Notes on creating Dream
Sep. 12th, 2018 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI mentioned a while ago writing out some of the process notes for creating Dream, and then just kind of settled into ennui and entropy. Even though it's faded into the woodwork now, I figured I should write it down at least so I don't forget later, more for my own benefit than anything else.
As I said in the original post here, I've had this song for quite a few years, since I first heard it ten years ago on a commercial for a vaccines campaign sponsored by Pampers/UNICEF (this piece of information always makes people titter or sneer, IDEK). I recognised the singer, who is a longtime fave--I was like, "Is that Angela McCluskey? Oh my god, it is!!" and I went in search of the song. Fortunately there was a full length version with full production values on iTunes, so I downloaded it and knew immediately it was a fabulous vid song. It had everything you could hope for--great hook, tonal changes, hopeful and inspirational lyrics, great chords and beats...it was perfect, only I just didn't know what the theme was. For years I would ask people, and they'd offer some idea or other, and while those were interesting, they were never right. When the con comm announced the last Vividcon, I knew that I finally had my theme.
Concepts
I started thinking about how I would approach it, even before the penultimate con: early on I considered using actual clips from actual vids, maybe even things like titles and such, but rejected that after a bit as too impossible and not something that would take advantage of the lyrics. Then I started tossing ideas around with friends like killabeez and minim calibre, but I constantly realized the concepts would be unwieldy or too difficult or not tonally correct. After my surgery last year, I finally decided that it should focus on being about fans and Vividcon fandoms--not necessarily only the vids themselves, and I wouldn't be too literal about it; I wanted to include a lot of fannish imagery that spoke to the lyrics, to the hopefulness of fandom and of finding joy in things, even if that fandom was new or had never been a big one at the con. That it was more important to reflect the feelings we get from being fans, and loving the thing and sharing with other people.
This...was easier to say than actually figure out at the time. Recovering from surgery took a long time, and my emotional state was kind of all over the place, plus at the end of the year I had another smaller cancer surgery, and the months just kind of rolled by where I didn't even think about the vid. I had Fandom Loves Puerto Rico stuff to do, Yuletide, etc. and by spring, I just got to a place where I stopped worrying about doing it, that it couldn't be done in the time allotted.
I wanted to collaborate again for my Club Vivid entry, because killa had been talking for a few years about Wild Ones for the Captain America: The Winter Soldier OT4, and that became my primary focus. But funny thing about collaborating--it reminds me an awful lot of vidding back in the VCR days, when we gathered in the living room and vidded as a group, and I love doing it, and working with killa kept reminding me as we went along how much I wanted to capture that feeling of loving to vid I'd had in the early days, of the joy of early fandom for me, and I couldn't fully let go of Dream.
So I was ruminating about it with killa one day, and we started talking about that concept, of VVC fandoms and how to approach it, and she showed me the SPN clips with little Sam and older Dean watching the fireworks, and we talked about Star Trek clips, and other images that reflected the soaring vocals and chords of the song. My desire to do it got rebooted, her excitement made me want to try again. I posted on my DW that I would need help if I was going to do it, and anoel volunteered to help. If she hadn't come through for me with help for clips and ideas, I couldn't have done it. Meanwhile, killa was already sending me clips to use, and it started to feel like maybe I could make it.
Timelines are terrifying
The last multifandom (what we called multimedia back in the day, so sometimes I still slip into that, fair warning) vid I made was at least all from the same universe, and the TV shows of the MCU are all widescreen format, so not much different in aspect ratio from films--which wasn't nearly as challenging as this one would be. I was dealing with tons of different aspect ratios, and I really hate videos that bounce around from size to size (I'm just very visual and my eye wants to track the different amounts of black). One of the things I like best about Final Cut 7, and which I can't get Premiere to do, is scaling clips up super easily and quickly, and it's been hard for me to accept letting go of the program now that it won't work on newer OSes. But I was still really daunted by the work, even with the better scaling capabilities: I would have to scale nearly every clip I would use in order to get everything in one image size, and render every time I made any edits, but I can't sit at the computer for very long. I knew I was looking at a lot of physical pain, but I don't think I realized quite how much it would take out of me, with the back, the wrists, the elbows.
