Vid Review, Part I: Themed Reviews

[thuviaptarth]

Moderated by flummery (Seah and Margie).
A review of the Premieres show.

Usual disclaimer re: memory and reliability. {}=my comments after the fact.

Actually, more than the usual disclaimer: By Vid Review, I was wiped out and not taking notes as thorough as usual, and I'd also found myself absorbing less of Premieres than usual, or at least than I've convinced myself I can as usual. I don't always get a lot on one viewing of a vid, but I usually get something, and sometimes, by Saturday night, I just wasn't. Premieres is a lot of vids at once and I blank out on Not My Fandom vids more than I do in shorter vidshows; some of these vids I don't remember at all.

Not My Fandoms
The Not My Fandoms that were popular this year were Stargate: Atlantis and Dr. Who/Torchwood, and what I'm most surprised about is that I enjoyed and/or was able to follow the vids way more than I usually am with popular Not My Fandoms. It probably helped that neither of them featured monochrome source, a single season of footage, and women being pinned to the ceiling and set on fire, and that the SGA vids either didn't focus so claustrophobically on the Bert/Ernie ship and/or were otherwise visually and stylistically distinctive. SGA is kind of weird for me: so much of SGA vidding that I see seems to be focused inward, on a common intra-fandom dialect and/or fanon and/or set of conventions and in-jokes, and I don't get the joke. I suppose this is true of every fandom, and this just happens to be one of the times it's a relatively large, current fandom that I'm not interested in; if Harry Potter were better represented at Vividcon, I suspect I'd have a similar response to it. (I'm not sure why it isn't, except maybe that in terms of vidding there's a lot less source available than there is for fiction.)

Torchwood/Dr. Who has never left me feeling as blank as SGA, but I don't have really good recall for most of the vids that were shown; I'll need to see them again. What's new for me this year is that I actually want to see most of them again, as opposed to wanting to just skip over them when going through the DVDs. But my notes on them are sketchier than the discussion was.

Actual Vid Commentary!

Roughly the first half of Vid Review was divided into categories of analysis, with the second half covering vids that didn't fall into the categories: slash, song choice, Torchwood, motion/movement, and voice-overs.

Slash
Margie and Seah started off by discussing the vids that reminded them of old school slash vids.

sherrold and wickedwords, Why Walk When You Can Fly? (SGA)
Some of the audience thought it was gen, some thought it was slash, some read it more as a team vid than a pairing vid. A lot of people {or possibly I overestimated the number because I was one of them} read it as a slash vid that brought Rodney and John together, but showed them as needing not just the closed world of each other, but the new world of Atlantis and the new family of the team. The romance or friendship is a pathway into a family and community. "Why walk" starts with Rodney going up the steps, then "when you can fly" shows the entire team. cesca felt the vid recuperated the adventure of Atlantis a little ("which the show really needed this season") and the_shoshanna was happy with the implications of flying imagery for Shephard's character and history.

klia and keiko_keirin, Hard Times Come Again No More (Peacemakers)
Not many people were familiar with the fandom. The washed-out palette is from the source. {This literally made it hard for me to focus on; I had the same problem with Minority Report. My brain knows the colors are deliberately washed out, but my eyes still strain to bring them clear. Between that and the unfamiliar faces, I couldn't follow the story of the vid because I just couldn't parse the visuals.} seperis said she got an uplifting feeling from the vid, although I think she wasn't familiar with the source; wickedwords said she thought of it as CSI: Old West. gwyn_r commented on the narrative progression: the sheriff has a dry, empty life, then is reinvigorated when his new chosen family comes into it, which isn't entirely dependent on just the slash pairing. the_shoshanna referred back to the "What Do We Want From Vids Now?" panel: "How have vids changed? One of the things that has changed—the protagonist discovers the slash pairing, then it takes them into a new family/community."

queen_zulu, Synergy (House)
pharis: I don't know House and it was very clear.
heresluck: I loved the song, was troubled by beginning literalism. What convinces me is later on: having "down the drain" be House drinking the alcohol is brilliant.
merryish: I'm impressed because I thought this show would be unviddable. I think of it as a show where they talk and they talk and they walk and they talk and they yell and they walk and there's an operating room.
elynross: The last is the only thing that makes it different from The West Wing.

