more genre thoughts, take 2, and vidder shoutouts

[frayadjacent]

shati and chaila asked: Is there a genre or style you've yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Yes! On a small level, I realized with my last few vids -- basically since I switched to Premiere and discovered the film dissolve and different blend modes -- I'm in danger of relying too much on dissolves and overlays. So I decided my WIP would have NO dissolves and NO overlays, which I thought fit the song and the vid well anyway. Then I discovered one spot where a dissolve really did work well and made the moment 100x better, so I went with it, but it's the only spot!

More broadly, I would love to make a stream-of-consciousness type of vid that is all about motion, or perhaps some other visual aspect. I'd still need some sort of additional common denominator and I don't yet know what that would be. It would be a fun use of one of my "I'd like to vid this song but I have no ideas for it" songs.

Also I have plans for an Orphan Black kink vid and possibly a Xena kink vid. That's pretty new territory to me and I'm very excited about them. The Xena kink vid was originally my plan for kiki_miserychic's femslash vidshow at VVC this year, but then I ran out of time and also got insecure about the idea and didn't want to premiere it at VVC. (Not because it was kink, but because I worried it would be criticised as a boring "they're so doing it" slash vid.) Though I don't want to under-emphasize how much the running out of time bit played a role as well.

chaila asked: If you were to revise one of your older vids from start to finish, which would it be and why?

I am planning to do this! Well I hope to anyway. For elipie's Take 2 challenge! Anyway, I would revise my first vid, The World is a Very Scary Place. It's a pretty terrible vid (aspect ratio! what are those fast fades doing in there! what does half of this even mean) but I still love the concept of a fun Buffy S1 vid to that song, focusing on the "High School is Hell" metaphor.

chaila asked: Share three of your favorite vidders and why you like them so much.

Eeeee, questions like this are super hard for me, so I'm going to use this as a chance to give a shoutout to three vidders who do a lot for vidding community. (Not that other people don't! See why this is hard for me?)

First, obsessive24 played a huge roll in my early vidding, and not just because she made the first vid that made me say, "I want to do that". She set up vidpub, which was already losing steam fast when I joined in 2012, but those discussions gave me my first sense of vidding community, the first time vidders talked to me and the first time I got feedback from any of my vids by other vidders. Nicky also offered kind but honest criticism to two of my early vids when I was absolutely dying for concrit and couldn't get it anywhere else because nobody knew who I was. Sadly my conversations with her have fallen off since I don't really do LJ anymore, but I'm forever grateful to the ways that she contributed to vidding discussion and community at a time when I didn't have any.

Speaking of defunct proboards sites, Elvira from Foolish Passions wrote up incredibly detailed tutorials that I treasured when I started vidding. Look, I know for some people she might come off as a bit snobbish in terms of codecs, where you get your source, etc, but for me, having incredibly clear, no-holds-barred instructions for the technical aspects of vidding was a complete lifesaver. I am a pretty impatient person with tech stuff, and I already deal with shit that doesn't work and has no instructions for 30/40 hours of my work-week, so there's a pretty good chance I would have given up on vidding altogether if it weren't for these tutorials.

Finally, a shout out to lithiumdoll for doing the web stuff for both VidUKon and Festivids. That's just awesome, and I imagine a pretty hair-pulling job at times.

Comments

[goodbyebird]

I might join in on that challenge as well, actually fix my Sleepy Hollow vid. Such cringeworthy errors, yikes. Goodie for a remastered Buffy vid tho ♥

Orphan Black kink vid, yesssss.

I didn't know about vidpub, will probably be combing through past posts there at some point :D

[frayadjacent]

ha ha, "combing through past posts" probably describes 80% of my fannish engagement circa 2012. I've often wished I'd discovered vidding back when people were more active on DW/LJ and other more discussion-oriented places.

Orphan Black kink vid, yesssss.

I'm pretty excited about it... :D

[violace]

You're forever linked to vidpub in my brain because we both signed up there around the same time looking for the same things, I think. Same with Foolish Passion -- such a good first guide for a newbie.

[frayadjacent]

Oh yeah!! You were one of my open-beta betas! Good times.

[chaila]

ITA that specific directions can be a life-saver to a new vidder! At the same time, I have never read those Foolish Passions tutorials and I am now actively avoiding them so as not to be confronted with how many things I still do wrong. :)

[frayadjacent]

Well at the time I was able to find used BtVS dvds at a price I could afford, and I got a trial version of software so it wasn't too much trouble financially or otherwise to follow the instructions. And doing so meant that I basically never dealt with things like crashing programs, which really helped my motivation to learn. (Some of that was also surely luck and possibly my editing software -- now I'm using Premiere and in many ways I live it but it's definitely less stable for me than FC was.) Now I break Elviras rules too, but I'm comfortable enough with the tech stuff that if something goes wrong I can figure out how to solve it

[shati]

Dissolves and overlays are so tempting. ;_;

[frayadjacent]

Sometimes I use them just because I want to use more of a clip than there is time for! /o\

[thuviaptarth]

On a small level, I realized with my last few vids -- basically since I switched to Premiere and discovered the film dissolve and different blend modes -- I'm in danger of relying too much on dissolves and overlays. So I decided my WIP would have NO dissolves and NO overlays, which I thought fit the song and the vid well anyway.

Ahaha, I am doing the exact opposite! I love dissolves and overlays; creating new images from the existing source feels like a writing a really good metaphor to me. My last two vids were all or almost all straight cuts, and I was determined to use more dissolves in the current vid just so I didn't forget that dissolves were an option.

[frayadjacent]

Haha, I know it's easy for me to forget about tools I haven't used recently. Just yesterday I realized that my zero one dissolve/overlay vid would be mightily served by some freeze frames! Which I enjoyed using in a past vid but then totally forgot about and don't even know how to make yet in Premiere.

I very much agree about dissolves and overlays being great for metaphor and creating new images.