Show And Tell - Just A Game I Play, When I Wanna Say

[sisabet]

A problem with reading wank because you are bored (if you are me) is then beginning a post that you absolutely *need* to do and then finding every single statement you make as being very provocative and possibly wank-inducing and then you start trying to tone it down a bit and then you start thinking about possible comments to your post and you get angry in advance about this fictional comments that will probably never exist.

This is also my problem with watching daytime talk shows. I get geared toward the wank and then I see it in everything. Dude - this chick in my office? Trying to start a total flameware. UPS guy? He hates Buffy. I can tell. It's the way he wears his shorts - damned Andrew-luva.

::is paranoid::

And I am trying to formulate a post about Showing and Not Telling in vidding because we should be talking about that. This idea comes up all the time in fic discussions and it equally applies to vidding (and not so coincidentally with what I am currently working on *and* a vid I am betaing... and another vid I want to beta when it is ready, and another vid I want to have made so I can beta and... wow - this applies to A LOT). So we should be discussing this.

And I want to discuss this and talk about it but I read too much wank and it has dissolved my brain and now I am all freaked out about starting a vidding talk and I AM NEVER freaked out about starting a vidding talk.

I freak out over strawberries. I freak out over everything - but not vidding conversations. Well, not in the bad way.

But I don't because - I have no reason.

So, let's talk about showing and not telling in a vid.

What am I talking about for starters? To tell you the truth, I don't even really know. Sometimes I just talk to hear myself think. Or type. Or something.

But there is something here - so bear with me. Let me use an example:

Right now I am at a point in a vid where I want to get a particular message about Chloe across (betas please feel free to skip this next part). I want to show that her fascination with Clark is more than a sexual reaction - it is because she so deeply needs to *know* things and this need prompts her to actually push him continuously (and causes him to not want to be around her) and in effect, betray him. The facts that she likes Clark and he has a secret are not mutually exclusive - one of the things that *attracts* her to Clark is his secret (pre-Pariah).

So I know this - this is one of my starting points in the vid - but how do I *show* this? IMO, the show has addressed this many times -- there have been arguments with Clark and Chloe each season (except for the current season) about her not respecting his boundaries and pushing him continually to tell her whatever it is he isn't telling her (and what he isn't telling anyone, but this isn't about Clark).

And here I have the dreaded "Talking Heads" - yes I can show a series of scenes where Chloe and Clark discuss just this issue. And that is what it will be - talking heads with some emphatic arm movements. Now if the viewer knows the source - they will get what I intend.

But it is still just a series of head shots. Head shots of very pretty people, but this is boring. So now it is up to me to be creative. To try to figure out exactly *how* I am gonna show Driven!Chloe and connect that to Clark and then connect that to her own feelings of loneliness and alienation. Because somehow if she can figure out him or have him - one way or the other, it might make everything better. And then she learns otherwise (but that is later). And this is the part of vidding where you get all of these people moaning and groaning and posting: Vidding is hard.

Because it is.

And there is a way to do this in a vid - to avoid just the talking heads and to use the lyrics to guide us to pick just the right action-y moments of a character and then translate that into a mood and then use this combined with the motion of the camera to create a feeling and THEN to use the mood and the feeling to cut between two disparate images that are actually related and show the PING moment where the audience might possibly get what you are saying.

If this makes any sense at all. I apologize for the disjointed quality of this post. I am slowly working my way back and you know - as long as nothing dissolves into wank we should all just pat ourselves on the back.

Because I wanted to talk examples and now I am facing a mind that is a complete blank. So, um. Yeah - examples. Talk about em in comments.

ETA: The call for examples was more of a call to discuss other vids and how they accomplish Showing and Not Telling. I was just using the Chloe vid thing as an example and also - my brain, so fried. I apologize for the confusion.

I will try to address this topic one day and be much more prepared.

Comments

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Heh. Goes to show what an amv-editor I am.

See, I was reading through this thinking "hmm, yeah I see your problem... hmm yeah, talking heads would be no good.. AHA" and came up with a solution which you would do if you were an amv creator.

