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.

[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. :)

[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? ;)

[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?

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!

[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!