Vividcon report, part two: panels and vids

[bironic]

Continued from here.

I neglected to say in the last post that, while overhearing fandom conversations and watching vids over the past many years has made me conversant in many shows/movies I haven't seen, it's still nice when something you like pops up at VVC. I smiled at a couple of clips of Sebastian Roche in a Supernatural vid during Premieres. (There were approximately 500,000 SPN vids this year.) I also had a good time talking with kiki_miserychic about what turns out to be shared ambivalence over Westworld, with franzeska about the delights of Longmire (sorry for hijacking your convo, thirdblindmouse), and with grammarwoman, corbae & sansets about Westworld & the equally frustrating-yet-sometimes-beautiful American Gods. See also: "fandom nostalgia" in the recs section.

Panels

As usual, for most of the day on Friday and Saturday there were two programming tracks running simultaneously: one of vid shows and one of panels. Also as usual, I opted for panels, figuring I could watch the vid shows later on VVC's streaming site for members. Here are some notes I took; they're not comprehensive, just comments that struck me.

Emotion with heresluck

- You have to give sadness time to breathe
- Allowing time to feel an emotion as the vid plays vs. afterwards
- Clip length & pacing (fast=anxious)
- Go to 11… and go further – up, and up, and still up
- Brave choice when vidder wants to make viewer feel something negative, feel bad about liking something
- Meta-joy, basic human enjoyment of well choreographed clips with music
- Funniest version of literalism
- Music helps you get past analytical approach
- How to get in and out of emotions and intensities
- Examples to check out: Day in the Life (Dead Zone), Haunted (Odyssey 5/Earth explodes), The Adventure (HP/Neville), I Swear (Smallville), 2005 Premieres show sequence

More thorough notes from settiai


Best Advice Ever with sdwolfpup & ghost_lingering

- Have backups – including other people
- The world *does* need another X
- People are watching your vid slower than you are
- Less is more. No, more is more.
- Use 1 project to take a break from another
- YouTube might have karaoke version or clean radio version of your song
- Sometimes good to discover on the timeline instead of overthink/plan/give up
- Sometimes helps to do the fun parts first, to pull through the tedious parts
- Watch your vid at different times of day
- It's okay to like, or love, or not be 100% okay with, your vid

(Ian: Premiere has a feature that highlights clips you've used on the timeline)
(sisabet: you can also "pancake" your timelines so you can see your unused clips sequence right above your vid sequence)

More thorough notes from settiai


Tension with kiki_miserychic & sort of jetpack_monkey

- Conflict/dissonance, insecurity, yearning for resolution
- Can be positive: baking cakes, sexual tension
- Components: Emotion, story, rhythm, eye trace, axis, 3D space
- Shock: Show explosion. Tension: Show bomb for 5 minutes, then show explosion.
- Delay resolution – something falling, not hitting; use alternate hit/follow-through. Head chop --> window break. Head chop --> coin. Fulfilling expectation in unexpected way.
- Clip progression not as "and then," but "but," "therefore"
- Red tones raise blood pressure
- Close-ups and camera angles – power, weakness
- Make use of key changes in your song
- Covers of songs can induce tension
- The false release of tension
- When only the song, or only the clips, is/are creepy, rather than both
- Don't give away twists/tension/reveals with title or song name or notes (vidder didn't list DS9 as a fandom)

More thorough notes from kiki and settiai


Aesthetic Shifts with destina

- You think you're just doing what's "normal" or neutral but you're vidding in a community, in an era
- Access & technology has led to impatience with things that aren't exactly to our tastes
- New vidders expecting viewers to hit pause to watch on frame level
- YouTube vids exist to be stylish about the thing they're interested in (less about narrative)

More thorough notes from settiai


Relationships with trelkez & killabeez

- Constructing OT3s: Show canon kiss between 2 chars, follow with similar clip of other 2 chars, people will see a kiss for the second pair
- Mix non-canon ships with canon ones, makes them seem more "real"
- M/F vocal = 2 POVs looking at 3rd character

More thorough notes from settiai


Motion with jarrow, rhoboat & bradcpu

- Circles. Combine 1/4 turns for full circle
- Don't be afraid to flip clips so things move in same direction
- Adding motion: effects, jump cuts, zooms, transitions
- Playing video game to generate the motion you want
- Motion on or instead of cuts on beat
- Use motion to counter expectations – humor, surprise, discomfort