Audience: A lot of these vids seemed to draw heavily on the theme of family, which is very big this year.
wickedwords: On that note, I would tie “Why Walk” into the Gilmore Girls vid, which is another vid about the importance of family.

Song Choice

destina, To Touch the Face of God (Space)
Seah: This used a lot of different source: NASA footage, The Right Stuff, space documentaries.
Margie: The instrumental was perfect and didn't distract from the story Destina wanted to tell.

I felt like this was probably the hit of the con: most of the audience was wildly enthusiastica baout it. It made people cry. People described it as "joyous"; as a "recruiter vid for space"; "immense and epic".

Seah: Watching it without an audience, before the con, I wasn't sure it was a fannish vid, but watching in the room, among a fannish audience, I knew it was. I could feel the fannish engagement.
astolat: It built up to the moment of the boot hitting the moon.
heresluck: This vid really benefited from being seen big.
seperis: It felt like "Data's Dream."

buffyann, This World (Battlestar Galactica) and Dreams (Heroes)
Seah and Margie started off with buffyann's two vids, both of which have a distinctive visual style.

Margie: For "This World," the visuals were beautiful. The vocals jarred.
Seah: You are either gonna love or hate the song. There is a pitch to the voice that's very off-putting.
jarrow: I disagree. I'm not really remembering the song. {I think they ended up playing a bit of the song, and most of the audience didn't find the vocals very noticeable.}
taraljc: I'm not used to seeing Battlestar Galactica as so suffused with hope; we see it vidded a lot to hard, driving lyrics, dramatic and downbeat.
Audience: Buffyann's style is transporting—the vid has a unique lyrical style.
elynross: I LOVED this song. Gnarls Barkley's voice is high and beautiful, but there's also an eeriness, a desperate grasping for hope.
Audience: The sound of voice pulls the lyrics and pulls the visuals into alignment: it's a sort of hopeful misery.
wickedwords: I remembered it as an instrumental – not words, just the vocal up and down the scale.

For "Dreams":
tv_elf: The piano makes it feel like a funhouse, surreal; it contributes to the mood of the vid.
vonnie_k: It's like, "Do I have to watch Peter Petrelli jumping off that building for the 200th time?" but she makes it work. She makes it look new.
Margie: We could have put this vid under "motion" as well, because it never stops moving.
astolat: The title dissolves and transparencies combined with the hard cuts draw you in.
jarrow: The clips are familiar, but the visual connections are new. The vid takes you from the familiar to the unfamiliar.
Audience: I love how well the opening works, it draws you in pace with the music.
millylicious: I think of buffyann's work as mood pieces.
Audience: The round shapes match the sound and feel of the music.

nightchik, "The Beautiful Struggle" (Harry Potter)
untrue_accounts: {I wasn't nearly this coherent in the actual panel, although I was this long-winded.} The vid makes beautiful use of the sound of the music -- there are some clips on the chorus drumbeats that make them feel like a heartbeat, it's really incredible -- but I was skeptical about the use of this song for Harry Potter, and I still am. I have two issues with the song choice, one thematic and one political. The thematic issue is that the song's not just about political struggle, it's about a revolution, and Harry Potter, insofar as I know the fandom, isn't about a revolution. It's not about an oppressed class rising up, it's not about a dramatic change in the social order, it's not about a huge shift in the nature of the wizarding society on the order of shifting from monarchy to democracy or suddenly enfranchising disenfranchised people. It's about an internal power struggle between groups which are already powers in their own societies, and that's not a revolution. My second issue is political: The vid takes a song that's specifically about African American history, slavery, and the civil rights movement and applies it to this very white fantasy society. It's appropriative. Taking something out of its original cultural context and stripping it of its political implications in order to express something for the very people the original protest was directed against, that's kind of the definition of cultural appropriation.
heresluck: Yeah, I was also very skeptical about the song's very specific references being applied to a very different context. When it started, I just thought, 'So what is she going to do with "And the motherfucking Democrats are acting like Republicans"?'
sisabet: But "And the motherfucking Democrats are acting like Republicans" actually works really well in the vid; that line has a real political force because of the visual referent. {Okay, so Sisabet actually described the visual referent, but I do not remember what it was.}
Audience: For me, the problem is that the song is just too American, and Harry Potter is not American.
elynross: I thought it was a great song choice because the song twisted the HP universe--it brought a political aspect that hasn't often been commented on or vidded. {It's my recollection that a lot of people agreed with this, but I didn't take good notes on it. After the panel, millylicious suggested that I might think differently if I were more familiar with the later books (I haven't read the last two), which make the earlier political subtext more textual, and that some of the effect of the vid depends on knowing what's coming but what isn't yet available in film form. I don't think this would change my reading, but I also don't think that I made clear at the panel that my particular issue was the disjunction between the black American experience and HP, not just an American song being used for a British source--which bothered some other commenters, but which was actually pretty tangential to my concerns.}

