Vividcon 2014 Con Report
At long last, here is my Vividcon 2014 Con Report :)
So this year I decided to do all my cross country vacationing in one go so I flew out of LA to Syracuse a week and a half before Vividcon so I could spend time with my family before Vividcon. This worked out super well in I was able to get adjusted to the time zones earlier and didn't have to get up super early for a flight on Thursday before VVC so I wasn't operating on a sleep deficit when I got to the con. It was a short 1 hour flight from Syracuse and I got in to the hotel around 1:45 pm or so where I first said hi to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
echan in the lobby. I was hungry so I met up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cherryice, par_avion, acridnym, settiai, tencel and possibly others I'm blanking on and we went to Spuntino's for lunch where we largely talking about vidding, Vividcon and various random stuff. We walked back across the dangerous street and then I mostly hung around in the lobby greeting people who showed up and catching up. I remember having fun talking to way2busymom about hockey and Kane/Toews (I was wearing my Toews shirt! perfectly timed for Chicago), jarrow about Faberry con and his space prison fic, absolutedestiny about Club Vivid (he put in Club Can't Handle Me without me having to ask! too cool), acridnym and lovelokest about our current fandoms and hung out on the lobby couches getting some last minute work done for the In Depth vid review while listening to fandom related conversation. There was also a lot of hugging of people! Finally it was time for early registration and I went to get my packet and see what fandoms were represented this year. I also got to say say hi to various people including butterfly, talitha78, hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly, kass, killabeez, winterevanesce and many other people I'm forgetting. At some point, we were able to drag a bunch of people away to have dinner at the House O'Meat and I was joined by hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly, elipie and we had a lot of fun talking about vidding and fandom.
After dinner, I went over to the Mystery Vid Party where I (of course) came in the middle of I Swear. Never gets old! There was a lot of fun vids that played and I remember getting to seecelli and bessyboo there for I think the first time. While leaving, I started talking to bessyboo and franzeska about finding more fannish people in LA and starting meetups to hang out with people. Since it was getting late, we decided to go down to the lobby table area and spent the next three hours or so talking about fandom friends (esp IRL), hockey (that was mostly bessyboo and me) and other various fandoms that came up. Finally around 3am or so, we called it a night and I went up to get some sleep. Next morning I woke up excited for the first official day of Vividcon and went down to breakfast where I was pleased to see the hotel had a delicious skillet dish this year. I think I had breakfast with revolutionaryjo and butterfly and we talked a bit about our fandoms. Then I went up to the registration area where I said hello to people, one of which was sanj who I was happy to meet as she is one of the few Kurt/Blaine shippers in vidding fandom. Then there was the Welcome to Vividcon/History of Vidding vidshow where it was really fun to see all the intro vids back to back (I especially love 2004/2005). I wanted to go to the Feedback panel but I had to go to the Femslash vidshow as not only my premiering vid was playing but a six other premiering vids plus FEMSLASH. I sat with hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly and elipie as we all cheered on each other's vids and then I was able to squee at them after the show about how great all the new vids were. Next up was lunch and I went to the Thai place (with the BEST pad thai) with podklb, thirdblindmouse and swiiftly. We had a fun discussion, my best memories being trying to convince podklb that Game of Thrones was not full of gratuitous deaths and that there was enough good meta out there that she should try giving the books and/or show another try. On the way back, I also tried to convince swiiftly to start vidding although I'm not sure how successful I was. I went up to Still Preoccupied with 1985 which was a lot of fun to see and hear about a lot of music videos that I mostly haven't seen as the music videos I'm more familiar with were mostly in the late 1990s and 2000s. But the conversation was enlightening and the mod's did a great job adding info and getting people talking. I remember around this point, I was able to catch up a bit with astolat and talk a little with her before the next panel. I went to Vid Purpose next which was an intriguing panel about a way to think about what your vid is doing and how that can influence structure and clip choice. Then I went to Out of Context Theatre where we had fun discussions about what to think about regarding audience's knowledge's of clips and how to vid with it in mind and shati made us all laugh with her hilarious powerpoint presentation. Next up I went to Also Premiering as I always try to go to the vidshow to see the new vids and there and ended up talking with frostfire_27 and iuliamentis, the latter of which I had a great conversation after the show about Swan Queen and Parks and Recreation which are two of my favorite things. Unfortunately that meant I missed the latter half of the panel like I planned but it was totally worth it.
