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How I vid
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sockpuppet who is fuddled by my creative process.
1) I hear a song. This is no stretch. I listen to 5 different radio stations over the course of my daily hour-long commute. Of course, this means every now and then, I get Shania Twain on three of them, but that's big broadcasting. I also have a list of songs, with vid ideas, that I keep. And I have a huge media library. Gotta love 5c song downloads from Europe. (that's how I got "Elusive Lover")
2) I have a vision. I know that sounds pretentious, but sometimes i can see the whole vid just unroll above my steering wheel as the song plays. Sometimes, it's just a "O! That is so Luke & Han!" moment.
2a) I have a concept. "The dissonance and ba-ba-ba in Happy Together make it sound ironic. What if I made it a vid about dysfunctional relationships?"
3) I check my media library to see if the clips I'm visualizing actually exist. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough Leia and Lando clips to make "Time of the Season" into anything passable.
4) I get the lyrics for the song and time out the lines. I may put little notes about what i want to happen on each line in this.
5) I make sure I have all the clips.
6) I put it together. (a weak 4 words to describe the process of swearing, saving, sweating, swearing, crashing, driving the household nuts with endless repetition, trimming, swearing and saving)
7) I put it out for beta downloads. I clean up stray stuff and try to alter confusing or dull patches.
None of this applies if I'm doing a challenge or commissioned vid.
In the latter case, I am very constrained. In the former, the challenge limits my music selection which limits my clip selection.
Take the Luck challenge for VividCon. (please do)
I had to find a song about luck. I bounced around "Hey Baby let's go to Vegas" "I feel lucky" "luck be a Lady" "Good run of bad luck" and "You are my lucky star" (I thought a Han/Luke to that, which is sung by the Muppets and Mark, would be a bit much)
I settled on one, and decided to make a multifandom western poker game.
I hunted high and low and COULD NOT find my copy of the Gunsmoke episode "Whelan's Men." And Miss Kitty winning at poker would have just made the vid.
So I reconceptualized. What about Simon and Simon? I have over a dozen tapes, maybe a hundred eps. I don't have a hundred hours to glean clips, and my vidcapture equipment isn't working too well.
So a third reworking was in order. And it seems to be working out, if rather silly.
This brings me to another topic: use of metaphor in vids
I am of two minds on this.
1) A well done metaphoric vid is a joy to watch. It works on a lot of levels, and makes one think beyond the literal.
2) Any time I step outside the literal or the funny, I lose about half my audience.
So do I make the metaphorical vid: "Veteran of the Psychic Wars," "Happy Together," "What I did for Love?"
Or do I go for the easy laughs: "Teddy Bears' Picnic," "Entry of the Gladiators?"
I have 17 vids at the moment. They fall into 5 main categories
Relationship vids:
Don't Let the Sun Go down on me (Han/Luke)
Sweet Little Sheila (Tom Petty/Kim Basinger's corpse)
I miss my friend (Han/Luke)
Did you ever have to make up your mind? (SW)
100 Years (SW, mostly Anakin)
Amazed (multifandom geezer love)
Metaphor vids:
Happy Together (anti-het)
What I did for Love (Multifandom sacrifice vid)
Veteran of the Psychic Wars (multifandom asylum)
Birds of Prey (multifandom war)
Let's dance (Star Wars, Vader & Luke parallel)
Silliness:
It's in his kiss (kissage. Straight, gay, trans)
Teddy Bears' picnic (ewoks!)
Virtual vid channel (silly stuff)
Pure movement:
Entry of the Gladiators (Indiana Jones)
I get around (SW)
Tribute:
The Highwayman (Harrison Ford)
My problem is, so many of my vids tend to leave people going "hunh?" that I'm starting to doubt my abilities. I'm still vidding, because I love to do it (despite the headaches). It's wonderful to stand in a room of people and hear them laugh, and gasp, and grow quiet at all the right times. It's disheartening to have them laugh at something you never intended to be funny. And it's more depressing to come out and hear rave reviews of the quick-and-dirty cheap shot, and not much about the one you spent oodles of time getting just perfect.
But that's how it goes.