Torchwood
gwyn_r, "Try Not to Breathe" and melina123, "The Wanderer"
Two Torchwood vids with very different emotional palettes.

astolat: I remember a lot of this year's vids as defined by moments, and in the first one it's Jack being buried alive, and in the second one, it's the lyric "you look beautiful tonight" applied to the city, the world, not a person.
killabeez: I'm noticing a lot of vids this year which have a perfect blend of closeup, midframe, long shot – buffyann's work, destina's space vid. I think "Try not to breathe" isn't quite there, hasn't quite mastered it, but it's interesting that it starts in all closeups, then opens up after grave.
Seah said that either Gwyn or Melina was very precise and consistent about which people were associated with repeated lyrics, but I didn't note down which of them it was. Sorry!

Motion/Movement
jarrow, "Love Turns 40" (The Closer)
Mods: I never thought talking heads could have such a tension-filled dramatic build. It shouldn't work, but it does.
wistful_fever: It's the frantic motion, like they're attacking each other with their faces, and there's one hit and then it slows down.
morgandawn: I've never seen the close-up used as a weapon before.
heresluck: There's a growing use of external motion throughout the vid, a mirroring of technique and theme

sisabet and caphricacorn, "Use It" (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)
[Audience]: This is a big contrast to Jarrow's vid: there's no use of close-ups, the faces were always side-on, it's all about the constant movement.

sisabet, "Here It Goes Again" (SGA)
Seah: This vid is made up of short moments strung together to create action, but it doesn't actually go anywhere.
renenet: The action isn't action per se, it's the slash relationship.
wistful_fever: The thing you need to take away from this video is the Flan's face.

Voice-Overs
chasarumba, I Am the Drug (Dexter)
There was a general sense that people didn't like voice-overs in general, believing the vid should convey its own argument, but that in this case the voice-over was necessary, effective, and well-used. Someone pointed out that the music starts to build under the voiceover.
Seah: I don't hear the words of the song very well, but I don't need to.
Margie: I read it as the POV of Dexter's sociopathy, not Dexter himself.
astolat: The cut to the montage is perfectly timed for comic effect.

KK, Who Cares? (Bones)
This was less successful for a lot of people because applause from the previous vid covered up too much of the voice-over; many people hadn't heard it. The sound mix on the voice-over was also off, much lower than the music; someone recommended playing vids with both headphones and speakers before declaring the final version final. Someone else (I think wickedwords?) also argued that the voiceover was different from the audio, and that the audience would be paying more attention to the visual, which may have involved written text (? notes unclear, don't remember).

Comments

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

Regarding "Beautiful Struggle":

two issues with the song choice, one thematic and one political. The thematic issue is that the song's not just about political struggle, it's about a revolution, and Harry Potter, insofar as I know the fandom, isn't about a revolution. It's not about an oppressed class rising up, it's not about a dramatic change in the social order, it's not about a huge shift in the nature of the wizarding society on the order of shifting from monarchy to democracy or suddenly enfranchising disenfranchised people. It's about an internal power struggle between groups which are already powers in their own societies, and that's not a revolution.