I gathered up a bunch of my already-sourced stuff, and went through the VVC booklets to look at what fandoms had been popular in case I didn't remember everything. Then I started thinking about what fit tonally: killa had said she didn't think certain of her fandoms that had had a presence at VVC were good fits for the song and theme, and there were some fandoms that were enormously popular I knew I could get clips for if I asked around, but they just were all kinds of wrong for the vid. There were some that people thought wouldn't fit where I was like, surely there must be a nice clip in there somewhere that feels positive or has something like a hug or flight in it. I think some people I talked to were focused on the flight thing--while I wanted flying clips, that wasn't the only thing I wanted, nor was dreaming...I wanted a lot of different things to put together but I sometimes had a tough time explaining my vision.
Going in, beyond the clips killa was sending me of her fandoms, like Star Trek and the Magicians, I knew I wanted some fandoms that maybe didn't mean a lot to other people but that did to me: Pacific Rim was one of the big ones, and The Martian was in my head for a lot of lines in the song. I had to include important things like Due South, the various Treks, Star Wars, some animated movies, SPN, and other fandoms that have had a presence there, particularly if I could find clips that fit tonally. I was kind of on the fence, though, about animation--I wasn't sure how well it would mesh with live action.
I'm glad that I decided on it, because that led me to WALL-E. When I tried to decide what to use for the beginning music, I didn't want to do credits--it was too long--but for some reason the scene in WALL-E popped into my head, when he shows EVE the video, and I was like "oh." When I watched it and was reminded of the videotape being pulled out, I was so happy about its utter perfection--it was such a great tie-in to my old days as a VCR vidder, its own little meta story about us fans creating this medium to tell our fannish stories through the old technologies, plus this perfect example of how it feels when we share our love of the thing with someone else. I wasn't sure if people would grok what I was doing there, but I put the clip in anyways. And at in-depth vid review at the con, people mentioned both those aspects, so it was super gratifying to know that my intention came across.
If I was using WALL-E for my first clip, I knew my last clip had to be Community's stop-motion Christmas episode where Abed imagines the study group as stop-motion animation characters, because I remembered the TV fading out to show the live versions of the characters reflected in the TV screen they're watching it on. For me, that was meant to be hopeful--that fannish vidding will continue on, we'll still see ourselves in these creations as long as there's fandom. In the show, Abed has broken with reality, but at the end, when they all come to watch TV with him, he realizes he can let go of this altered reality, the better dream, and it'll be okay. I felt like that was the most perfect ending for the vid if it began with the message from WALL-E, and it was animation to animation. But I'd forgotten that there was a "The End" on Abed's TV screen, which seemed to be the thing that made a lot of people cry, and I suppose I could have trimmed that "The End" out, but it would have been wrong. I didn't see it as sad, necessarily, but in hindsight, of course, it's more obvious.
I knew the first clip had to be either Luke looking at the twin suns, or Buffy looking at a new future for herself. Turned out to work perfectly to have one moving into the other. I considered using dissolves, but that was more trouble than it would have been worth, and I'm glad I dismissed it immediately. The original SW trilogy was never super big at the con, but it was a first fandom for a lot of folks, and Buffy was an enormous presence in the early years--they pretty much had to be first.
Mighty white
I made a lot of drafts along the way, and was doing something I don't usually do, which is vid nonlinearly, but it kind of required it since I only possessed about 50 percent of the material myself. Anoel was sending me clips fast and furiously, I was pestering killa and sdwolfpup for things I knew they had, and I was spending hours on YouTube searching for HD footage I could use of material no one had access to. This was really challenging, because a lot of what I wanted to use had no good footage anywhere online, and I didn't have time to get it nor money to buy it. I mean, it's my own fault for waiting till two months ahead of deadline to start, and then getting the deadline wrong and finding out I had ten fewer days to do it in, but it was incredibly frustrating all the same. Some of it was just old fandoms that didn't exist in quality video form, a lot more of it was the studios taking all the good clips away so the only stuff you could find was crap. I knew I wanted Heroes, for instance, and I used the only two good clips I could find that suited the vid: Hiro in Times Square and Nathan and Peter flying, but it was weird how much of that show had just vanished when it used to be all over the place. I spent literally over an hour editing the flying scene, and then in the end it didn't work and I cut it. :-(
But that kind of turned out to be typical for this project. I was throwing stuff on the timeline more just to get an idea of what worked or didn't, while every day anoel was sending me more clips with potential ideas, which would then spark more ideas of stuff to include. At times I was so stressed about keeping track and figuring out what I needed that I couldn't breathe. I'm not a spreadsheet person, I don't outline writing, and trying to do that would only have stressed me out more, but geez, for a while there I was losing my mind.
