Deb would swear at me

[gwyn]

Oh, vidding how I hate and love you. You torture me with your ideas and your songs and your characters. You provide endless hours of torment and aching necks and arms and the feeling of utter hopeless failure. And yet, you keep my mind off things I don't want to and shouldn't think about. And when you are done, I feel so relieved and so bad at the same time. You are like mountain climbing -- miserable and cold and dangerous and fraught, but you have your peaks and valleys and the summit is an achievement.

I want to do this vid for Deb Morgan on Dexter. I'm stuck on a song that is very well-known, one of those rare songs that crosses musical lines and came out of nowhere to become a hit after being featured on a TV show so effectively. And I don't want to do this song even though it's been eating away at my brain since I first heard it a few years ago on the show and I love it and never ever get tired of hearing it. And it is beyond perfect for what I want to show about Deb. Why do I not want to do something that sounds so perfect? Because it's probably been vidded at least 13,487 times by 13 year old girls who make crappy YouTube type vids. A quick search, even, of YT confirms that there are at least half that many vids by crappy youthful vidders who wouldn't know a point of view or an edit point if it bit them in the ass. And two such kinds of vids for Dexter the character and show. Gah.

I have listened nonstop to everything I have and have bought tons of music online for the past few months, this idea burning in my head, trying to find something less used. I like other songs by the artist, but they don't have the tone I want and are more focused on other aspects that I don't want to focus on. I've found gajillions of wonderful songs, which I love and think they could work, but they don't work as well for me. None of them have the exact feeling I get from this overly familiar song.

I just... I don't know what to do. I've always enjoyed picking up stuff that is unexpected, that people think couldn't work for a show or a character, and blasting people's expectations to bits. I can't tell you how many people said something couldn't be vidded to me, only to recant when they saw the finished product. But this time, something unusual, rare, or unexpected is not working for me. Wonderful songs, but none of them have this feeling. I really don't know what to do. Force myself to make a song that doesn't quite speak to me in exactly the same way? I could still come up with something good, I'm sure, or at least not as bad as the crap on YT. But it wouldn't have that heart. OTOH, if I make it, a lot of people will just... recoil, or scorn it, or pass it by.

With vids, you lose people each step of the way -- first goes the fandom people, who wouldn't watch a vid unless they're in that fandom. Next comes the music genre -- "I won't listen to pop, country, boy bands, emo, metal, blah blah." Then the song, if they know it, and they don't want to hear it one more time because they hear it on the Muzak system at work every day or the guy in the truck plays that on the route 500 times an hour. And so on -- in the end, you lose a significant portion of viewers by whichever choices you make, so you have to take into consideration whether that bothers you.

I don't know if it does bother me to add that to the list or not -- maybe it's just that I don't want fellow vidders whom I respect to think I'm a loser for making such a blatant musical choice? Especially when I love finding obscure stuff for other vidders? I don't know. I just can't decide, but I want to start on the vid and the song will determine my clip choices.

Vidding, why so difficult?

Comments

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Vid the song that speaks to you. Who cares if it's popular? The first rule of creating art - if you don't like it, nothing else matters.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

If it's such a popular song, maybe you could find a cover for it? Or even a remix or mashup? I love finding random covers of popular songs on mp3 blogs. (One awesome find was an overseas version of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," so all the stupid/annoying parts of the lyrics are in Japanese. *G*)

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

If it's that powerful, do it. If you wait for something pristine, it'll never get done. (And seriously, finding a perfect song for Deb? That's tough. Don't pass it up.)

The one vid I may make someday is to an overvidded hack of a song. But if I can get enough technical skills to make it work, I'll do it anyway.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

While I certainly at times avoid vids for fandoms I'm not familiar with, I've never avoided one specifically because of the song. I have, after watching it once, decided on the basis of hating the music to delete it and never watch it again, but to be honest I do that with the majority of vids I download for one reason or another. In any case, I say go for it!

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Do it! One because I'd love to see a Deb vid from you (or more in general) and two because, who cares? Do what you love and fuck the rest. Think of it this way, it'll be unexpected that YOU would use that kind of song. You already tried to find a substitue which gets past the whole songs are overused because people don't have a wide enough music selection process. You could wait til you have a song that does work but who knows when that will be. If you can't get it out of your head, just vid it to let that out. If you don't want to show it to anyone, that's fine too (please do though!). The song deserves a Great vid!

[keiko-kirin.livejournal.com]

If it were me, and I went for a different song that wasn't as perfect, I'd spend the *entire* vid, and the *entire* lifecycle of the vid afterward, thinking, "but damn, that other song would have been perfect!" I couldn't do it.

I haven't not watched a vid because of song choice. I would rather have a vidder use a song that works for the vid and get me past whatever baggage I have about the song (genre, overviddedness, etc.) than have a vidder try to shoehorn a vid into a song that doesn't work.

And also? Who gives a damn about the thousands of crap vids on YouTube? Seriously. Anyone who would give you grief for using a song they'd already seen on YouTube -- is it someone whose opinion you would respect, anyway?

[elynross.livejournal.com]

Because it's probably been vidded at least 13,487 times by 13 year old girls who make crappy YouTube type vids.

So...maybe consider, just this once, vidding the song that's eating your brain, and taking what you see as an overused song and defining it for yourself, and making yours the definitive vid for it? Seriously, I think that's a perfectly valid idea. If it would be that perfect for her, I'm really dying to see it done well, and for me, at least, one vid done well for a song like that drives any other mediocre vids out of my mind.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

If the song feels powerful and perfect, I would encourage you to make the vid. People's reactions may surprise you, in a good way. Hell, I thought I would be run out of fandom on a rail for vidding Holding Out For A Hero.

Also, I would love to see a Deb vid, period. I adore her.