Vividcon 2014 Panel Notes (part 2)

[anoel]

Here are my panel notes (part 2) for Vividcon 2014, apologies for the lateness. I missed the Feedback and Using Vids in Class panels, sorry but you can find some notes from the mods for the Using Vids in Class here and here and the mod for the Feedback panel may be posting notes at some point soon. If you're looking for more notes for the panels, kass has some here. I did my best at hearing and typing as accurately as I could but sometimes people had quiet voices or I couldn't type fast enough so these are not perfect transcriptions especially as they are not completely proofread. If you see something and want it corrected (or credit), feel free to let me know as I'd love for it to be more accurate.



Love Struc(ture)
Notes/slides from the mods

-structure is the underlying skeleton of something
-structured along narrative, chronology (forwards/reverse), POVs/subject, emotion/reaction, fancy ass montage
-two basic components are visual and audio, structured along visual or audio lines
-structuring narrative around ?, structuring around narrativeq around song, some vids illustrate the song, constructed reality: structure around narrative that you want to be there in your head
-the more vid changes things in the narrative, the more noticeable the structure is, in a straight up retelling, you dont think of the narrative, otherwise you notice more what something is organized around
-not every vid has deliberate structure, i tried to make a vid without structure and it was very difficult, a lot of times people put structure in subconsciously, order things to make sense, vidder might not be trying specifically
-what are vids? something visual, something audio (probably)
-chronology (slide): i am going to retell the shit out of this source, we're going back to the sta-a-art, "where are they now" edition, ex, Just by hazelk, Faith vid, starts at end, goes backward, sources go in chronologically, then back in time, events go chronologically then back in time, stabbing a person
-i dont have a clear distinction between chronology and narrative, narrative is the order that the events are in, the chronology is the relationship between the order that they have in the source or in the timeline
-common vid structures, retelling, going backwards, starting at the end and showing how they got there
-who do you think you are (pov slide): one man, dual pov slash vid, we're all in this together (ensemble), multisource, wouldnt you like to know, multi editor projects, example: under ice by scintilla, two sources for a ?
-I just have a lot of feelings (emotion slide): everything sucked and now it doesnt, everything changed when fire nation attacked, THEN WHO WAS PHONE, laugh track attacked,
-i think humor vids fall into this category, vids that make you smile and then make you cry at end
-example: Steady As She Goes by obsessive24, starts out very happy and bouncy, lots of energy, whats changing is the feeling that the character is having, started feeling one way and by the end of the vid he feels another way
-one of these things is very much like the others, in fact they all are: you can montage basically anything: things breaking, hands doing hand things, people being chased by surfing elephants, montage of gay love also common, recommended, very common in supermultifandom vids
-vid example: watery symphony of Kai by siny, thought process of kid playing the piano, thinking about water, multifandom, clips of water in winter, water in summer, bookending of source kid playing the piano, literally going in order of the seasons
-vid example: every anime opening ever by derek lieu, organized in groups by what the clips have in common, overall typical example of anime opening, organized in typical chronology
-what do your elf-eyes see (visual aspects slide): different sections, different colors (hue/saturation/shade), slow fade slow fade slow fade SMASH CUT, transitions, shape of the frame, zoom/external motion, i guess all motion?
-visual aspect can relate to structure, most cases they wont be the overwhelming aspect that you focus on, i have short attention span but if somethings changing then i keep watching as i want to see where its going even if ive seen it many times, i have a bad memory, at beginning of vid its dark but its getting brighter and brighter or youre vidding angel and its that one scene where its not well lit, even the style of cuts you use, can depend on whether youre thinking of structure, most songs change as itd be boring if they didnt, slow fades for one part and hard cuts for another because of how the song sounds, thats changing how the vid is viewed
-vid example: Sunburned by kanzeyori, structured around color, not only around color but color which can be most obvious, movie had clear sections of color such as red/orange, green, blue, vid goes through those sections and then rainbow montage at end, vid also uses narrative of the movie and that chronology for structure
-stop hey whats that sound (slide): audio has its own structure i know shit about -musical structure, narrative, mashup, vidder may rearrange, may combine many songs, may modify aspects of the song (volume, speed), crack vids/AMV hell, (many short audio clips strung together, relationship to lyrics
-for audio, songs have their own structure that i decided not to talk about, when i think about the structure of the vid, i think of structure of what the vidder actually did, so if the vidder composed their own song in the vid, the structure of the song is part of the vid, in most cases, i think vidders are less likely to rearrange the audio but there are vids where the vidders did something to the song and that becomes part of the structure, whereas the musical structure is not part of the structure of the vid although some of that is squeezed into...
-some examples are you want to get rid of terrible verse, get rid of 30 seconds of ?, you want to make it shorter...
-another example is amv hell/crack vids, theyre taking short sections of songs together usually for humorous effects, now for something totally different, structure is partly jokes, you can have reoccurring jokes, ideally to me, organized from less funny to funny, can be reordered in different ways
-i included relationship to lyrics, part of vids that go from one emotion from another, if the song starts out straightforward interpreted and then the visuals change to be creepy, ironic, experiencing the lyrics differently, part of what changes in vid
-vid example: once upon a time crack song spoof by j2thepowerof3 (youtube), this one returns to the same song clip several times
-i assume a single vidder or two vidders working together, i find AMVs where one vidder worked on 10 seconds and other works on another 10 seconds, they may not see each others work, the experience is like watching a variety show, see how different people treat a song, sometimes a similar source, cool concepts like everyone gets a decade, it becomes about theres not one overarching mind, i watch vids by one person because its less existentially confusing
-argument: logical, intro paragraph, thesis, make one point, then another and conclusion, there are vids that are structured that way, there are a lot of songs that are structured in a way that allows you to do that, with an intro, different verses and chorus for the thesis...a lot of vids switch from different aspects of structure, a lot of times vids have a chronological order, then for the final chorus its a montage, a lot of time they involve themselves coherently, one character in love, in the second verse, the other characters pov, both characters are sad, bridge around holding hands (sepia flashback), visual structure, in the end theyre together and very happy...
