Vividcon part 1: con report

[bironic]

I had a great time at Vividcon this weekend. It was my third time going, over a span of six years, and each one has felt more comfortable than the last. I learn more about the history of vidding and vidders and pick up more skills and get to know more people, or get to know people better.

This year's new experience was encountering again and again people's love for Starships. It just fills my heart with joy that it makes people so happy, and it's surreal (but also a thrill) to, for example, hear it mentioned as an annual Club Vivid favorite, or to learn that it was included in a suite of vids that helped convince a college to archive older fanvids. Although I have not yet learned how to react to effusive compliments, eep.

Social-type highlights of the con: or, In which bironic turns on her extrovert:

- Meeting sheafrotherdon after reading her stories for more than 10 years (?!) and getting to steal her for dinner one night. I was nervous about being able to sustain conversation but she is such a wonderful, thoughtful, centered, interesting speaker and engaged listener that it was simply a delight.

- Dressing up as a low-budget Winter Soldier for Club Vivid; getting to take silly pictures with Cate in her amazing Peggy Carter-as-Captain America costume and with bradcpu and millylicious in their excellent Kirk & Spock costumes. As expected, my getup was too warm for the occasion, but whatever, it was a lot of fun. In her write-up, giandujakiss said it was honestly a bit terrifying, so: success. :)

- Low-key in-room Shabbat service with kass, sheafrotherdon, the_shoshanna, grammarwoman, norah and someone else I'm forgetting thefourthvine

- Discovering one of the con attendees is from my hometown and went to the same high school

- Lunch conversation about multifandom vidding with jetpack_monkey and echan before the "Make Mine Multi" panel. I wish there'd been more time to talk to Nate this weekend.

- Dinner with the endlessly lovely and brainy futuransky, thuviaptarth and lola; sadly, I'd just missed were_duck's visit, and cathexys had also already left

- Joining arduinna's surprise birthday party, sharing in the delicious cupcakes, and looking around the room at all the Big Name Vidders and feeling hopelessly young and lucky and like my heart was full

- Flailing all over anoel for making two of my favorite vids of the con

- Hugs

So many others I enjoyed either having my first full conversations with or talking to again after three years: par_avion, gwyneth, serrico, tencel, bradcpu, morgandawn, joyo, thevetia, killabeez, pipsqueaky, ghost_lingering, talitha78, kiki_miserychic, franzeska, cherryice, I know I'm forgetting some, argh.

I missed laurashapiro, though. :(

I shared a room with new acquaintances neery and lovelokest, who were both fun to talk to, although there weren't too many chances to do that since most of the time I was in the room I was trying (ever the optimist) to sleep.

Also it was a hoot to say hello to the Boston or recently-Boston crew in Chicago: thirdblindmouse, therienne, mollyamory, arduinna, shati, scribe and laura47. shati and I were on the same flight today, one row apart, so that was fun and helped ease the transition from con to home.


Panels

The first session, History of Escapade: The Digital Transition, made me nostalgic for shows I've barely or never watched. *cough Highlander cough* melina provided fascinating insights into the early styles and philosophies of digital vidding at Escapade. Was introduced to an infamous and still powerful Oz vid, Prison Sex, by Jo.

The three fandom-specific panels I went to, Phases of the MCU, BtVS: Nummy Treats and Vidding Doctor Who, served as vid primers with various amounts of commentary/analysis and history.

I would have liked a broader view of early BtVS vids, but that may have been my own ignorance; I didn't realize Nummy Treats referred to a specific mailing list and group of fans. The panel did introduce me to a landmark Buffy/Faith vid I hadn't been aware of, Superstar by heresluck, as well as a fabulous Spike vid that I have to track down from Slayage 2005; something about all the pieces fitting together, Schism, by Vrya.

millylicious had some interesting things to say about the challenges of vidding Doctor Who as a character with a lot of faces and as a show with decades of source material of varying quality. We discussed ways to unify the character across faces/actors—single "I" narrator, matching motion, visual parallels, etc.—and the way vidders can choose to depict the Doctor as one person across time or as a character unto himself with each new regeneration; if the latter, each incarnation inspires different music choices, styles, narratives. I liked the sequence during greensilver/trelkez's Take On Me where the Doctor tries on clothes like he's trying on personalities to rediscover who he is after regenerating, and I loved being introduced to Blank Space by purplefringe and such_heights (Doctor/Master).