At 5, I went to the hotel lobby to meetup with other hockey people for our hockey dinner at House O'Meat. With us we hadsvmadelyn, bessyboo, j_apollo, celli, cee_m and possibly others I'm forgetting? I know we talked about cons and crazy things actors have had to deal with for a bit and then started talking about various hockey teams and ships. I also remember I had the most amazing garlic mashed potatoes, sooo yummy. I had to leave early so I could get my costume ready for Club Vivid where the wonderful par_avion helped me with my hair. I was going as Arya Stark from Game of Thrones in S1 when she was doing her "dancing" lessons. I had green pants, a custom made tunic shirt, brown boots and a wooden sword :) A bunch of people were able to recognize me when I went downstairs (I think I actually find this part scarier than premiering a vid) and there was a lot of other great costumes such as kass and laurashapiro doing Carlos and Cecil, bradcpu and milly doing Sleepy Hollow characters and the best one of all, bessyboo as the poor Dash Con ball pit. It was genius! I was able to get a chance to talk to kouredios and others while waiting until the vids started playing. After I had a couple drinks, Club Vivid started and began with a bunch of vids I loved from milly's fun wrestling vid (such music nostalgia!), thirdblindmouse's super cool Fast and the Furious vid, sweetestdrain's mesmirizing pop divas vid and then I started getting a bit nervous for my premiere (I really need to get drunk earlier so I'm better prepared, just managed two drinks) but thankfully it seemed to go over well and I could just enjoy trelkez's fun Kitcken Confidental (nostalgia!) vid after mine. I was also super happy to see Do My Thing play and remember going over to laurashapiro to squee over how much I love that vid. I remember I got to dance with winterevanesce for her super pretty Thor vid and then was super happy I got to dance to my All We Got vid as I had originally made it with hopes that it would be in Club Vivid someday since the song is important to me as I heard it playing in a Berlin nightclub when fun stuff happened to me. After that, findthesea's awesome women of MCU vid came on and I danced with hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna and wished she could have made it to Vividcon. I was super excited for the next vid, Club Can't Handle Me as it was fun dancing to a Kaner vid in Chicago next to bessyboo who could understand the hockey love.
My favorite vid of the night washollywoodgrrl's Viking vid because I thought I was prepared for it but it blew me away visually with what it was doing and I wanted to watch a million more times and I'm not even that much *into* Vikings, it was just that good so it was fun watching that live and getting to gush about it afterwards. It was also fun dancing with bradcpu to his Sleepy Hollow vid, My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (song title) which was SUPER fun to sing out all the lyrics with all the other fans who knew the song by heart like me, definitely one of the highlights of CVV. It was also fun to dance to the Happy Endings vid by gwyneth and get to talk to her a little about the show and then fun singing and dancing to two nostalgia song vids, I'll Be There For You and Semi-Charmed Life where for the latter it was fun to shout the lyrics with elipie, jarrow and pipsqueaky. absolutedestiny had also included an AMAZING mashup of astolat's Bukowski House/Wilson vid with the song, What Is Love and it was both hilarious, adorable and sad and gave me ALL kinds of squeeful feelings for which I was sure to thank both astolat and absolutedestiny for. It was also super fun getting to go all out dancing to Dance Across the Floor, one of my favorite CVV vids as it's both super danceable and I love all the dance-y Scrubs shots littleheaven used in it. absolutedestiny continued his run of putting all my favorite vids in CVV this year by putting in The Evil Queen (Ms. Mills If You're Nasty) (or the best title ever) and I had SO much fun seeing the hotness of Regina and wooing at all the super sexy Swan Queen parts. The finale section of vids had so many of my favorite vids and I had a blast jumping around to Take Me Out, singing out the words to Hot in Herre, having feelings to God is a DJ and Starships and pretending CVV would never end with Don't Stop the Rock. It was so much dancing with so many of my friends to so many of my favorite vids I adore and just absorbing the ecstatic atmosphere of Club Vivid. Never gets old!
After Club Vivid ended, I went outside and drank some water and started talking toohvienna about Game of Thrones and The Scene, the reaction and dealing with my issues with it. Eventually I headed up to kiki_miserychic's room with cherryice, hollywoodgrrl, kiki_miserychic and ohvienna and we talked a for a little while until we were tired and split up. I was really tired so decided to go to my room and get some sleep early for once to recover from the late night the day before (I also am not into MCU at the moment so didn't want to go to that room party). I managed a good 7-8 hours of sleep and then went to have breakfast which sadly didn't have the potato skillet. I ate with podklb and swiiftly and talked a bit before heading up for my first panel of an all panel day. The first panel was Gathering Source which was a good warmup note wise and I mostly remember getting excited about absolutedestiny's cool tech discoveries. Next up was hollywoodgrrl and kiki_miserychic's Lyrical Interpretation which was filled of clips of vids showcasing different ways of interpreting lyrics and was really interesting to think about as lyrical interpretation is in my top 3 parts of vidding. For lunch I met with laurashapiro to discuss our In Depth panel the next day and we were able to figure out our plans exactly for that. We talked a little about our lives and then absolutedestiny came over and we talked a little to him about his transition to America. I was a little bit hungry so I had some snacks and a couple tacos from the taco bar while watching a hilarous game of Fandom Cards Against Hilarity with bessyboo, celli and a bunch of other people I'm forgetting. Then I headed over to the Love Struc(ture) panel led by shati who talked about ways of structuring vids (probably my favorite thing to think about vid-wise) including another hilarious powerpoint presentation with some interesting discussion. After that was the Timing is Everything panel where gwyn_r and talitha78 talking about how to time your big moments in a vid for emotional impact and showed gwyn's Orange Crush vid and later, chaila's Sound the Bells vid which again made me cry even though I've seen it a bunch of times before (best parts version of the movie vid!).