Early on, though, I was hit with the realization of just how painfully white everything was. In the early stages, I think about 90 percent of what I was laying in was white, or the actors of color were heavily made up as aliens or something and therefore unrecognizable. Poor anoel was looking at these drafts where not only was the vid suffering from extreme whiteness, but since I was feeling things out, the clips I did have placed were long and sometimes static so she was seeing this really boring, very pale version. I was keeping a list of more source with greater inclusivity, but an awful lot of what I was looking at was tonally incorrect.
The plan was to have more than a few clips of Black Panther, because I think that, had VVC gone on more years, that would have been a huge fandom, and I already had some Pacific Rim placed, and the Heroes clip, but I didn't want those to be the only ones. I was stymied in my efforts to get good clips for some more diverse fandoms, but I was sent a good-quality clip of Martha Jones from Doctor Who, which made me happy because not only was Who a huge VVC fandom, Martha was my favorite and one of the very few nonwhite characters they've used. I had Sam Wilson from Captain America, of course, and Lilo and Nani, Rhodey, and I was looking for good Hardison clips, but I just hated the overpowering whiteness of everything. Still, I kept at it, just plugging clips in so I could get a sense of where I wanted to fill in holes and hopefully use more diverse casts (like, I know John and Rodney were the popular part of SGA, but I wanted clips that would have Teyla and Ronon at the very least).
I knew from the start that Abby from Sleepy Hollow would be on one of the "shine" lines, because I adored her so much as she was, to me, a character who shone like a sun--and Shuri, too, would have to be on the sun line. One of the "I can see for miles" was, from the very first, Stacker and Mako in Pacific Rim, but just overall, the amount of white faces was a constant issue for me as I laid in clips. Even though it's never been represented at the con till this year, I loved the clip from Z Nation that sdwolfpup gave me, because wow do I love Roberta Warren's face with her huge smile and her white hair! It improved, bit by bit. Overall, I feel okay about how it turned out, because we landed on some good casts (Sense8, Good Place, Parks & Rec, Moana, etc., Trek), but an awful lot of the biggest fandoms of the past were pretty white and there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about that.
The other representational thing I wanted to do (besides focusing a lot on women instead of the dude-centricity of historically popular fandoms) was LGBTQ characters, but again, there was an issue with whiteness--it's definitely a conundrum. Anoel made a really good observation about including a gay couple in the dancing sequence (possibly Torchwood), and I was planning to cut a bunch of stuff into the really long static dance scenes I had initially, and I thought, oh! Tara and Willow dancing. I knew anoel had vidded Sense8, too, and she gave me so many amazing clips and I wish I could have used all of them. I'd already used some Xena clips, but would I have liked to use more queer-representational characters? Definitely. If I'd seen Killing Eve before I made this, I absolutely would have included that, and even though I didn't like Pose, wow, what that series could have added to the vid.
Circling around
Sometimes I would get feedback but I'd stay on a course anyway, even if it was sensible feedback. At one point I mentioned that I come from the vidding group that became known for the clip matching, finding patterns sort of thing. That was always what people would tell the Media Cannibals--how cool the way we matched clips was, how we segued things into each other, and sometimes I get a little carried away with that. It's my legacy. But I wasn't sure this wouldn't be my last multifandom vid, so I just really wanted to make things flow into each other as much as possible. (And it's funny, but I shared a laugh with Morgan Dawn about how much people misremember about Data's Dream related to that sort of thing--I'm happy people associated my vid with it, but...it definitely wasn't intentional!)
Some of those action matches are obvious, of course, to anyone watching the vid, but a lot of them were more subtle, to the point where I might be the only one who's really aware of the way one clip would connect to another. I was afraid at first, considering how late I began vidding, that I wouldn't be able to find and make use of matching actions and visuals, there just wasn't enough time, but it turned out to be way easier than I expected. Astolat mentioned at vid review how it's a super power to be able to remember clips and find patterns and stuff--maybe it is, I don't know! but I've always been able to do that, which came in handy back when we had to fast forward or rewind through boxes and boxes of videotapes to find clips and the process took literally days.
The related sequences I'm happiest about are the "dancing" sequence as it moves from space dancing to actual dancing to dancing in the snow to snow falling to hugging in the snow and so on, and of course the Steve in Times Square to Hiro in Times Square with arms out to Sophie holding her arms out for Parker. Those were a lot of fun to put together, I'll tell you what.
