fray-adjacent

Previous years: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

I'm posting this later than intended, but at least it's still January! However, it's a bit late for those 2019 vids. They seem like ancient history.

Vids I made in 2020

Statuette (Steven Universe, June)
Touch Me Fall (Xena, July)
Thank U, Next (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, October)
Rain on Me (The Old Guard, November)
Find Your Way Back (My Neighbor Totoro, November)
The Memory of Trees (Miyazaki Multi, December)

Additionally, I remastered Starkville and Shed Your Skin, both Xena vids, and made significant edits to the intro of the latter.

Vids I made in 2019

Sparrow's Lullaby (Xena vidlet, January)
Fine with the Dark (Xena, June)
Butterflies (Xena, December)

Favourite

I made three vids in 2020 that I'm really pleased with. The first is Statuette. It's kind of an intellectual high concept vid, and I don't know how successful it is, but I know what I meant and so I enjoy it. Happily, laurashapiro  left a lovely comment that told me that at least one other person got it. I also love The Memory of Trees, which gives me all the Miyazaki feels I wanted, and Touch Me Fall. In the latter I let myself lean into the weird and it paid off. In particular, both Statuette and Touch Me Fall feel like my most experimental, conceptual vids, where I took some risks that paid off.

Least Favourite

Sparrow's Lullaby, because the overlays in the last 10 seconds or so are just way too much. I like the first part though, quite a bit. I'm also not happy with the end of Butterflies or the last third or so of Rain on Me. I hemmed and hawed on Rain on Me because the song felt a bit too long to support the concept, and wo it was. Though I'm still pleased with the vid in most respects, far more than Sparrow's Lullaby which I mostly pretend doesn't exist.

Most Successful

Butterflies has gotten a fair amount of traction on youtube, which is now not only where my vids get by far the most views but also where they get the most comments. I have also gotten lovely comments on Thank U, Next on YT, which has given me a super positive view of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fandom. But within my own vidding circles I believe that Touch Me Fall was the most successful.

Most Underappreciated by the Universe

Oh poor Statuette, I worked so hard on you and am so proud of you, but, well.

Most Fun to Make

The Memory of Trees came together surprisingly fast. Like, once I'd finished cutting clipping I made it in about 24 hours including solid sleeping and eating breaks. Lately I've been vidding much faster than I used to and there's something fun about that fact? Like just the feeling of flow, of having lots of ideas, lots of great material to work with and never getting stuck. But I also enjoyed making Statuette, because I discovered cool ways that you can manipulate the colour, timing, etc with animation that you just can't do with live action. It was a lot of fun.

Hardest Vid to Make

TBH, none these vids was hard to make. Statuette and Touch Me Fall were a lot of work, but I enjoyed it, so it wasn't a struggle. The last section of Butterflies I felt quite uninspired and didn't really know what to do with it, so maybe that one?

The Things I Learned This Last Year

That vidding is, almost all of the time, a genuinely fun and relaxing hobby for me. It definitely got me through the year. Also that when in doubt I intercut, and it might be worth trying other methods a bit more.

Planning for Next This Year

My big goal is to finish my Lesbian Icons Vid Series in 2021. I've already made two more vids for it this month, and I have 2-3 to go. TBH I feel like I need to see this project through before I return to a life where I have to travel for work again -- though I doubt I will ever again do so as much as I did in 2019 -- and my output returns to 1-3 vids per year.

Previous years: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

Vids I made in 2017

Electric Lady (Steven Universe, premiered at VidUKon in June)
Airplane (Xena, September)
Partition (Buffy theVampire Slayer, November)

Favourite

Partition — I enjoy re-watching it, and it’s a different sort of vid, with a different take on Buffy, than I have done in the past.

Least Favourite

Airplane — it’s a fine vid, but it’s my weakest Xena vid IMO. I had a lot of trouble getting something that went with the music like I wanted on the bridge. And I struggled a little with conceptualising it — at first it really was a Gabrielle vs Horses vid, but that was too narrow a concept for an entire vid so it became about the discomforts of travel, but I’m not sure how well the second half connects to the first half.

Most Successful

Partition, I think, in that I saw a few people reccing it. Electric Lady in terms of comments though — I got some really lovely comments on it on DW and at VidUKon.

Most Underappreciated by the Universe

I secretly hoped Electric Lady would take off on youtube because I think it’s better than a lot of the Steven Universe vids I’ve seen out there. (Not all of them of course! Becca’s SU vid, for example, still blows my mind every time I watch it.) Alas, that didn’t happen.

Most Fun to Make

Electric Lady, before my laptop was stolen (see below).