The next panel I went to was Nice Use of Clips! modded bysweetestdrain which was an interesting look at the clipping process and what kinds of clips we grab for our vids and arrange them maximum effect. I really liked getting a chance to watch astolat's vid, Jig of Life without sound in a group and then talk about what things we noticed in the clip choice, I thought it was a fun way to look at it. Finally, the last panel of the day was It Cuts Both Ways where absolutedestiny talked about the why, how, what and when of cutting and we talked a lot about interesting ways to cut and why we do it in certain places and not others. After that, I had my first time volunteering for setting up Premieres and while I was waiting to start talked with thefourthvine about hockey and she began to try to convert me to ship Jamie/Tyler. I helped with setting up with Premieres where thankfully lapillus was able to fix a little bit of tech trouble and then had dinner with lapillus, melina123 and thefourthvine from a Chinese place and had a nice conversation about various things. Once setup was done and people were let in, I sat with hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna and kiki_miserychic and was thankfully not too nervous as my vid was in the second half so I could just enjoy the first half vids. I particularly loved the Hannibal, Bates Motel and Bonnie and Clyde vids and after the first half was able to talk to some of the vidders in the show about their vids. Next up was the second half and my vid was not too far in so I started to get a bit nervous although I was also excited about seeing sisabet's Mindy Project vid so I tried to think about the vids coming instead. ohvienna had a great first time premieres with a vid for The Conjuring (Vera!!) and The Mindy Project vid did NOT disappoint and I had to actively constrain myself in Premieres from not exploding in feels and squee and was just crying with joy by the end of it, it was so wonderful. And THEN came kiki_miserychic's amazing Disney Princess vid which just blew me away. I was able to engross myself in milly's great Dollsome vid for awhile until I started getting really nervous about my own vid which was one of the more ambitious vids I've done but I was thankful that it seemed to play well although it looked a bit dark (brightness wise) on the big screen and gave me feels all over again. The vidshow as a whole was really strong, yes a bit dark but I enjoy well made vids regardless and I particularly enjoyed bradcpu's Cosmos vid which was a fun, joyful end to the show. I gave some insta-feedback to the amazing vidders around me and was happy that a few people came up to me and seemed to *get* my vid and of course, my fellow incest shipper, bessyboo enjoyed it :)
Next up was something new, Premieres Show Pictionary where people drew pictures of stuff from the vids and we all had to guess them. It was a lot of fun although people were pretty good with their guesses. I was able to gather up my courage and volunteer towards the end and thankfully got the Hannibal vid which wasn't too hard to draw. Then I went over toelipie's Club Vivid Rewatch party (although I did even less watching than at CVV) where I grabbed a slice of pizza and talked to franzeska about various things including (what else?) incest. Then I headed over to sit on the bed and talk to elipie, bessyboo, celli, ohvienna, bradcpu, kiki_miserychic, hollywoodgrrl and milly . We talked about all sorts of things although at one point I remember talking to ohvienna about, I think Game of Thrones, bradcpu about this cool videogame that sounded interesting, hollywoodgrrl about Grey's Anatomy and of course vidding and TV shows came up a whole lot in the general conversation. Towards the end of the night, people were pretty drunk and I remember we talked about famous celebs we have a connection to and franzeska told her hilarious story about watching certain movies with her dad. After the party, bessyboo, franzeska and I went back down the hotel lobby tables to continue talking. I don't remember a lot about what we talked about but I know at one point I mentioned trying to guess all the Challenge vidders without seeing the vids and I correctly got franzeska's vid right when she told us she had one in there. When it got late, we decided to go to bed as I needed to rest up for In Depth the next day.
I watched the two vids chosen for In Depth when I woke up in the morning which made me a bit late for breakfast where I quickly ate some oatmeal while talking withkatie_m and laurashapiro. I rushed off to Vid Review so I could take notes and thought it was a really great discussion about all the vids with some interesting comments. I had prepared myself for negative comments about my vid but thankfully it was pretty positive so my nervousness was for naught. Also I was able to finally find sisabet so I could squee at her about her Mindy Project vid. Next I had an hour of lunch before I co-modded In Depth Vid Review so grabbed some snacks off the con suite and mostly spent the time in my room calming my nerves and preparing and then left early for the panel where laurashapiro and me set up. We had cards with numbers setup to split people into groups but in the process of handing them out, there was a mixup with handing out the facilitator ones out which was the major snafu of the new format we had come up with. The night before we had people vote on the vid they most wanted to discuss in In Depth and the way we setup the panel was to try splitting into small groups to allow people to have longer conversations about the vids and to allow people who didn't feel as comfortable talking in a big group to speak if they wanted to. We also wanted to focus less on personal responses to the vids and more on what the vid was trying to do and how it accomplished that with things such as clip choice, pacing, effects, etc. Public speaking is one of my worst fears but I've been to enough Vividcons that I know it's a safe space to try new things so even though I was nervous, I was able to speak my part without too much trouble. After everyone was split up, Laura and I walked around the room listening to the conversations, making sure the discussion was staying on track and we had the conversation end when we had about 15 minutes left so the facilitators who took notes could report back to the group on what they had talked about. I was happy to experiment with the In Depth format but one of my concerns was not getting to hear all the conversations in the small groups so I hoped reporting back would at least give different groups a chance to share some of the insights in their groups. In hindsight, it probably would have worked better if we had an extra half hour and we could not only report back but actually discuss more the groups comments but not enough time is one of the sad facts of Vividcon.
