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Show And Tell - Just A Game I Play, When I Wanna Say
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.
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.
no subject
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? ;)
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.