thuvia ptarth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thuviaptarth) wrote2004-08-22 11:08 am
thuviaptarth) wrote2004-08-22 11:08 am
Vividcon Panels 3: Illustrating Relationships; Vid Review; How Did You Do That?
Couples, Triples, and Ensembles: Illustrating Relationships
Moderated by Rache (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wickedwords) and Equanimity. This followed a vid show on the same topic, which I didn't see; in retrospect, this was a big mistake, as I'd only seen three of the vids on the playlist elsewhere, so I lacked a common ground for communication with the rest of the people present. This was especially bad for a panel whose moderators seemed to want to encourage a kind of round-table discussion atmosphere. The attempt at group discussion didn't work too well, as not enough people were willing to talk. I think the room setup argued against it, unfortunately -- setting the chairs in a semicircle around the projector setup in front made it too much like a lecture setup, and something as simple as rearranging the chairs in a circle might have encouraged more people to speak up. I am not sure time constraints allow for that kind of thing, though, especially since the chairs would need to be restored to their original positions for the next panel.
Despite the title, this ended up being a discussion of shipper (romantic) vids rather than other kinds of relationships, and as I said during the discussion, pure shipper vids tend to bore me unless they offer something in addition to the display of romance; that said, "shipper vid" and "character study" or "thematic commentary" are not mutually exclusive categories. (I citedsisabet's "Paradise" as an Angel/Cordelia shipper vid that worked much better for me than the show had, because Sisabet made the relationship a clear outgrowth and symbol of Angel's desire for and accumulation of a family; similarly, heres_luck's "Come On" is as much about Faith's perception of being an outcast as it is about her frustrated desire for Buffy.) Other people seemed much more favorably inclined towards the "They're so doing it!" vids. Someone (feochadn?) cited boniblithe's "Momentum" as a good recent shipper vid.
People discussed the difficulty of balancing narrative and cuteness, and suggested that relationships could be made interesting by a focus on elements of the relationship that were generally overlooked or forgotten. Rache mentioned that facial close-ups could be used to ground the emotion in the narrative and/or establish an emotional connection to the events being shown, which wasn't something I'd thought about before; in conjunction with some oftzikeh's comments at "The Wayback Machine" vidshow, this made the aesthetic shaping many vids much clearer to me.
Vid Review
Moderated bymelina123 and renenet. This was a two-hour group discussion of the Premieres show; I'm not going to comment on it much, since I'll incorporate most of what particularly struck me into my comments on the Premieres vids. Melina and Renenet organized discussion around con panel topics--all I have written down in my notes is Song Choice and Literalism vs. Metaphor, but I'm sure there were more. They hit, I think, every vid in Premieres, although not always in the depth I'd have liked and sometimes the focus on the panel topics meant other aspects of the vids were neglected. Apparently in previous years, the moderators had selected fewer vids, which would be discussed in more depth. I can see the appeal of both approaches, actually, and given the time constraints and the number of vids premiering, I'm not sure which solution works best. I think I prefer the approach that tries to cover every vid in the show, even if the discussion may not go as deep as I'd like.
I missed the Literalism vs. Metaphor panel, but came out of the con with the realization that using literal clips for lyrics works best when they're either dramatically or emotionally charged, or when they're literal actions that carry a metaphorical meaning, e.g.,flummery's "Big Red Boat," where both the song and the show use the construction of a literal boat as a metaphor for creating connections among people, or gwyn_r's challenge vid "Through Your Hands," which uses dramatically interesting and contextually significant images of hands healing or clasping in service of the song's metaphor about taking control of your own fate. So I'm assuming that people explicitly stated this as a lesson learned from that panel, and I'm forgetting who said it. Or else I absorbed it by the usual weird fannish osmosis.
A random thing I'll put in here, because why not? There was some discussion of a Smallville vid by Soappocrates which experimented with split screen and picture-in-picture effects; I had nothing to say about the vid, in large part because I was in the back of the room for that half of the Premieres show and could not actually see the picture-in-picture bits (too low on the screen). The consensus seemed to be that there were some interesting ideas but unsuccessful execution here. Nobody at the con mentioned the use of split screen in 24 or Spooks/MI-5 that I heard, but I think it's worth considering. (It's my impression Spooks pretty much grabbed the techniques from 24 after the latter became a hit, but I could have the timing wrong.)