And sometimes the clip locations just came down to "this has to go here." I got feedback about the Captain Kirk clip at the end (it was originally super long, just for placement, but I think it seemed static even when shortened) not being dynamic, but from the start I knew that scene had to go at the end, along with T'Challa's face at the end of Black Panther. I explained that in the scene, Kirk is saying "Out there...thataway," and that the film was the culmination of years and years of fans campaigning to make that movie happen, the first time we'd taken a failed series and made it so popular they made a film. And it would map, I felt, to the image of a boy seeing himself in a king, and a king seeing the potential of a future where he will right all these wrongs and create an entirely new future with kids like that. Those were, maybe, the most meaningful clips beyond just the ones that were already deeply personal in a private kind of way. They had to be my ending, along with the Community clip. I was pretty intractable about that, even though the feedback was solid.
Missing links
Even knowing what I wanted, though, and trying to focus on Vividcon popular fandoms, there was still SO MUCH that couldn't be included. Some of that was simply that the fandoms were wrong in tone--and even if I could have found a hugging or flying or happy smiling clip in something like Sherlock or Hannibal or Luther, they were just so tonally off it would have felt wrong. I disagreed about some of the fandoms my collaborators mentioned as tonally incorrect, like Highlander, but I never found a place for the few clips I did think of using HL in, and they still didn't make it into the vid.
Then there were the fandoms I really, really wanted to put in, like X-Files, where I knew there were at least one or two usable clips, but it would have taken me so long to find them, get good source, and know where to use them, and I just didn't have that kind of time. There are definitely some less than cheerful clips in there (Steve in Times Square or with Bucky, the end of Angel as a series, Diana on the battlefield, Frodo and Sam on Mt. Doom), but they didn't feel tonally wrong to me, I guess. It's hard to articulate why. Some things needed that edge--"we need it to rain all night" and "help me find you"--and that was okay.
And also, just...there were a lot of fandoms to try to fit in as it was. Originally I wanted to only use source I could pull more than one clip from, but that plan ended quickly. Some fandoms repeat, but most don't. I felt like, as mentioned above, Black Panther and Wonder Woman, and some others, would probably have become VVC mainstays had the con gone on, and they just fit, honestly. They felt right in the places I used them. Some fandoms were huge at one point, but didn't really end up with more than one spot in the final vid, like Stargate SG-1 (ugh, getting source for that was a nightmare, it was the absolute worst one to get) or Smallville.
A few fandoms were never really big at the con, but they fit so well with the theme that I didn't care and chose them over more clips from a more-popular source--for example, Up and Lilo & Stitch had a presence over the years, but I ended up with only one clip from the latter, choosing clips from Moana and Finding Nemo, even though neither had been at the con much. Moana, especially, just fit so perfectly with what I wanted to do. (And sometimes, the overpowering whiteness of a fandom influenced how many clips I chose to use, like with Harry Potter and SPN.)
Many were just mandatory, however--Star Trek was the first real fanvid, so that had to go in, but some of the subsequent vid development fandoms, such as Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals, weren't a good fit (and I liked how old Trek tied into the reboot and ST Discovery). Harry Potter brought a lot of people into fandom, same with Star Wars and Doctor Who and Buffy/Angel/Firefly. The MCU was heavily represented because, well, that's my fandom, and it also inspired a lot of vids. I'm sad about the things I never found a place for, or that had only one short clip to represent them, but I was still pretty happy with the mix I did end up with.
The end
I've never had a vid pulled out for In-Depth Vid Review before, and it was really gratifying that astolat chose to talk about Dream at the con. I was kinda nervous, because I wasn't sure if anyone would have anything to say and my vids often elicit one comment and nothing more, but the discussion was so great. All the things I'd worried about people picking up on, they did, including that sort of historical vidding meta in the WALL-E clip and the action matching and stuff. Nobody seemed too miffed about the fandoms that weren't included, which was my big fear.
So all in all, even if this turns out to be my last vid (I can't currently vid right now), it's good. I got to write my love letter to fandom and the con, as hastily scribbled as it was, and it seems to make people feel emotional, and that's all you can really ask for.
As I said in the original post here, I've had this song for quite a few years, since I first heard it ten years ago on a commercial for a vaccines campaign sponsored by Pampers/UNICEF (this piece of information always makes people titter or sneer, IDEK). I recognised the singer, who is a longtime fave--I was like, "Is that Angela McCluskey? Oh my god, it is!!" and I went in search of the song. Fortunately there was a full length version with full production values on iTunes, so I downloaded it and knew immediately it was a fabulous vid song. It had everything you could hope for--great hook, tonal changes, hopeful and inspirational lyrics, great chords and beats...it was perfect, only I just didn't know what the theme was. For years I would ask people, and they'd offer some idea or other, and while those were interesting, they were never right. When the con comm announced the last Vividcon, I knew that I finally had my theme.
