thuviaptarth | State of Fannish Panic

Entry tags:

festivids,
yuletide

State of Fannish Panic

Fanvid Love Meme
No panic. I am resigned to being the world's slowest commenter and trying to hit two or three people per day. I am choosing who to comment on by arcane metrics involving whether or not I've left you feedback in the past two years. So, you know, no comments doesn't mean I don't love your work.

(ETA: This doesn't mean you have to comment on me! I am feeling much more competent than last week. Two weeks ago. Whatever.)
Yuletide
I told myself I would default if I had nothing by the morning of December 10, and I had nothing by the morning of December 10. I am now feeling so relieved I am thinking of doing my original assignment and a bunch of pinch hits as Treats. But I make no promises.

Do not worry, Yuletide writer! I will comment on your story anyway. I am sorry you got stuck with such a slacker, though.
Festivids
I was doing my thorough, foresighted, and carefully labeled pre-clipping by scene and theme, the way I do for any fandom I think I might vid more than once, and I was feeling bored and overwhelmed and pressured by the deadline and not sure I could manage even a vidlet by the deadline and having second thoughts about the vid idea and wondering if I should go with the backup song, which was probably too long for me to complete in the time allotted but had a much more solid idea, and -- then I said, "Fuck it," and ditched the pre-clipping in favor of tossing things I knew I'd want on the timeline and going from there. I feel much happier now. Also much more likely to have something workable by the deadline.

I used to like deadlines because they forced me to produce things, but I am rethinking this. I am not as inspired by adrenaline rushes as I used to be.

then I said, "Fuck it," and ditched the pre-clipping in favor of tossing things I knew I'd want on the timeline and going from there.

That right there is exactly how I vid. None of this organizing nonsense. Every video is like a new adventure in random chaos!

I used to like deadlines because they forced me to produce things, but I am rethinking this. I am not as inspired by adrenaline rushes as I used to be.

Me too. :/

More people should post about process! It fascinates me.

Organizing is a pain, but I figure it will save me time in the long run. I am still glad I did it for SCC (and still need to redo it for the last few S2 episodes, since I got the DVDs), because I wanted to vid six different characters (only five to go!). When I asked myself ahead of time what I might need, the answer was, "Everything." But usually my desires are not that inclusive and/or there's so much more source that it's too painful to do.

Letting go and ditching the pre-clipping and the complete transfer of all my hand-written notes to computer is much better for the Festivids project, though! I have already filled in more gaps in my outline. Too much information paralyzes me as much as too little. More, maybe.

Every video I come at with a different frame of mind & focus, therefore I dissect scenes differently for each vid. So I import the full episode/movie into my program and clip the scenes I want for this specific vid as I go along. It sort of feels like going into it with a blank slate.

However, I am SUPER impressed with people who pre-clip things & organize giant clip databases that they use for all their vids & storyboard every single clip of a vid ahead of time. I just don't have that kind of patience. Plus, half of the things that end up in my vids are shots I find accidentally while clipping with this particular vid in mind. I'll throw them on the timeline to work in later so I don't forget about them. Half the time when I start a vid, I only have a general idea of what it'll look like. I figure the rest out as I go. And sometimes the finished product ends up quite different to what I thought it would be when I started. I used to feel like this made me Not A Real Vidder, but now I just say fuck it. I was never good at planning things anyway.

Too much information paralyzes me as much as too little. More, maybe.
Too much information (and organization) DEFINITELY paralyzes me. Freeform vidding all the way!

Oh, I always import the whole movie/series. Pre-clipping is breaking it down by scene and character so I can find clips more easily, and also prevents Premiere from having as many crashes with AVS files. I was trying to do it in this case because I kept noticing all these bits that would be great for Vid #2 and I didn't want to forget them while working on Vid #1. But I have copious notes and am also trying to adopt the attitude that if it's really important, I will remember it/find it again. This is not an attitude that comes naturally to me. My natural attitude is, "PANIC OMG HOW DID I DO THAT I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO IT AGAIN."

Oh sorry, for some reason I was thinking you meant cutting up movies/episodes outside of/before your vid project timeline, because I know people do that.