But if anyone reading this is really interested in effective use of these kinds of effects, I recommend taking a look at WickedAmp--who started off as an anime vidder (where these kinds of effects are common in both source and vids) and then used some of the same techniques on live-action vids for Buffy and Angel and Tipping the Velvet. I'd recommend taking a look at Million Miles (Read or Die) and Butterfly (multiple) for successful uses of split-screen in anime vids, in Break Me Off A Switch (Angel) for the very successful transition of these effects to live action, and at Played (Angel) and Lovers (Tipping the Velvet) for interesting failures/mixed successes.
How Did You Do That?
This was panel wassisabet describing inspirations and techniques for her Smallville vid "Without You I'm Nothing." I love this vid. I do not love Smallville--in fact, I do not watch Smallville--but I love this vid. I figured most of the technical discussion would be over my head, and it was, but that I could still get something out of Sisabet's discussion of why she made the choices she made, and I did.
Sisabet had a handout of screenshots from Premiere illustrating several technical tricks, and I took this despite having no use for it, because handouts induce a Pavlovian student grind reaction in me. Belatedly, I realize this was selfish, and if any vidder who could use this handout wants it, let me know and I'll mail it to you.
First, Sisabet said that a huge influence on the vid was this amazing trailer for this lousy movie, one that even overcame her aversion to Nickelback--The Butterfly Effect. And this made several lightbulbs go off in my head.
I didn't take enough notes on this; I hope someone else will post in more detail. Sisabet showed us the final version, and then she showed us the "Without Special Effects, I'm Nothing" version. No filters, no fades, no color changes, just clips from the show edited to the beat. And the thing is, the version with effects is better. The version with effects is stunning. I could see places Sisabet made changes, and some of them were big, and some of them were small, and every single one improved the final version.
But the version without the effects still left me breathless by the end.
It's the story and the clip choices and the cutting, man, and by the end it's a punch in the gut, all over again, every time. Clark and Lex, Clark and Lex, Lex was supposed to be Lionel's boy, but then there's Clark, and Clark makes him. Clark makes him, and Clark will break him. And it's the very same things that will make Lex and that will break him, and the failures are perfectly understandable, oh I see I see I see why Clark runs away and why Clark tries to come back and why everything Clark tries to do to make it better will break both their hearts in the end. Without you, I'm nothing. And with you -- with you --
Breathless. Yeah.
So there are lots and lots of color changes and brightening and darkening effects to shift the focus of clips to where Sisabet wanted the viewer's attention to go, and the thing that got me is that most of them were tiny, were things you don't even count as special effects in movies. ("Clark should glow," Sisabet said. "Don't you think Clark should glow?") I would have guessed that one of my favorite bits from the vid -- the black crow fluttering off and then freeze-framed agains the supersaturated green of the corn sheaves -- was a Sisabet effect, but so many of them were invisible to me, and not just because I didn't know the source.
Sisabet also explained she saw the vid as being first-person omniscient -- it's Lex pulling everything he knows about Clark together, seeing it all, right before the electroshock therapy, when it all falls apart. So we know what he saw, but he doesn't, and on the way home I realized that it was no wonder this punched me in the gut, because it's "Flowers for Algernon," and "Flowers for Algernon" always hits me like that. And I also wonder why when other people explain vids as having narratives I can see it, but I hardly ever see them on my own, because this was, like, the third time in the con that happened. And I'm supposed to be, you know, trained to interpret narratives, but clearly I'm not making the leap from textual narratives to visual ones very well. Maybe it would have helped if I'd watched more MTV as a child. Yes, that's it -- Time-Warner did not colonize my neighborhood early enough. I blame them. Clearly I did have been crippled and made unfit for modern life by remaining unexposed to flashy music video editing techniques until I was too old to understand them. Do you think I could sue?