Concepts
I started thinking about how I would approach it, even before the penultimate con: early on I considered using actual clips from actual vids, maybe even things like titles and such, but rejected that after a bit as too impossible and not something that would take advantage of the lyrics. Then I started tossing ideas around with friends like killabeez and minim calibre, but I constantly realized the concepts would be unwieldy or too difficult or not tonally correct. After my surgery last year, I finally decided that it should focus on being about fans and Vividcon fandoms--not necessarily only the vids themselves, and I wouldn't be too literal about it; I wanted to include a lot of fannish imagery that spoke to the lyrics, to the hopefulness of fandom and of finding joy in things, even if that fandom was new or had never been a big one at the con. That it was more important to reflect the feelings we get from being fans, and loving the thing and sharing with other people.
This...was easier to say than actually figure out at the time. Recovering from surgery took a long time, and my emotional state was kind of all over the place, plus at the end of the year I had another smaller cancer surgery, and the months just kind of rolled by where I didn't even think about the vid. I had Fandom Loves Puerto Rico stuff to do, Yuletide, etc. and by spring, I just got to a place where I stopped worrying about doing it, that it couldn't be done in the time allotted.
I wanted to collaborate again for my Club Vivid entry, because killa had been talking for a few years about Wild Ones for the Captain America: The Winter Soldier OT4, and that became my primary focus. But funny thing about collaborating--it reminds me an awful lot of vidding back in the VCR days, when we gathered in the living room and vidded as a group, and I love doing it, and working with killa kept reminding me as we went along how much I wanted to capture that feeling of loving to vid I'd had in the early days, of the joy of early fandom for me, and I couldn't fully let go of Dream.
So I was ruminating about it with killa one day, and we started talking about that concept, of VVC fandoms and how to approach it, and she showed me the SPN clips with little Sam and older Dean watching the fireworks, and we talked about Star Trek clips, and other images that reflected the soaring vocals and chords of the song. My desire to do it got rebooted, her excitement made me want to try again. I posted on my DW that I would need help if I was going to do it, and anoel volunteered to help. If she hadn't come through for me with help for clips and ideas, I couldn't have done it. Meanwhile, killa was already sending me clips to use, and it started to feel like maybe I could make it.
Timelines are terrifying
The last multifandom (what we called multimedia back in the day, so sometimes I still slip into that, fair warning) vid I made was at least all from the same universe, and the TV shows of the MCU are all widescreen format, so not much different in aspect ratio from films--which wasn't nearly as challenging as this one would be. I was dealing with tons of different aspect ratios, and I really hate videos that bounce around from size to size (I'm just very visual and my eye wants to track the different amounts of black). One of the things I like best about Final Cut 7, and which I can't get Premiere to do, is scaling clips up super easily and quickly, and it's been hard for me to accept letting go of the program now that it won't work on newer OSes. But I was still really daunted by the work, even with the better scaling capabilities: I would have to scale nearly every clip I would use in order to get everything in one image size, and render every time I made any edits, but I can't sit at the computer for very long. I knew I was looking at a lot of physical pain, but I don't think I realized quite how much it would take out of me, with the back, the wrists, the elbows.
I gathered up a bunch of my already-sourced stuff, and went through the VVC booklets to look at what fandoms had been popular in case I didn't remember everything. Then I started thinking about what fit tonally: killa had said she didn't think certain of her fandoms that had had a presence at VVC were good fits for the song and theme, and there were some fandoms that were enormously popular I knew I could get clips for if I asked around, but they just were all kinds of wrong for the vid. There were some that people thought wouldn't fit where I was like, surely there must be a nice clip in there somewhere that feels positive or has something like a hug or flight in it. I think some people I talked to were focused on the flight thing--while I wanted flying clips, that wasn't the only thing I wanted, nor was dreaming...I wanted a lot of different things to put together but I sometimes had a tough time explaining my vision.
Going in, beyond the clips killa was sending me of her fandoms, like Star Trek and the Magicians, I knew I wanted some fandoms that maybe didn't mean a lot to other people but that did to me: Pacific Rim was one of the big ones, and The Martian was in my head for a lot of lines in the song. I had to include important things like Due South, the various Treks, Star Wars, some animated movies, SPN, and other fandoms that have had a presence there, particularly if I could find clips that fit tonally. I was kind of on the fence, though, about animation--I wasn't sure how well it would mesh with live action.