Hardest Vid to Make

Electric Lady, because I was about halfway finished with it when my laptop was stolen. I’d had Premiere installed on my laptop from my previous job, but when I bought my new laptop I couldn’t get it back. I ended up remaking Electric Lady in Lightworks. Now, I’m sure Lightworks is a lovely program, and it’s fantastic that it’s free. But as someone who was just trying to (re) make a vid and wasn’t actually interested in learning new software, it was very frustrating in some ways. It wasn’t just small differences along the lines of those I discovered when I switched from Final Cut Pro 7 to Premiere, but major differences in the workflow that I really struggled with.

Not long after I finished, I decided to splurge on a subscription to Adobe CC even though the cost and subscription program piss me off. I get the educational discount because I work at a university, and I do use Illustrator for work so I can kinda justify it on those grounds. So the work I’d done on Airplane and Partition — both of which I had started in 2015! — was mostly not lost, thanks to my backups.

Also Partition because the process of making it made me so angry at the source that I almost lost all motivation, when it was 90% finished.

The Things I Learned This Year

Back up my vid projects! Keep my laptop upstairs and not where thieves can see them (only helps with middle of the night robberies, but still).

Also, put more effort into vids. Resist the urge to just post it because I’m sick of working on it. It’s the difference between having a vid I rewatch for years to come and almost never rewatching it. This isn’t good advice for perfectionists, but I am definitely not one of those.

Planning for Next Year

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.

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.

I only made two vids in 2015. Oops? Some of these questions will be a bit silly to answer but I still wanna do the meme, so here it is.

Past memes: 2012 | 2013 | 2014

Vids I made in 2015

Milkshake & Honey (Orphan Black, premiered in March for Escapade)
Never Look Away (BtVS, premiered in June for VidUKon's Superheros vidshow)

Favorite

Well, Never Look Away, because it is all the Buffy feels I could generate. But at the same time, it left me feeling like it wasn't feelsy enough, like all the reasons Buffy is the character of my heart somehow still didn't get though. I dunno. I like it more now than I did when I posted it, which is common anyway. But still. I wanted even more feels.

(This doesn't stop me from rewatching this vid A LOT, though. For the feels.)

Least Favorite

Heh, I guess that leaves Milkshake & Honey, and it's true the vid doesn't move like I wanted it to, isn't quite as sexy as I'd hoped. But it was kind of a big step for me in terms of vidding kink, so I'm still proud of it even if it's one of my least-rewatched vids.

Most Successful

Never Look Away. If there were some sort of "vid success" metric that assigned different weights to DW comments, youtube views, yt comments, tumblr reblogs, and recs, that metric would probably say Never Look Away is my most successful vid ever. So at least I did that this year.

Most Underappreciated by the Universe

Lol, again by default it's Milkshake & Honey. But truthfully I was a bit surprised at the lack of comments/reactions. I guess I thought Orphan Black kink would be a bit more popular than that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most Fun to Make

I think Milkshake & Honey had some fun moments, and it felt really easy to make after What's Mine is Yours, which was the vid I made before and which was *hard*.

Hardest Vid to Make

I don't know that Never Look Away was *hard* -- I let myself use more well-known clips than I have with past Buffy vids, I didn't have to learn new tech skills -- but it was draining and not as much fun as I'd hoped. That's part of why I haven't made another vid since. Like I said, I wanted a vid that showed my Buffy feels and it just didn't, not like I'd hoped. I dunno. Maybe part of the problem is that I love Buffy for so many different reasons, and I just couldn't fit them all in one vid. Luminosity's Scooby Road, and especially Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight, still does that best for me.

The Things I Learned This Year

My short period of vidding might be coming to a close, and I think I'm OK with that. I still have a few vids I really want to make, and I hope I do. But between my vidding exhaustion post-Never Look Away and the various injuries that have made sitting at a computer a minor health risk, I can't be the prolific vidder I once hoped to be. And I'm fine with that.

Planning for Next Year

I have a bunch of vids I've started: an epic Xena/Gabrielle vid, and Gabrielle comedy vid, and an Aeryn Sun vid. I also have very solid, well thought out ideas for a Willow character study and a Stephen Universe vid. Hopefully I'll make at least one or two of these.

I might go to VidUKon. I mean, I absolutely want to go. I had so much fun last time, but work might interfere.

This is in principle my last question for the vidding meme, but I'm happy to take more questions and will probably do a few more on my own just because I like them.

colls asked: Do you work mostly from start to finish, or do you vid sections out of order?

Bit of both, but my orientation is very much to go from start to finish, and I've had to train myself out of that. Even though I use a non-linear editor! A number of people have talked about how when they get an idea for a vid, there are a few spots that are clear in their minds, and those are the parts they make first. And of course I also have some very vivid ideas for a few spots in the vid, but for some reason I often wait to put those down!

So, anyway, I do vid out of order, but I find that I get major mental blocks if the first ~15 seconds of the vid aren't solid. This made "Become You" a major headache cause I never could work out how to open the vid. Even after I submitted it to Wiscon I continued to fiddle with the opening.  But apart from that I do vid out of order, according to where I have ideas/what I'm excited to work on/what I've already clipped.

