(no subject)

[katallison]

My tiredness is epochal. It is legion. It is like the forces of Mordor attacking Helm's Deep, or something. In the rain.

And yet it is also oh, so boring, so I shall not discuss it further. I could witter on about my guilt over having fallen behind in posting recs for crack_van -- see, I remember now why I never did a recs page, there's such fraughtness in the whole thing, the myriad possibilities of giving offense or causing sniffliness or whatever, especially in dS.

Or I could try to get a handle on some of the thoughts I had in response to laurashapiro's recent post, about losing her squee. (Laura! You know I love you! My failure to respond to your post is just due to the epochal tiredness, and also I am a jerk!) And yet the thoughts aren't really so much about Laura's post as they are about something barkley posted not long ago, about vidding and over-vidded scenes in due South, the reading of which gave me a chill. Which is not (I hasten to add) a bad thing, and I wish my ensuing comments to cause no bad feelings for Barkley or anyone else posting in that thread.

The thing is--OK, I *get* the deal about over-vidded scenes. I have heard numerous people say that they really can't deal with seeing any more Duncan/Methos vids, because every single clip extant of Methos, or Methos and Duncan together, has been included in so very, very many vids that they've burned out their emotional charge. Those scenes have, as it were, lost their squee-factor. And I *get* that.

But I find myself thinking that maybe that's an occupational hazard of vidding. Vidders, after all, are working within a really very constrained space--there's the clips, there's the song, and beyond a certain point they're unalterable, you have to work with what you're given, and you can interpret and shade and combine these given factors to create new layers of meaning, sure, no question. But--

OK, speaking as a writer? And switching it back to dS for a moment--there are indeed overwritten, as well as over-vidded, scenes in the fandom, of course, and yet I know that there's no scene in the show so overly familiar that I couldn't take it and twist it in a hundred new directions--new POV, alternate backstories, different emotional overtones and implications and flavorings. I was reading dsudis's new story lately (and hey, Dira! I owe you much feedback! Reprise the "I am a jerk!" music!), and one thing that struck me was how she took little bits and shards from the episodes, and so casually, masterfully, with a flick of the wrist, cast them into an entirely new storyline.

I feel confident that, as a writer, I could keep confabulating dS stories until I'm too old to see the keyboard, and still not get to the end of the stuff I could come up with, or want to say. The one where everyone's born ten years earlier and Ray's prime Vietnam draft-bait and flees into Canada. The one where Fraser's the charismatic cult-leader, bent on a moral regeneration of the world, who ends up wreaking havoc. The really dark one with Vecchio and RayK and Fraser all dealing with the aftermath of Armando.

Which is to say, it's all AU, but as a writer I have that available to me. I'm loosely bounded by canon, sure, in the sense that the characters are who they are and I have to wholly mindful of that when I twist them into new situations. But still ...

And, see, what's really intriguing to me is that quite a few of the most outstanding vidders I know also have made a mark as writers and have produced some really fine stories, but feel that in vidding they've really found their metier, their voice. What I keep wanting to ask--and I'm terribly afraid here of sounding patronizing or dismissive or something, when that's not at all what I'm feeling--is, how do you come to terms with the relative limitations you work under in vidding? How do you deal with the frustration of not having that *one* scene, that *one* clip, that you really need, because the goddamned TPTB didn't see fit to film it? How do you not burn out when you're looking at the same set scenes over and over again? How do you keep your squeee?

All of which is really, I guess, just a way of saying I'm fundamentally a writer and not a vidder; as much as some vids have opened my head up with a great whoooshing sound, when trying to do vids I end up feeling thwarted and hampered. But still, I'm curious about how others experience it.

And I should just set this entry aside for re-thinking and editing in the morning, when I'm less epochally tired, but I'll probably just hit "update" and take my lumps. And stagger off to bed. Maybe tonight I'll get some sleep, which would be nice.

Comments

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Killa already said a lot of useful things here, but I've been thinking for twelve hours about how I'm going to respond, and I just can't stop myself at this point. (:

First of all:

Or I could try to get a handle on some of the thoughts I had in response to laurashapiro's recent post, about losing her squee. (Laura! You know I love you! My failure to respond to your post is just due to the epochal tiredness, and also I am a jerk!)

*laugh* I'll buy the epochal tiredness, but not the jerk part.

I want to mention that my current squeelessness is very much unrelated to vidding, in particular (which still provides me creative squee if not the same kind of fannish squee that reading and writing fic did). And it's not to do with that "it's all been done before" feeling that seems to be needling you. I just feel sort of...worn out and used up, and I think that's coming from the fact that I feel I've thought, said, written, or vidded pretty much everything I want to about my two major shows. kormantic said I need a new fandom, and she's probably right.

I also want to jump in on this:

something barkley posted not long ago, about vidding and over-vidded scenes in due South, the reading of which gave me a chill.

...because my answer to Barkley was that, with DS in particular, I think the field is wide open. There just aren't that many DS vids. I think the both of you, and any DS vidders for that matter, should not even *think* about "over-vidded" clips -- there are, what, 25 vids for the whole fandom? Come on.

And I do think that what killabeez said is true, that considering your audience is relevant: DS fans, in general, are going to yum your vids up with a big spoon. Even if it weren't for the scarcity issue, we who love these characters want to see them, want to see what you have to say about them, and don't care a wet slap if we've seen that underwater kiss or train station platform shot a bazillion times.

Not so for non-DS fans, it's true. But are they your target audience? If so, then you may want to think about what will appeal to them, too. But I don't think that means freaking out over "over-vidded" clips.

I also think "over-vidded" clips (yes, I always put that in quotes, because it's not a phrase I really believe in) have a few advantages, in that there's a kind of money shot feeling about most of them which you can twist, bend, reverse, or exploit depending on how you use them. They have a predictable emotional impact, which is a big deal, really -- most clips, decontextualized, don't offer you any kind of emotional givens. So, for example, say you want to use the shot of Fraser running along the platform with his hand outstretched. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, is going to associate that with Victoria, even if we don't see her in the clip. So you could cleverly create storyline that has a reference to Victoria without ever showing her in the vid. Or, you could play on the deeper associations with the clip: Fraser willing to give everything up, Fraser desperate. That clip then becomes a metaphor for desperation, a kind of black hopeless striving, maybe. You've eschewed literalism, your audience is riveted, and you're cooking with gas.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that clips never mean only what they appear to mean.

(continued)