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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
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?
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.