So, like right now my WIP has a ~75% full timeline. I imported the episodes directly into Premiere, but since I'm not super duper familiar with the source I'm scrubbing through the episodes chronologically. However when I started the vid there was one part I was pretty excited about that involved clips from the last episode, so I vidded that first. Ironically I am now planning to change that section! Anyway, I have a pretty solid structure planned for the vid so as I scrub through the episodes and find relevant clips, I drop them directly onto the timeline and fiddle from there. And I alternate between doing that and making changes to sections I've already worked on, according to whatever is most appealing at the time.

beccatoria asked: Which vid was the hardest to make?

Definitely Tightrope! It was my biggest learning curve technically, especially with the speed changes and freeze frames. (OMG, my favorite thing about Premiere as opposed to Final Cut is how *easy* the former makes speed changes.)

The one thing that wasn't difficult about Tightrope was clip availability. On the other hand, one of my biggest issues with Become You was the utter lack of clips available to say what I wanted to say, especially about M'Lila. I also really struggled with the bridge in that vid, because it had a lot it needed to accomplish in terms of getting the viewer from point A to point B and frankly it was too much, at least for my current ability. So in that quite different sense Become You was also difficult.

I'm getting a bit behind on answering comments today due to an epic bad mood this morning, but I'm carrying on with the daily posting!

goodbyebird asked: what do you look for in a beta?

In the past my main answer would have been to not be afraid to give me concrit. Don't get me wrong: my feelings are as tender as the next vidder's, and it will take a moment for my bruised ego to recover. But I'm always grateful for it. Not only does it help the vid and me as a vidder, it also gives me a boost of confidence that, when I post my vid, it's been viewed by at least one person who would have told me if it sucked.

I don't even mind if the concrit is of the "if this were my vid I'd do this" type, because it's obvious to me that if my beta has a different idea of what the vid should be doing than I do, I can always ignore some or all of their advice. But it's still useful to get the information of what they think the vid should be doing, because maybe it means that it's not currently getting its purpose across clearly enough.

However, praise is also great! I love the confidence boost, and if the praise is specific about what is working and why, that's every bit as useful as concrit.

So a more general answer might be, as shati said, a "discriptivist" beta. As in, "the vid is doing this", whether that functions as praise (because that's what I wanted it to do!) or criticism.

A few vidders have answered this question along the lines of, "someone to bounce ideas off of", which sounds SO GREAT but I'm always worried I'm asking too much of my betas so I've never done this before. I mean if nothing else, just having to put into words what I want a vid to do would probably be super useful. Anyway after the Orphan Black S2 finale I did have a great time chatting with violace about a vid idea, so that was at least a step in that direction.

goodbyebird asked: talk about your current vids in progress.

Mainly an Orphan Black Team Sadler+ vid. I'm pretty excited about it right now which is not great timing when my wrists are acting up a bit (don't worry, I'm writing this on my phone) and I really aught to be packing for my upcoming move next weekend.

The song is perfect for the subject and is a cool song to vid. I've gotten very comfortable vidding "white people with acoustic instruments" type music, and this isn't that. My usual Neko Case/Indigo Girls/Ani Difranco/Decemberists thing is easy music for me to vid, in part because I often prefer to vid to the melody and harmony than to the drums, and that type of music lends itself well to that style. Along with vague song lyrics :D. But sometimes I think it's funny that I mostly vid that type of music when it's not what I mostly listen to. Anyway the song I'm vidding right now is a challenge for me in a good way.

However, the song has a section that any reasonable watcher-of-vids would expect me to edit out, and I'm not. Instead I'm doing something that I think is awesome with it. Something that, once I committed to it, ended up putting a really cool twist on the whole concept of the vid. But it makes the vid 5 minutes long, and some people might find that part hard to watch/listen to. So I'm recognizing that not everyone will probably like my choice. That's fine, because I think it's awesome.

These are all questions from thirdblindmouse, via the vidding meme.

What's the best vidding advice you've ever come across? (goodbyebird also asked this)

To watch and study vids that I love, and figure out what makes them work for me. In my early days of vidding I did this often, and for a few vids I even watched the whole thing basically frame by frame and took down notes. That was how I realized, for example, that Bachelorette's intro goes through all the themes explored in the rest of the vid, basically giving an overview of the vid in the first 20 seconds. And that Nicky uses a fade to black between each section of the vid -- and nowhere else, I believe.

I don't do this as much anymore, except that I recently studied shati's vid "Boulevard of" while making "Become You", because I wanted to emulate both some of her cutting techniques, which I love, and the way she continued to revisit specific moments in the show throughout the vid as a way to drive home the themes.