-any experience of watching a vid and not being able to figure out the structure?
-i was making a vid where it would be structureless, all cool images strung together, what ended up happening was the vid forced structure on itself, that ended up being my club vivid, was supposed to be mish mash of vampire imagery, ended up being the story of vampire stuff
-problem with clear structure, we want it to exist, we will impose it on something that doesnt seem to have one and if what we impose is not what the vidder meant, the vidder is fucked, like we will make shit up, im happy to be coached, like if the vidder wants to tell me how to interpret something, i am there for that, my brain will just make shit up without them if theyre not going to volunteer any help
-i think thats a good thing as a vidder and a viewer
-i cant do random, as random as i am as a person, if im vidding, even if i have to make it up for me, i dont care if no one sees it, i need a skeleton that i can arrange around
-i made a vid for karaoke, i tried to not make it sense, i still put stuff from movie in one section and stuff from tv in another section, (its hard to watch), the song and source both have a particular structure
-when i dont know whats going on with a vid, usually its supposed to be a cool visual montage but they havent pulled it off, versus a failed narrative vid, its boring or its an argument but i cant tell what the arguments supposed to be, but i think i know what the structures supposed to be, where i cant tell the structure, i think they should be transitioning between things that are visually similar or something, they didnt do a very good job of it so i dont know whats going on (sometimes they explain it in paragraphs)
-fun project for themselves, vid where they didnt watch the source, they just opened it up and started editing, then i saw the same vid with someone who loves the source, it wasnt good, i was expecting out of the person even if they didnt watch the source (im glad they experimented)
-white america challenge vid: i didnt see a structure but we put structure on it pretty enthusiastically
-failed narrative, know theres a structure, trying to find out what that structure is so distracting for an audience (what politically charged argument are you making in this vid)
-there is a structure outside of a vid, about a conversation going on in the community, lord of the rings to the wu tang clan, not actually about lotr, but its about the community, lithiumdoll made a vid for me, 6 degrees vid, she showed two actors and then a movie with two more actors and then new actor and paired them up, linking of actors through hollywood, time to get away vid by barkley, pink line, internet was getting toxic, people were being awful, footage of herself, walked us outside to everything needs some time to get away, linked to love thread, hearts, hard to say im sorry song, structure was the conversation the community was having
-supernatural vid, still alive by counteragent, all the wank going on in fandom, lot of stuff going on in fandom, we're still alive, lim's us is very context heavy of fannish discussion over the years, things fannish people talk, showed it to other fangirls, wow there are so many layers, this is so cool, showing it to my mom once, not fannish and she watched it, i can tell it has a lot of technical expertise, looks very pretty and visually complicated but i have no idea what this vid is telling me
-humans are pattern seeing animals, i will impose structure even on structure less vid, if i hear a vidder say, no structure, i have a negative reaction, why should i watch your vid, not visual enough for visually pretty images to be meaningful to me, i want there to be structure, i want you to tell me something, i gather other people dont have negative reaction, not saying not to do that, i dont understand why you wouldnt do that, could just put ipod on shuffle and walk away, wheres the skil, i dont get it
-even if youre matching up clips to music, youre still going to end up with a structure, even if its just the length of your cuts, brightness, what kind of emotions, what kinds of motion you match, still will have a structure
-i have a lot of fun with that, tell me what you think my vid is about, i like hearing about how other people make connections, my brain really enjoys making connections when there probably are none
-i agree as a watcher being passive, i dont get how someone hasnt done the work for me, as person interested in narrative theory, i find it interesting to put two things together, they could be from two different negatives found in a thrift store and we will make the connection, the creation of narratives and a sense of time and chronology is theoretically interesting, the issue of looking at structure as something that self-evolves as opposed to something we self-impose
-ex.neon genesis ileia of corndog, radioactive, not a narrative structure but it separates the vid into different parts
-white america ended experimental vids, still tied to structure of song, they had to match it the song even if they wanted it to be totally random, they couldnt get far enough away from what they wanted a good vid to look like
-when im setting things on the timeline to get myself vidding again, there is no structure, its just random to see what sticks but then a structure comes out sometimes, sometimes the music is talking too loudly to try to do that randomly, whatever works is how a structure makes its way out
-i have a very strong desire to vid science, i want to vid planet earth and blue plannet but my problem is coming up with a structure that will be compelling for other people outside of my head because theres a part of me fighting to structure it along scientific or evolutionary terms but thats not going to make a lot of sense to people who dont spend as much time doing this as i do, how do i make a compelling narrative that still makes sense other than, look at these dinosaurs eating things! dinosaurs! (i would watch that vid)
-theres a tunnel vision for something like vividcon, the kinds of vids that i prefer to make and watch are the kinds of vids i dont see here, our musical taste and so on is different, the objective of a lot of vids here would be an argument, you should watch our show, these people are in love, heres a meta thought i have about the fandom or show, but i have seen a lot of personal vid projects where the objective is to make a room full of people feel stoned while dancing to 5000 sources in a long repetitive techno song, theres not no structure but the structure is like blue things, red things, those kinds of video projects work for vaguely changing long techno song versus 3 minutes of structured pop song of verse chorus verse
-i am a firm believer that if what you are doing than somebody else will also connect to it too in the same way (maybe not everyone)
-youre never going to be clear enough that everybody is going to get it, theres always going to be people who are confused, doesnt mean its bad
-i tend to have trouble parsing a structure if the vidder is not clear about pov changes, like the faith vid, then were going to go way back in time, if i havent seen the show, i dont have context, i dont realize that then that will be lost on me, so if the vidder is not super clear with effects or some kind of change then im not clear on the structure
-i often have troube parsing a structure, more than 50% of the time, if im not familiar with the fandom
-theres a literacy, the longer i watch vids, i find that i had a hard time at first with understanding unfamiliar source vids, the more i watch vids for their own sake, the more i learn how people do it, the first time i see a vid you need to slap me in the face with pov change and such, i think there is a sakill
-for a lot of us, chronology is the default setting, in the absence of narrative cues to the contrary, we assume that stuff is happening in the order of stuff that happens, we're also familiar with narratives that dont do that, we all know stuff where the plot doesnt match the story, the story is doing this but the plot jumps around, we have visual cues for that like sepia tones, things go blurry, if we want to draw in people who dont have that context, we have to remember visual conventions for, dude its a flashback, we can exploit that stuff, there may be reasons not to do that but we're going to lose people
-i brought a distorted copy of friday...
