National Vidlet Making Month Retrospective!

[beccatoria]

WOW. Okay, so I actually finished it. It was both exhausting and awesome and at times a bit stressful, but I'm glad that I really, honestly DID it. And now I'm finished, I'm going to ramble FOREVER about it. Probably the part you're all interested in is the index of vidlets, so feel free to skip on over to that part. :)

Okay, next up, some thoughts on vidlets in general.

I really, really love vidlets. Several people have commented that they find vidlets to be teases - just as you're getting into it, the vidlet ends. I have mixed feelings on that. Sometimes I think that's the case, but at other times I think vidlets are really freeing and also practical. There are some ideas that aren't sustainable over the course of a full-length vid, either due to lack of footage (for example, when vidding Altlivia) or a joke that might wear thin, or even a truly surreal idea (to use a really old example, when I made a BSG vidlet about Kara/Sam/Scar the Cylon Raider as an OT3). Or even when an idea just doesn't need a whole vid to explain it even if it could use one, it can be freeing to give yourself permission to make it shorter, sometimes.

I think I made both in this project. Certainly there were some where I felt I was making a trailer for a full-length vid, but others where I thought they worked pretty well as they are. (Though okay, it oughtn't be missed that several of the prompts spilled over into almost full-length, or in once case actually full-length, pieces).

So, um, there are my scattered thoughts on the vidlet as a medium. Also in case anyone is curious, my personal and absolutely arbitrary designation of a vidlet is less than two minutes, with anything over two minutes being a vid (albeit a "short vid" in my head until it gets over the three minute mark). Cus that's how I roll.

Because I'm not planning to include these vidlets in my forthcoming End of Year Vidding Meme, I figured for the hell of it, I'd use that meme to talk about just these vidlets. Because I'm feeling verbose and contemplative!


List of NaViMaMo Vidlets in date order:

Note: some of the dates line up a bit funny because I'd post after midnight one day then right before midnight the next, making it look like I did multiple vids the same day.

6th: War Machine [BSG] [Scar the Cylon Raider] for rjsteamboat76

6th: The Heart, The Piano [BSG] [Helo] for kuwdora

7th: a thousand goodbyes [Doctor Who] [River/Doctor] for tellitslant

8th: Boy & Girl [Star Wars] [Luke & Leia] for daybreak777

9th: so happy [TSCC/Fringe] [Sarah Connor & Olivia Dunham] for chaila43

10th: Not My Name [Leverage] [Sophie & Parker] for emmiere

11th: Harbour [Doctor Who] [Amy/Rory] for be_themoon

12th: Diary of Jane [Fringe] [Altlivia] for hollywoodgrrl

14th: It's Not (Before). [Fringe] [Olivia] for coffeejunkii

14th: It's Not (After). [Fringe] [Olivia] for coffeejunkii

15th: A to B [Pushing Daisies] [Episodic: Pilot] for kiki_miserychic

15th: Cold War [BSG] [New Caprica Occupation] for bluerosefairy

17th: For Amy [Doctor Who] [Amy Pond] for pellucid

18th: This Chain of Days [Star Wars] [Padme Amidala] for such_heights

20th: The Pretender [BSG] [Sam Anders] for sabaceanbabe

21st: Serenity [TSCC] [Sarah Connor] for impatient_dream

22nd: i say fever [Farscape] [John/Aeryn] for teenygozer

24th: My Love, the Astronaut [Doctor Who] [River/Doctor] for ladymercury_10

25th: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room [Fringe] [Olivia/Peter] for grav_ity

27th: Short Skirt, Long Jacket [Doctor Who] [Amy Pond] for apatheia_jane

28th: You Can't Survive on Ice Cream [Batman: the Dark Knight] [Joker, Two Face, Batman] for streussal

29th: I'm Gonna Fall [Fringe] [Olivia] for ghanimasun

29th: Clonie [BSG] [Cylons] for cyborganize

And now, THE MEME (in which I will cheat and choose multiple answers and refuse to interpret questions as they were intended!):

Favourite
Ooooh, so many to choose from. I want to say, and it's true, that there were moments I loved about all of them, and I'm not just saying that because I made them for people. But I think that there are two vids I have to point out as favourites because I wasn't expecting them to go from vidlets to full-fledged (almost) vids, and not only that, but vids I really felt...caught something about the subject matter I'm not sure I'd properly expressed in other work of mine. So let's hear it for the angsty canon ship-vids:

a thousand goodbyes

and

i say fever

I love both couples for reasons I often struggle to articulate; I think these vids help explain why. More than that, I feel they perhaps (though in honesty, probably more then second than the first) benefited from the manic pace I set myself, whereas I think other vids were, err, victims of it.