See, because amvs arent in any way subtle, it is difficult to neatly use Intelligent Montage with anime *characters* because they only ever show extremities of emotion. It's also difficult to create feeling through motion because it's often so static. If what you want to say isnt said explicitly in the lyrics or isnt shown explicitly in the original source footage then you are screwed most of the time with anime. If there is any subtle emotion going on in the source then it generally happens in the voice acting. This makes this hard in the vidding sense but convenient in the amv sense because amvers generally just want to construct it all from nothing anyway. (I'm so going to recycle this example if I talk at a panel)

So, the amv approach would be to slap on some "Hello Look At Me I'm The Meaning Here" effect on the footage to represent this idea, such as distorting Clark's face, obscuring it until the point in the video where Chloe understands him and then - bingo, there he is clear as day. Even then, however, it would need some lyrical signpost or some obvious mention of this theme in the title because amv readers don't like videos without liner notes. In fact, even if the song said "You're a mystery that I want to solve" the amv maker would STILL obscure the face because it's not enough that the meaning is implied, it needs to be written on the video in big letters.

That's the amv approach - all problems can be fixed with a sledgehammer called after effects.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

::lightbulb moment::

And here I thought one of the reasons amvs are so effects-heavy was because it was something you could do without degrading the original source (unlike some manip of live-action footage) so the reason there is so many effects is a lot like Everest.

But this - this makes sense. Ohhh - I am intrigued now with actually conveying subtlety in an amv (and I generally think Subtlety Is for Pussies).

[permetaform]

That's the amv approach - all problems can be fixed with a sledgehammer called after effects.

::laughs wryly and hides Saiyuki vid::

[pipsqueaky.livejournal.com]

If I've never seen a single episode of Smallville, can I still brainstorm with you anyway? :)

I totally grok what you are saying about Showing and Not Telling. That is one of the most difficult parts of vidding, IMO - especially when all the characters do is talk and talk and talk about their feelings instead of acting them out with nifty little visual metaphors that you can just pop on the timeline and make the audience go "ooooh".

IMO: Facial expressions are vital. Facial expressions are key. If you can get some good shots of Chloe looking determined or longing or alone or whatever, and connect those moments to Clark, the audience will get it.

I do remember a couple scenes (from vids, of course) involving things like newspaper clippings and online articles and so forth whenever Clark has just done some Big Mysterious Alien Thing. If you include, say, a clip of Chloe studying a photo of Clark in the paper alongside the headline "Local Boy Has Deep Dark Secret!" (or, you know, whatever the hell the headline actually was), that would get your point across. Show the investigation. Show Chloe following Clark's trail.

And there are plenty of ways to visually show that someone is being secretive, too. Walking away. Looking down, or not meeting someone's eye. Stepping back when they approach. Keeping a physical distance from them in general. A shot of Clark doing any of these things, followed by a focus on Chloe's reaction, would work wonders.

I don't know if this is the kind of help you were looking for. If you just wanted to talk about Showing and Not Telling in a general sense - oops, my bad. :)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh - no you are right on the money (and totally channeling the SV source without viewing a worthy skill)!

I do want to talk about Showing and Not Telling in general though -- how to get a point across without relying on a audience's knowledge of context clues (and I think you once had that very wonderful analogy of choosing between someone leaving a rose on a pillow or two characters in an intense scene and what would work better in a vid). So while talking heads are boring - reaction shots are not. Demonstrating a character's quest by showing the byproducts of the quest is another great point.

[f1renze.livejournal.com]

I like Pips' suggestions a lot. What's hardest for me about narrating - aside from composition, because *everything* seems to be about composition lately - is how to connect these parts well.

Like in your example:

To try to figure out exactly *how* I am gonna show Driven!Chloe and connect that to Clark and then connect that to her own feelings of loneliness and alienation.

Okay, so now you have clips of Driven!Chloe and Secretive!Clark and Alienated!Chloe. How do you invite the audience to make them cohere?

One way that comes to mind - and I have yet to really explore this - is to use visual likeness. sdwolfup made me aware of this wrt the vid I'm working on. Disconnected-looking parts could be made flow better when there's something consistent in the transitions, like the continued presence of a character. I thought maybe this could be expanded to things like variations of visual blending, e.g., using matching color tones and fades.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in general on making parts of plot cohere. I mean - I know you love vids that make you think, but how much is too much to ask of your audience?

Show And Tell is haaard.

[f1renze.livejournal.com]

Er...I meant sdwolfpup, of course.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Well - your vid is obviously something I am thinking about heavily here. The idea is you are mainly drawing these connections and needing your viewer to make these leaps because the idea is complicated on its own - the fact that it concerns and involves 2 characters fully (and not in a romantic sense) and one character by proxy, makes the job even more daunting.

But this also makes it FUN! Hard - but FUN!

So we need to discuss the overwhelming theme - what is your vid saying? and then address what it is you want your vid to say - and how to reconcile the two things.