Next up was Challenge and I took a seat next toelipie and made my final guesses on who made the Challenge vids before I saw them. I strongly suspected sweetestdrain for the Kings vid (and I was right!) and tried to get her to say if she made a vid. I also correctly guessed obsessive24 for The Single Man vid and trelkez for the Pride and Prejudice vid although I was unsure about the Frozen vid and tried to get jarrow to tell me if he had made a vid for the show as he was one of the few people I knew who was into it although my final guess was such_heights which was wrong (the amazing milly made that wonderful vid!). The Challenge vids were all great with the Single man vid making me cry and I was glad to see that hollywoodgrrl had made her Olivia vid that mentioned to me last year and was as amazing as you'd think it would be. The one vid that destroyed me though was sisabet's Due South vid that won me over with the cuteness of Dief and then there was a moment where I thought she was going to kill Dief (that would have been fan_eunice) and that made me emotional and then I really wanted a dog and then I started missing my cat a lot (I hadn't seen her for a week and a half) and there was a lot of tears. When the lights came on, I found out I wasn't alone and elipie and I comforted each other. After taking notes about the Challenge reactions, we had a break before Auction so I went to eat some snacks from the con suite and talked with various people, one of which I remember was acridnym where we talked a bit about sweetestdrain's Snowpiercer vid and I was able to see her and get her to come over so she could hear about it. I talked to a few more people like flummery (Seah) about her Walking Dead vid and talitha78 about my adventures getting autographs at the NBA summer league then went back to see the Auction vids. The highlights for me was vagabondage's super cute Fraser/RayK vid and then sockkpuppett's hilarious World War II vid that had me laughing so hard. I can't even with that.
Then I talked with a few people in the alcove, saying goodbye tohollywoodgrrl and ohvienna and talking with jarrow (whose love of my Faking It vid was a highlight of the weekend :)) and podklb about cons (especially Faberry Con) and making new friends at them. I tried to find barkley because I wanted to talk some German football with her but sadly she had left early although it was nice getting to chat briefly with destina who said nice things about my vids :) Then I went to go hang with milly in her room where she attempted to get me into the femslash in Wrestling Fandom and then went to Hooters with elipie, kiki_miserychic, milly and bradcpu as I had never been and figured it would be the most fun with the aforementioned people. We talked about Vividcon so far, vidding and real life stuff and then on the walk back, I talked to bradcpu about his future vidsongs. They had to go to a Fiasco game so I went to the 2nd floor alcove where I hung out with bessyboo, cherryice and way2busymom where we talked about various fannish things and bessyboo attempted to get me into her Baseball RPS ship and did get me to read a really good fic with them (iPhone's are a glorious invention for quick fic reading on the go). We started to get hungry so I headed to the Penny Dreadful room party with bessyboo and cherryice where franzeska had prepared some tasty food for us. I talked with bessyboo and franzeska for a little while and then went to go check out the Fiasco game with jetpackmonkey, elipie, kiki_miserychic, shati and bendtothesun and watched with bradcpu. It was a lot of fun to watch as kiki_miserychic was hilarious, there was funny pop song recordings and general ridiculous shenanigans. After a bit, I went back to the Penny Dreadful episode and watched a bit of an episode which made me want to watch the show more mostly because of the hotness and amazingness of Eva Green.
Afterwhile I left and met up withbessyboo and we went down once again to the hotel lobby to talk about mostly sports related things. As most of fandom is mostly into hockey or nothing, it was really fun to get to talk about other sports such as talking about my basketball OT3 and soccer OTP while also talking about hockey (learning more about the Minnesota Wild), the Minnesota Lynx and baseball. I remember we also talked about playing instruments growing up and other various topics. At some point it became around 3am and we figured with our previous sleep deficits and current tiredness, we should go to bed. I slept in til 9ish and then went downstairs to say goodbye to some of the people that were leaving while I waited around with other people to go to the traditional diner we always go to. After awhile I left with jarrow, sweetestdrain, cherryice, fan_eunice, pipsqueaky, absolutedestiny, joyo and possibly others I'm forgetting right now. The only space left was at the bar so I sat next to cherryice and fan_eunice and talked about our current fandoms and some RL stuff.
On the walk back to the hotel, I caught up a bit withpipsqueaky and encouraged her to make more vids and then went pack to my room to finish packing so I could check out and then went to hang out in hotel lobby so I could say goodbye to everyone as they left the shuttle. While I waited (my flight didn't leave til 6pm), I worked on uploading and posting my vids and was thankfully able to get them all finished before I left. People were playing this interesting pattern matching game but it was pretty tough for me so I mostly observed to take a break once in awhile from posting. About an hour before I needed to leave the hotel, I went to get my favorite pad thai from the Thai place and then joined thirdblindmouse, echan and cherryice in the House O'Meat to talk a little before I left. Then I went to catch my flight where instead of working on con notes like I planned, I watched vids and planned out vids I wanted to make (found a vidsong for Escapade!). As much fun as Vividcon was, I was happy to be home in Los Angeles and see my beautiful cat, Lana again <3
Overall it was an absolutely amazing Vividcon and I had a wonderful time getting to see so many friends again as well as meet new ones. There's never enough time to get to talk to everyone for as long as I'd like but I like to think of all my Vividcon's put together as a way to get a chance to do that and I definitely was able to have some great conversation with various people. I was really inspired by some of the vids and the panels were full of interesting discussion that has made me even more determined to keep learning and growing to become a better vidder. When I got home, I started clipping for my Club Vivid vid next year and I'm already looking forward to making Escapade vids and festivids. The con is always super well run which as we've seen this year, is not a given and I love the balance between trying new things and sticking with so many great traditions that I deeply love. I missed a lot of people this year who couldn't make it but I'm so thankful for all the people who could come and made it such an amazing experience for me. I'm so happy to be a part of such an amazing vidding community and can't wait for next Vividcon!