FWIW, in my reading of this vid it puts the revolution back into HP. JKR sets up the wizarding world as a place in which there are huge disenfranchised, oppressed groups, enslaved beings, sentient beings who are not recognized as such and who are herded away from 'real' society. JKR brings all this out in the last three books, above and beyond that muggle/wizard racial analogy that she thinks is so clever and which actually doesn't work very well: in, for example, the closing scene of book 5 where the fountain of fake interspecies harmony is shattered, she sets up a society that is ripe for revolution. Then she casts it all aside in favour of Harry's hero narrative that ends up not changing anything at all. (my longwinded take on this after book 7 (http://heyiya.livejournal.com/143416.html)).

To me then, vidding HP to this revolutionary song brings the potential of large-scale change into Harry's hero narrative in the way JKR failed to do but which I've definitely seen fandom deal with more effectively (it's years since I really read HP so I can't think of examples offhand, but I know I've read a few fics that do this). The song shows up what's missing from the footage and the text and by extension the vid (the perspective of someone who is not a human, white wizard) but also suggests what Harry's struggle would look like if it actually were revolutionary -- since at the stage we're at in the films now, it still has the potential to be so.

My second issue is political: The vid takes a song that's specifically about African American history, slavery, and the civil rights movement and applies it to this very white fantasy society. It's appropriative.

I realise I'm on shaky ground here, but my take on the vid--which I approached with some suspicion partly because of both the reasons you mention-- was that it worked in part *because* of this problematic context. Now, the question of racial specificity is a big one and I can see both sides of the argument about the song's appropriateness. But I'm mostly inclined to think that vidding is an art form that's about appropriation of some kind and so the transfer of context in and of itself isn't a problem (YMMV, naturally): it's what the contextual specificity means that counts (like in this reading of race in the SPN vid Bricks (http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/videos/2008/01/31/bricks-a-supernatural-vid-by-luminosity/), which addresses some implications of musical appropriation).

I felt like using a song which attaches to a context JKR clearly has in mind at certain points in her narrative (again I refer you to the ham-handed house-elf slavery analogy) was part of what made the vid show up the revolutionary and racial lacks and potentialities in the HP series. Like, okay, it's another white liberal fantasy that thinks it can make an easy allegory to race with its multispecies imaginary -- but what would it look like if there were moments where that allegory were effective?

I suspect you'll take a harder line than me and think this is bullshit, which is fine of course and quite possibly right -- I just wanted to put my interpretation out there. :)

*edited for clarity, sorry!*

The Beautiful Struggle

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

I'm going to separate the discussion of "The Beautiful Struggle" and the discussion of "Bricks" because the cases are quite different.

"The Beautiful Struggle" - . But I'm mostly inclined to think that vidding is an art form that's about appropriation of some kind and so the transfer of context in and of itself isn't a problem (YMMV, naturally):

And as you rightly suspected, I call bullshit. There's a big difference from white people appropriating black history and individuals appropriating corporate productions. Stealing from the dispossessed isn't revolution. Cultural appropriation is just business as usual. How is it a revolution if the result you produce looks exactly like the cause of the revolt? Both here and in your own subsequent post, you treat "political" and "revolutionary" as synonyms and elide the specific racial component of my critique, which misrepresents my point: the problem isn't the use of a musical style traditionally associated with blackness being used for white characters, it's the use of a particular and consciously historically situated song in such a way that its history is erased even as it's used: its black politics are made to stand for politics, but not for black people. Race is present, and people of color are absent. It's using the song in a way that is antithetical to the very message the song is expressing, and it's that which makes watching this vid more and more painful to me as it goes on, as the cognitive dissonance between what the vidder is trying to do, what the vidder is actually doing, what the visuals are saying, and what the lyrics are saying, grows greater and greater.

Re: The Beautiful Struggle

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your critique, I really appreciate your engaging in such depth and making me step back and think hard.

There's a big difference from white people appropriating black history and individuals appropriating corporate productions. Stealing from the dispossessed isn't revolution.