And absolutely - using consistency (and breaking that) in things like color palettes, fades, blends all help in maintaining a narrative. Kind of like the AMV thing that absolut3destiny mentions but perhaps a bit more subtle. You really don't want to let your audience know you are manipulating them with certain tricks, but I definately think they are all part of helping you "show" your point.

Also - this means more Angel - right?

[f1renze.livejournal.com]

You really don't want to let your audience know you are manipulating them with certain tricks

Yes, though I LOVE when I can see the vidder's narrative tricks. Unless you meant not to be tacky with effects, hee.

Also - this means more Angel - right?

In conclusion: Clearly.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Yes, though I LOVE when I can see the vidder's narrative tricks

Well yes - because we are obsessed with vidding. We are like magicians watching for one another's tells.

[pipsqueaky.livejournal.com]

The post I made about the rose on the pillow is here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/pipsqueaky/16291.html). (And wow, I said that I was going to reply to everyone who commented, and I so didn't, and now I feel like a tool. Anyway.)

That is only sorta tangentially related to your question. The rose-on-the-pillow thing was about context; like, should you choose a visually-exciting-but-contextually-bland moment over a context-rich-but-visually-boring-or-confusing moment. Which is really more of a question about the intended audience, and how deeply they know the show, which ties in nicely with what wickedwords said about reading levels (http://www.livejournal.com/~wickedwords/211742.html).

The idea of Showing and Not Telling can become a question of context; if your audience is the type who know the show backwards and forwards, you could include all the talky-face you wanted, and they'd be able to remember what was said during those scenes and get the point of the vid that way. But from a purely aesthetic point of view, talky-face = annoying and bad, so - not the ideal solution.

The real problem here is when a show communicates a piece of information *verbally* (Chloe: "Clark, you are hiding things from me and I am upset!") and you need to figure out a way to communicate the same information *visually*.

(I guess the easy way around this would just be to include the relevant dialogue audio in the vid itself. But obviously this wouldn't work in all cases, or even in most of them.)

It really depends on what the information is. In this particular case, the information is "feelings". Chloe's feelings of curiosity and need and frustration. And feelings are usually best portrayed visually with facial expressions or reaction shots. If the information was something else - like if someone gave a big speech about how an apocalypse is coming, and we don't actually see the apocalypse onscreen but you still want to convey that sense of urgency and doom - an action or event is best communicated via another action or event. You'd want to show things blowing up, or battles, or the world going haywire and generally falling apart.

I'm just rambling now, sorry. Vidding talk is fun, but it is best to do it when you're fully awake and making sense. :)

I had this exact same problem with "Ordinary", BTW. Willow talked an awful lot about her crush on Xander, but she very rarely gave any onscreen visual clues, like giving him puppy-dog eyes or whatever. I had to use a combination of the lyrics, and Willow looking upset whenever other girls were around him, in order to get the idea across that she was interested in him romantically.

[piper47.livejournal.com]

I promise I didn't read any of this. I want to be surprised by this vid. If and when you finish it.

I'm being good I *promise*.

[elz.livejournal.com]

If this makes any sense at all.

No, it definitely does. And I think it works for the same reasons as it does in written fiction: if you make the viewer follow you from A to B to C, they feel that more than if you just yell "C! C! The answer is C!" It's more interesting and more engaging.

To try to figure out exactly *how* I am gonna show Driven!Chloe and connect that to Clark and then connect that to her own feelings of loneliness and alienation. Because somehow if she can figure out him or have him - one way or the other, it might make everything better.

Massively uninformed opinion here, but: with Chloe and Clark, isn't the whole show sort of the connective tissue between them? Because she's the keeper of the Wall of Weird, and he's the source of the mystery. I gather that they're less focused on standalone stories these days, but there were certainly plenty of them early on, and there must be a lot of shots of Chloe out investigating. Smallville, post-meteor-shower, is kind of an extension of Clark, and she focuses a lot of her drive on that, on getting to the bottom of individual cases as a way of getting to the bottom of Clark's secret, consciously or not. (Doesn't she have a line about that in Pariah? I wasn't entirely paying attention.) So could you go from Chloe with her clippings to Chloe investigating a couple of different cases to Chloe looking speculatively at Clark? Would that be A to B to C, or would that be some combination of letters that you're not actually trying to produce? ;)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

So could you go from Chloe with her clippings to Chloe investigating a couple of different cases to Chloe looking speculatively at Clark?