Least Favourite
I don't think it's fair to choose this; it would put an unfair focus on the prompt rather than the vidding, so instead, I will choose a vidlet I wish I'd done a better job with because I did like the prompt. Like, a vid I wish I'd done better at.

So, This Chain of Days. But I really recommend reading the vidder's notes on that page for a proper account of why. It's down to my complicated, obsessive relationship with Star Wars as a story, and my investment (and disappointment) with its gender issues in various areas. In a sense, this is only a "least favourite" because of its catharsis which is satisfying but always tinged with grief. I have a complex relationship with this vidlet in that I'm extremely glad I made it, and grateful to such_heights for suggesting it because otherwise I would have avoided the issue, probably, even though vidding is, these days, a primary method of communication between me and a text. You know, to sound pretentious.

But at the same time, I will always be sad it wasn't bigger, that it wasn't a reclaimation vid in the usually understood sense, but rather a vid that, in part, exists to mourn the lack of that reclaimation. I can't fix it; this vid is about that.

Maybe I put the wrong vid here; maybe it's one of the most successful given it's now spawned more wordage from me than any other. But it's certainly a more complicated experience than pure glee or powerful satisfaction.

Most Successful
I always struggle with this criteria. I think, really, I have to choose i say fever. I think it achieves a clarity of message in a spare, direct style that makes me rewatch it and think, in parts, I vidded that?! I think it does a better job of internal motion and linking and...vidderly stuff too than most of my stuff.

But since I already gave this vid the spotlight once, I'm gonna give an honourable mention to A to B because I'm obsessed with jump cuts, but I think they work here more successfully than usual and I was quite happy with how I integrated them with the internal motion of the source.

Most Underappreciated By The Universe
Oooh, tough call. It's hard to tell exactly how much something should be appreciated by the universe when you've been spamming all month and some of them are pretty darn obscure fandoms! I think I shall choose Boy & Girl. It doesn't surprise me it got less on the feedback front; the Star Wars Original Trilogy is long gone now, and this is a strange piece to live music, but the Skywalker twins have a special place in my heart, and I am more than slightly taken with this vidlet as an expression of that early, earnest, eager, naive love they both had for a universe that was trying very hard to kill them.

Most Fun
AHAHAHAHA. Can I pick November? ;) Okay, okay, srsly though, three way toss-up:

Not My Name

Short Skirt, Long Jacket

Clonie

Single Sexiest Moment
And here I make a weird choice. I could choose a sexy awesome shippy moment but instead I'm going with editorial sexiness. I'm not sure why, it just seems the right answer.

Harbour, at 1:29. The shift in camera focus from Amy's face to her hand, holding Vincent's, on "drowning [deep]". Something about the lyric in sync with the context, and the slow blur of her face, the clarity of her grasping hand, the way it shifts as something drowns, idk. It's probably unique to me and my idiosyncrasies, but it's, for some reason, an editing moment that gutpunches me and works about fifty times better (to me) than I thought it would before I put the clip on the timeline.

There are other lyric matches I've liked more this month, or pieces of editing I think are more skillful or original, but few others I think are sexier.

Biggest Vidlet Fail
Hmmm, okay, two things. Firstly the fact that I still, after AGES (okay, comparatively, but for some edits, I literally tried adjusting it frame by frame until it was clear I was hitting the beat too late, then frame by frame in the other direction until it was too early), I COULD NOT get all the cuts right in You Can't Survive on Ice Cream which bugs me because it's a vidlet that deserves better. Hopefully it's at least not painful to those watching.

I'd also mention, in passing, that I basically made the same Olivia vidlet about four times. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love that vid; Olivia as the self-denying lonely hero is something I will never tire of watching or vidding. But I do think that maybe I could have done something more interesting with some of them if I'd been less lazy? On the other hand...I love Olivia the self-denying lonely superhero so maybe I'm just onto a nonstarter on that one and should embrace my calling. ;)

Hardest To Make
Technically, probably Serenity for the masks and overlays. In terms of really struggling to meet the self-imposed deadline (I didn't have formal deadlines but I did allocate myself goals after working out how long I wanted to make the vidlet and what I was doing IRL at the time), then Harbour was a real race against the clock by the end.

