This Post Is Not About Spongebob, Jesus, Satan or Soup...or *IS* It?

[sisabet]

OPENING DISCLAIMER:

The following post is not intended as a critique of the Club Vivid Challenge currently underway (which sounds very exciting and I am eager, as always, to see what happens). The following post is just me, whining and navel-gazing. You know. The usual.

Right then. Carry on.

I'm a bit bummed about the Club Vivid Challenge this year. Not bummed like I am wailing at the walls or rending my garments, more like I would love to make a dance vid but I vow to not commit myself to making any vid this year (after my spectacular bailing on the AtS End of Days Challenge and I will feel better when I just *do* that vid) until said vid was finished.

It's not a matter of deadlines. I know all about the Escapade deadline and I am not stressed (well, I am stressed, just... in a different way). I'll have this vid ready by then. If I didn't - I'd have *something* ready by then or not - if I don't have a vid, then no one is the worse for it.

It is more about the *specifics* and the commitment that yes, "I will vid this song" - I can't claim a song with the intent to vid it and know that I can vid it. Half of my vid starts are just that anymore. Just a start. This of course does not stop me from perusing the list and going "OMG I WANT TO VID THAT" [the rest of this sentence is excised due to obvious attention seeking behavior]. And I am greedy and want all of the songs (ALL OF THE SONGS IN DE WORLD) to belong to me. So there is the letting go of that.

Then I have to examine my motivations for vidding anymore. I wanted to make a dance vid - why don't I just make a dance vid? Why does it have to be a dance vid that specifically *plays* at Club Vivid? When did "Oh, I will do this vid for my VVC premiere vid and I'll do this for Escapade and I'll do this for Club Vivid and I'll go ahead and post this vid and hopefully it can get into Nearly New" become how I vid?

And a corollary to that is me listening to a song that tzikeh gave me on a mix this weekend (and oh, the wacky on this MIX... requires its own post, actually) - the "Spiderman" theme song Big Band remix from the second movie and I really want to see that vidded to...Spiderman. And I could do that - I could make the vid I want to see to this song and I could do it to Spiderman and I would probably really enjoy it... but then I had to stop myself and ask "Do you really want to vid the movie song to the movie? Do you want to be that vidder? Isn't that like wearing the t-shirt to the concert?" And I stopped and then I thought that a Danny Ocean, Oceans 11 vid to that song would really work and be kind of sly, but it would lose a lot of the emotional impact the song has originally for me by divorcing it from Peter Parker. But it will play better at Vividcon if I vidded it to Oceans 11 and all of a sudden I was making a decision to not make a vid just for me but to possibly make a vid I am less emotionally invested in based on who I am going to show it to.

Why waste such a good song on a vid that is really only for me? But then, isn't the fact that I would even say that to myself incredibly stupid?

Because there is vidding for an audience and that is fine. This is good. But, I don't know - is it really the end all and be all of how I want to spend my time? Because I have had a blast with this last vid, the vid I'll send to Escapade, and I went into it knowing that the audience would be really small and maybe that helped me just loosen up and enjoy it. And lately, unless I am vidding something that I will never show to more than a few people, I just haven't been having fun with it (for the most part- there have been *moments* of fun).

And it actually helped me have fun on this vid, knowing that not that many people would be in the fandom or would want to see it or would know the context, or whatever. Right now the thought of a lot of people watching it is kind of filling me with a dread and a panic and dear GOD what was I thinking and I am trying to control that, but man. I am not confident. I was and then I wasn't and it happened so fast I could hear the audible hiss as all of the air went out of my float. I'm still sending it to Escapade, though.

But why?

And to be perfectly honest - I like attention. This is the only explanation. Why else would I be excited about making a dance vid for Club Vivid and then not excited about making the same vid just to make it? I am vidding for attention and this has got to stop or be controlled or something because it could actually, possibly, and I have no proof, but I suspect strongly that this might damage my soul.

So, what do I do? How do I get around this and figure out how best to make certain I am vidding because I want to vid and need to express something and reconcile that with the attention whore within?

Because not vidding makes me a bit nutty. Vidding also makes me nutty - but there is a difference in the quality of the nuts. One is Premium Mixed Nut cocktail with plenty of Brazil nuts and the other is mainly salted peanuts with a couple of cashews tossed in.