So this year I decided to do all my cross country vacationing in one go so I flew out of LA to Syracuse a week and a half before Vividcon so I could spend time with my family before Vividcon. This worked out super well in I was able to get adjusted to the time zones earlier and didn't have to get up super early for a flight on Thursday before VVC so I wasn't operating on a sleep deficit when I got to the con. It was a short 1 hour flight from Syracuse and I got in to the hotel around 1:45 pm or so where I first said hi to
echan in the lobby. I was hungry so I met up with cherryice, par_avion, acridnym, settiai, tencel and possibly others I'm blanking on and we went to Spuntino's for lunch where we largely talking about vidding, Vividcon and various random stuff. We walked back across the dangerous street and then I mostly hung around in the lobby greeting people who showed up and catching up. I remember having fun talking to way2busymom about hockey and Kane/Toews (I was wearing my Toews shirt! perfectly timed for Chicago), jarrow about Faberry con and his space prison fic, absolutedestiny about Club Vivid (he put in Club Can't Handle Me without me having to ask! too cool), acridnym and lovelokest about our current fandoms and hung out on the lobby couches getting some last minute work done for the In Depth vid review while listening to fandom related conversation. There was also a lot of hugging of people! Finally it was time for early registration and I went to get my packet and see what fandoms were represented this year. I also got to say say hi to various people including butterfly, talitha78, hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly, kass, killabeez, winterevanesce and many other people I'm forgetting. At some point, we were able to drag a bunch of people away to have dinner at the House O'Meat and I was joined by hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly, elipie and we had a lot of fun talking about vidding and fandom. After dinner, I went over to the Mystery Vid Party where I (of course) came in the middle of I Swear. Never gets old! There was a lot of fun vids that played and I remember getting to see
celli and bessyboo there for I think the first time. While leaving, I started talking to bessyboo and franzeska about finding more fannish people in LA and starting meetups to hang out with people. Since it was getting late, we decided to go down to the lobby table area and spent the next three hours or so talking about fandom friends (esp IRL), hockey (that was mostly bessyboo and me) and other various fandoms that came up. Finally around 3am or so, we called it a night and I went up to get some sleep. Next morning I woke up excited for the first official day of Vividcon and went down to breakfast where I was pleased to see the hotel had a delicious skillet dish this year. I think I had breakfast with revolutionaryjo and butterfly and we talked a bit about our fandoms. Then I went up to the registration area where I said hello to people, one of which was sanj who I was happy to meet as she is one of the few Kurt/Blaine shippers in vidding fandom. Then there was the Welcome to Vividcon/History of Vidding vidshow where it was really fun to see all the intro vids back to back (I especially love 2004/2005). I wanted to go to the Feedback panel but I had to go to the Femslash vidshow as not only my premiering vid was playing but a six other premiering vids plus FEMSLASH. I sat with hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna, kiki_miserychicbradcpu, milly and elipie as we all cheered on each other's vids and then I was able to squee at them after the show about how great all the new vids were. Next up was lunch and I went to the Thai place (with the BEST pad thai) with podklb, thirdblindmouse and swiiftly. We had a fun discussion, my best memories being trying to convince podklb that Game of Thrones was not full of gratuitous deaths and that there was enough good meta out there that she should try giving the books and/or show another try. On the way back, I also tried to convince swiiftly to start vidding although I'm not sure how successful I was. I went up to Still Preoccupied with 1985 which was a lot of fun to see and hear about a lot of music videos that I mostly haven't seen as the music videos I'm more familiar with were mostly in the late 1990s and 2000s. But the conversation was enlightening and the mod's did a great job adding info and getting people talking. I remember around this point, I was able to catch up a bit with astolat and talk a little with her before the next panel. I went to Vid Purpose next which was an intriguing panel about a way to think about what your vid is doing and how that can influence structure and clip choice. Then I went to Out of Context Theatre where we had fun discussions about what to think about regarding audience's knowledge's of clips and how to vid with it in mind and shati made us all laugh with her hilarious powerpoint presentation. Next up I went to Also Premiering as I always try to go to the vidshow to see the new vids and there and ended up talking with frostfire_27 and iuliamentis, the latter of which I had a great conversation after the show about Swan Queen and Parks and Recreation which are two of my favorite things. Unfortunately that meant I missed the latter half of the panel like I planned but it was totally worth it. At 5, I went to the hotel lobby to meetup with other hockey people for our hockey dinner at House O'Meat. With us we had
svmadelyn, bessyboo, j_apollo, celli, cee_m and possibly others I'm forgetting? I know we talked about cons and crazy things actors have had to deal with for a bit and then started talking about various hockey teams and ships. I also remember I had the most amazing garlic mashed potatoes, sooo yummy. I had to leave early so I could get my costume ready for Club Vivid where the wonderful par_avion helped me with my hair. I was going as Arya Stark from Game of Thrones in S1 when she was doing her "dancing" lessons. I had green pants, a custom made tunic shirt, brown boots and a wooden sword :) A bunch of people were able to recognize me when I went downstairs (I think I actually find this part scarier than premiering a vid) and there was a lot of other great costumes such as kass and laurashapiro doing Carlos and Cecil, bradcpu and milly doing Sleepy Hollow characters and the best one of all, bessyboo as the poor Dash Con ball pit. It was genius! I was able to get a chance to talk to kouredios and others while waiting until the vids started playing. After I had a couple drinks, Club Vivid started and began with a bunch of vids I loved from milly's