My number 1 advice when vidding is to not be subtle - you have 3.5 minutes to make your point and get out and visually conveying a story even with solid lyrical backing is incredible difficult, especially if you are presenting an argument that was not either explicit in the source material or to an an audience presumably not as familiar with the source as you.
I adore subtlety - I believe show not tell is way superior for fiction. I don’t like it when I am spoon fed twists and turns in a movie or television show but all of those mediums have a lot more time and space to get an idea across. I’m super interested in long form vidding and am wondering if a bit more subtlety might be rewarding since the time investment is so much longer. I worry though about losing an audience when you are asking for 6 plus minutes of their focus if they aren’t hooked both on the visuals and where the story/argument goes is clearly in the beats.
I think that is probably the issue with Stand Back, actually. I am asking too much of the audience - first I am asking them to suspend cheesey disbelief due to the combination of song and source material. I am then, more or less, presenting a slash pairing argument which highlights Dean’s repression. None of this is new or novel or exciting and while I did put more call backs to hell in the part of the vid that is illusion, I don’t think it was enough to keep the audience focus and investment in the vid itself - the reveal isn’t until the last minute and while 3 minutes does not seem that long, asking for a viewers complete and total focus without enough of a reward promised that something is off here, something isn’t right - trust me and come down this path with me. Therefore the idea that Dean is back from hell and yet something is still off needs to be hammered in.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out way to do that and also maintain the viewers ease so that the reveal was more emotionally rewarding. The show could EASILY decide to end with this being all a hallucination Dean is having in hell! I mean Dallas had that one season that was all a dream, so if the show wanted to do that they could and it would be...affecting (also infuriating). If I wrote fic and I wanted to end with the entire thing being a hallucination I could also do that and my authorial intent would probably carry through. Vids are just different - so I’m still figuring this one out.
So really it comes down to intent and how you want to make your audience work to figure out yours (or any sometimes with vids, lol - I got a comment on a vid saying it was just random clips set to Santa Buddy and was hilarious so it was a nice comment that I then had a nervous breakdown over, lol). You also have to take into account that your audience is gonna approach the vid from whatever skill at reading vids they have developed be it “wow those clips move to the beat!” or “the complexities of the relationship are really laid out here and I especially loved that moment in the bridge where we understood that this is a leap of faith”
I think probably one of my only real talent at this is making a cohesive narrative that someone can follow. I do that by not being subtle and so that’s my advice to other vidders - that doesn’t mean you have to do it or the goal of finding that perfect audience of one WHO GETS IT isn’t just as great. I often layer a lot of things in a vid and hope the audience gets the wider theme “omg Victoria is a polar bear. OMG they are BOTH polar bears!” Is great! But then you get that one person who says “shit they are in a snow globe” and you dance up and down the block.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-12-13 05:43 pm (UTC)My number 1 advice when vidding is to not be subtle - you have 3.5 minutes to make your point and get out and visually conveying a story even with solid lyrical backing is incredible difficult, especially if you are presenting an argument that was not either explicit in the source material or to an an audience presumably not as familiar with the source as you.
I adore subtlety - I believe show not tell is way superior for fiction. I don’t like it when I am spoon fed twists and turns in a movie or television show but all of those mediums have a lot more time and space to get an idea across. I’m super interested in long form vidding and am wondering if a bit more subtlety might be rewarding since the time investment is so much longer. I worry though about losing an audience when you are asking for 6 plus minutes of their focus if they aren’t hooked both on the visuals and where the story/argument goes is clearly in the beats.
I think that is probably the issue with Stand Back, actually. I am asking too much of the audience - first I am asking them to suspend cheesey disbelief due to the combination of song and source material. I am then, more or less, presenting a slash pairing argument which highlights Dean’s repression. None of this is new or novel or exciting and while I did put more call backs to hell in the part of the vid that is illusion, I don’t think it was enough to keep the audience focus and investment in the vid itself - the reveal isn’t until the last minute and while 3 minutes does not seem that long, asking for a viewers complete and total focus without enough of a reward promised that something is off here, something isn’t right - trust me and come down this path with me. Therefore the idea that Dean is back from hell and yet something is still off needs to be hammered in.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out way to do that and also maintain the viewers ease so that the reveal was more emotionally rewarding. The show could EASILY decide to end with this being all a hallucination Dean is having in hell! I mean Dallas had that one season that was all a dream, so if the show wanted to do that they could and it would be...affecting (also infuriating). If I wrote fic and I wanted to end with the entire thing being a hallucination I could also do that and my authorial intent would probably carry through. Vids are just different - so I’m still figuring this one out.
So really it comes down to intent and how you want to make your audience work to figure out yours (or any sometimes with vids, lol - I got a comment on a vid saying it was just random clips set to Santa Buddy and was hilarious so it was a nice comment that I then had a nervous breakdown over, lol). You also have to take into account that your audience is gonna approach the vid from whatever skill at reading vids they have developed be it “wow those clips move to the beat!” or “the complexities of the relationship are really laid out here and I especially loved that moment in the bridge where we understood that this is a leap of faith”
I think probably one of my only real talent at this is making a cohesive narrative that someone can follow. I do that by not being subtle and so that’s my advice to other vidders - that doesn’t mean you have to do it or the goal of finding that perfect audience of one WHO GETS IT isn’t just as great. I often layer a lot of things in a vid and hope the audience gets the wider theme “omg Victoria is a polar bear. OMG they are BOTH polar bears!” Is great! But then you get that one person who says “shit they are in a snow globe” and you dance up and down the block.