Things I jotted down during Survival of the Viddest, which was about archiving:
- Lots of copies keeps stuff safe
- Nonprofit/academia/museums may be more committed to preservation
- One option is use your own (or a trusted) server for downloads
- Put metadata in your video file (LlamaEnc does this); put your name in your video file name
- It's easy to win a takedown battle if you make a big stink. Although it's easier if you have clout.
- digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving
- Explore creating a Critical Commons account
- Don't physically store hard-copy backups in a place you wouldn't be comfortable in yourself

I was very much looking forward to Nate's Make Mine Multi, and it didn't disappoint. Having made one small (5 sources) and two big (40-80+ sources) multifandom vids, I came to the panel with a mix of things I've learned and things I'd like to learn from others and was keen to talk research, definition of scope, structure, process, philosophy, flow, the advantages and disadvantages of working on a tight deadline, etc. I hope I didn't speak up too much. Said the person who usually sits quietly in the back, ha.

It was a two-hour panel in a well-attended room with lively discussion, very little of which I wrote down. Here's what I did note:
- How do you connect sources: dance, disorientation, narrative/themes, visual similarity…
- Argument about 3 sources is more specific to those sources, whereas argument about 100+ sources is more universal
- When do you tip from "about these sources" to "a pattern"? One answer: ask, Do I need to know canon X to get what you're saying?
- Even more so than in a single-source vid, you are the voice, you are the one who sees the connections and presents the argument or shapes the narrative
- Only knowing a source through multifandom vid research can give you a bad association with that source if your vid is about something troubling
- Multiple characters become one character
- Song/music structure can define the number of sources you use; one vidder couldn't figure out why 5-source vid wasn't working until she realized the song had 4 parts to it and cut one source out
- Viewers' brainpower is already going toward making sense of the multi-sourced clips, so there's less left to interpret any divergences from lyrics
- New-to-me research idea: IMDB keyword search
- Groupings and metabuilds can help when you don't have a narrative; Nate's Gene Kelly example: dancing alone, with props, with partners, with world, alone again

jarrow's and in absentia laurashapiro's session Stop, Collaborate, & Listen started with a rundown of the pros and cons of working together on vids and then broke for a mixer exercise in which people with vid ideas talked to people who might be willing to offer help, from full collaboration to beta to concept development to help finding source and song. There were some neat ideas, and several people offered specialty services to the room in general. Also jarrow proved every inch the second-grade teacher he cheerfully announced himself to be. Adorable.

Vidding as Media Literacy featured acafan panelists futuransky, lola and cathexys, each of whom brought along 1-2 vidders whose work they have used in their classrooms: giandujakiss (A Different Kind of Love Song), kiki_miserychic (***Flawless) and sisabet/sweetestdrain (On the Prowl), respectively. They brought up a slew of provocative questions about the uses of vids in education and in wider cultural conversations that there just wasn't time to address. It ought to have been a two-hour panel, alas. Here is futuransky's Prezi that she updated during the panel.

All I wrote down was:
- [Vids can be used when] people teach critical analysis and tools of authorship outside of academia
- Understanding "On the Prowl" was a capstone of cathexys' uni course; students watched three times over the semester
- "***Flawless" as essay assignment after class discussion
- Both vids stemmed from conflicting feelings about source/trope; love/shame; criticism and celebration; the ambivalence is the resolution (and perhaps the reason the vids are so compelling)
- Issues of losing the framing and context when a vid travels outside its original fandom circles
- Class talked to vidder: humanized process, they related to her on a creative/creator level
- "Seeing 'Superstar' changed the way I think and write"
- "A Different Kind of Love Song" – the fans are normalized
- Get the students where the love sits, even if they don't know the source(s)
- "Frat boys wept"
- Most vids are about the emotional connection to the source, but teaching & advocacy examples tend to be intellectual critiques, respectable

franzeska walked through basic rotoscoping and motion tracking in Curse You, After Effects!, and let me tell you, those 15 minutes showed me how to solve a problem that's caused a 95%-complete SGA vid to sit on my computer for two years. Jazzed to see if I can finish it now.



And with that, I am out of brain. Choosing to blame all the adjectives and "to be" constructions in this post on the fact that I haven't had a full night's sleep in a week! Vid recs to follow at some point here.

ETA: Other people's con reports: giandujakiss, kass, sheafrotherdon, jetpack_monkey, ghost-lingering on the fandom-specific panels

Comments

[cathexys]

What an amazing writeup! It's like I'm reliving everything as I'm reading it!

I was so sad to hear I'd missed dinner (and by just like two hours, bc Lola's plane was only two hours later). But it was great meeting you F2F and at least getting to talk a little but. \o/

[bironic]

Alas. Maybe next time. Glad you enjoyed the write-up, at least - funny, it seemed so quick-and-dirty to me, but possibly that means it was the right length for online reading!