I'm glad that I decided on it, because that led me to WALL-E. When I tried to decide what to use for the beginning music, I didn't want to do credits--it was too long--but for some reason the scene in WALL-E popped into my head, when he shows EVE the video, and I was like "oh." When I watched it and was reminded of the videotape being pulled out, I was so happy about its utter perfection--it was such a great tie-in to my old days as a VCR vidder, its own little meta story about us fans creating this medium to tell our fannish stories through the old technologies, plus this perfect example of how it feels when we share our love of the thing with someone else. I wasn't sure if people would grok what I was doing there, but I put the clip in anyways. And at in-depth vid review at the con, people mentioned both those aspects, so it was super gratifying to know that my intention came across.
If I was using WALL-E for my first clip, I knew my last clip had to be Community's stop-motion Christmas episode where Abed imagines the study group as stop-motion animation characters, because I remembered the TV fading out to show the live versions of the characters reflected in the TV screen they're watching it on. For me, that was meant to be hopeful--that fannish vidding will continue on, we'll still see ourselves in these creations as long as there's fandom. In the show, Abed has broken with reality, but at the end, when they all come to watch TV with him, he realizes he can let go of this altered reality, the better dream, and it'll be okay. I felt like that was the most perfect ending for the vid if it began with the message from WALL-E, and it was animation to animation. But I'd forgotten that there was a "The End" on Abed's TV screen, which seemed to be the thing that made a lot of people cry, and I suppose I could have trimmed that "The End" out, but it would have been wrong. I didn't see it as sad, necessarily, but in hindsight, of course, it's more obvious.
I knew the first clip had to be either Luke looking at the twin suns, or Buffy looking at a new future for herself. Turned out to work perfectly to have one moving into the other. I considered using dissolves, but that was more trouble than it would have been worth, and I'm glad I dismissed it immediately. The original SW trilogy was never super big at the con, but it was a first fandom for a lot of folks, and Buffy was an enormous presence in the early years--they pretty much had to be first.
Mighty white
I made a lot of drafts along the way, and was doing something I don't usually do, which is vid nonlinearly, but it kind of required it since I only possessed about 50 percent of the material myself. Anoel was sending me clips fast and furiously, I was pestering killa and sdwolfpup for things I knew they had, and I was spending hours on YouTube searching for HD footage I could use of material no one had access to. This was really challenging, because a lot of what I wanted to use had no good footage anywhere online, and I didn't have time to get it nor money to buy it. I mean, it's my own fault for waiting till two months ahead of deadline to start, and then getting the deadline wrong and finding out I had ten fewer days to do it in, but it was incredibly frustrating all the same. Some of it was just old fandoms that didn't exist in quality video form, a lot more of it was the studios taking all the good clips away so the only stuff you could find was crap. I knew I wanted Heroes, for instance, and I used the only two good clips I could find that suited the vid: Hiro in Times Square and Nathan and Peter flying, but it was weird how much of that show had just vanished when it used to be all over the place. I spent literally over an hour editing the flying scene, and then in the end it didn't work and I cut it. :-(
But that kind of turned out to be typical for this project. I was throwing stuff on the timeline more just to get an idea of what worked or didn't, while every day anoel was sending me more clips with potential ideas, which would then spark more ideas of stuff to include. At times I was so stressed about keeping track and figuring out what I needed that I couldn't breathe. I'm not a spreadsheet person, I don't outline writing, and trying to do that would only have stressed me out more, but geez, for a while there I was losing my mind.
Early on, though, I was hit with the realization of just how painfully white everything was. In the early stages, I think about 90 percent of what I was laying in was white, or the actors of color were heavily made up as aliens or something and therefore unrecognizable. Poor anoel was looking at these drafts where not only was the vid suffering from extreme whiteness, but since I was feeling things out, the clips I did have placed were long and sometimes static so she was seeing this really boring, very pale version. I was keeping a list of more source with greater inclusivity, but an awful lot of what I was looking at was tonally incorrect.