-i appreciate you ended the panel with not showing us something on the computer because you didnt show us anything on your computer at the beginning of the panel (tech trouble) and i appreciate the bookend structure




Timing Is Everything
Notes from the mods

-the title is a lie, there are a lot of components to a vid, theres structure, theres cutting, theres lyrical interpretation, etc, etc, timing is one of the foundational building blocks of a vid, you can use it to tell the vidder what parts are most significant, drive the vid along, for me, my pet theories, one of the things when i construct a vid and im thinking about timing, i use it to establish credibility, technical competence helps establish confidence in the viewer, will be talking about audience reception, some people dont care about audience reception but because we're talking about provoking feelings, we'll talk about audience and the relationship between vidder, how you can maximize what youre hoping to inspire
-if someone asks you to define timing, what would you say? in simplistic terms
-length of the clip
-relationship between images and video
-hitting on the beat
-the speed in what something is happening
-how the beat interacts with movement
-reasons on how to focus on timing besides aesthetically pleasing, sometimes i just throw a vid out there because its fun, not thinking about what feedback ill get and how to provoke emotion, because im full of squee, sometimes i am strategic about timing because im trying to provoke FEELS so when i play with timing, im doing that with the hope that im going to get that response, establish yourself as a reasonably good technician, able to hit beats, drive it along, to me, that helps give a sense of confidence as a vidder, if i can trust with my eyes and ears, maybe i can trust vidder with my heart
-another component is pacing, as a writer and editor i deal with a lot of text, work with fiction a lot, using narrative techniques to create feelings, how pacing draws a reader in, keeps them going, creating a cliffhanger to have them go back, theres a concept in fiction that has two major components, see this most in genre fiction, not as much in lit fic, genre fic leans heavily on scene and sequel
-scene: stuff happens, major set piece, followed by sequel: reactions characters might have interior to story, a bit of action, a reveal, something advances the plot = Scene, each scene is followed by a sequel, characters reacting to the scene, characters talking about it and coming to a resolution of what happens next, novels with all scene such as the da vinci code, stuff happens all the time, no one takes time to process
-a vid is only 2-5 minutes usually, compact environment, we're working with already created stuff, we need to create our own scene and sequel throughout the vid, the money shot comes from porn (cum shot), money shot is big Scene, not only one thing, we can have multiple money shots throughout the vid, give viewer time to process it, move the story forward, another scene and another sequel or a bunch of scenes and a bunch of sequels, it can vary, viewer often needs time to have processing take place, clip choice can really effect how scene and sequel are paced, a lot of vids where people were waiting for big money shot, the beginning is frontloaded with stuff thats not really happening, want to wait to use money shot at the end
-a good example with perfectly timed scene is seah and margie's odyssey 5 haunted vid, they have a lot of good small scenes and sequels throughout the vid and then theres a crescendo and the world explodes, one of the best examples of perfectly paced vid with little scene/sequel and then BAM and then the rest is the sequel, the processing of the big explosion
-particularly in comedy, to have the big laugh at the end, you need milestones, a little bit of chuckles and laughs throughout so people are primed for the big laugh, if you have it serious throughout and then funny at the end, people are just like, huh?
-you explained that very well and it was very clear (and now we're processing)
-maybe we should show one of our vids for an insiders perspective of what we're thinking, gwyneth made a vid that has a lot to talk about timing and pacing and feels
-vid example: orange crush by gwyneth (captain america)
-basically one of the things when i started this, i had 3 Scenes to put in here as my big notes to hit, the first one was the serum and the shield as the orange crush, orange crush is slang for agent orange we used in vietnam to nuke the jungles, the 70s political thriller of winter soldier spoke to me, i felt there was vietnam allegories in the movie, reference to orange crush is him getting the serum and putting the shield on his back, for he bucky section, Scenes I had in mind were him with the sniper rifle shooting the hydra guy, defining characteristic were him as an assassin, two big themes for those guys, biggest Scene was the arrest of the squad team of the shot on the bridge, off the top of his head dialogue: "we were circling", weird stream of consciousness thing, military cadence 1234, helicopter noise, that was my big scene that i built a lot of this around, huge takedown, there were some more scenes sprinkled throughout but most was sequel to tie those scenes together, that was how i wanted to pace it to give break from feels moments, the end is scenes of the rest is the parallels of steve and bucky turned into weapons and experimented on, all of those feel-y things
-difference between reactions of characters in vids versus audiences reacting, at the end parallels you defined as scenes, all action, for me, thats all reaction, thats me reacting to the vid, how you do it is going to be different depending on how youre telling characters reactions versus affecting audiences reaction, im not sure how you distinguish between those two, the story youre telling and audiences reaction may not be the same reaction
-i think thats true of any form of art though, youre going to have more of a reaction to things that hit you viserally, thats going to be your sequel moment whereas for her its a scene moment, also based on your history, based on the scenes that broke you or hurt me are different for people because my dad was in vietnam, that song is big in my family, just the song starting hit me viscerally, there are parts in the vid that you dont have as reaction moments but they are for me because im me
-i just think its a difference between reaction and reaction time, you have an emotional reaction during the action for sure but what happens during the moment when the character gets to react is the audience gets to rest, in the last bit, we dont have a second to rest, thats why its the climax, bam emotional overwhelm and then it ends and thats why when you get sequel
