A Vid With Words. My Mind is Blown.

[sisabet]

Last night I got enough source clipped that I could start laying clips in the timeline, except I hadn't edited my song and even after I edited out a bunch of stuff I need, renenet told me to take it down some more. So I did. I grumbled but I did and I swear to you that it was only around 11:30 by then. But I wanted to lay two clips before I went to bed and the next thing you know, it is 2:00am and I am scrubbing the timeline and lost.

Cause that is how it works. I don't remember vidding. I see clips now and I know they are supposed to be there, but I didn't really think about them getting there. Just now - I ran home with the sole purpose of checking in with sockkpuppett about the end of the BBP (YAY!) and Premiere was there and open and I only sat down for a minute! ACK!!! And then it is time to leave and I see what I am doing and I like it - it is what I am supposed to be doing there, but I wasn't thinking when I did it. I was vidding.

I'm actually pondering this mental shutdown thing fairly hard cause that is how I know I am going into Vid Farr: I stop thinking and it just happens. And today at ds_flashfiction the challenge was songfic, except as cesperanza bravely said - not like traditional songfic - to think more like a vidder. A vid with words. Which blew my mind a bit cause, well first of all, I don't think while vidding. Secondly, most of my vids are heavily influenced by fanfic. Not fanon, I don't give a shit if Lex has a Japanese Rock Garden on a terrace in Metropolis somewhere. I'd like to think that he does, just because Japanese Rock Gardens are really nice and it is a scenic place for Clark to land, but I'm not basing vids on it.

But fanfiction - sure, yeah. A story that highlights some aspect of the character that the source hints at but never has time to explore? If it reads real to me - I am there. A lot of my vids, just off the top of my head, are pretty heavily influenced by things I have read: "Without You I'm Nothing" and "Closer" are all just... well, I don't think I am all that insightful, alone. "Peacekeeper" was a reaction to anti-Buffy shite that I have read for years. "S.O.S." wasn't fanfiction based, because I never read Farscape fic, but I did spend years discussing My Dead Blue John with just_eunice. We are talking hours upon hours of DBJ talks. And it isn't just fic or meta or essays (cause yeah - that, too)-- missmurchison sent me poetry while I was vidding "Closer" and lately I keep ending up at the library doing research on Parchman Farms for a Farscape project or Max Wertheimer and Arthur Rimbaud for a Due South idea, cause I need to know this stuff, fresh, before I start.

Pre-Vid I am nothing but think. The song is on repeat for forever. I don't get tired of a song as long as I am still figuring it out and it is still telling me something. So listening to one song for weeks at a time is a joy. Like a brain teaser. And I'll read fic. I'll search for something that resonates with me - that bounces off the source and the song. There is a lot of thinking going on here. Too much, if you are misfortunate to end up with me in chat when I am on a roll in a Pre-Vid state. But they aren't all my thoughts. They are this mish-mosh of other people's insights and fic and possibly something else that I haven't even considered. But when you get to the timeline, everything is fair game.

And Pre-Vid State can strike at any time. Sometimes you have no intention of vidding something. But someone says something about a character - let us call her Lorelei just for fun's sake. And you still have no desire to vid this character, but that comment makes you think. And you think some more and someone else says something and OMG you do not agree with that and obviously this person has no idea what is going on in Lorelei's head, much less her feelings about Luke and then you start thinking about Luke and Lorelei and what all is going on with them and suddenly you realize that the song you have been hitting repeat on (without thinking) while you are thinking about them, is totally about them!!! AND YOU MUST VID THIS!!!!

But when I lay clips - it is just mainly a product of whatever was driving the previd. The times where I am actually sitting and thinking and plodding along have resulted in vids that are not nearly as rewarding. Or don't end up being vids at all.

So the concept of making a vid with words is blowing my mind a bit cause how would you approach that? I mean, I get the entire "I was inspired by this song to write this story" and yeah, I can see that. But, the other, the vid with words is much more interesting to me cause I don't know where to start. Like, okay, I have plenty of songs that I will probably never vid, not because they don't mean something very specific and fannish, but because I don't have the source. Either the events that song outlines happened offscreen or it occurred pre or post canon and while I can still *see* the vid, the source to support it wasn't filmed. Sometimes I can work around it anyway, so like, I can still see that Kings of Leon's "The Bucket" is totally about Angel and Spike post "Not Fade Away" but I can vid it anyway. Some vids, not so much.

So, if there isn't the source maybe there should be the words. And that is as far as I get.

If Word was set up with a timeline, maybe I could write. Except then it would be "Okay, so you know how such and such says "Blah, blah, blah" in Best Story Ever? Well - it is like that only with a bit of dialogue from "Your Ep Title Here" from second season and then remember when BigOleMetaFan posted her incredible essay about how such and such's dietary habits throughout season 4 point to his clinical depression? That too." and it is just so much easier to show you than explain.

Comments

[vagabondage.livejournal.com]

It's not really what the challenge is about, I don't think, but nancy and I once wrote a story that was based on, inspired by, and timed to read with a certain song. It was a cool way to write.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

See, I find the process of writing to be fascinating just in itself - that you did it timed to a song, based the beats and just... well aren't you impressed by this?

And all day I've had Mos Def's Fear Not of Man kind of on this backbeat repeat in my head. Like I realize I am kind of reading and parsing thoughts within the word rhythm of this song - so if you were here I could show you how that works or if I was vidding it, I could definitely show you how it is working but the only thing I can do in prose is point to the lyrics and say "All over the world hearts pound with the rhythm/Fear not of men because men must die/Mind before matter and soul before flesh/Angels for the pain keep a record in time" and hope that it reads as it sounds to me -- but I don't know that the cadence would be natural and carry across on the page.

Writing - it is so open-ended and out of control and you have so little control over the senses of the audience that... it scares me shitless to be honest.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I think about structure and points -- just not if I am in vid farr -- generally I've worked all that out somewhere in my brain and it just needs me to shut up and vid once I finally get to the timeline. Sometimes.

And then sometimes after a draft, I'll notice - or more likely my beta - will point out some place where I repeat something or where I have some new kind of theme emerging that I didn't realize and so when you go back in to revise or redo -- typically that is the hardest thinking I will do in the vid. This is why I put of revisions for months sometimes -- it takes me a while to work my brain around concepts.

car

[retired-mom.livejournal.com]

call me at work...love, mom