The plan was to have more than a few clips of Black Panther, because I think that, had VVC gone on more years, that would have been a huge fandom, and I already had some Pacific Rim placed, and the Heroes clip, but I didn't want those to be the only ones. I was stymied in my efforts to get good clips for some more diverse fandoms, but I was sent a good-quality clip of Martha Jones from Doctor Who, which made me happy because not only was Who a huge VVC fandom, Martha was my favorite and one of the very few nonwhite characters they've used. I had Sam Wilson from Captain America, of course, and Lilo and Nani, Rhodey, and I was looking for good Hardison clips, but I just hated the overpowering whiteness of everything. Still, I kept at it, just plugging clips in so I could get a sense of where I wanted to fill in holes and hopefully use more diverse casts (like, I know John and Rodney were the popular part of SGA, but I wanted clips that would have Teyla and Ronon at the very least).
I knew from the start that Abby from Sleepy Hollow would be on one of the "shine" lines, because I adored her so much as she was, to me, a character who shone like a sun--and Shuri, too, would have to be on the sun line. One of the "I can see for miles" was, from the very first, Stacker and Mako in Pacific Rim, but just overall, the amount of white faces was a constant issue for me as I laid in clips. Even though it's never been represented at the con till this year, I loved the clip from Z Nation that sdwolfpup gave me, because wow do I love Roberta Warren's face with her huge smile and her white hair! It improved, bit by bit. Overall, I feel okay about how it turned out, because we landed on some good casts (Sense8, Good Place, Parks & Rec, Moana, etc., Trek), but an awful lot of the biggest fandoms of the past were pretty white and there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about that.
The other representational thing I wanted to do (besides focusing a lot on women instead of the dude-centricity of historically popular fandoms) was LGBTQ characters, but again, there was an issue with whiteness--it's definitely a conundrum. Anoel made a really good observation about including a gay couple in the dancing sequence (possibly Torchwood), and I was planning to cut a bunch of stuff into the really long static dance scenes I had initially, and I thought, oh! Tara and Willow dancing. I knew anoel had vidded Sense8, too, and she gave me so many amazing clips and I wish I could have used all of them. I'd already used some Xena clips, but would I have liked to use more queer-representational characters? Definitely. If I'd seen Killing Eve before I made this, I absolutely would have included that, and even though I didn't like Pose, wow, what that series could have added to the vid.
Circling around
Sometimes I would get feedback but I'd stay on a course anyway, even if it was sensible feedback. At one point I mentioned that I come from the vidding group that became known for the clip matching, finding patterns sort of thing. That was always what people would tell the Media Cannibals--how cool the way we matched clips was, how we segued things into each other, and sometimes I get a little carried away with that. It's my legacy. But I wasn't sure this wouldn't be my last multifandom vid, so I just really wanted to make things flow into each other as much as possible. (And it's funny, but I shared a laugh with Morgan Dawn about how much people misremember about Data's Dream related to that sort of thing--I'm happy people associated my vid with it, but...it definitely wasn't intentional!)
Some of those action matches are obvious, of course, to anyone watching the vid, but a lot of them were more subtle, to the point where I might be the only one who's really aware of the way one clip would connect to another. I was afraid at first, considering how late I began vidding, that I wouldn't be able to find and make use of matching actions and visuals, there just wasn't enough time, but it turned out to be way easier than I expected. Astolat mentioned at vid review how it's a super power to be able to remember clips and find patterns and stuff--maybe it is, I don't know! but I've always been able to do that, which came in handy back when we had to fast forward or rewind through boxes and boxes of videotapes to find clips and the process took literally days.
The related sequences I'm happiest about are the "dancing" sequence as it moves from space dancing to actual dancing to dancing in the snow to snow falling to hugging in the snow and so on, and of course the Steve in Times Square to Hiro in Times Square with arms out to Sophie holding her arms out for Parker. Those were a lot of fun to put together, I'll tell you what.
And sometimes the clip locations just came down to "this has to go here." I got feedback about the Captain Kirk clip at the end (it was originally super long, just for placement, but I think it seemed static even when shortened) not being dynamic, but from the start I knew that scene had to go at the end, along with T'Challa's face at the end of Black Panther. I explained that in the scene, Kirk is saying "Out there...thataway," and that the film was the culmination of years and years of fans campaigning to make that movie happen, the first time we'd taken a failed series and made it so popular they made a film. And it would map, I felt, to the image of a boy seeing himself in a king, and a king seeing the potential of a future where he will right all these wrongs and create an entirely new future with kids like that. Those were, maybe, the most meaningful clips beyond just the ones that were already deeply personal in a private kind of way. They had to be my ending, along with the Community clip. I was pretty intractable about that, even though the feedback was solid.