Most Unintentionally Telling
AHAHHAAHAHA, must you ask? ;) This Chain of Days of course.

But again, in an attempt not to make this meme about a few of the vidlets, honourable mention goes to It's Not (Before). & It's Not (After).. Only I could fail to be concise in vids AND words, and therefore overrun the comment character limit need to make TWO vidlets to fulfill a single prompt. ;)

Bonus: New Things I Did
I added this one in because I don't necessarily think it fits under "things I've learned" (which I've treated a bit more generically), because I technically knew how to do this stuff, but rather I wanted to say, "Hey, I never did something like this before in a vid!"

So first off I jumped in and vidded a few brand new fandoms (Leverage, Pushing Daisies, live action Star Wars, Batman) even though I wouldn't normally be confident enough to just bust out new fandoms at a moment's notice. Though I did have the advantage of them either being a single movie (or set of movies I know well), or me choosing to limit the scope of the source I was using.

In technical terms though:

- so happy because I've only ever one done a crossover vid before and that one was a bit different. This one was all about the visual parallels which isn't something I'm usually strong at. Fortunately I had chaila43's awesome picspam to use as a guide, but it was still a style (constant overlays) I hadn't used before, with the different tracks vying for dominance. The music was also really interesting and weird to work with.

- This Chain of Days for the last clip of the vidlet only. The rest of the vid is fairly straightforward in its editing, but I knew I wanted to end on Leia, who never actually has a moment of reflection about her father's death, or even, really, a moment of confrontation about the fact he IS her father. (For that you have to read an otherwise fairly dire novel that at least features the rather awesome moment when Anakin's ghost comes knocking on HER door for forgiveness and unlike her brother she rather bluntly tells him where he can shove it). Anyway, I wanted to put that back in there, but the clip I found was SO coloured wrong, it looked unlike anything that should be near the funeral pyre scene. So I actually took time to not only colour correct it but mask in an alternate (very murky or it wouldn't have worked) background. I'm...actually pretty pleased with the end result. I think it at least subtly hints at a connection between the two even if it doesn't exactly look like she's sat by the pyre. Anyway, I'd never tried anything that complex with colour correction, etc., before.

- Serenity for the rather obvious fact of the overlays, etc. I've done stuff like that before, but rarely and never as, like, the "thing" of a vid.

- My Love, the Astronaut because, folks, for the first time that I can remember (yes, I know, I KNOW), I did not vid it linearly. I did the middle, then I did the start, then I did the end.

Things I've Learned
Vidding this quickly was a bit of a different experience to the normal way I do it, but probably not as different as it'd be for some people: I've always been a fairly fast vidder. I throw shit at the timeline any which way from start to end. The main difference is I devoted more time per day to doing this and therefore spent less time in between and prior mentally vidding it and rerunning over clip options. Which, you know, is a fairly important part of my err, "process". Running through source and clips in my head while I'm drifting to sleep or in the shower or pretending to be working. ;) The other half of my process is actually putting things on the timeline, when I often come up with ideas about how, stylistically, to edit a vid that I wouldn't have considered before. I mean, sometimes I do come up with tone and style ideas before I lay down clips, but a surprising amount of the time, it's not until I'm actually visually seeing it on the timeline that I really know what I'm doing.

(An example would be, for instance, I knew I was going to be using a lot of jump cuts in A to B, but while I knew I needed to represent the dreamy, fevered, slow daze of Serenity but not how I'd do it - with the resized, partial overlays creeping around the screen - until I actually made the thing.)

I thought that the second part of my process would suffer acutely because I was working very quickly and I figured either my focus on speed or simply the fact I was having to switch through so many vids so quickly would stop me from really trying anything other than simple "me"-ish editing. To an extent, I believe this did happen. There are a few vids in here that I vidded more slowly and simply because I felt the vidlet needed that, but there are a few others when I know that if I were vidding them with more time, I might have concentrated more on the vidding, been a bit faster with the cuts or a bit more careful with them, put some more thought into it, that kind of thing. And there are still others that, looking back on them, I think I fell back on some clips that fly by too fast because I'm used to vidding fairly quickly, and so I compensated by doing that when I was afraid that by vidding slower, I'd make the project look lazy or boring, but without the quality control of a few days to reflect or a beta, I didn't catch til later that they were flying by way too quickly.

There are also a few points at which I think I picked the easier prompts - vidlets I knew I could do quickly or simply, instead of the more complex or weirder or more interesting ones (as I might have earlier in the meme), which is a shame for both me and the prompters, but at least everyone got something.