Pre-clipping is breaking it down by scene and character so I can find clips more easily
Do you keep a record of what scenes have what characters? If so, I am super impressed.

and also prevents Premiere from having as many crashes with AVS files.
Now I'm confused again. So, you do cut them into separate files instead of importing the full single-file movie/episode?

I don't know if it's a problem with other versions of Premiere and Windows, but Vista/CS3 gets memory errors if you load too many AVS files. You can reduce the crashes by cutting the big files into smaller subclips, because then Premiere will access the cached version in its memory instead of the actual file.

Or so I hear. It works, anyway! By the time I got to the end of the first draft of my first vid, I couldn't keep Premiere up for more than 6 seconds until Lum told me about subclipping. This has improved things vastly.

So you can have both the full movie/episode/disc file *and* subclips/subreferences to smaller parts of the movie/episode/disc file. For SCC, I cut the episodes into scenes or acts -- they'd have more than a traditional scene, but would cover one action, like "Sarah and Cameron hoodwink corporation," and I'd label them by episode, scene number, and description which included character name. So if I wanted every scene in the show that included Sarah, or (more reasonably) Riley, all I had to do was search for the name. While I'm cutting things up thematically/chronologically, I also make subclips of things for a particular look or theme, so I can refer back to them later: for "Riot Act," say, I might have a bin (or folder) for subclips with Riley and food, or for "Low Red Moon" I'd have a bin for "red" and another for "circles." You can make as many copies of a subclip as you want, since they're really just shortcuts to a file, so a lot of the time I will have one copy of the subclip labeled "Ep. No. - Scene No. - Description" and another copy labeled "Ep. No. - Scene No. - Symbol or Image."

This is sort of what it looks like (I can't find a good example on any of the vids I've finished, so you get an imperfect example from an abandoned vid):

(http://img707.imageshack.us/i/gwenproject.png/)

So you can have both the full movie/episode/disc file *and* subclips/subreferences to smaller parts of the movie/episode/disc file.
Whoa. That sounds most excellent & useful.

Wow, I am mightily impressed by your organizational skills & Premiere tech skills. Some of this is probably going over my head, but the level of organization & cross-referencing & subclips is amazing. Your brain is pretty rad.

(I love that you have folders like "Dean afraid" and "Dean and torture" and "Sam frightening". Awesome.)

Wow, I am mightily impressed by your organizational skills & Premiere tech skills.

Also, my procrastination skills! But, seriously, it does help me -- it means that I feel more confident that I've reviewed the available footage for anything useful, and it increases the prep time but decreases the amount of time it takes to edit.

(I love that you have folders like "Dean afraid" and "Dean and torture" and "Sam frightening". Awesome.)

These may be relevant to my interests. Er, I mean, they may be of great thematic importance!

(Okay, so I may made it through the rigorous exclusion of unnecessary Dean from "Low Red Moon" by promising myself I could make a vid about how very, very pretty Dean is afterwards.)

I may made it through the rigorous exclusion of unnecessary Dean from "Low Red Moon" by promising myself I could make a vid about how very, very pretty Dean is afterwards.

I fully support this promise, my friend.

I am so glad somebody else is still watching Supernatural. Or Supernatural vids. I have been afraid no one will want to by the time I finish my ode to the prettiness of Dean.

(Okay, in fact, I think SPN fandom is still full of people who will happily consume vids about the prettiness of Dean. But it's more fun when I know some of them.)

I'm a few episodes behind & need to catch up, but I am most definitely still in the fandom & love love love the vids. Yes. I do believe the world needs your ode to Dean's prettiness.

Edited 2009-12-15 04:40 (UTC)

Wait, this project may show it better:

(http://img13.imageshack.us/i/spnars.png/)

1. I still need to go back over that and comment on people that posted after me. I'm horrid about leaving timely feedback lately.

3. I envy highly organized vidders like you. :)

1. I started from the back because people who come late always get scanted. But then I had to keep going back to see if new people had signed on, which made it difficult to progress.

2. I envy vidder with excellent visual memories who can visualize their vids before they start, like you. :)

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State of Fannish Panic

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