fun wrestling vid (such music nostalgia!), thirdblindmouse's super cool Fast and the Furious vid, sweetestdrain's mesmirizing pop divas vid and then I started getting a bit nervous for my premiere (I really need to get drunk earlier so I'm better prepared, just managed two drinks) but thankfully it seemed to go over well and I could just enjoy trelkez's fun Kitcken Confidental (nostalgia!) vid after mine. I was also super happy to see Do My Thing play and remember going over to laurashapiro to squee over how much I love that vid. I remember I got to dance with winterevanesce for her super pretty Thor vid and then was super happy I got to dance to my All We Got vid as I had originally made it with hopes that it would be in Club Vivid someday since the song is important to me as I heard it playing in a Berlin nightclub when fun stuff happened to me. After that, findthesea's awesome women of MCU vid came on and I danced with hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna and wished she could have made it to Vividcon. I was super excited for the next vid, Club Can't Handle Me as it was fun dancing to a Kaner vid in Chicago next to bessyboo who could understand the hockey love. My favorite vid of the night was
hollywoodgrrl's Viking vid because I thought I was prepared for it but it blew me away visually with what it was doing and I wanted to watch a million more times and I'm not even that much *into* Vikings, it was just that good so it was fun watching that live and getting to gush about it afterwards. It was also fun dancing with bradcpu to his Sleepy Hollow vid, My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (song title) which was SUPER fun to sing out all the lyrics with all the other fans who knew the song by heart like me, definitely one of the highlights of CVV. It was also fun to dance to the Happy Endings vid by gwyneth and get to talk to her a little about the show and then fun singing and dancing to two nostalgia song vids, I'll Be There For You and Semi-Charmed Life where for the latter it was fun to shout the lyrics with elipie, jarrow and pipsqueaky. absolutedestiny had also included an AMAZING mashup of astolat's Bukowski House/Wilson vid with the song, What Is Love and it was both hilarious, adorable and sad and gave me ALL kinds of squeeful feelings for which I was sure to thank both astolat and absolutedestiny for. It was also super fun getting to go all out dancing to Dance Across the Floor, one of my favorite CVV vids as it's both super danceable and I love all the dance-y Scrubs shots littleheaven used in it. absolutedestiny continued his run of putting all my favorite vids in CVV this year by putting in The Evil Queen (Ms. Mills If You're Nasty) (or the best title ever) and I had SO much fun seeing the hotness of Regina and wooing at all the super sexy Swan Queen parts. The finale section of vids had so many of my favorite vids and I had a blast jumping around to Take Me Out, singing out the words to Hot in Herre, having feelings to God is a DJ and Starships and pretending CVV would never end with Don't Stop the Rock. It was so much dancing with so many of my friends to so many of my favorite vids I adore and just absorbing the ecstatic atmosphere of Club Vivid. Never gets old!After Club Vivid ended, I went outside and drank some water and started talking to
ohvienna about Game of Thrones and The Scene, the reaction and dealing with my issues with it. Eventually I headed up to kiki_miserychic's room with cherryice, hollywoodgrrl, kiki_miserychic and ohvienna and we talked a for a little while until we were tired and split up. I was really tired so decided to go to my room and get some sleep early for once to recover from the late night the day before (I also am not into MCU at the moment so didn't want to go to that room party). I managed a good 7-8 hours of sleep and then went to have breakfast which sadly didn't have the potato skillet. I ate with podklb and swiiftly and talked a bit before heading up for my first panel of an all panel day. The first panel was Gathering Source which was a good warmup note wise and I mostly remember getting excited about absolutedestiny's cool tech discoveries. Next up was hollywoodgrrl and kiki_miserychic's Lyrical Interpretation which was filled of clips of vids showcasing different ways of interpreting lyrics and was really interesting to think about as lyrical interpretation is in my top 3 parts of vidding. For lunch I met with laurashapiro to discuss our In Depth panel the next day and we were able to figure out our plans exactly for that. We talked a little about our lives and then absolutedestiny came over and we talked a little to him about his transition to America. I was a little bit hungry so I had some snacks and a couple tacos from the taco bar while watching a hilarous game of Fandom Cards Against Hilarity with bessyboo, celli and a bunch of other people I'm forgetting. Then I headed over to the Love Struc(ture) panel led by shati who talked about ways of structuring vids (probably my favorite thing to think about vid-wise) including another hilarious powerpoint presentation with some interesting discussion. After that was the Timing is Everything panel where gwyn_r and talitha78 talking about how to time your big moments in a vid for emotional impact and showed gwyn's Orange Crush vid and later, chaila's Sound the Bells vid which again made me cry even though I've seen it a bunch of times before (best parts version of the movie vid!). The next panel I went to was Nice Use of Clips! modded by
sweetestdrain which was an interesting look at the clipping process and what kinds of clips we grab for our vids and arrange them maximum effect. I really liked getting a chance to watch astolat's vid, Jig of Life without sound in a group and then talk about what things we noticed in the clip choice, I thought it was a fun way to look at it. Finally, the last panel of the day was It Cuts Both Ways where absolutedestiny talked about the why, how, what and when of cutting and we talked a lot about interesting ways to cut and why we do it in certain places and not others. After that, I had my first time volunteering for setting up Premieres and while I was waiting to start talked with thefourthvine about hockey and she began to try to convert me to ship Jamie/Tyler. I helped with setting up with Premieres where thankfully lapillus was able to fix a little bit of tech trouble and then had dinner with lapillus, melina123 and thefourthvine from a Chinese place and had a nice conversation about various things. Once setup was done and people were let in, I sat with hollywoodgrrl, ohvienna and kiki_miserychic and