That said, I was surprised at how many times I did end up innovating as I went, as usual. It's not always things you'd notice as viewers, perhaps, when a vid might seem fairly averagely in terms of style, but again as an example, Cold War has a very messy and fast style which is certainly something I've done before, and might even be considered fairly close to my regular style (though I'm always uncertain if I have one of those?) but I initially intended to go with something long and slow and fadey, except obviously when I started vidding it That Was Wrong.

So anyway, I was quite pleased with the overall ratio. And you know, I was vidding ridiculously fast, it was never going to be a series of masterpieces. But the speed was in some ways freeing; I stopped worrying about the details because I had an excuse not to, and I tried some stuff I might not otherwise have tried for fear of not being able to sustain it over the course of a vid, or because it's not a subject with enough footage to cover a whole vid.

A few of the vidlets I even thought were genuinely awesome and some of my best work!

So, in conclusion, I think people had fun, and it's really awesome to make presents for people, and I do enjoy vidding as a distracting activity when I have Real Life Crap I want to be distracted from. Which means, I think, we can count NaViMaMo as a ridiculously named success! :D

Comments

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

This is AWESOME !!!

<3 !!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :D \o/

[daybreak777.livejournal.com]

I will have lots more thoughts but I wanted to comment on these right away. I love a Boy and a Girl very much. I'm glad you vidded the trilogy. But the one I watched most? For Amy. The song. I think the song too is what makes it feel like it should just be a vidlet. Short song, and a simple idea. I have watched it sooooo many times. :-) And for a source that I don't even know!

It's so funny to get a ray into how you vid. I plan everything out but lately, I've waited so long to actually vid those ideas that I just started throwing things on a timeline because the plan was so outdated and well, if I didn't vid it RIGHT NOW I might never. ;-) It does get vids done quickly, but I think I need that planning even if I don't even look at those papers when I start vidding.

I think your National Vidlet Making Month was an enormous success! I still love some of the vidlets you did for TheArchive2. I have watched Manifesto so many times and still think that was such a cool vid. :-)

Long live vidlets!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yes, I felt bad about not really talking more about For Amy up there. It's one of the vidlets I vidded very slowly and simply because it felt right to do so not because I thought I was being laaaazy. But it's so, simple and sweet and complete I kind of don't have a lot more to say about it so I didn't end up waffling a long time, which I suppose is a measure of its success. I'm certainly thrilled that you like it even not having seen the series. That's awesome! (Though you should watch the series!) And yes, I think the song is part of what makes it so lovely. There's something unusual and offbalance about the way the lyrics exist in such a late-stage, top-heavy way, too, that I find charming.

I used to plan everything too. Even after I stopped making storyboards, I still used to listen to the song until I pretty much knew where everything was going to go. But that's...not visual enough really and sometimes I'd get stuck and one day I just started anyway and discovered sometimes the best ideas arrive on the fly and if they don't, welll, then I can take a break and come back later. It was a bit like you - if I don't make it RIGHT NOW, when will I?

I understand wanting the act of writing everything down even if you don't look at the paper when you're vidding. The first part of my process is a bit similar, I think, in that I don't always stick with the ideas I obsessively throw out in my own mind while going about my day, but I do feel insecure if I haven't done that preparatory thinking time, if only to get myself more familiar with the song and potential clips.

Hooray for vidlets indeed! It's so nice to hear that you remember Manifesto! That was one of the first really experimental things I did with style and I think the very first time I did anything outside of WMM. It'll alwyas be special to me.

[chaila.livejournal.com]

29 vidlets! You are clearly an internet-powered Cylon from the future! I'm kind of amazed that you were able to turn out not just that number of vidlets, but really great stuff like "i say fever" which honestly showed me stuff about the characters that I ought to have grasped before, but really just kind of didn't, or at least, not so coherently as it is portrayed in that vid.

Vidlets are awesome! Your ability to not worry about all the details and all the stuff and just make a bunch of vids is awesome! Though dude, I still cannot believe that you are able to do everything linearly. I imagine your head as some sort of huge footage library.

And it goes without saying that I loved *my* vidlet. :D Mwahaha I shall now go contemplate other ways to make you make me more visual parallel-y crossover vids about girls so I never have to make any of them. <#

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

23 vidlets! Which makes me simply an internet-powered cyborg from the future. :p I'm a little amazed myself but in fairness I think that "i say fever" was a...not exactly a fluke but certainly a really fortuitous meeting of song and idea and a take on the two of them I had had for years in a show I know backwards? Which isn't to say I don't loooove it cus I do, or that I'm not slightly stunned I finished it all.