-i think resting is a good term for it (sequel)
-orange crush, vietnam era, i love that it was telling a meta story at the same time as these images, it was much bigger than just the bucky, steve story because its a story of all of our veterans and what weve done with them and how we have not supported them, it brought up so many feelings just in that instance, it was more than just the scenes of parallelism or the scenes of steve as captain america, i was reacting a lot to the images of the military and of steve, key points in that meta story, who we are as we treat our military, that was a different story that was being told on my level than people coming in as a fan of the pairing
-everyones going to take it in differently, you cant always predict what parts are going to hit people, if youre timing things a certain way to bring out the things you want to highlight, hopefully theyll get some sense of where youre coming from and theyll follow along, how do we know, people bring so much to their viewing experiences, they may come to the vid for the pairing or the fandom or someone knows you personally
-i like your point about once you get the technical right, if you start a vid and someone is obviously not vidding to the music, im tapping out, ive got other things i can do with my time, its an important one because its the first thing we see
-vid example: sound the bells by chaila (pacific rim), this vid i have a memory of actual tears down my face
-ive never seen the movie, the beginning is pretty slow for me but the part with the shoe gets to me emotionally even though i barely know the plot but it still works, might not be true of a different vid
-great example to look at timing, the piece of music is so simple, it gets complex as it goes on, it allows you to get what the music is doing, i believe its 4/4 time, its got the 4 count, at the beginning you get 4, sometimes 2 and 1, sometimes 4 in a row, use the two counts to show the important images, you know exactly whats important
-for something so simple, heavy beat, doesnt have rhymic backbeat, it can look really monotonous but in this case, at the end all the cuts were on the movement of the jaegers, they all moved on every clip, cut move cut move, it felt ponderously accelerated
-what i loved about the vid, she used internal motion of the movie, slow moving jaegars, someones eyes closing, tear going down her cheek, scene where theyre standing and the tension, use of internal motion is exquisite, really works for me, very evocative, already predisposed because i love the movie but it really drew me in even in the beginning which the song starts out slow
-ponderous acceleration, there was a reset as well, driving and then you settle back in, its not that you forget, you dont have to hold it all in your brain, gets you fleshed out and you can then pay attention to whats coming
-bridge: so clear where that scene is ending, moment of exhilaration, you get a breath
-lyric matching on the exact right moment, writing on the wall = nose bleeding because he has cancer, hes dying, perfect example of waiting to use these powerful shots to get the effect of the lyrics
-when the vidder is able to take advantage of these musical moments, demonstrate so well that they understand the movie and theyre working with the music, youre buying into their story, theyve demonstrated a lot of thought, im going with them
-(red shoe giving), rising voice with looking up
-even if you knew nothing about the movie, she already primed you with showing a clip of the shoe, but mako picking up the shoe on the beat, boom, you know theres so much emotional weight here and she captures it beautifully
-im a big believer in light to signify emotion, i like the light exploding to hit on a significant moment (little mako looks up at idris elba under light), things brighten up, smiles, feels, tears
-bridges are great, in the vid the bridge begins on the bridge! i love that
-when the key changes, the first time the dissolves are used, when the snare drums come in, the military jaegars comes in
-theres a lot to unpack in this vid, theres musicality, movement, structure, narrative, this vids the whole package
-i think pacing as a physical activity, you cant run a longer distance as a sprint, you can do high intensity interval training, very hard and then slow and then fast again, you cant maintain that, peoples attention spans are similar, you cant go too fast for too long or youll wear people out
-for some people they like reading/watching things without breaks, most people need that rest, with a book you can set it down but with vids its less easy, you can pause but its only 3 minutes
-the song choice is super important, good vidders pick songs that allow them to do more than this, a song might have good lyrics and tone but doesnt lend themself with the opportunities to do this kind of pacing or structure with scenes and sequels, a lot of the effort the vidder does, massive effort but it helps with the song, all these considerations dont just happen on the timeline, they happen when you pick a song
-the vid tends to echo the pace of the source but this vid is different than the movie which has a lot of boom boom boom movie with a slow, deliberate vid, song chosen to heighten emotional reaction, first reaction after movie would think to use something like dubstep, with the slower song they can pull out the slower stuff, stuff that might go over your head when you focus on the conflict instead of the emotional depth of the movie
-i remember when i went apeshit over the movie, other people didnt understand, the movie i saw was these people coming together to help stop destroy the world, about love, they said wow i didnt know it was in there, what a vidder can do, we can take shit movies and turn them into beautiful works of art by finding the persona moments that might not be apparent to audience in theater




Nice Use of Clips!
(there was a lot of text and pictures on the slides I wasn't able to take down)

-we dont talk quite as much about putting things on the timeline, how do we go through the source we have, figure out whats useful and put it into action, "use of nice clips"
-lets talk about the process of clipping, many people have their own method, you can make physical clips, one video file for each section youre going to use, avisynth or similar to put large amounts of source into an editing program and do it there, clip first or do it while vidding, at any point must go through source and see what to use
-why do we dread clipping?