I also remember reading the advice to read vid meta, which I would do anyway because it interests me. It helps with excitement and inspiration as well as learning tricks of the trade.

Do you use any tools, like clip notes or storyboards?

It depends on the vid. For example, my next vid in Xena Vid Series from Hell has a complete timeline of clip notes -- an extended marker describing what will go in each section. And I believe it does not yet have a single actual clip on it. Conversely, my current WIP, an Orphan Black vid, has no markers and a ~70% full timeline because the structure of the song is such that it's kind of obvious -- to me anyway -- what goes where, and because I've been able to import all the episodes directly into Premiere, which has changed my workflow quite a bit from what I usually do.

I used to always storyboard but I haven't done that in a while.

I also keep a vidding journal -- a trick I learned from kiki_miserychic -- where I scribble down ideas as they come to me. I carry it everywhere! It is an excellent tool and I highly recommend it. It occurs to me that I could also use a notes function in my smartphone for this, but personally I like having the written journal.

Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your vids being canon compliant?

Hmmm. I'd say I keep my vids compliant with my head-canon, which generally would not directly contradict canon or even stray much from it. But part of being in fandom for the last few years is that I've gotten much more comfortable with the general taking liberties with canon, especially if femslash is involved. So I might do it someday?

Actually, I for a couple years I had "Fire Door" saved as a Veronica Mars AU-ish vidsong. The idea was for a season 1 AU of sorts where in the end Veronica rejects both Logan and Duncan, along with all the other 09-ers. But I didn't envision it taking liberties with canon so much as a criticism of canon. At any rate, it's now and forever a Tyra vidsong, and I'm quite happy with it that way.

ETA: it occurred to me that another way to interpret the question is whether I use clips in their canon context, which is maybe a more useful way to think about this for vidding -- as opposed to writing fic, which this meme was originally designed for. And for that, I am very much happy to use clips out of context, but they'd still be supporting my reading of canon, as opposed to going totally AU. In fact when I am clipping/vidding I sometimes get too visual and don't consider the context of the clip enough. If it's not a well-known clip that's fine, but for famous moments it's almost impossible to divorce the clip from its context. I'm better at this than I used to be but my first vid or two contained some very famous clips in moments where they didn't work at all.

To help with the daily posting! Comment with a number and I'll respond in a new post. I've deleted a few of these from the general meme that's been going around because I knew I wouldn't have anything to say about them. And because I'm lazy I didn't renumber.

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-vid.
2. Is there a genre or style you've yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
3. Is there a genre or style you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?
4. How many vid ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
5. Share one of your strengths.
6. Share one of your weaknesses.
7. Point to a section from one of your favorite vids you've made and explain why you're proud of it.
8. Which vid was the hardest to make?
9. Which vid was the easiest to make?
11. Is there a section of canon above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?
12. What's the best vidding advice you've ever come across?
13. What's the worst vidding advice you've ever come across?
14. If you only could vid one show/movie for the rest of your life, which show/movie would it be?
15. Do you work mostly from start to finish, or do you vid sections out of order?
16. Do you use any tools, like clip notes or storyboards?
18. Describe your perfect vidding conditions.
19. How many times do you usually revise your vid before posting?
20. Choose a section from one of your earlier vids and talk about whether and how you'd do it differently now. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).
21. If you were to revise one of your older vids from start to finish, which would it be and why?
22. Have you ever deleted one of your published vids?
23. What do you look for in a beta?
24. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
25. How do you feel about collaborations?
26. Share three of your favorite vidders and why you like them so much.
27. Do you accept prompts?
28. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your vids being canon compliant?
30. How do you feel about crack?
31. Which is your favorite site for posting vids?
32. Talk about your current vids in progress.
33. Talk about a comment or review that made your day.
34. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

Day 30: Do you have a favorite vid you've made? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!

My two favorite vids that I've made are "Tightrope" and "Everywhere".  I don't think it's a coincidence that one is an ode to my all-time favorite character set to dance music, and the other is an ode to my all-time favorite pairing, also set to dance music.  :D

But I'll go with "Tightrope", because I'm pretty happy with all the fun jump cuts and time toggling and things like that that I put in there.  And it's not just an ode to Buffy's kick-assery, but also a vid about how she handles all the different pressures and tensions in her life, about how sometimes she fails at that but mostly she just does it.  And about how the Scoobies help her.  I secretly kind of love that Buffy's ships take up about 20 seconds of the vid, in a segment I called "Boy Trouble"

I'm not entirely happy with the ending of that vid though.  The idea was that, at least on a broad thematic level and ignoring the comics, once Willow does the empowerment spell then Buffy no longer has to walk that tightrope, at least not like she did before.  But I don't think that really came through.  I mean, it just looks like I lazily ended the vid with the last clip from the show. 

Still, it was awfully fun to make everyone dance.  :D

( 30 Questions )