Well - yeah - I should have been more clear in my post that the example I am using is more just that - an example. There is more to it than just demonstrating that Chloe is investigating Clark. There is a lot to be tied into that. I kind of know what to do and how to do it, now I just have to figure out how to vocalize it to promote discussion of Showing in a vid.

I would have used a finished vid - but all mental processes have left me today.

[elz.livejournal.com]

I would have used a finished vid - but all mental processes have left me today.

Mine are on vacation. :)

I started thinking about what you meant and then I realized that maybe I didn't know what you meant. *g* In writing, I think of "show don't tell" as being the difference between giving us three pages of "Xander thought about how angry and frustrated he was, blah blah blah," and just having Xander curse and punch the wall. In vidding, does it mean choosing scenes that don't rely on dialogue to give them meaning? Or choosing the most efficient scenes to convey whatever it is that you want to convey? Scenes that are more accessible to people who haven't seen the source, are more meaningful to people who have, or are some combination of the two?

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

In vidding, does it mean choosing scenes that don't rely on dialogue to give them meaning? Or choosing the most efficient scenes to convey whatever it is that you want to convey? Scenes that are more accessible to people who haven't seen the source, are more meaningful to people who have, or are some combination of the two?

Yes. Hee - and I mean that, I do!

Vidding can be complicated and there can be a tendency to want to opt out for the easy answer (and while I think certain amounts of Gimmee are needed, I also think a good vid has a lot of balance).

Go for a clever interpretation and then try to figure out the most balanced and involving and emotional depiction that you can. Sometimes it is straightforward - but often you need to do some serious thinking about what different images mean and what you are saying and how to get this across. So there are 2 different ways to avoid telling:

1. Stay away from talking heads, context laden, but static scenes unless you absolutely *need* a static shot to built tension (I used a static shot from Flowers for Hobbes in Weeping Willow to build tension. The idea is that if you know the context, it hits you like a ton of bricks - but even if you don't, the dynamic of the scene should be strong enough on its own to communicate Something Big is Going Down). But other than that (tension builder) avoid this -even if this scene in the source *tells* exactly the story of your vid - it will be still be boring.

2. Don't go the easy road if you can deepen it a bit more - ABABAC might be easier to tell the audience, but inserting just something a bit more, a bit unexpected and insightful, will really get the point across. See Laura Shapiro's wonder commment below for an example from "Ing" that perfectly illustrates this.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I definitely know the pain you're describing -- how to I communicate my Deeper Meaning That Is Inconveniently Not Present In Lyrics Or Pretty Clips? How do I make meaning out of seemingly random connections? The art of editing, in other words...

I never thought of it as "showing, not telling" before, but you're right. Great panel idea!

With regard to the specifics of your vid, without knowing SV all that well, my idea is to intercut shots of Chloe doing investigatingy things with shots of Clark. So we see her doing research, working at the Torch, questioning somebody with a notebook in hand, etc., and after each shot of that, you have Clark, so that he looks like the subject of her investigation.

Maybe?

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Well I have seen many a vid where a dramatic moment ends up being two characters talking. And invariably when asked the vidder will say something along the lines of:

"Well Character X just told Character Y that he is in love with Character Y and it is this big moment for them and everyone knows that is why I used this scene."

And yeah for someone in the fandom (heavily) in that fandom, they might be able to pull the meaning out of that static shot of talking heads - but it is still a boring shot. Whereas using the reaction cuts from the same scene interspersed with a later moment of closeness or Character X gazing at (I do not gaze at Agent Scully) Character Y would be much more telling then whatever context dictates as The Moment.

And this is stuff we know - but it is important that we talk about it (with examples) because then it might help gel in someone else's head a bit more of what you so rightly call "the art of editing" - that is exactly what it is.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

X-Files reference! ::loves on you::

I have certainly used talking heads moments in my vids before -- complete with talky-face! Even intentionally! I do think the ability to get away with/not get away with shots like that depends on a few factors, like who your target audience is, how prominent the character/relationship you're vidding is in the fandom (see my example below, where a context-dependent shot would work for Spike-Buffy but not for Xander-Anya), and last but especially not least, how cool the camerawork is on your show. Like, Farscape has plenty of talking-head stuff that is not boring, because of the patented Farscape Nauseacam, not to mention its wacky lighting and color palette, etc.