-boring, overwhelming, dread, takes forever, BORING, clips dont exist, cant remember where it is, why did i grab this, there used to be a reason
-if im doing it super hygienic, im going to clip out the source, im going to get everything nicely labeled and in bins where it belongs and then ill start putting things down on the timeline...yeah, i get two clips, oh i know where that goes, then the rest of my bins are bin 1, bin 2 and the rest of the clips are all over the place and who knows whats up
-i watch the vid in my head before i make it physically, i only do vids for sources i know well, i need this this this and this, i also allow for serendipity, while im finding the exact one, if i see something better ill use that
-i clip all my source ahead of time, with the way i vid, i need to see all the motion in the clips and how it moves to the music and into other ones and if i dont try different things i dont know whats there
-a lot of times while im clipping, ill listen to the song over and over while clipping, ill be like, oh i know where this is going to go so ill put the lyrics in the clip name so i know where itll go
-clipping brings us feeling of dread, oh no it takes so long, such a pain but what it also does is it familiarizes us with the source, what exactly we're working on, lets us evaluate whats there and see what will be useful
-what are some ways to make clipping less painful?
-when i make a multisource vid especially, learning experience, watching film, taking notes of timestamps, series of keywords that relate to concepts, ive got gears here, electricity coming here, making a robot vid rn, find patterns
-clippings really boring for me, i cant do one thing at a time, so i put the source on repeat while im clipping, i have s2 going while clipping s1, sometimes youre clipping from that episode and you go ooh
-i cannot clip individually, i listen to the song at least 20 times while i figure out if the clips actually work, secondly so it is in my head while im doing, chunking, pull scenes that i know i want to use, break it in chunks, i go through those chunks, i still review the source but it breaks it down into digestable pieces
-I watch other tv shows i watch that are too boring to watch alone, clipping shows, episodic tv but with good parts where i get a break from clipping, i can pay attention while i think, not everyone can multitask like that
-shortcut by not clipping, i put the source into premiere and go, thats quite daunting, ill litmus test the source by ill play the song in spotify, ill put the source in media player, skip over bits of the movie to see if that combination is working, theres a feeling you get when you know youre on the right path with an idea, then ill dive into premiere and build up a vid
-once i find out the vid will work, i chunk the source, i break them into four chunks and i set them to process at night, so im not waiting for clips to load in the timeline
-with a solid vision, ill just watch the source and take notes, i have a notebook that tells me exactly what i want to clip, i go in there and grab them and vid, i dont know if thats storyboarding or planning
-god bless screen capture people, they have pages of pages of photos, i know this happened in one episode but i dont know where and i dont want to watch five hours so you can go through and go, oh there it is, you can look for keyword
-you can look at reviews and search for keywords
-i dump everything into premiere, i will find lynchpin moment, if i lay those clips down and they work, then ill make subclips, ill see a source and think itll go really well with source
-i clipped 7 seasons of DS9 on pen and paper and then i decided to just cut individual file clips, episode 1x07clip1, put vid aside for 6 months, had to go back and make a spreadsheet and list details of all 800 clips to make vid (thats when you give your computer away)
-so the longer i vid, the first time i watch something, i notice when there are things watching that id like to put in the vid, not so much thematic, the way things move in a shot, there are a lot of youtube shipper compliations, cant find an episode guide or reviews, cant remember when they got married, was able to find it in YT comments
-a lot of our strategies are mental stimulation, have other stimuli, something else going on thats not just clipping, also have a plan going in, focus on a character or a storyline to narrow focus, first is ideal, go through source and find clips and encode them, put descriptions and find them and make vid, i always end up having to go back, i dont grab all the clips i need at first, i cant find them, i have to go back through, half a vid sitting there, wait i need something else, when thinking of having a plan, go on a tangent, we talk about the right clip, the right lighting or color, want to talk about composition, when i look through source, i look through the source visually, i always mute the audio (killaudios the first thing i do), the audios really distracting for me
-(slide with lots of text)
-even more than distracting, it puts more than whats on the screen, i pull an emotional clip, without the sound its just two people standing there, i have to watch without the sound, see whats actually visually there
-i need audio because i need to know whats going on in the source, im clipping but im also watching, it may be a terrible movie but i want to know how terrible
-(slide)
-i look mostly for in addition to contextually, what scenes i need to tell the story, im looking for shots that have framing, color/lighting, gesture/movement, youll have two people talking in an important moment but cant hear them actually talking so ill pull facial expressions where the emotion comes through
-they can have big moments like buffy leaping off and small moments like facial expressions
-in terms of framing, types of shots: long shot (person's entire body), extreme long shot (establish place), medium shot (also a two shot, establish what theyre doing and relating to each other), medium long shot, close up, extreme closeup (add emotional texture)
-do you use mostly one time of compositional framing or do you try to vary it, i usually try to vary it but it depends on vid
-if its a very cheesy ship vid, its all closeups, a's face, making an emo face, if its narrative then its mostly medium shots
-some sources are mostly medium shots or closeups, dont have as many establishing shots as youd like to have, working with what kind of shots do you need and what are the limits of your sources
-if your source doesnt have a variety, as a vidder, you can go in and make a closeup, crop it
-if youre vidding standard dvd, get the huge 1080 and you can crop from it, get the big one so you can crop out credits
-camera angles are fun to play around with, interesting to deconstruct what a film editor has constructed, interesting to see how they put it together and how it helps/hurts what you want to do
-(slide) eye level, high angle, gives you different emotional feel, whats the feeling you get from it?
-high angle, makes you feel small and isolated, little guy in the middle of all those guys, helpless, boxed in
-placement of staircase feels more confining than i think itd feel at eye level
-feels like detachment, cant see face
-high angle reaction (lower right picture): isolation, little bit closer in it, still not in it but we're aware
-low angle: fun, acceleration, on top of the world, spartacus shot: perspective of whoever hes just conquered
-dutch angle: sense of chaos, horizon line is at an angle, our perspective has changed
-(slide), point of view, panel before talked about big moments and reaction clips that are important to consider when clipping,
-establish context for a viewer who doesnt know
-most all the time your shortened focal point is going to be this little square (slide)
-example that isnt in the middle can draw the viewers eye in a different way, all this negative space where nothings happening and that makes you look further to the left?