More thorough notes from settiai


Vids as Time Capsule with killabeez

What was happening
- in the news
- in media
- in fandom
- in a specific fandom
- in vidding fandom
- in the vidder's life

More thorough notes from killa and settiai


Effects with hollywoodgrrl & Kitty aka winterevanesce

- "Indie" vids = cutting. "Studio" vids = some effects. "Blockbuster" vids = heavy effects; Lum, Lim, YouTube.
- Evolve your style! Don't be afraid!
- Add/adjust color – or remove them – or highlight a single one. Magic Bullet program.
- Layers & opacity. Blending mode, lighten.
- Transitions
- "Spell" (Carol vid) – lens flares & crystal footage & layers. Masking, "shock wave" from YouTube in After Effects
- "Is It Safe Now" (Eyewitness vid) – push-zoom effect from NewBlue FX
- Sometimes the song is asking for something
- Search Google & YouTube for your program + phrases like "coloring pack, texture overlay, transitions." Vector backgrounds. $ for Boris FX Sapphire, Twixtor, Red Giant/Mojo, Rampant Design, Motion Array. Premiere 2018 coloring tool, can save presets.

More thorough notes from settiai


Town Hall with cesperanza

- Continuing conversations about where vidders are today (the youths, they're making edits on Instagram), where we're going (nowhere centralized), what landscape we're in (the good and bad of legislation, technology and global communities)
- Gov't laws become more permissive, but corporations aren't gov't
- Lim is learning Russian to talk to the vidders. :) ("We need a 'Russian for vidders' primer")
- 5.1 audio tracks can isolate vocals/music/SFX
- YouTube algorithms driving vid aesthetics. Also regularity of posting, not embedding on other sites
- (c) claimants might not be actual (c) holders. Business models/outsourcing (c) arguers. Half the (c) holders don't even know what "internet rights" meant when they signed license agreements X years ago
- Resilio media sharing (Napster for vidders)
- Debates over best online platforms to sustain the vidding community
- I know it's not exactly the same venue, but I thought it was funny-sad that people were mourning and/or freaking out over how this would be the last vidding Town Hall with nothing in place to continue such conversations when Fanworkscon is already scheduled for next year


Multisource with fiercynn, scribe & bironic

Heh. Panel notes here.


Vividcon History with various con comm members past & present

- Vid critique language hadn't developed at first
- Club Vivid began because vidding felt to me like dance (astolat)
- Challenge partly helped with anonymous vid review – honesty – freeing for vidder too
- The Rogue One of VVC – "Amy, if I don't make it through immigration, this is the con in a box" (absolutedestiny)


Vid Discussion

Challenge: Full Circle: Notes from settiai

Vid Review: Notes from serrico & settiai

In-Depth:

House of Mercy by rhoboat (Rogue One/Serenity)
- Parallel or crossover?
- POV evil empire or rebels? Death Star?
- Characters not mapped 1:1
- Also Wash --> robot, I see what you did there
- Pairing the sources opened up Serenity, drew out the melancholy of Rogue One

Our Ghost by skygiants (Chicago Typewriter)
- Title refers to both typewriter and gun
- Reincarnation, writing and memory
- Self-destruction becomes self-creation, literally
- Characters writing fix-it fic for their past lives
- Show available on viki.com, dramafever.com – legal free streaming
- ETA: post from thuvia-ptarth

Black Sun by joyo (Hannibal)
- Reversals, pulling back from precipice
- Curiosity killed cat
- Motifs: food, liquids. He gets fractured like chocolate
- Sun: (1) him; (2) the show "around him," his egocentrism – lots of his face in a row; (3) Hannibal, all these characters revolving around him
- Physically, Chilton moves around people. And they never let him in
- All tension, little release
- Hannibal --> absence of Hannibal

Blow (Deconstructed) by kiki_miserychic (Supernatural)
- Callbacks to Kitty's "Sucker Punch" vid
- Thoughts about Ke$ha being thrown around too

