release any on disc, then they let us have season 1, and then there wasn't going to be a S2 or any more ever, then they decided to give us 2, but more than a year after S1 was released... I made Atom Bomb from all videotapes just because I didn't want that glaring mismatch between the S1 dvds and the rest of the series on tape.
And I keep getting stuck back in the Jossverse, when I have so many other vids to make. Another Miracles vid, a Miami Vice vid, Keen Eddie (though I have three songs and can't decide which one to use), LFN, X-Files, Brimstone, Professionals... you name it, I probably have a freakin' idea for it. Still I find myself going back to the j-verse. There's the Firefly ideas, and the Xander humor vid, and the Giles and Buffy vid, and and and... I almost wish somone would come and take away these components so I couldn't do it. Writing never consumes me this much; maybe it's the visual nature and the music or something, maybe the fact that what I really want to do is direct. I don't know. But it's like a disease in every way -- it takes over my life, and makes me sick and enervated and angry and excited and weird. Feckin' vids, man. I hate 'em.
How many days till Vividcon?
I have like 100 different ideas floating around in my head for vids I've thought about for years, and now I keep getting distracted by newer thoughts. A while ago I was talking to my dear friend Keiko Kirin about this peculiar idea I had of doing a requiem for the Jossverse, since Angel had just ended, and we both were caught up in the excitement of the idea. But I couldn't find any right music -- all the gorgeous requiems in my classical collection always have lots of pie jesus and domines and stuff like that in them. But I was listening to Sigur Ros the other day, and I just fell in love with Olsen Olsen as a perfect song for this idea -- it's certainly a bit brighter and... well, not perky, exactly, but livelier than your traditional requiem, but then I think maybe this is just too weird, the whole thing. Only I think about it all the damn time. It would be hard work -- the song has to be edited because it's eight freakin' minutes long, and it'll be a huge-ass file even edited, and then there's the effort of meshing three visually different shows well. Not that you can't do this -- my old vid There's No Way Out of Here used X-Files, Buffy, and Nikita, shows with fairly different sensibilities, and they looked fine. But Angel is different visually from Buffy, plus there's the letterboxing, and Firefly is radically different from both. I think I'm probably crazy for wanting to do this, but I can't stop visualizing it in my head, nor listening to the song. I should probably do a poll -- Am I insane? Is this a stupid idea? Should I be put down? Vote here!
And then there's the digitizing of vids. A while ago I got one of those jabbing little mails I hate so much, where the person is whining about why can't you make these older tape vids available to me in the format Iiiii waaaantttt. Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be flattering, but I hate that it's never accompanied by anything except whining, and always has to have a jab at how, gee, there might be six LFN vids on that one tape, but I only want one, and I'm not going to go to the trouble to get it on your sucky little tape, please do it now at my convenience because I'm flattering you by requesting it. To which I always want to say, blow me. But don't, because, you know, kinder gentler Gwyneth. I don't think there's much of an audience for LFN vids anyways -- it's such a peculiar fandom in that it's one of those feral fandoms that sprung up only online, and the people who were in it participated nowhere else, and didn't even know they were in fandom! Vids have not been much a part of their fannish world, which I found out the hard way when I tried to communicate with them about what I had available. But I keep thinking maybe it would be worth digitizing (not digitally remastering, just making digital copies of the old vids) all of the LFN ones and slapping them on a dvd -- though I'm not sure, considering how many people left the fandom and online communities once the show was over. There are so few LFN vidders it's not funny, and most of those folks, because they have no idea there are things like fannish songvids, make strange little "movies" that have none of the usual conventions of fannish songvids. So this might be a lot of effort for absolutely no reward (not that there's any reward for vidding anyway, but still). And it'd have to be disc, because I can't afford to put up many vids on my site. I'm stalled out on all the LFN vids I want to make, because of how Warner is treating the dvd releases -- at first they weren't going to release any on disc, then they let us have season 1, and then there wasn't going to be a S2 or any more ever, then they decided to give us 2, but more than a year after S1 was released... I made Atom Bomb from all videotapes just because I didn't want that glaring mismatch between the S1 dvds and the rest of the series on tape.
And I keep getting stuck back in the Jossverse, when I have so many other vids to make. Another Miracles vid, a Miami Vice vid, Keen Eddie (though I have three songs and can't decide which one to use), LFN, X-Files, Brimstone, Professionals... you name it, I probably have a freakin' idea for it. Still I find myself going back to the j-verse. There's the Firefly ideas, and the Xander humor vid, and the Giles and Buffy vid, and and and... I almost wish somone would come and take away these components so I couldn't do it. Writing never consumes me this much; maybe it's the visual nature and the music or something, maybe the fact that what I really want to do is direct. I don't know. But it's like a disease in every way -- it takes over my life, and makes me sick and enervated and angry and excited and weird. Feckin' vids, man. I hate 'em.
How many days till Vividcon?
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 11:20 am (UTC)Oh, yes. Full stop. Pretty source material, I am sure. Bring it on, thankew. 8}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 01:22 pm (UTC)I have like 100 different ideas floating around in my head for vids I've thought about for years, and now I keep getting distracted by newer thoughts.
I am tempted to stop listening to music until I get out some of my old ideas. Except I'm not insane. Hee. But it makes it hard sometimes to work on ideas you think you should be vidding; I often tell my beta "this is the next vid!" only to show up with something completely different.
The being consumed by vids - that happens to me, too. I stay up way too late working on them and cleaning and errands go undone and my dogs hate me. But I can't pull away. Just one more clip, one more adjustment, one more storyboard idea.
I'm sorry that people are thoughtless when asking for digitized vids.
Finally, I think the requiem idea sounds great. I had the same type of idea (different song) myself and would love to see someone tackle it well. Good luck on deciding whatever it is you're going to vid next. :)
(Your Taz icon is great, btw.)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 04:06 pm (UTC)One month to vividcon. See ya there!