-put important focal points in one of the four corners as our eye lines will follow it, nothing right in the middle but right on the edge
-in terms of clipping, i look for and pay attention to the moon in one spot, later on then the persons head is in the same place as the moon, ooh can put them together, look for compositions that are similar so that you can use them together, direct the eyes (if theyre not you can always move them), have awareness so you can see things together or look at the opposite if you want to move the eye from one place to another or look at all that free real estate space, i can put credits on there
-color and lighting (slide): i try to figure out, in making the vid i have a vision in my mind of not just narrative but of what i want it to look like so for example blue/green
-it can be difficult to work with warmer tones in your vid but one clip you need is outside and its night and blue which stands out and thats where you mess with it and play with color filters, for example the sellout, everything was gold so i had to deblue a bunch of stuff
-have a sense of movement, lots of circles in this vid or lots of straight lines because it has an emotional effect
-vid example: jig of life by astolat (watch once with sound and once without)
-what patterns did you see?
-in the first part, eyes are very important, opening or closing, closing a lot because theyre trying to put it out, then theyre opening
-shitload of closeups, couple of slightly longer shots to show theyre at a funeral, claustrophobic, one tiny medium shot
-lot of black and white and desaturated and one red thing
-shortcut for transformation, jump shot, face to the knife was transformation
-excellent job at establishing basic premise of show, what made it easy was there arent a lot of long shots, medium-close-close, syncopated sequence intercut with other ones to make it easy to parse, mid shot of her face intercut with witchblade, intercut with password, it happened before and will happen again
-whole section for thematic paraphernalia, the books, the paints, the scripture stuff, all collected together, it was spread throughout the season, you need all of that stuff
-need to remember to clip that stuff, revelation to me, wait i dont have to just do faces, i can use other things
-focus moves from one side to another, extreme angle disorientation
-a couple things where there was closeups where context wasnt important, closeups of her feeling guilty for someone who died
-both static shots and shots of interesting motion whether in the frame or camera motion, panning, i noticed second time through, the vid doesnt lose momentum because when she has those static shots, theyre cut like ?, when we linger on a shot its because something is moving, small like moving eyes, static shots dont slow anything down
-i noticed that certain clips were longer, with music they felt fast because of the music behind it but without music it was a little bit slower and it was moving things along
-clip of someones heart, didnt see whose heart, never noticed it before, saw it right after losing her lover, was brilliant, when you think metaphorically with your clipping, i dont know what im going to use it for but a shot of a heart is a cool metaphor
-i keep a bin of symbols, things i see in the show or movie, things that help establish the place or mood im going through, usually inanimate objects, book, parchment, glowy thing, glowy sign in terminator vid of danger
-chinese dragon in history repeating by killabeez, fun thing
-one clip to the next, theres the sex scene where they roll over and then they open a book so it was like, yeah i got that
-theres a hannibal vid i might have made and in clipping phase, there so many visually interesting things over here, collect them and then i can use for filler
-i do it on bigger scale, i collect stuff from different tv shows and movies so i can use it for AUs and trailers, constructed reality
-what do you name your clips?
-i use season 1 , episode 3 and then random keywords that tell me whats in the clip
-i have a naming convention where i have a post it note with stuff im looking for, characters with one or two letter code, usually in order of how much they show up, some brief description of whats happening, sc for lovely thematic stuff
-i make bins for each season with season 1, then episodes (1, 2, 3, 4) with bins, then nothing else after that unless im working with someone, at some point clips end up everywhere, i knows what clip that is
-you have to label each file, i put it under the lyric, what character was in it but changed it...
-sometimes ill use lyrics and sometimes ill use stuff like "fraser and ray run to the left"
-ill name clips a word thats on my mind when im looking at them like talking or face or what i want for lunch, then i name them talking2, talking3, not talking anymore, eventually talking23 (and then you come in irc and we all laugh at you), yes thats exactly how it goes
-thats why i quit naming them because im like, ill figure it out
-i arrange them visually, i dont name anything, i clip in the program, these things on channel 3 are of this character
-ill encode by episode, that sits in the bin with that name and then ill cut my pieces, ill name them ship fight scene, traincar from hell, those remind me of the scene that im going to pull this from
-fascinated by people who label things from season, i make a lot of ensemble vids so i label things by character or interaction (these two characters together), premiere you can add keywords and search by filter (wait WHAT?), its like magic, i can abbreviate and then find only things, i label things obsessively, now that i often make multiple vids in one project file, will forget things three years from now
-i label my sequences as well
-im lazy by nature, i dont want to do 1x03
-i need to know whose in it




It Cuts Both Ways

-stuff i will not cover: eisenstein montage (juxtaposition), blink of an eye by walt murch (how eyes work and how cutting is a natural process, very important if you havent read about it, reasons on why we make cuts, choosing emotional rhythm), i recommend those, will talk more about the vid specific minituae
-why we cut: show me the next thing, this is what you see from new vidders, vid collages, just cutting to the next thing i want to show, not really about where, i want to show you the things, here are the things
-rhythm: working with music, our cutting is a kind of grammar, is like punctuation to visual poetry
-liveliness, want to make things more dynamic, cutting is one way to achieve that
-intent: we judge vids, if theyre precise with cutting, we will go, they have intent in this, if theyre not precise, im going to ignore this vid, we can be quite judgey about it in this community, cutting as authorial intent, i am cutting deliberatively so you should know the things i am doing are deliberate
-reasons why a cut would be made?
