(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

continued from previous post

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Finally, the heart of the matter:

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?

I used to feel this way a lot, I mean practically all the time, when I first started vidding. I'd go to the computer holding one perfect clip in my mind, the clip/lyric match-up that inspired the entire project, only to find out that it didn't work at all -- too short, the angle all wrong, talky mouths, or maybe it just didn't at all look in reality the way it looked in my head. For my first few vids, at least 50% of my choices were made with resignation, second choices all, because my first choices hadn't worked out or didn't, in fact, exist.

This is of course particularly true for slash vids. Fraser and Ray are never going to give you those onscreen kisses you want, let alone the oodles of hot sex. Vidders of canon relationships have an easier time of it, in a way, because they have kisses and more available to them.

As you point out, a writer can make anything she wants, pretty much. Small wonder that so much of fanfic is so explicit -- not just sexually, but emotionally explicit. Everything we want to see, but the show doesn't give us, is laid out often in minute detail.

Vidding, OTOH, is all about what's *im*plicit. It makes so much sense to me that the first vids were slash vids: vidders grabbing the clips of all those smoldering glances and supposedly casual shoulder clasps, pointing and squealing "There! There! See?" Those clips were *proof* of a subtext the vidder felt when she watched the show.

Although vids rely on movement, which implies action, and although vids must of course use clips of things that actually happened in canon, they are, whether they deal with relationships, individuals, or overarching themes, all about subtext.

Once I started letting go of my preconceptions about which clips I *needed*, I found that, like a writer, I was able pretty much to make whatever I wanted out of the materials at hand. As a vidder, my interest lies in retelling canonical stories with different emphases, exploring events or feelings that might have gotten glossed over in the show, or characters that received short shrift. I think of this as "telling deeper." And again, that's all about subtext: picking a clip not because of what it literally shows, but because of the emotional information it carries -- which can be due to context, movement, facial expression, or even something as deceptively shallow as color.

Does this make any sense to you?

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Aarghh -- Laura, this totally makes sense, and leads me off into a whole bunch of new thoughts, and I'd love nothing more than to take several hours and carry on this whole conversation, except that after a hellish work week I'm about to fly off to Baltimore, and so--it'll have to be next week, drat, but I've bookmarked the thread and shall return. Thank you so much for all of this, you (and Rache, and Killa) rock beyond the telling, and I only wish we could all sit down together right now and actually *talk* about this stuff. *g*

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I wish we could talk in RL, too. ::pout::

But not to worry. Come back and look me up. (: Seagulls and beer await you.

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[therealjae.livejournal.com]

As a vidder, my interest lies in retelling canonical stories with different emphases, exploring events or feelings that might have gotten glossed over in the show, or characters that received short shrift. I think of this as "telling deeper."

Thank you, my dear, for summing up exactly what writing fanfiction (at least in the Turningverse) has felt like for me, in one wonderful little sentence. :-) I've recently branched out into both fanfiction that tells more original stories and original fiction, and I've enjoyed it, but my real fanfiction love will always be what you describe here.

-J

Re: continued from previous post

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Glad to help!