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

[franzeska]

Sadly, I got out of SPN before I got into vidding, and I was never much into SGA. I used to not be a vid person; it was a combination of never really taking the time to watch and never finding things that suited my taste. (I only care about funny or cheesy vids most of the time, and I haven't been into most of the shows that produced big vidding fandoms in the last ten years or so. I also wasn't going to cons until recently.) It was only after I started vidding myself that I began to care about watching other people's vids, especially in fandoms I don't know. (Vidders who mostly vid and don't watch/give feedback/etc. are totally a thing just like some fic writers mostly work on their epic and don't have time for anything else. With vidding, I feel like it's considered more of a faux pas to admit it though, and it usually means you won't have an audience places like lj because so many people just watch their friends' vids.) The limited footage thing is a huge issue, especially in movie fandoms or something like Sherlock. Sometimes, vidders use it to their advantage; there's a funny Highlander vid by the Media Cannibals that parodies the extreme overuse of key Duncan/Methos clips.


If you want to go truly oldschool, Mary Van Deusen is active online and has her stuff up on a webpage. Her Temper of Revenge Miami Vice vid blew my mind. (Miami Vice specifically: she's vidded it three times, and I found this one way better than the others.) It's a longish, cheesy song with overly-specific lyrics that don't fit a modern-day setting. The first time I saw it, I didn't even like the characters involved. And yet... It's brilliant. It completely won me over. (She's kind of oldschool, so if you want to see it, you need to go to her website, search for it, and enter some captcha to get a download link. No publicly available streaming copy.)

I love most of sisabet's vids, especially if they are cheesy like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPLYowCYN4A

Many vids shown at Club Vivid are enjoyable without knowing much about a canon because they're dance vids made to be bright and flashy and destined to play in a room full of drunk people.

This is one of my favorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfPCHKcusQ

Lots of unexpected music can be awesome as long as it works on some level (humor through an incongruous choice, lyrically perfect though musically inappropriate, or whatever). One of my favorites from last Festivids that I still rewatch is this Scarlet Pimpernel vid: http://archiveofourown.org/works/332965