was thankfully not too nervous as my vid was in the second half so I could just enjoy the first half vids. I particularly loved the Hannibal, Bates Motel and Bonnie and Clyde vids and after the first half was able to talk to some of the vidders in the show about their vids. Next up was the second half and my vid was not too far in so I started to get a bit nervous although I was also excited about seeing sisabet's Mindy Project vid so I tried to think about the vids coming instead. ohvienna had a great first time premieres with a vid for The Conjuring (Vera!!) and The Mindy Project vid did NOT disappoint and I had to actively constrain myself in Premieres from not exploding in feels and squee and was just crying with joy by the end of it, it was so wonderful. And THEN came kiki_miserychic's amazing Disney Princess vid which just blew me away. I was able to engross myself in milly's great Dollsome vid for awhile until I started getting really nervous about my own vid which was one of the more ambitious vids I've done but I was thankful that it seemed to play well although it looked a bit dark (brightness wise) on the big screen and gave me feels all over again. The vidshow as a whole was really strong, yes a bit dark but I enjoy well made vids regardless and I particularly enjoyed bradcpu's Cosmos vid which was a fun, joyful end to the show. I gave some insta-feedback to the amazing vidders around me and was happy that a few people came up to me and seemed to *get* my vid and of course, my fellow incest shipper, bessyboo enjoyed it :) Next up was something new, Premieres Show Pictionary where people drew pictures of stuff from the vids and we all had to guess them. It was a lot of fun although people were pretty good with their guesses. I was able to gather up my courage and volunteer towards the end and thankfully got the Hannibal vid which wasn't too hard to draw. Then I went over to
elipie's Club Vivid Rewatch party (although I did even less watching than at CVV) where I grabbed a slice of pizza and talked to franzeska about various things including (what else?) incest. Then I headed over to sit on the bed and talk to elipie, bessyboo, celli, ohvienna, bradcpu, kiki_miserychic, hollywoodgrrl and milly . We talked about all sorts of things although at one point I remember talking to ohvienna about, I think Game of Thrones, bradcpu about this cool videogame that sounded interesting, hollywoodgrrl about Grey's Anatomy and of course vidding and TV shows came up a whole lot in the general conversation. Towards the end of the night, people were pretty drunk and I remember we talked about famous celebs we have a connection to and franzeska told her hilarious story about watching certain movies with her dad. After the party, bessyboo, franzeska and I went back down the hotel lobby tables to continue talking. I don't remember a lot about what we talked about but I know at one point I mentioned trying to guess all the Challenge vidders without seeing the vids and I correctly got franzeska's vid right when she told us she had one in there. When it got late, we decided to go to bed as I needed to rest up for In Depth the next day.I watched the two vids chosen for In Depth when I woke up in the morning which made me a bit late for breakfast where I quickly ate some oatmeal while talking with
katie_m and laurashapiro. I rushed off to Vid Review so I could take notes and thought it was a really great discussion about all the vids with some interesting comments. I had prepared myself for negative comments about my vid but thankfully it was pretty positive so my nervousness was for naught. Also I was able to finally find sisabet so I could squee at her about her Mindy Project vid. Next I had an hour of lunch before I co-modded In Depth Vid Review so grabbed some snacks off the con suite and mostly spent the time in my room calming my nerves and preparing and then left early for the panel where laurashapiro and me set up. We had cards with numbers setup to split people into groups but in the process of handing them out, there was a mixup with handing out the facilitator ones out which was the major snafu of the new format we had come up with. The night before we had people vote on the vid they most wanted to discuss in In Depth and the way we setup the panel was to try splitting into small groups to allow people to have longer conversations about the vids and to allow people who didn't feel as comfortable talking in a big group to speak if they wanted to. We also wanted to focus less on personal responses to the vids and more on what the vid was trying to do and how it accomplished that with things such as clip choice, pacing, effects, etc. Public speaking is one of my worst fears but I've been to enough Vividcons that I know it's a safe space to try new things so even though I was nervous, I was able to speak my part without too much trouble. After everyone was split up, Laura and I walked around the room listening to the conversations, making sure the discussion was staying on track and we had the conversation end when we had about 15 minutes left so the facilitators who took notes could report back to the group on what they had talked about. I was happy to experiment with the In Depth format but one of my concerns was not getting to hear all the conversations in the small groups so I hoped reporting back would at least give different groups a chance to share some of the insights in their groups. In hindsight, it probably would have worked better if we had an extra half hour and we could not only report back but actually discuss more the groups comments but not enough time is one of the sad facts of Vividcon. Next up was Challenge and I took a seat next to