How do I get from here to macadamia? Mmmm - chocolate covered macadamias. I want to be the chocolate covered macadamia nut vidder.

Comments

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I understand this completely, attention whore that I am. I think you're making a great start, just by recognizing the difference between "I want to make this vid *to show at Club Vivid*" and "I want to make this vid, period." There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking up a challenge, and seeing where it takes you (the not finishing wariness is good to keep in mind, though), but I understand that feeling that your motives are stealthily shifting on you in ways you don't like.

So, I'd say you keep asking yourself those questions. It's fantastic to make vids to send to cons -- it gives the audience pleasure, and you do sometimes get great response. I think that response is not a bad thing, not an intrinsically unhealthy thing, unless you want it too much, and it becomes your primary motive, because, like you, I feel like underneath somewhere, it's a darker motive that's doing me damage.

But I think so much of this kind of damage is avoidable simply by this level of self-awareness. If you see something you want to do, and you find you really want to do it, even if the challenge were to disappear -- go for it. If you're uncomfortable with your reasons, let it go, and that's okay. I think it's a wise thing.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I just don't do well with challenges and knowing that I don't do well with challenges on my best days and knowing how antsy I am about vidding *anything* right now (I'm losing it. I really really am. Ideas and enthusiam are slipping away from me right and left and then when I finally am able to get a vid I like out, all of a sudden - poof - I am terrified and embarrassed to show it). Well, I just don't want to bail out again.

So, I just want to know why? Why do I start three SV vids and just abandon them and I start an Iman vid and (regardless of how I feel about that vid now) I am able to get all the way through it and have a great time doing it? I am still highly invested in Clark and Lex - so it isn't that. The only thing I can think of is that in the back of my mind I know that a lot of people like WYIN and I feel like whatever I do in SV will be... looked at by all those people. Whereas, initially, making the Iman vid (Dewey) - I was pretty confident that only y'all would want to see it. And that is cool - so I was okay to just vid it and relax.

Then I decided it was the vid I wanted to send to Escapade and now I am just really fragile with it right now. I do this - I know it - so I'll get over it.

But it doesn't change the fact that I think my inner attention whore is causing a lot of pain for my inner introverted vidding geek. Maybe they should arm-wrestle?

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I seem to do really well with Yuletide, and I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe it's the level of initial control? I have another one currently, the picture challenge, which I did because it's *precisely* 1000 words. For Yuletide, I think part of it, too, is that it gets things out of me I'd never even think to do on my own. Het Litfic? Not likely.

I wonder if part of it is an unconscious expectation of potential audience? The SV audience is HUGE, even apart from the pressure coming out of WYIN. Before you decided to send to Escapade, the targeted IMan audience was smallish, and you knew most, if not all, of them. Now, suddenly, it's going to automatically get wider exposure. (Note, however? A lot of people who didn't know IMan would have watched it anyway, just because it's a sisabet vid.)

Personally, I'm dying to see the finished version!

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm dying to see the finished version!

Okay - see you really should not have said that because renenet and I were just discussing the other day how we both feel we are no longer objective about this vid.

We agreed on a few key changes, however (especially going back to the long shot of the syringe in the leg - I broke it up trying to follow the music more and it... it loses impact and I think the *reason* it loses impact is precisely because it is not what you would expect listening to the music and that tells the audience to pay specific attention to Bobby. If you break it up, the focus on Bobby has shifted and it is more on the syringe and then the flinch he gives is easy to miss. This is a working theory - I can show you both versions), and I plan on making those tonight and Lum helped me identify some problems with the blurring at the end, so I'll fix that and add the finished titles (Eunice rocks!)

Soooo - since I *have* to upload this thing this weekend and you *said* you wanted to see it -- wanna give the olll once over tonight/tomorrow?

We discussed that I could post to my LJ the need for fresh eyes/beta, but then decided against that cause it would just be... well, I don't need feedback at this point - I need beta and that is a fine line and something I just do not trust with many people.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

Okay - see you really should not have said that because renenet and I were just discussing the other day how we both feel we are no longer objective about this vid.

Wait. Is this a trick? I say I can't wait to see it, and I shouldn't have said that, because you're gonna let me see it?

I'm so confuuuused. But willing! Nearly always willing. *g* I'll come find you....