-getting rid of something i dont like, cut it out, selection within a scene, picking the best bits, nuanced pieces, deliberately selecting from the source
-compare/contrast two things, juxtaposition
-choreography: overall motion, choosing where to cut so that its seamless movement, the flow, the internal motion
-thats the why stuff, why we do these things, then we have the what, what kind of cutting can we do
-scene progression, action sequence thats got different elements to it, condensing that event into smaller pieces
-jump cuts or in shot jumps, what do we use jump shots for? rhythm, condense a piece of plot, unsettled, edgy, not how your eyes see, could be to look cool, used for effect, used to seeing things clearly, did i black out for a minute
-for emphasis, whatevers closest to when the jump cuts end is important, gets back to punctuation
-cross scene cutting, like juxtaposition, im putting together these two things, thing 1 may be person and thing 1 may be metaphor or different person and so on
-blank frames: negative space in your vid as an effect
-inner frame cutting, scene inside that scene is screen, are controlling some inside element, veronica mars just found footage of something, watching screen, can edit footage in scene, can use effects to control the inner elements
-how we do it: my method is that at end of the last cut point, ill put down my clip, ill find the end point of the clip according to feel, i want this motion so thats the section i need, ill measure it according to song, ill find the balance and if it doesnt kind measure it the same, i might change the speed of the clip, ill find the start end point, compare it to what came before, ill put them down very logically, acknowledging as sequence and also as internal piece of vid, the content will be very motion dependent, the internal motion will often, the decisions i make is how im balancing where i start and end the scene will depend on the music choice, i may or may not want the start of this to be very sudden so a scene naturally starts with someone turning their head, i may or may not choose it depending on the music, may cut that out, often have something measured out in the music that i want to use the rhythm and i will use the slide tool to shift the footage around without changing the start and end points of the song until it feels better
-what do you do when youre just on the timeline, making new cuts, building new vids?
-listening and relistening, where the important points of the visuals hit the important rhythmic/vocal points of the music, then the clips get expanded and contracted to fit that (so the when is the important part)
-i dont pick the start and end point, i find the point of impact, whether its a literal impact, a thing hits another thing or where the camera movement stops, i put that in relation to the music, how many frames before and after do i need, im usually wrong the first time
-point of view, is one of the characters telling the story or is the third person, the editor talking about them so you might start a clip on one particular character start it
-i do a combination of the two things, i know the spot i want filled, use keyframes within a clip, stretch the clip to fill it up
-where you see the clip is wrong so you put other clips to stick underneath, see if one clip works, invisible track at the top
-when to cut
-the most annoying thing is when the clip ends (ian runs out of paper on board - you planned that), clip runs out with one or two frames, i hate that
-clip dissolves into someone else, guys emotion is still happening and it looks weird (just because it looks better for their show, they should think of the vidders) or the person opening their mouth so it looks weird
-beat matching
-4/4 is the most common time signature, eight or sixteen bars, four beats in a measure, can break it down by fourths, downbeat, one and two and three and four, it really depends on what youre trying to do with your pacing
-there tends to be percussion emphasizing, syncopation, the beat 2 and beat 4 are called the back beat where you can have other stuff going on, often drums, one TWO three FOUR
-it can be anticipated, you start to expect it
-lyric matching: cut when they start to sing or lyric starts
-vid example: raise your weapon by absolutedestiny, focused on the beat
-vid example: starships by bironic largely focused on the lyrics
-its rap, the lyrics themselves are their own rhythm
-what is significant in the musicality of whats going on, this is where you may change your mind on whether youre following strict rhythm or vocals, it might be a particular instrument or particular phrase based on your ear and hopefully someone watching will agree
-when youve listened to the song enough times, the instruments start separating, you can only listening to the drums or cellos or guitars until you take a step back
-after a few years away from vid, what was i cutting to?
-what was i cutting to is a real tension in vids, go back to somthing you edited before, is this right?, may now hear different parts of the song
-vid example: baptism by joyo, changes when in the vid, the choice of where the cutting happens, i changed it a couple times intentionally, was trying to emphasize different things and different characters, after first verse, what was i clipping from, part of what i was doing was clipping to a large part of the screen in the dark, had to see the whole thing to understand it
-the song is well constructed, things will come and go throughout the song, theyll build, the choice you make at the start may become less relevant later on, but theres a risk that if you change it up you could lose your audience, theres that whole intent thing
-if you cut too much of the same thing, youre going to lose your audience in another way
-lets talk about beat match cutting, we tend towards lyrics because pure beat match cutting can be relentless, that consistency can help, i use it when i want to use montage, go from A to B, just going to hit the beats and ill do something else when the lyrics come back, theres the risk that if you cut the same way through the entire vid, it can be tiring or become boring
-many amv editors will say, why are vids so badly cut, why dont they hit the beat, ok show me an example of a really good amv, will send something long, first minute, it perfectly hits the beat, its techno, by minute 5, this is the shittiest thing i have ever seen, everything is cut to the same beats
-good example in amv world is an amv vidder who measured out the beats, picked frame rate of the same song with video, then mathematically calculated it, great youve got the beats in the right place...
-who cuts their frame directly on their beat or who does it a couple frames earlier? (many before, 2 or 3 or i dont know, depends)
-a little before is a good rule of thumb, depends on speed of your brain visually versus what youre hearing, im often too precise in my vidding which can be a problem if theres a tiny bit of lag on youtube, itll annoy me and i should have put it earlier, as long as you do the same all the time, its not a big deal
-Doomsday by absolutedestiny, big loud noises, the peak of the sound is not where the clip needs to be, needed to put it earlier
-sometimes we want to cut right on the beat, want the change to happen on the beat, want to register the face of the clip, will go back a couple frames before that movement
-some vidders are instinct vidders are where to put their clips, very freeform, some beats, some lyrics, wherever they think will put the most interest or emotional impact
-vid example: god is a dj by dualbunny: i dont cut like that, but it all really works
-part of what makes it work is the handheld camera, really helps
-ive talked to her about this, her cutting style looks different from mine, i dont do math about it but i do it much more metromonically, dualbunny looks at the beats of the waveform...because theres not a metromonic feel, thats why her vids mash up to songs so well as it feels more all over the place so it lines up on all sorts of songs (ill make love to you dualbunny mashups are amazing)
-...theres a downbeat where the plane goes, it feels very organic and goes back and forth, has a flow to it and i hate her (laughs)
-very quickly you get the full spectrum of who this character is, deliberate use of what she shows us, when she shows us and how she shows us, musicality and the lyrical interpretation, makes perfect sense
-she doesnt go for the obvious, punch is on two, what? why on that, should land the punch on 1 but it totally works (emotional peak is different from the punch), shes not automatic about it
-the first frame of the clip is not what shes cutting to (internal motion), its not that its not being timed, its not the first frame
-you can cut outside of the beat, as long as youre being mindful of the overall motion and internal motion, you can be more freeform
-i know nothing about this, is it possible to find the melody?