elipie and made my final guesses on who made the Challenge vids before I saw them. I strongly suspected sweetestdrain for the Kings vid (and I was right!) and tried to get her to say if she made a vid. I also correctly guessed obsessive24 for The Single Man vid and trelkez for the Pride and Prejudice vid although I was unsure about the Frozen vid and tried to get jarrow to tell me if he had made a vid for the show as he was one of the few people I knew who was into it although my final guess was such_heights which was wrong (the amazing milly made that wonderful vid!). The Challenge vids were all great with the Single man vid making me cry and I was glad to see that hollywoodgrrl had made her Olivia vid that mentioned to me last year and was as amazing as you'd think it would be. The one vid that destroyed me though was sisabet's Due South vid that won me over with the cuteness of Dief and then there was a moment where I thought she was going to kill Dief (that would have been fan_eunice) and that made me emotional and then I really wanted a dog and then I started missing my cat a lot (I hadn't seen her for a week and a half) and there was a lot of tears. When the lights came on, I found out I wasn't alone and elipie and I comforted each other. After taking notes about the Challenge reactions, we had a break before Auction so I went to eat some snacks from the con suite and talked with various people, one of which I remember was acridnym where we talked a bit about sweetestdrain's Snowpiercer vid and I was able to see her and get her to come over so she could hear about it. I talked to a few more people like flummery (Seah) about her Walking Dead vid and talitha78 about my adventures getting autographs at the NBA summer league then went back to see the Auction vids. The highlights for me was vagabondage's super cute Fraser/RayK vid and then sockkpuppett's hilarious World War II vid that had me laughing so hard. I can't even with that. Then I talked with a few people in the alcove, saying goodbye to
hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna and talking with jarrow (whose love of my Faking It vid was a highlight of the weekend :)) and podklb about cons (especially Faberry Con) and making new friends at them. I tried to find barkley because I wanted to talk some German football with her but sadly she had left early although it was nice getting to chat briefly with destina who said nice things about my vids :) Then I went to go hang with milly in her room where she attempted to get me into the femslash in Wrestling Fandom and then went to Hooters with elipie, kiki_miserychic, milly and bradcpu as I had never been and figured it would be the most fun with the aforementioned people. We talked about Vividcon so far, vidding and real life stuff and then on the walk back, I talked to bradcpu about his future vidsongs. They had to go to a Fiasco game so I went to the 2nd floor alcove where I hung out with bessyboo, cherryice and way2busymom where we talked about various fannish things and bessyboo attempted to get me into her Baseball RPS ship and did get me to read a really good fic with them (iPhone's are a glorious invention for quick fic reading on the go). We started to get hungry so I headed to the Penny Dreadful room party with bessyboo and cherryice where franzeska had prepared some tasty food for us. I talked with bessyboo and franzeska for a little while and then went to go check out the Fiasco game with jetpackmonkey, elipie, kiki_miserychic, shati and bendtothesun and watched with bradcpu. It was a lot of fun to watch as kiki_miserychic was hilarious, there was funny pop song recordings and general ridiculous shenanigans. After a bit, I went back to the Penny Dreadful episode and watched a bit of an episode which made me want to watch the show more mostly because of the hotness and amazingness of Eva Green. Afterwhile I left and met up with
bessyboo and we went down once again to the hotel lobby to talk about mostly sports related things. As most of fandom is mostly into hockey or nothing, it was really fun to get to talk about other sports such as talking about my basketball OT3 and soccer OTP while also talking about hockey (learning more about the Minnesota Wild), the Minnesota Lynx and baseball. I remember we also talked about playing instruments growing up and other various topics. At some point it became around 3am and we figured with our previous sleep deficits and current tiredness, we should go to bed. I slept in til 9ish and then went downstairs to say goodbye to some of the people that were leaving while I waited around with other people to go to the traditional diner we always go to. After awhile I left with jarrow, sweetestdrain, cherryice, fan_eunice, pipsqueaky, absolutedestiny, joyo and possibly others I'm forgetting right now. The only space left was at the bar so I sat next to cherryice and fan_eunice and talked about our current fandoms and some RL stuff. On the walk back to the hotel, I caught up a bit with
pipsqueaky and encouraged her to make more vids and then went pack to my room to finish packing so I could check out and then went to hang out in hotel lobby so I could say goodbye to everyone as they left the shuttle. While I waited (my flight didn't leave til 6pm), I worked on uploading and posting my vids and was thankfully able to get them all finished before I left. People were playing this interesting pattern matching game but it was pretty tough for me so I mostly observed to take a break once in awhile from posting. About an hour before I needed to leave the hotel, I went to get my favorite pad thai from the Thai place and then joined thirdblindmouse, echan and cherryice in the House O'Meat to talk a little before I left. Then I went to catch my flight where instead of working on con notes like I planned, I watched vids and planned out vids I wanted to make (found a vidsong for Escapade!). As much fun as Vividcon was, I was happy to be home in Los Angeles and see my beautiful cat, Lana again <3Overall it was an absolutely amazing Vividcon and I had a wonderful time getting to see so many friends again as well as meet new ones. There's never enough time to get to talk to everyone for as long as I'd like but I like to think of all my Vividcon's put together as a way to get a chance to do that and I definitely was able to have some great conversation with various people. I was really inspired by some of the vids and the panels were full of interesting discussion that has made me even more determined to keep learning and growing to become a better vidder. When I got home, I started clipping for my Club Vivid vid next year and I'm already looking forward to making Escapade vids and festivids. The con is always super well run which as we've seen this year, is not a given and I love the balance between trying new things and sticking with so many great traditions that I deeply love. I missed a lot of people this year who couldn't make it but I'm so thankful for all the people who could come and made it such an amazing experience for me. I'm so happy to be a part of such an amazing vidding community and can't wait for next Vividcon!
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I'm so happy to be a part of such an amazing vidding community and can't wait for next Vividcon!
That is exactly how I feel, all the time. ♥
Also, I thought In-Depth was really neat this year. I think I've said this to
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I'm glad you enjoyed it! There was definitely some pros and cons but I enjoyed trying something new and was glad Laura suggested it!