That is completely true. I still feel inclined to argue that the mainstream appeal and commercialism of the Talib Kweli song, as well as the explicitness of its address, lets its context carry into the vid rather than being evacuated from it be read as repurposing Harry Potter into a story whose racial analogies wouldn't be insults. But it's entirely possible -- rather more than possible actually -- that this is a wishful interpretation on my part and involves me seeing the vid through rose, or revolution-, tinted glasses. It may, in fact, be more that *I think it would be possible* to make a radical Harry Potter vid to Talib Kweli than that I think this vid actually does that work.

Both here and in your own subsequent post, you treat "political" and "revolutionary" as synonyms and elide the specific racial component of my critique

You're right about the subsequent post, which was lazy in the extreme; I even saw that I was doing it but decided to post anyway instead of deleting everything but the vid rec or saving it until I had more energy, as I should have done. In this one I definitely *tried* to make the distinction, but clearly it didn't work. I didn't intend to elide race from the part of my response that talked about revolutionary politics, but reading it back I see that I did. I guess in trying for a reparative reading of a text that definitely does elide race (which is both HP itself and the vid) it's hard not to end up perpetuating that move.

the problem isn't the use of a musical style traditionally associated with blackness being used for white characters, it's the use of a particular and consciously historically situated song in such a way that its history is erased even as it's used: its black politics are made to stand for politics, but not for black people.

You talk below about the use of songs in vids and the primacy of the visuals, and Coppa's essay in TWC talks about that in a lot of depth. That essay made me realise that (not being fully trained up, as it were, in the main vidding community) I don't always read vids this way; when I have knowledge of the song, I am quite likely to foreground its context and content in my interpretation. I think in this case I was doing that and thinking 'Harry Potter and black revolutionary struggle in the US, what an unexpected conjunction that actually applies interestingly to certain themes in the text' rather than 'this is Harry's beautiful struggle'. Which certainly doesn't make it *right* in any way, or do anything about the visual absence of people of color, only explains why I didn't perceive the vid as erasing the history which is there in the song.

Re: The Beautiful Struggle

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say that your comments have been living in the back of my head for the past two weeks or however long it's been since you made them, making me obsess a little and feel defensive, and I came to the conclusion that they couldn't possibly bother me so much if you weren't fundamentally right. I posted an ETA to my LJ post to that effect, and I wanted to say thanks for showing me where I was being privilegedly naive/sweeping in assumptions and interpretations.

Bricks

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

Going by the Google cache of the page (http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:wAwebSx_2rAJ:mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/videos/2008/01/31/bricks-a-supernatural-vid-by-luminosity/+http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/videos/2008/01/31/bricks-a-supernatural-vid-by-luminosity/&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a): Stein's analysis is theoretically unsound and politically reprehensible. First of all, "Bricks" isn't a counternarrative, like "The Beautiful Struggle" is, and I think it just plain misses the point of the vid to posit it as oppositional to its source canon. (And Stein's analysis of the canon is dubious -- she's on a lot sounder ground when she calls SPN fetishistic of white masculinity than when she attempts to read it as situated in (racial) Otherness -- but it would take volumes to describe the problems with SPN and race, so I am just going to focus on the reading the vid.) I would argue that the vid doesn't "transgress" racial and gender boundaries by using a mashup with Aretha Franklin anymore than 50s rock stars who used black female backup singers to add "vocal texture" to their hits were "transgressing" race and gender: in both cases, black women are only present as support, object, Other. The subject remains white and male. Especially given the relationship between visuals and music in vids, in which the song is typically used to express something about the visual source, giving the visuals a kind of primacy of interpretation, what the vid does is use Franklin's voice as the voice of the Winchester brothers (and Stein fails to mention that it's followed up/chronologically preceded/displaced by or shown to be grounded in the Metallica lyrics which speak in the voice of John Winchester -- the voice of the father is shown as the ground and basis of the voices of the sons). This tells us something about the Winchesters. It tells us nothing about Aretha Franklin. It's not intended to, and it's fallacious to claim it is. But it doesn't change the limited and politically restricted role of black people, women, and black women in the universe of show or vid.

