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End of 2018 Vidding Meme
31 December 2018 09:34 amPrevious years: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012
I've written an end-of-year vidding reflection post every year since I started vidding, and I want this year to be no different. But, once again, I only made two vids this year, so the usual meme doesn't quite make sense. Instead I'll follow the format I used a couple of years ago, a year when I only made one vid.
Vids I made this year:
Shed Your Skin: a Xena character study, made for VidUKon 2018.
Virginia Woolf: a Xena/Gabrielle vid.
Both of these are part of my 90s Lesbian Icon vid series (AKA Xena vids to Indigo Girls songs), which now has five vids.
What was your outlook on vidding a year ago?
Here's what I wrote at the end of last year's meme:
On the other hand, the second paragraph is referring specifically to Virginia Woolf, a vid that, among other things, attempts to deal with the Xena finale, Friend in Need. Everything I said in the second paragraph still holds true, and reading it makes me glad I finished Virginia Woolf, because I know I'll re-watch it a lot. Also, I have so many more Bard!Gab feels now than I did before I made that vid.
Xena Warrior Podcast continues to keep my fannish feelings high, which helps a lot with motivation. If you like Xena, or are considering watching it, I highly recommend it. I particularly like that they bring so much cinematic/film industry knowledge to the podcast. And that they like a lot of the same things about the show that I do. :)
How was vidding life in 2018?
I spent much of the year without a good physical space for vidding. I need a setup that accomodates, as much as possible, my chronic wrist and back injuries. I also got sucked into other hobbies this year, things that were OK but ultimately less rewarding than vidding is. And I was busy with work, like most people are, and tired at the end of the day. For all of these reasons, I often went months without vidding at all. But when I did, I really enjoyed it and was motivated to work consistently on it.
The usual meme has questions like "what was your favourite vid?" etc, and I don't want to answer questions like that when I only have two vids. But:
What's the outlook on vidding next year?
I now have a home office with a desk that fits me, and so I'm cautiously optimistic that I will vid more in 2019.
I want to continue my Xena vid series. I also have an idea for The Good Place, and I plan to re-watch Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery which might lead to vid ideas. It would be nice to make vids for shows that people are currently fannish about -- although Xena fandom is pretty healthy. I've had a few Steven Universe ideas kicking around for a while, but one of them got Jossed by a big reveal earlier this year. I find that the scheduling of Steven Universe makes it difficult to plan vids. When I vid a show that's still airing, I like to vid it during a hiatus. SU has lots of hiatuses, but you never know how long they're going to be. Also many of them are so long that I completely forget that the show is still airing.
I've written an end-of-year vidding reflection post every year since I started vidding, and I want this year to be no different. But, once again, I only made two vids this year, so the usual meme doesn't quite make sense. Instead I'll follow the format I used a couple of years ago, a year when I only made one vid.
Vids I made this year:
Shed Your Skin: a Xena character study, made for VidUKon 2018.
Virginia Woolf: a Xena/Gabrielle vid.
Both of these are part of my 90s Lesbian Icon vid series (AKA Xena vids to Indigo Girls songs), which now has five vids.
What was your outlook on vidding a year ago?
Here's what I wrote at the end of last year's meme:
My goal is three vids again this year. I managed it last year, which I’m so pleased about because I only made one vid in 2016 and two in 2015. But two of the three vids I made in 2017 (Airplane and Partition) had significant work done on them in previous years. So making three vids again this year is still a step up in productivity.Regarding the first paragraph: I didn't meet my goal of making three vids, and one of those vids (Virginia Woolf) also had quite a bit of work done prior to 2018. Then again, it is five and a half mintues long, so there was still plenty of vid to make.
Also, Xena Warrior Podcast has inspired me to return to my Xena vid plans, and has also given me courage to go ahead and make one or two of the darker Xena vids I’ve thought about. Not all vids need to appeal to everyone. More than any other fandom, I vid Xena so I can have the kind of vids I want to watch, and sometimes I want to watch a vid that explores the sad and difficult parts of that show.
On the other hand, the second paragraph is referring specifically to Virginia Woolf, a vid that, among other things, attempts to deal with the Xena finale, Friend in Need. Everything I said in the second paragraph still holds true, and reading it makes me glad I finished Virginia Woolf, because I know I'll re-watch it a lot. Also, I have so many more Bard!Gab feels now than I did before I made that vid.
Xena Warrior Podcast continues to keep my fannish feelings high, which helps a lot with motivation. If you like Xena, or are considering watching it, I highly recommend it. I particularly like that they bring so much cinematic/film industry knowledge to the podcast. And that they like a lot of the same things about the show that I do. :)
How was vidding life in 2018?
I spent much of the year without a good physical space for vidding. I need a setup that accomodates, as much as possible, my chronic wrist and back injuries. I also got sucked into other hobbies this year, things that were OK but ultimately less rewarding than vidding is. And I was busy with work, like most people are, and tired at the end of the day. For all of these reasons, I often went months without vidding at all. But when I did, I really enjoyed it and was motivated to work consistently on it.
The usual meme has questions like "what was your favourite vid?" etc, and I don't want to answer questions like that when I only have two vids. But:
- The usual meme asks what my favourite vid of the year is, and Virginia Woolf is possibly my favourite Xena vid I've made yet. Time will tell if it will beat Starkville.
- The meme asks about the sexiest moment.The first five to ten seconds of the Callisto section of Shed Your Skin is in the running for sexiest thing I have ever done in a vid.
- The meme asks which vid is most under-appreciated by the universe. Please excuse this moment of honesty/pettiness: As I've drifted a bit from LJ/DW-based vidding fandom, my sense of how well-received my vids are increasingly comes from Youtube views. Therein madness lies. I'm not the best vidder ever, but I think my Xena vids are pretty great compared to a lot of what's out there. But a lot of what's out there has orders of magnitude more views than my vids. I keep reminding myself of two things: 1) what many people want in a vid is not necessarily what I want to make. Plenty of Xena fans just want to relive their favourite scenes set to current music that they like, and that's fine. 2) *I* do truly enjoy re-watching my vids, and as said above, I started this vid series mainly because I wasn't finding the kind of Xena vids I wanted to watch. That's slightly less true now than it was in 2014, but still mainly holds.
What's the outlook on vidding next year?
I now have a home office with a desk that fits me, and so I'm cautiously optimistic that I will vid more in 2019.
I want to continue my Xena vid series. I also have an idea for The Good Place, and I plan to re-watch Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery which might lead to vid ideas. It would be nice to make vids for shows that people are currently fannish about -- although Xena fandom is pretty healthy. I've had a few Steven Universe ideas kicking around for a while, but one of them got Jossed by a big reveal earlier this year. I find that the scheduling of Steven Universe makes it difficult to plan vids. When I vid a show that's still airing, I like to vid it during a hiatus. SU has lots of hiatuses, but you never know how long they're going to be. Also many of them are so long that I completely forget that the show is still airing.