But in general, I agree, it's better to get away from anything that depends on dialogue. For some shows, that's a lot harder than others. SV is *ass* when it comes to this -- you've either got people standing around talking (shot, two-shot, over-the-shoulder-shot, reverse-shot, OMG-I-am-so-bored-shot), or you've got wacktastic special effects. There's very little in between. Whereas with something like Firefly or, as I said, FS, there's more of a chance of finding good external and internal movement in any given clip.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

One of the first things I tell newbie vidders is to avoid talky-face in vids, but then I say that it has a place and when used effectively is wonderful -- but for someone just beginning to work within the confines of the medium it can really be difficult to master - so just avoid it until the confidence is up.

I remember a lot of the feedback I got for "Without Me" was "Liz! There is so much talky-face! What is up with that?" And my response was just that it is Lilah. She Smirks - her talky-face is MOVEMENT and part of who she is. Also - by the time I made that vid I was ready (confidence-wise) to assume that I could make a fairly good distinction when a flapping mouth would be a distraction and when it wll be overridden by a movement or camera angle...or a smirk.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* "Ing" uses talky-face intentionally, because you have to have it to set up the reaction shots in the choruses. And that's the *thing* about Anya: she goes on and on.

My early vids? I was so feral, I had no idea I wasn't supposed to use clips with flapping mouths. *g* Some of the clips make me cringe. OTOH, I like to think I had decent instincts: most of the time I used clips that *didn't* have flapping mouths. I even remember working to avoid them, but not with any concrete objective. I'd put in the clip I wanted and then think "that looks weird" and take it out, without ever consciously realizing *why* it looked weird.

We learn a lot.

Aaaand if I'd bothered to read the other comments...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I would've seen that you've already heard this idea a few times. :p I am lame and unimaginative!

Re: Aaaand if I'd bothered to read the other comments...

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Aww - no worries. I am not communicating myself effectively and I have edited my post to reflect this.

See, what I want to show is much more complicated than just Chloe investigating Clark -- and normally I wouldn't use a vid in progress as an example, because that sucks. But my brain is fried and I just can't think of anything else that is *not* a vid in progress.

At this moment - I can't even remember my own finished vids. So I want to discuss how we do this - Show and not tell - and use vids as an example and yet I am at work and (the afore-mentioned brain fry) and so I post anyway and get a lot of people thinking about a vid I'm making (which is very nice of them) where I wanted to talk about vids that have already done this.

All in all, it has restored my faith in LJ. Cause vidders are just nice and pleasant people.

Re: Aaaand if I'd bothered to read the other comments...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

We try. (:

Quick example from my most recent vid:

In Ing, I was struck right away by the lyric "I had a little fling that we won't be mentioning." My first thought was that this was the SpikeSex, but I quickly realized that that had to come later. No, the little fling was a little fling with being a vengeance demon for a thousand years, which in the time we know Anya is held uncomfortably distant by everyone (but especially Xander). Nobody wants to mention it. Anya, clearly, thinks it's no big deal at all, and talks about it fairly often, but the others are (understandably) freaked out by all the carnage.

Now, if I had just wanted to "tell", I'd have used a clip of Xander telling her to shut up about being a demon, a clip where a viewer very familiar with the context would know that that's what they're talking about. Everyone else would go "buh?" And really, that would be most people, lots and lots of people going "buh?", because very few fans have studied the Anya-Xander storyline with the kind of attention to detail that, say, Spike-Buffy gets. So it would be talking heads and arm-waving and it wouldn't mean anything in particular.

Instead, I used a shot of lots of dead people, people Anyanka had killed, and followed it with a clip of bloody-gloved Anya waving and drinking and smiling, as if to say, "Well, obviously you guys are all bugged by the carnage, but it was just good clean fun to me!"

This is showing, not telling. The viewer and the vidder work together to turn the lyric into a metaphor that matches the clips, and create meaning out of that juxtaposition.

Result: people keep telling me it's their favorite moment in the vid. (:

Is this what you meant?

Re: Aaaand if I'd bothered to read the other comments...

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

AND YES!!! Whee - I just commented on your other comment a "what if" type scenario but what you are describing is PERFECT!

Re: Aaaand if I'd bothered to read the other comments...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Whee!

[heresluck]

I have so much I want to say about this but I have to go dissertate. Dammit. More later I hope.

[permetaform]

::am blanking too:: er. I go for sledgehammers. and shiny. and figure that if the deeper meaning isn't conveyed...hey at least it was pretty?? ::strains:: erm.

incoherent now. apologies. more later. yes.

also, gattaca vid. me and lierdumoa's insane vidding project. bwah!