[chagrined]

that "make mine multi" panel is one i wish i could have been able to see, heh. since the most "multi" i've ever made a vid is only 2 sources (and that was doctor who & torchwood so they're connected to start with, so i don't consider that multi at all), i find even the idea of multivids very overwhelming. so tho i have had many ideas for them over the years, have never actually started working on any of them.

anyway, thx for the interesting writeup. :)

[bironic]

Sure thing. That panel was neat, with a range of multividding experience among audience members. The idea *is* overwhelming, I think, but maybe it's like regular vidding, just magnified - when you have the right idea, the desire to see it realized overcomes the daunting prospect of actually making it.

[laurashapiro]

Thank you for writing this up! For obvious reasons, I am particularly appreciating con reports this year.

I missed you, too! But it sounds like a great year for you, and that makes me happy.

[bironic]

It *was* great, but not perfect - absent LJ/DW friends being a major factor. Glad you enjoyed the write-up. I hope the VVC comm creates a roundup post for people to link their reports, as I'm sure I've only seen a few of the ones that are out there. Although I suppose I could just do a DW search. Hm.

[kass]

So glad to have you there for our little Shabbat shindig! The other person there was thefourthvine.

[bironic]

Oh, I hadn't realized! Neat.

[heresluck]

The Spike vid is Schism. It's probably been reposted to YouTube, as well. It blew EVERYBODY's mind. It still blows my mind. Twelve years later, Vrya's work holds up better than just about anybody else's from the Nummy Treat era.

FWIW, the NT list had about 1,000 members in its heyday, with dozens of vids posted to the Buffyverse Music Video Database (which auto-posted announcements to NT) in any given week, so while the list was indeed "a specific group of fans" in that it was for posting, watching, and discussing Buffyverse vids, it was not exactly a *small* group.

[bironic]

Ah, thank you for the Spike vid link. You're right, it's on YouTube as well. I look forward to watching it again. The style wasn't something I'd seen much of before, being newish to vid fandom, the use of repetition to hammer home the conflict among all of Spike's often contradictory facets.

>>while the list was indeed "a specific group of fans" in that it was for posting, watching, and discussing Buffyverse vids, it was not exactly a *small* group.

Ah, I didn't realize that either. I may have missed some of the context given during sisabet's presentation, or perhaps I ought to just look it up on Fanlore! I would like to learn more about what BtVS fandom was like while the show was still airing, as someone who was obsessive about the show and devoured fanfic but didn't participate on discussion boards/listservs or watch vids (but did go to Slayage once). Another item on the to-do list.... I also look forward to your post about the Nummy Treats panel (if you post it as it sounded like you wanted to) and hearing another perspective from someone who was there at the time. If that was even English. Eesh, Tuesdays. :)

[heresluck]

I haven't looked at the NT entry on Fanlore in a while. Or the BMVD. I should probably do that...

Like a lot of lists, NT sometimes seemed smaller than it was; lots of people were just there for the vid announcements, so only 40-100 people were active in any given round of discussion (though not always the same 40-100!). Many of them have since drifted away from vidding, or Buffy, or fandom altogether. But a fair number of VVC attendees did meet each other on that list or on the Band of Buggered forums. Vidder Boot Camp was some serious business. Heh.

I don't know much about what the wider fandom was like, I have to say; I really was only active on the NT list and reading a small handful of LJs -- that was back when you had to be offered an invite code to join LJ, so I lurked for months reading ep reviews before I got up the courage to ask someone for a code.

And I do want to post panel notes! ...which I should do sooner rather than later, since I didn't actually write anything down this year. *facepalm*

[bironic]

Oh, and "Superstar" is freaking spectacular. I have no idea how I didn't know about it until this year's VVC. Speaking of work that holds up. I plan to watch it many more times, and maybe one day I will be able to say something actually insightful about it. :)

[heresluck]

Awww, thank you. I'm still very fond of that one, especially now that the memory of sweating blood over it has faded a bit. I'm a bit surprised that anyone remembers it, honestly; twelve years is a long time, and there have been some really amazing Faith vids made since then.

[jetpack_monkey]

It was delightful to see you this year and I really hope we get a chance to talk again in the future.

[bironic]

Ditto. I am sure we will, and I very much look forward to that.

[grammarwoman]

I had such a fabulous time hanging out with you - thank you for lending a sympathetic ear, and for being delightful company. I hope to see you next year so we can pogo together for "Starships"! :)

[bironic]

I like that thought and that visual!

It was great to see you again and to share in those little moments throughout the weekend.