Another thing that is awesome:

[bironic]

"Starships!" made it onto io9 today! Thank you to were_duck for the tip.

The thrill of having the vid featured there outweighs what I'm about to say by far, but following on our recent conversation about citing creators and, more important to me personally, including or linking to vid context when posting a rec, it stood out to me that the short post by Annalee Newitz included the YouTube embed without title or attribution, a link to Nicki Minaj's official video, a link to Vividcon's website, and my excerpted source list, but only referred to "this fan video" and "the filmmakers." The result was a flurry of the "No Babylon 5/Red Dwarf/Cowboy Bebop?!"-type comments that I am now expecting and resigned to in the absence of my notes about deadlines and access to source -- they continue to stream in on the Tumblr post as well -- along with the "Ew, Nicki Minaj" comments (which don't bother me). And, not to sound ungrateful, a nice handful of happy viewers. The frustration is just that I (and others) keep trying to explain why the vid includes only what it includes, but because of the nature of certain sharing platforms and because of common reccing practices, it doesn't stick.

What also resulted, however, was that someone named eregyrn, who came to my defense on the MarySue.com post a few weeks ago, and later someone named telepresence, quickly stepped in in the comments section to provide that very context, along with links and a greensilver/anatsuno-style call for vidder credit. There ensued a confusing thread in which Annalee said she'd already linked to the YouTube page (she hasn't; there's only the embed, which means people have to know and want to click on the video and then click on the little YouTube icon to view over there; but to be fair, some people are doing that, because a bunch of comments have been coming in on YouTube this afternoon) and that my name wasn't on the vid (which eregyrn pointed out is incorrect, and also, the video title on YouTube says "by bironic" and the LJ link is in the description right above the source list she quoted, so even though it's easy to miss the opening vid credits, it isn't hard to track down who made it). But she kindly amended the post to include my name, which now links to the LJ master post. So that is cool. I need to find and thank eregyrn somehow.

In conclusion: io9! Whee! And this lovely blog post by Doctor Science on Tuesday, which expands on a comment she made to Masters of War about vids being like bouillon cubes.

.

I think I've settled on a new vid to work on, finally. Not sure what it'll be for -- maybe Kink Bingo -- but after four months of lying fallow it'll be nice to get back into practice.

Comments

[counteragent.livejournal.com]

:)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

And YOU! I don't really know SPN but I am so looking forward to checking out the first installation of your remarkable project.

[counteragent.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I hope you like it! :D

And gah to them sort of not giving you credit and really not trying. One of the things I really dislike about the reblog culture is how easily attribution gets lost.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Hooray! And thanks for the links! I look forward to reading about the bouillon cubes. (:

[john c. "buck" field (from livejournal.com)]

I just found out about this video last week, and have been playing it every couple of days at least once. An amazing effort...congratulations and thank you!

BTW - I'm working on videos for real starships (http://www.starshipvlog.com).

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Aww! Hi! *waves* I got linked to your post here by a friend who is a regular Vividcon-goer, as well as a local friend of myself and telepresence; he and I don't go, but we follow the vid releases closely, and then we hold a vid-watching party when they get back. I always get one of the VVC dvd sets from her or another mutual friend who's a VVC regular.

If I could sticky a note at the top of my (little-used) Tumblr, it would be the .gif "ATTRIBUTE THAT SHIT". Lack of attribution drives me nuts, like, everywhere -- I want to KNOW who the cool people were who made whatever, partly because it's only right to say "hey! that was cool!", and partly because that helps me track down what else they've done. That part often leaves me scratching my head about people who fail to attribute. If you see something cool, don't you want to be able to find out if they've done other things that are similarly cool? Don't you think the audience you're sharing it with would like to do that? Why is this a difficult concept???

So yeah, I saw the vid making the rounds on Tumblr, and facepalmed, but Tumblr makes me facepalm really often anyway. And I saw it pop up on The Mary Sue, and then io9, and was like, COME ON. Those guys, I feel should do better than Ye Random Tumblr Poster.

Also it felt like a missed opportunity... but I guess it also points up that both of those sites, despite being genre-oriented, aren't necessarily *fandom* oriented. So perhaps the writers themselves were not equipped to use "look at this awesome vid!" to talk about the (to me, fascinating) challenges and limitations involved in vidding. I feel like knowing about that makes me respect vidders even more (and I respect them a lot, as I can conceive of how difficult and time-consuming an art-making process it is), and helps to combat the problem that "look at this cool thing!" often erases the creator, and the difference between the achievement of a fan working under limiting circumstances, as opposed to a product made by a professional (meaning, paid for their time) with potentially far wider access to source material.

(But let's be honest, also I posted in the comment threads because I'm a recovering sufferer of "Someone is Wrong on the Internet" syndrome.)

... Anyway! Did I post on your original post of the video before to tell you how much I love it? (I meant to, but I am kind of bad these days at leaving LJ comments.) Because I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Playing it puts me in a major fandom happy place, without fail. And each time I marvel at what a fantastic job you did in such little time. *hats off*

[jfowen.com (from livejournal.com)]

I wanted to tell you that your Starship video is the best video I've seen in years. I linked to the original Vimeo version on my blog. Thanks for sharing the fruits of your labor. It's GREAT!

http://jfowen.com/quickies/