I'm glad you find my ability to not worry about stuff impressive rather than lazy. ;) But it really is fun, I recommend it!

As to being linear, it's...it's not like my head is a library of footage (though I WISH IT WERE) so much as I try to remember stuff I stumble across as I'm going, for later. I think part of it is if I vidded the bits I liked first, I'm convinced I'd use up all the "good footage" and be left with boring bits for the inbetweens, so this means I make a concerted effort to "save" iconic shots, even though that probably makes no real sense. The downside is that I think I probably end up stumbling across fewer awesome visual parallels or coincidence or whatever. Which is a shame. And something I wish I were better at, but you know, at least here I'm trying not to worry about stuff. ;)

Your vidlet was superfun to make! Especially because I'm NOT always that great with visual parallels it was really nice to have your picspam as a starting point and then to discover that I was capable of finding more. And also because I've never done a vid entirely in overlay before. <#

But surely now it's my turn to fob off awesome ideas on YOU?! ;)

[yetanothermask.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've really enjoyed watching your videos throughout the month. This is fabulous!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thank you so much for letting me know. :) I'm really glad you've enjoyed it.

[sabaceanbabe.livejournal.com]

A few of the vidlets I even thought were genuinely awesome and some of my best work!

So? Spill! Which ones and why? *iz evil* *polishes halo*

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

:p AHAHAHA yes, you're evil. ;)

Okay, hoenstly though, it's not a big secret. I guess probably "i say fever"? In terms of persistence of quality? For the reasons given above? And then there are a lot of other moments I was really pleased with in the others. Like the jumpcutting in the nuke-over-ocean-from-above shot in The Pretender, or the way the dead-dream-Sarah crept across the screen in Serenity, or the use of internal motion in A to B or the final composited shot in This Chain of Days? I mean...yeah. I suppose a better way of saying it would be to say that I think I managed some really awesome moments throughout the month even if that didn't always reflect the quality of the whole vidlet? AND STUFF. :p

[impatient-dream.livejournal.com]

November's kind of been ridiculously awesome, between your NaViMaMo and chaila43's awesome women posts. So, you know, thanks for that. And also all the awesome vidlets. :) (I'm stuck on the word awesome, it seems. Oh well, it's fitting.)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yes, we were a bit memetastic weren't we. ;) And you're very welcome. Awesome is an awesome word to hear!

[such_heights]

I've enjoyed everything you've put out this month so much! Especially as apparently we share a silly amount of fandoms. (The only one I've avoided is your Farscape vid as I'm still working my way through the series, but I look forward to seeing it when I'm done!)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Clearly we both have awesome taste. :p I'm really glad you enjoyed it the ride! I certainly did, although at times I thought it'd cause me to collapse. ;)

Farscape is awesome. Like, there are bits of it that are ridiculous or dire, but only because it's brave and that means sometimes it flops, but when it doesn't flop, it's soars. It's probably the best example I can think of of a show where I put up with the ridiculous plot-stupidity of the universe because the people in it are so real and so complex. Normally I'm totally zen about spoilers, but yes, it's probably best to watch this vid when you've seen the whole series. May I ask how far you've gotten into it?

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

It should surprise you not at all (considering that I've been commenting all along) to know that I've enjoyed this project very much!!! I'm also pretty much in awe of your magical vidding superpowers. <3

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hee! Not quite superpowers, I think, but I'm still glad that you've enjoyed it (and I've definitely enjoyed your commenting along the way!) Thanks for all your support and the awesome prompt. As I was saying above to daybreak777, I felt a little bad about not talking more about For Amy as it's probably my go-to example of a vidlet that works as a vidlet and also a vidlet where I used a simple style of editing because it felt right not because I was in a hurry. But then, it's so understated and complete, it's kind of easy...not to talk about it along with the big splashy ones. Even though it's probably one of the better ones I made this month. So thanks for that. :)

[goodbyebird]

Haven't had the opportunity to watch any vids for over a month now, but this is sure some treat to come home to! :D

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I had a fabulous time watching all these vids. I particularly love It's Not (Before) and It's Not (After) and Serenity.

[cyborganize.livejournal.com]

*CHEERS*

predictably superbelated comment, but I loved reading about your learning process. and it was soooooooo much fun to have these all to queue up at CYCON!