Just a quick note about vids (since I've watched two hours' worth of Supernatural vids tonight)

[kate]

One of the things I've noticed about a lot of the vids I've been watching is that the songs are just Too. Damn. Long. There are a lot that start out strong but then either end up losing coherency in the middle or repeating clips over and over. Seriously, if you only have a couple minutes' worth of material, why are you choosing a song that's four and a half minutes long? Cut out the bridge if it doesn't fit. Do you really need twelve choruses? No, of course not! I find it funny that a lot of vidders (and this is just youtube, I don't believe this is anywhere near the best and the brightest of fandom, Festivids has shown me quite clearly that there are vidders who do this sort of thing, and do it well) don't think to cut the song up the way they cut clips up. You have to have an ear to do it, because you can't just mash two parts of a song together unless they work harmonically (or unless you're looking for a jump cut, which, musically is a little weird, but I'd love to see someone make work), but I imagine that most vidders have a pretty good ear, it's part of the job to make the clips and the music work together.

ETA: This wasn't really me bemoaning the entire vidding community, though I grant you it sounds like it (it was 2:30am, please cut me a teenie bit of slack). ESPECIALLY since I don't do this. I don't generally criticize (another reason this post is even here - I would never have posted this if I had been sober non-sleep-deprived). I certainly don't critique things I don't do, which, at least for now, and likely for a long time yet, is all vidders ever - even the people who made the vids I don't particularly like are obviously waaaaaaaay ahead of me, as I've never even tried it. This was me making an obvservation about vids that I was watching on one particular medium (one I think is maybe similar to FF.net in some ways? as it seems that the vids are generally of a lower quality than those of, for example, Festivids, a lot of which were hosted on vimeo and other sites (my vimeo experiences in general have been quite lovely!)). And busaikko points out below that editing music is harder than I think (which is not a surprise to me, not at all), and that a lot of folks don't have the time or resources to be able to do it effectively. If I figure out how to do it, I am going to make a giant meta post on how to edit music, because I want people to be able to do this so they can tell the stories they want to tell and aren't constrained by their resources. /ETA

I pretty much intend to edit my songs, probably fairly early on in the process and maybe some later, if there's clip trouble. I have a feeling I will be editing the shit out of the music a lot to accommodate my ideas (I tend to have ideas for parts of songs, with other parts of those same songs that are completely inappropriate for the concept).

So anyway - rec me some vids? I'm stuck on Supernatural at the moment, so of course I'd love some truly amazing stuff there (any pairing or RPF (also any pairing) or gen of either), but I won't turn down any suggestions for amazing vids. I only have a couple that come to mind, but My Brilliant Idea by lim (SGA, McShep) is my favorite to date. Plus lots of multi-fandom things by thingswithwings because xie's amazing. Also, I just recced cupidsbow's Red Right Hand, Dean/Castiel.

Comments

[cupidsbow]

Um. I'm a bit verklepmt at this and your SPN falling in love posts. I'm incredibly flattered, but also really surprised. I don't think I've ever been a fandom enabler through a vid before. I'm still a pretty new vidder in a lot of ways, so not a lot of people know my vidding work or follow it (in fact, I'm stupidly mopey that no-one has tried to guess my festivid(s) this year, even though I know perfectly well it's because no-one knows my vidding style *sigh*). But that aside, YAY for enabling a new fandom love! That's incredibly happymaking. :)

Your comments were useful and on the money for that vid too, so thank you!

As for what you're saying here, I'm going to take an Unpopular Stance, and agree: OMG yes, why oh why don't more people edit songs?!? There are so many vids that are awesome for the first minute, and boring after that. They would be so much better if they left the viewer wanting more.

It's true it's easier to edit songs on a professional suite like Sony Vegas, but it's totally doable with Audacity (I edited songs right from the start when I was using WMM and Audacity). Like so many things, there's a knack to it, and once you've practiced enough to get the knack, it's just another part of the job of making a vid.

I also agree so much with your observation about tired clip choices. I actually think this is a more understandable issue than not editing music, though. The thing about editing music is that you're mostly just shortening, not actually doing effect work and stuff. I have done overlays of voice and sound effects onto the music, which has its own set of issues, but mostly it's just shortening the song, which is linear and so kind of easy to think about. Some songs can't be edited because of their structure, but most contemporary songs have a lot of repetition and you can just splice them -- cut them, delete part out, and overlay the ends where the beat matches up. (That's what I did for Red Right Hand, which is soooooo long in its original form.)

I honestly think that the sweet spot for vids is around 1:40 - 2:40 mins. Occasionally an idea has enough legs to be longer, but they are the novel equivalents of the vidding world.

With visuals, it's different. At first it's really hard to get your mind around the idea that you can change them, so there's a temptation to just take the meaning of your favourite bits and build a visual painting with them. It takes a cognitive leap to realise you can actually take the original meaning, and elide it, add to it, empty it out and change it completely, just by using effects (overlaying, recolouring, changing velocity, panning/cropping, etc), changing the sequence, flipping them, reversing them, putting them in a new context, building constructed realities, etc etc etc. Some of those are completely impossible to do with WMM, so I think it would be a lot harder to make that cognitive leap using a single-track editor.

I've been vidding for about 3 years now, and I'm only just getting my head around this central aspect of visual remixing. It's fascinating to me, because it opens up all these new possibilities for clip choices. Once you're no longer focused on deploying the meanings already in the text, you can choose clips that have no canonical depth -- like a shot of hands or tail-lights on a car -- and fill it with your own momentum and meaning. And it has more meaning once you've kind of got the knack of it, because your clip choices aren't tired, and you can focus on things like internal motion or colour (rather than longing stares). That's much more interesting to me, anyway, but I do suspect my tastes aren't the norm. I'm not claiming I have that knack yet either, btw, but my favourite vidders certainly do.

And now I should really make my "how to get free pro editing software" post, right? Because no-one should have to suffer WMM after their first 3 vids. :)

[franzeska]

FWIW, a lot of the guesses come from people sitting in #vidding harassing their friends to guess more. A lot of the evidence comes from things people have let slip there too.

And, dude, that's not an unpopular stance: that's the VVC and Media Fandom party line. ;P

[cupidsbow]

Most of the time I love living in Australia, but there are moments when I just want to shake my fist like a cranky codger. Missing out on things like VVC (one day, ONE DAY, I will finally make it back to the US and attend a vidding con) and chatrooms (people are so rarely in there when I log in) are definitely two of those times.

It would be kinda awesome to actually get schooled in these things in person! ;)

[franzeska]

Some day! Some day!