Voice/vocals/lyrics *can* be deliberately opposed to visuals in a way that interposes an omitted subjectivity--I would argue that destina and barkley's "Want" does this, with a female singer representing the voice of the demons (in canon) and the desiring female watcher (metatextually), but the vid very clearly identifies "I" as the watcher, the desirer, the writer/reader, and "you" as the Winchesters--the subject of the source narrative is made the object of the viewer's desire. Equally clearly, the "I" of "Bricks" shifts but generally belongs to the Winchesters either collectively or individually.

Re: Bricks

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

(Unrelatedly, I am sad about the mysterious disappearace of In Media Res! That was a great site. Sorry for sending you to a dead link.)

Obviously I disagree with your take on Stein, but I have had the benefit of hearing the argument more fully as a conference presentation, where she unpacked her readings a lot. Also I have never watched SPN, so I lack context to develop a reading of Bricks of my own.

I would argue that the vid doesn't "transgress" racial and gender boundaries by using a mashup with Aretha Franklin anymore than 50s rock stars who used black female backup singers to add "vocal texture" to their hits were "transgressing" race and gender: in both cases, black women are only present as support, object, Other. The subject remains white and male.

I was about to say that I didn't see this as incompatible with my reading of the essay, because I thought the essay read Franklin's voice in Bricks as marking the presence of racial others in SPN despite their nonappearance in the same way that the voices of the backing singers in 50s rock might be understood as figures for that music's problematic relationship to blackness. But reading the essay again I see that isn't what Stein actually says in the short piece, that she actually says the vid uses the song to voice Sam and Dean's transgression of gendered and raced categories. I am not sure I agree with that myself, based only on what I know of Sam and Dean. That's what I get for linking to things without rereading them, I suppose.

I *don't* think she is arguing that the vid tells us something about Aretha Franklin; she still frames the vid as all about Sam and Dean, and certainly a consideration of cultural appropriation is absolutely necessary here. White men being transgressive is a narrative that doesn't go very far away from white men being the ones who set all the terms.

it just plain misses the point of the vid to posit it as oppositional to its source canon

I guess I think readings that miss the point can sometimes be the most interesting? I feel like Stein is doing something important by thinking about the interplay of song and source in terms of racial dynamics even though it may not be a satisfactory interpretation. I had remembered the essay (well, acadrabble) as being more engaged with a critique of SPN's racial/gender problems and the absence of POC in the show than it actually is because the conference paper I heard was, I think, but I still reckon that's true.

[octopedingenue]

OMG people making Peacemaker vids! I hope that one shows up online. I know that Everything's On The Internet but I'm still slightly amazed someone else watched that show, which was so totally CSI: Old West. "And now I will determine the killer using the magic of...FINGERPRINTS!" At least there was a savvy female sheriff type.

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

I think most of these are already online -- look at vidding and vivdcon for Premieres playlists.

[octopedingenue]

I found it, thanks! Mmmm, pretty angsty grimy Western people.

[countessmary.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the mass type emailing thing but I want to get this to as many of you as possible. I went back a few entries to it's less likely that charmax will actually see this.

I'm putting together, in conjunction with ch_wg, a prezzie for charmax's wedding. I'm putting together a goofy dance video for part of the present and I wanted to use pictures from her friends saying congrats. How much you're actually in the picture is up to you. I know some of you are fiercely private so you don't have to be in the picture yourself. Take a picture of your dog with a sign in front of him that says "Congrats from (your username)" or what have you. Just so long as it says who it's from so that she'll know who's sending the love I don't care what you put on it. If you want to photoshop something feel free to do so. PLEASE make sure your image is horizontal. I can play with it so far as sizing but horizontal will definitely help me with sticking it in the video.

REMEMBER... this is a secret so no snitching. If you want to post something like this on your journal (with charmax filtered, of course) that would be great.

I need the picture(s) by this Sunday October 12th. Email your pictures to countessmary@gmail.com

Thanks,

Mary