Missing links
Even knowing what I wanted, though, and trying to focus on Vividcon popular fandoms, there was still SO MUCH that couldn't be included. Some of that was simply that the fandoms were wrong in tone--and even if I could have found a hugging or flying or happy smiling clip in something like Sherlock or Hannibal or Luther, they were just so tonally off it would have felt wrong. I disagreed about some of the fandoms my collaborators mentioned as tonally incorrect, like Highlander, but I never found a place for the few clips I did think of using HL in, and they still didn't make it into the vid.
Then there were the fandoms I really, really wanted to put in, like X-Files, where I knew there were at least one or two usable clips, but it would have taken me so long to find them, get good source, and know where to use them, and I just didn't have that kind of time. There are definitely some less than cheerful clips in there (Steve in Times Square or with Bucky, the end of Angel as a series, Diana on the battlefield, Frodo and Sam on Mt. Doom), but they didn't feel tonally wrong to me, I guess. It's hard to articulate why. Some things needed that edge--"we need it to rain all night" and "help me find you"--and that was okay.
And also, just...there were a lot of fandoms to try to fit in as it was. Originally I wanted to only use source I could pull more than one clip from, but that plan ended quickly. Some fandoms repeat, but most don't. I felt like, as mentioned above, Black Panther and Wonder Woman, and some others, would probably have become VVC mainstays had the con gone on, and they just fit, honestly. They felt right in the places I used them. Some fandoms were huge at one point, but didn't really end up with more than one spot in the final vid, like Stargate SG-1 (ugh, getting source for that was a nightmare, it was the absolute worst one to get) or Smallville.
A few fandoms were never really big at the con, but they fit so well with the theme that I didn't care and chose them over more clips from a more-popular source--for example, Up and Lilo & Stitch had a presence over the years, but I ended up with only one clip from the latter, choosing clips from Moana and Finding Nemo, even though neither had been at the con much. Moana, especially, just fit so perfectly with what I wanted to do. (And sometimes, the overpowering whiteness of a fandom influenced how many clips I chose to use, like with Harry Potter and SPN.)
Many were just mandatory, however--Star Trek was the first real fanvid, so that had to go in, but some of the subsequent vid development fandoms, such as Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals, weren't a good fit (and I liked how old Trek tied into the reboot and ST Discovery). Harry Potter brought a lot of people into fandom, same with Star Wars and Doctor Who and Buffy/Angel/Firefly. The MCU was heavily represented because, well, that's my fandom, and it also inspired a lot of vids. I'm sad about the things I never found a place for, or that had only one short clip to represent them, but I was still pretty happy with the mix I did end up with.
The end
I've never had a vid pulled out for In-Depth Vid Review before, and it was really gratifying that astolat chose to talk about Dream at the con. I was kinda nervous, because I wasn't sure if anyone would have anything to say and my vids often elicit one comment and nothing more, but the discussion was so great. All the things I'd worried about people picking up on, they did, including that sort of historical vidding meta in the WALL-E clip and the action matching and stuff. Nobody seemed too miffed about the fandoms that weren't included, which was my big fear.
So all in all, even if this turns out to be my last vid (I can't currently vid right now), it's good. I got to write my love letter to fandom and the con, as hastily scribbled as it was, and it seems to make people feel emotional, and that's all you can really ask for.
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Date: 2018-09-13 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-15 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-13 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-15 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-15 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-13 06:49 am (UTC)Also, I'm so glad you included that tiny Smallville clip. My first real fandom, so the moment hit me right in the feels. <3
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Date: 2018-09-15 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-13 03:07 pm (UTC)I empathize with the aspect ratio stuff. On Might Lead to Mixed Dancing, I left all of that until the end and in one week burst I resized/cropped everything to a consistent 16:9. That was easier for me than doing the resizing all the way along, but reasonable people can have different opinions about that.
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Date: 2018-09-15 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-16 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-13 10:55 pm (UTC)The transition from Steve in Times Square to Hiro in Times Square makes my heart catch in my throat every time.
I just -- I flail incoherently because I love this vid so much. It is the multifandom love letter to vidding and to fandom and to our dreams that I wish I'd been able to make for the last VVC, and I don't mind anymore that I didn't manage to make that vid, because YOU DID, and you made the vid of my heart. I have loved so many of your vids over the years (omg don't even get me started) but this one feels like you reached into my fannish heart and pulled out all of my feels and put them on screen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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Date: 2018-09-15 08:06 pm (UTC)Of anyone whose heart I could have reached into and done what they imagined, I'm so glad it was yours!