Moderated by Rache (
wickedwords) and Equanimity. This followed a vid show on the same topic, which I didn't see; in retrospect, this was a big mistake, as I'd only seen three of the vids on the playlist elsewhere, so I lacked a common ground for communication with the rest of the people present. This was especially bad for a panel whose moderators seemed to want to encourage a kind of round-table discussion atmosphere. The attempt at group discussion didn't work too well, as not enough people were willing to talk. I think the room setup argued against it, unfortunately -- setting the chairs in a semicircle around the projector setup in front made it too much like a lecture setup, and something as simple as rearranging the chairs in a circle might have encouraged more people to speak up. I am not sure time constraints allow for that kind of thing, though, especially since the chairs would need to be restored to their original positions for the next panel.Despite the title, this ended up being a discussion of shipper (romantic) vids rather than other kinds of relationships, and as I said during the discussion, pure shipper vids tend to bore me unless they offer something in addition to the display of romance; that said, "shipper vid" and "character study" or "thematic commentary" are not mutually exclusive categories. (I cited
sisabet's "Paradise" as an Angel/Cordelia shipper vid that worked much better for me than the show had, because Sisabet made the relationship a clear outgrowth and symbol of Angel's desire for and accumulation of a family; similarly, heres_luck's "Come On" is as much about Faith's perception of being an outcast as it is about her frustrated desire for Buffy.) Other people seemed much more favorably inclined towards the "They're so doing it!" vids. Someone (feochadn?) cited boniblithe's "Momentum" as a good recent shipper vid.People discussed the difficulty of balancing narrative and cuteness, and suggested that relationships could be made interesting by a focus on elements of the relationship that were generally overlooked or forgotten. Rache mentioned that facial close-ups could be used to ground the emotion in the narrative and/or establish an emotional connection to the events being shown, which wasn't something I'd thought about before; in conjunction with some of
tzikeh's comments at "The Wayback Machine" vidshow, this made the aesthetic shaping many vids much clearer to me.Vid Review
Moderated by
melina123 and renenet. This was a two-hour group discussion of the Premieres show; I'm not going to comment on it much, since I'll incorporate most of what particularly struck me into my comments on the Premieres vids. Melina and Renenet organized discussion around con panel topics--all I have written down in my notes is Song Choice and Literalism vs. Metaphor, but I'm sure there were more. They hit, I think, every vid in Premieres, although not always in the depth I'd have liked and sometimes the focus on the panel topics meant other aspects of the vids were neglected. Apparently in previous years, the moderators had selected fewer vids, which would be discussed in more depth. I can see the appeal of both approaches, actually, and given the time constraints and the number of vids premiering, I'm not sure which solution works best. I think I prefer the approach that tries to cover every vid in the show, even if the discussion may not go as deep as I'd like.I missed the Literalism vs. Metaphor panel, but came out of the con with the realization that using literal clips for lyrics works best when they're either dramatically or emotionally charged, or when they're literal actions that carry a metaphorical meaning, e.g.,
flummery's "Big Red Boat," where both the song and the show use the construction of a literal boat as a metaphor for creating connections among people, or gwyn_r's challenge vid "Through Your Hands," which uses dramatically interesting and contextually significant images of hands healing or clasping in service of the song's metaphor about taking control of your own fate. So I'm assuming that people explicitly stated this as a lesson learned from that panel, and I'm forgetting who said it. Or else I absorbed it by the usual weird fannish osmosis.A random thing I'll put in here, because why not? There was some discussion of a Smallville vid by Soappocrates which experimented with split screen and picture-in-picture effects; I had nothing to say about the vid, in large part because I was in the back of the room for that half of the Premieres show and could not actually see the picture-in-picture bits (too low on the screen). The consensus seemed to be that there were some interesting ideas but unsuccessful execution here. Nobody at the con mentioned the use of split screen in 24 or Spooks/MI-5 that I heard, but I think it's worth considering. (It's my impression Spooks pretty much grabbed the techniques from 24 after the latter became a hit, but I could have the timing wrong.)
But if anyone reading this is really interested in effective use of these kinds of effects, I recommend taking a look at WickedAmp--who started off as an anime vidder (where these kinds of effects are common in both source and vids) and then used some of the same techniques on live-action vids for Buffy and Angel and Tipping the Velvet. I'd recommend taking a look at Million Miles (Read or Die) and Butterfly (multiple) for successful uses of split-screen in anime vids, in Break Me Off A Switch (Angel) for the very successful transition of these effects to live action, and at Played (Angel) and Lovers (Tipping the Velvet) for interesting failures/mixed successes.