-yes, with rock music its generally guitars, vidders will pick songs that automatically do this, only the vidder will have the same ear, the things theyre listening for and the audience listens for can vary dramatically
-speed of clipping, we know instinctively that cuts that you do will effect rhythm of your vid, use that as a thematic element of your vid, two good examples, one is the comic use of how you manipulate this and one is dramatic
-vid example: do my thing by laura shapiro, the thing to look for is when does laura not put in a cut
-for comedy vids, you can do all this slapstick stuff with the beat matching or lyric matching but you can also do, youre expecting a clip there but no, theres internal gap, i am not cutting here because you need to pay attention, important principle of vidding, i will do this all for you, im going to get you used to it, youre going to get my intent, when we've made a connection, you trust me, when i choose not to, you pay attention, also works great in dramatic vid
-vid example: take me out by destina and barkley, focus on the cutting, does it follow the strong musical cues and think about the content we're seeing and whether theres a thematic connection
-theres some awesome things going on in this vid, amazing opening to it, going to start with the end, the most beautiful uniform section with the beat clips, its the flashback, when everything was predictable, when we were in sync, the stuff that came before, it was shit fucked, intense bits of reasonably fast cutting with violence and with some longer cutting, watch the emotional burden of the expression, the variance of cutting is fantastic, deliberate choice to go back to bridges, lets go back how things started before the chorus
-there was a small spot before that cut 1234, it was getting your heart in sync, my heart starts beating with the music so when it slows down your heart is still beating with it
-without knowing the source, something here unsettled and dont know what to expect, creates a tension, switches up, okay its calming down and you dont know whats going to happen, you know its upsetting
-its unsettled with what time frame it was going in, theres white shirts, sometimes theyre bloody, clearly we see different time periods
-want to talk about speed of cutting
-when i first came to vividcon in 2005, the premieres show showed street cafe and ?, lot of discussion about us cutting so fast now, there was general transition, technological and refinement of aesthetic that we're cutting faster, reached peak cutting speed in 2006, we've kept to that beat, people have been existing in that space since then, frequency of cutting not just how often a cut happens, think of speed of cutting as a measure of change, if you have a clip with a lot going on inside it, it often feels quicker, regardless of when you cut, the choice of when you need to go fast, needs to be measured by the content itself, sometimes you can multiply in a bad way, clip really fast and use crazy footage and it becomes difficult to parse, sometimes its useful and sometimes it may not be
-once i got below 10-12 frames, motiony clip will be hard to register, if i want shorter clips then clips need to be more still if i want viewer to register
-ive been through the spectrum, theres also cognition as well, how important it is that they can recognize whats going on, comes a point where it becomes effects and that might be fine too, important connection to be made when something is unknown or at beginning when you havent established pov, decisions like that can all effect how quickly you cut
-i learned all of that during baptism, i wanted them to feel the feels, at the last one, youre not going to see the images but youll see them enough to get it, scary thing you cant see and youll see this girl crying but youre going to feel bad, sorry
-cut differently based on the fandom, if im using visuals that are fannishly accepted between accessible images, cut between iconic image, flashback to star trek, all the key scenes between kirk and spock, fans will be able to spot that with single frame (and tell you background of it), fannish knowledge can affect that depending on your decision making, its a spectrum on where you fall in terms of where you fall in the cognition, its up to you as a vidder in terms of your aesthetic
-have you watched a vid for the first time and think its cut too fast?
-when we were making street cafe, i couldnt see it, says something about my slowness of my apprehension, i cant see less than 7 frames, the flashes of fast cutting is too disorienting for me to follow, i am a slow perceiver, my job is to advocate for all the slow perceivers who cant follow this
-sometimes on the first viewing when the lyrics are too fast or im unfamiliar with the song, trying to figure out what im hearing and seeing
-unfamiliar fandom and the editing feels off to me, too fast with the music choice, too much dissonance at the same time, i can deal with one way if its happening but i cant do both
-difference between what the music says to do and what youre actually cutting
-classic example: the music is much faster than how im cutting, vogue by luminosity, incredibly intentional in that it creates this whole new space of how you look at this footage
-really chaotic like the start of get back by cappy, she cuts faster than the song, makes uther look like a badass, no swagger in original clips
-depends on what the clips, how fast they are, if youre repeating clips, the image sticks in your mind more, its a lot easier to to feel whats going on
-i find that the vidder often has to signal to me how much i need to understand, some vidders will signal that the clips are shape and color, i get frustrated if the pattern is i need to see and then i cant see, ive learned i dont have to see everything, some vidders are good at signaling that its ok, im making shapes, im sculpting, you dont have to see, a good vidder can signal to vid watcher how much they need to see, its okay to not see everything
-you dont always have to see everything, as a vidder for one vid, i absolutely cut too fast for vid, only vid i was going to make for that show, i have to show everything, it ended up being way too fast, i got feedback that it was incoherent, i would take out 20 clips (sometimes less is more)
-i didnt cut fast enough, betas said cut faster, "im cutting as fast as i can", i really wasnt, i can cut much faster now, you have to do what your music is demanding as much as what youre viewer needs to see