Eternity by hollywoodgrrl (Star Wars)
- Pulled between X & Y. Tattooine and Ren, Ren and Rey, Luke and Leia, twin suns, lightsabers, creation and destruction
- Luke's alternate path
- Skywalker legacy. Shattering – Han, family, fleet, Luke
- Death wish? Peace?
- Family is his completion

I Did Something Bad by jarrow (Killing Eve)
- 2 women come closer together physically and temperamentally
- Eve puts on Villanelle when she puts on the dress
- Violence/chase as sex/seduction
- Cuts faster even though/because images are so still at the climax of the show

Dream by gwyneth (multi)
- People looking at joyful things together. Ends on Community
- Data's Dream. VHS era to now – future of vidding and fandoms, also call to love and care for our history.
- Callouts to shows and vids from fandom and VVC specifically
- WALL-E to Eve = showing someone your fandom, your vid

Notes from serrico & settiai


Vid Recs

I haven't seen all the many-hundred vids yet, and I need to watch some again because I was so tired when they screened. Nevertheless: those that made the biggest impressions for me:

Personal faves

Our Ghost by skygiants (Chicago Typewriter) – I was intrigued by this the first time. Then, when thuvia-ptarth explained the plot of the show at Vid Review, the rewatch made me choke up. (Three present-day characters—a writer, a fan and a ghost—use writing to recover memories of their past lives as resistance fighters in 1920s/30s Japanese-occupied Korea and even alter their story.) Fabulous editing.

The Sound of Silence by bradcpu (Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049) – Highlights both visual and character similarities and divergences between the first film and the sequel, focusing on the replicants' stories. Kudos for nearly zero Jared Leto.

Photograph by milly (Coco) – I did not actually cry at the con, but this brought me the closest. On a technical level, I look forward to rewatching it to study how milly works with the song but lifts the cutting away from the beats so the music and the edits flow.

Bodies by Andraste and Loki’s Rose (X-Men movieverse) – Powerful use of the metaphors of mutantism in the movies. Starts dark and moves into power and hope.

Editing

Vids I know I'll be going back to to learn from.

Descent into madness/chaos:
Velouria by absolutedestiny (Mulholland Drive)
a horse with no name by kiki_miserychic (mother!) *many many content warnings

Clipping rhythms; mixing humor and drama:
I Did Something Bad by jarrow (Killing Eve) *all the spoilers

WTF, plus application of many effects:
Just Dance by hollywoodgrrl (Twin Peaks) *pretty much all the physical & content warnings

Action:
Can’t Stop Feeling by teyla (Kingsman)

Audio/Autotune:
Steamed Hams Inc. by NPCarlsson (The Simpsons) *flashy/stuttery visuals

Doing interesting things with split screens/multiple screens:
Digital Witness by sisabet (Twin Peaks: The Return)
This is Us by Diana Williams (Yuri on Ice)

Biggest group laughs of the con

I’m a Lady by Kitty aka winterevanesce (Betch!)

Now That’s What I Call Z Nation! by sdwolfpup (Z Nation)

Wrecking Ball by jetpack_monkey (X-Men)

Blue on Black by elipie (Batman/Superman DC movies)

Poignant, personal & communal, a mark of this moment in time

Ave Que Emigra by fiercynn (multi/sitcoms)

Fandom nostalgia

cracks appear by Destina (Less Than Zero)

Pompeii by astolat (TNG)

Riverside by Destina (Jesse Stone movies)

Vidders doing difficult things

Zero Sum by tbm (DS9) - Imagine editing a vid about beings who exist outside of linear time and trying to make sense of their plot and convey their POV!

Ein HaNamer by seekingferret (Jewish athletes) - So much research!

Also

Team by theletterelle (The Hunger Games) – As someone said at vid review, it would've been wonderful if this sort of teamwork and leadership had been so coherent and effective in canon.

Seven Years by cherryice (Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra) – I'm sure I'll pull way more out of this once I've… seen the shows… but it still packs an emotional punch.

Jerk It by absolutedestiny (80s bodybuilder/action movies. Also porn.) *suuuuper NSFW

And while we're talking about porn, Sex Pollen & Curtains by franzeska (first section of Slash, that controversial student film made by a guy about a bunch of guys) *NSFW


Full programming list at vividcon.info.

Comments

[cathexys]

Thank you so much for the details!!! I know it can only ever be snippets, but it's great snapshots of discussions and moments. Thank you!!!