How Did You Do That?
This was panel was
sisabet describing inspirations and techniques for her Smallville vid "Without You I'm Nothing." I love this vid. I do not love Smallville--in fact, I do not watch Smallville--but I love this vid. I figured most of the technical discussion would be over my head, and it was, but that I could still get something out of Sisabet's discussion of why she made the choices she made, and I did.Sisabet had a handout of screenshots from Premiere illustrating several technical tricks, and I took this despite having no use for it, because handouts induce a Pavlovian student grind reaction in me. Belatedly, I realize this was selfish, and if any vidder who could use this handout wants it, let me know and I'll mail it to you.
First, Sisabet said that a huge influence on the vid was this amazing trailer for this lousy movie, one that even overcame her aversion to Nickelback--The Butterfly Effect. And this made several lightbulbs go off in my head.
- YES! I loved that trailer! It was so cool! I couldn't believe I was contemplating seeing a movie with Ashton Kutcher in it! I couldn't believe I contemplated seeing a movie with Ashton Kutcher in it every time I saw the trailer, which would have been, um, every time I saw Return of the King in December and January. So. Um. Three times. Or four. Something like that.
- Nickelback! That was why I was listening to Nickelback and Matchbox 20 all January, which led to my posting a shamed confession about my fondness for lovesick depressed whiteboy music, whereupon, instead of disowning me, heres_luck just sent me a birthday mix of less embarrassing lovesick depressed whiteboy music. So not only is that trailer cool, it got me a really cool music mix. I love that trailer.
And people warned me off the movie, so I have no later recollections with which to taint the trailery excellence. Life is good.
I didn't take enough notes on this; I hope someone else will post in more detail. Sisabet showed us the final version, and then she showed us the "Without Special Effects, I'm Nothing" version. No filters, no fades, no color changes, just clips from the show edited to the beat. And the thing is, the version with effects is better. The version with effects is stunning. I could see places Sisabet made changes, and some of them were big, and some of them were small, and every single one improved the final version.
But the version without the effects still left me breathless by the end.
It's the story and the clip choices and the cutting, man, and by the end it's a punch in the gut, all over again, every time. Clark and Lex, Clark and Lex, Lex was supposed to be Lionel's boy, but then there's Clark, and Clark makes him. Clark makes him, and Clark will break him. And it's the very same things that will make Lex and that will break him, and the failures are perfectly understandable, oh I see I see I see why Clark runs away and why Clark tries to come back and why everything Clark tries to do to make it better will break both their hearts in the end. Without you, I'm nothing. And with you -- with you --
Breathless. Yeah.
So there are lots and lots of color changes and brightening and darkening effects to shift the focus of clips to where Sisabet wanted the viewer's attention to go, and the thing that got me is that most of them were tiny, were things you don't even count as special effects in movies. ("Clark should glow," Sisabet said. "Don't you think Clark should glow?") I would have guessed that one of my favorite bits from the vid -- the black crow fluttering off and then freeze-framed agains the supersaturated green of the corn sheaves -- was a Sisabet effect, but so many of them were invisible to me, and not just because I didn't know the source.
Sisabet also explained she saw the vid as being first-person omniscient -- it's Lex pulling everything he knows about Clark together, seeing it all, right before the electroshock therapy, when it all falls apart. So we know what he saw, but he doesn't, and on the way home I realized that it was no wonder this punched me in the gut, because it's "Flowers for Algernon," and "Flowers for Algernon" always hits me like that. And I also wonder why when other people explain vids as having narratives I can see it, but I hardly ever see them on my own, because this was, like, the third time in the con that happened. And I'm supposed to be, you know, trained to interpret narratives, but clearly I'm not making the leap from textual narratives to visual ones very well. Maybe it would have helped if I'd watched more MTV as a child. Yes, that's it -- Time-Warner did not colonize my neighborhood early enough. I blame them. Clearly I did have been crippled and made unfit for modern life by remaining unexposed to flashy music video editing techniques until I was too old to understand them. Do you think I could sue?