Stars, I wanna go to VividCon!
sockpuppet who is fuddled by my creative process.1) I hear a song. This is no stretch. I listen to 5 different radio stations over the course of my daily hour-long commute. Of course, this means every now and then, I get Shania Twain on three of them, but that's big broadcasting. I also have a list of songs, with vid ideas, that I keep. And I have a huge media library. Gotta love 5c song downloads from Europe. (that's how I got "Elusive Lover")
2) I have a vision. I know that sounds pretentious, but sometimes i can see the whole vid just unroll above my steering wheel as the song plays. Sometimes, it's just a "O! That is so Luke & Han!" moment.
2a) I have a concept. "The dissonance and ba-ba-ba in Happy Together make it sound ironic. What if I made it a vid about dysfunctional relationships?"
3) I check my media library to see if the clips I'm visualizing actually exist. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough Leia and Lando clips to make "Time of the Season" into anything passable.
4) I get the lyrics for the song and time out the lines. I may put little notes about what i want to happen on each line in this.
5) I make sure I have all the clips.
6) I put it together. (a weak 4 words to describe the process of swearing, saving, sweating, swearing, crashing, driving the household nuts with endless repetition, trimming, swearing and saving)
7) I put it out for beta downloads. I clean up stray stuff and try to alter confusing or dull patches.
None of this applies if I'm doing a challenge or commissioned vid.
In the latter case, I am very constrained. In the former, the challenge limits my music selection which limits my clip selection.
Take the Luck challenge for VividCon. (please do)
I had to find a song about luck. I bounced around "Hey Baby let's go to Vegas" "I feel lucky" "luck be a Lady" "Good run of bad luck" and "You are my lucky star" (I thought a Han/Luke to that, which is sung by the Muppets and Mark, would be a bit much)
I settled on one, and decided to make a multifandom western poker game.
I hunted high and low and COULD NOT find my copy of the Gunsmoke episode "Whelan's Men." And Miss Kitty winning at poker would have just made the vid.
So I reconceptualized. What about Simon and Simon? I have over a dozen tapes, maybe a hundred eps. I don't have a hundred hours to glean clips, and my vidcapture equipment isn't working too well.
So a third reworking was in order. And it seems to be working out, if rather silly.
This brings me to another topic: use of metaphor in vids
I am of two minds on this.
1) A well done metaphoric vid is a joy to watch. It works on a lot of levels, and makes one think beyond the literal.
2) Any time I step outside the literal or the funny, I lose about half my audience.
So do I make the metaphorical vid: "Veteran of the Psychic Wars," "Happy Together," "What I did for Love?"
Or do I go for the easy laughs: "Teddy Bears' Picnic," "Entry of the Gladiators?"
I have 17 vids at the moment. They fall into 5 main categories
Relationship vids:
Don't Let the Sun Go down on me (Han/Luke)
Sweet Little Sheila (Tom Petty/Kim Basinger's corpse)
I miss my friend (Han/Luke)
Did you ever have to make up your mind? (SW)
100 Years (SW, mostly Anakin)
Amazed (multifandom geezer love)
Metaphor vids:
Happy Together (anti-het)
What I did for Love (Multifandom sacrifice vid)
Veteran of the Psychic Wars (multifandom asylum)
Birds of Prey (multifandom war)
Let's dance (Star Wars, Vader & Luke parallel)
Silliness:
It's in his kiss (kissage. Straight, gay, trans)
Teddy Bears' picnic (ewoks!)
Virtual vid channel (silly stuff)
Pure movement:
Entry of the Gladiators (Indiana Jones)
I get around (SW)
Tribute:
The Highwayman (Harrison Ford)
My problem is, so many of my vids tend to leave people going "hunh?" that I'm starting to doubt my abilities. I'm still vidding, because I love to do it (despite the headaches). It's wonderful to stand in a room of people and hear them laugh, and gasp, and grow quiet at all the right times. It's disheartening to have them laugh at something you never intended to be funny. And it's more depressing to come out and hear rave reviews of the quick-and-dirty cheap shot, and not much about the one you spent oodles of time getting just perfect.
But that's how it goes.
Stars, I wanna go to VividCon!