[bironic]

Sure! I'm glad someone read the notes. :)

[chagrined]

that "best advice ever" panel sounds like a fun time & especially good pep talk haha. i especially like "the world *does* need another X" which... i'll be honest, i have def lost track of the times this has made me go "meh" & abandon a project. (although it usually feels like just giving in to my laziness inertia haha.)

hadn't heard of this new premiere color match tool so i looked it up & now i'm jealous. XD i'm still stuck in cs6 over here as i use all adobe products so infrequently nowadays and have so little money i def can't afford cc. that is some cool stuff tho. (i just felt slight jealousy over this last night too b/c i was trying to clean up an audio track in audition & found out cc audition now has a new tool that might have been just the thing i needed but ofc my cs6 version did not have it ha.)

twixtor is so fun. i have seen so many ultra hilarious AMVs that use it. some people may be thinking "WOW I'M MAKING THIS MOTION LOOK SO GR8 AND SMOOTH" (all worship anything 60fps i guess) but when you apply it to anime it ends up looking supppper uncanny valley, but used correctly that itself can be so amazing. (like this one person made a super serious monogatari amv using it on almost every clip and i was not that into it though the amv is extremely popular, and then another person parodied their amv down to each clip, only using super ott fanservice shots from fanservice anime... i thought this was amazing and can't stop dying laughing every time i see 60fps slow motion anime boobs.)

also THX 4 THE RECS!

[bironic]

You're welcome!

I'm still on CS...5, I think, for similar reasons of not wanting to move to $ subscription. It's a pain for some things, like not being able to process certain file types that have become common, and it's not going to last forever, but at least I have a permanent copy for now.

That's funny about Twixtor. I need to watch more YouTube vids to study what people are doing and see what styles, if any, it would be fun to experiment with. If there are any you particularly like, I'd take recs! Most of the ones I know are by people like vordeel and lightningxdisaster.

[chagrined]

yeah i kept my copy of cs6 i got in grad school haha. and it kept working UNTIL THE OTHER DAY, when everything still worked but it kept giving me an annoying popup every time i started it saying it wasn't a legit copy (maybe my university's license had finally expired). so that was really annoying, but at least finally i was able to figure out how to stop that from popping up.

yeah i actually haven't watched a ton of vids for a long while, so your recs post here will be the most i have watched in a day in ages. XD of twixtor vids, the only 2 that really stuck in my mind are those 2 amvs i mentioned. i'm sure the effect is a lot different in live action; i imagine it's much less uncanny-valley-ish with real people. i only played around with it a little myself, also on some anime clips, and lol'd at the results.

but yeah those 2 amvs i mentioned are:
1. into the labyrinth (the original). like i said i don't really care for it altho it is technically impressive. but you have 2 watch it 1st anyway 2 fully appreciate:
2. into the lingerie, which parodies the above nearly shot-for-shot. and i will never stop laughing at fanservice anime boobs in slow-mo 60fps. (eta: an extra layer of hilarity is that the monogatari series from amv #1 is largely also a fanservice series itself but as fanservice goes it's pretty high-brow and the show's direction/writing is very artsy, and it's got much better production values & just overall prestige than joe blow generic fanservice show. so doing a parody of that amv in the same style but using a ton of very low-brow much lower overall quality shows as the source material is just bonus fun meta haha.)

ANYWAY I'M NOT FAMILIAR WITH EITHER OF THOSE VIDDERS YOU MENTIONED SO IF YOU HAVE RECS FROM THEM I'D TTLY ENJOY IT! :D

p.s. after watching several of ur recs from the entry now i feel like i want to watch z nation haha

[selki]

I watched a bunch of these vids after reading your post, thanks! Chicago Typewriter was new to me and I've started watching the show (5 episodes in) at this site with English translation: https://www.viki.com/videos/1118488v

[bironic]

It sounds like Chicago Typewriter and Z Nation were the most successfully pitched fandoms of the con, heh. That's cool that "Our Ghost" intrigued you enough to check out the show. Maybe I should move the note about its streaming availability from the In-Depth Vid Review section down to the recs in case others want to check it out...

[selki]

... I binged the rest!

[toft]

I read these notes! Thank you for writing them up.