Vidding Meme! :D

[beccatoria]

Shamelessly stolen from frayadjacent and chaila! Give me a number (or a few) and I will try to answer things! Some numbers are missing because my intelligent predecessors went through combing for questions they didn't think they'd be so interested in, but I'm, um, lazy, so I just copy-pasted one of their lists and ran with it. YAY ME.

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-vid.
2. Is there a genre or style you've yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
3. Is there a genre or style you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?
4. How many vid ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
5. Share one of your strengths.
6. Share one of your weaknesses.
7. Point to a section from one of your favorite vids you've made and explain why you're proud of it.
8. Which vid was the hardest to make?
9. Which vid was the easiest to make?
11. Is there a section of canon above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?
12. What's the best vidding advice you've ever come across?
13. What's the worst vidding advice you've ever come across?
14. If you only could vid one show/movie for the rest of your life, which show/movie would it be?
15. Do you work mostly from start to finish, or do you vid sections out of order?
16. Do you use any tools, like clip notes or storyboards?
18. Describe your perfect vidding conditions.
19. How many times do you usually revise your vid before posting?
20. Choose a section from one of your earlier vids and talk about whether and how you'd do it differently now. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).
21. If you were to revise one of your older vids from start to finish, which would it be and why?
22. Have you ever deleted one of your published vids?
23. What do you look for in a beta?
24. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
25. How do you feel about collaborations?
26. Share three of your favorite vidders and why you like them so much.
27. Do you accept prompts?
28. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your vids being canon compliant?
30. How do you feel about crack?
31. Which is your favorite site for posting vids?
32. Talk about your current vids in progress.
33. Talk about a comment or review that made your day.
34. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

Comments

[violace]

5, 22, 24!

[beccatoria]

Okay! Let's do this thing! :D

5. Share one of your strengths.

Interesting - I actually feel like this has changed over the years. When I started I think I did interesting lyric matching, and I sort of miss doing that. But a shift in the types of music I vid (less lyrically intricate; I think as a combination of changing music tastes but also changes in what's popular and like...around cus I'm so lazy about discovering new stuff) and the fact that I've been without a single obsessive ongoing fandom where I know every clip means that's not quite so much my wheelhouse anymore. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I do think that I've developed a real tenacity when it comes to technical crap, though. Like I think if I have an idea but no idea how to achieve it, I will learn how. I think I'm determined. I try not to use effects unless they actually add something to the vid, but I do feel like I've become a much more effects-heavy, technically-fiddly vidder. So my more recent vids focus more on that than lyric matching, sometimes. Which I'm not sure how I feel about in broad terms but only because I want to do both things, you know? Yeah. And stuff.

22. Have you ever deleted one of your published vids?

No. There are some that I no longer like that much and even one where I feel really awkward about my song choice, but flat-out removing them feels... I don't know, like hiding where I came from. I don't mean that as a judgement to people who do remove their vids, or who let them expire when hosting goes down, etc. I think...whatever is right for you, you know? But for me, I don't know. That's all stuff I did, so...it can stay.

24. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

Not often, but sometimes. To be honest, I worry I'm not a very good one because I tend to beta for friends and I like their aesthetic, so I think I'm not as rigorous as I could be. I think I tend to focus more on the overall flow and pace of the vid than attempting to overanalyse meaning or structure. Though I do get hung up on timing at a clip-level sometimes.

[goodbyebird]

2, 8, 12, 19 :)

[beccatoria]

FOUR NUMBERS?! Ooooh, fine. :p

2. Is there a genre or style you've yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

I'm sure I'll think of some others in a minute, but right now I'll say constructued reality in the sense that there is no video source (rather than constructed crossovers, which I have done). Like, I am impressed with the way people have vidded comics or stuff like Night Vale and would like to try something like that at some point.

8. Which vid was the hardest to make?

Probably Small Blue Thing for Fringe. I kept trying to isolate blue and red colours and change them into each other as a recurring theme to tie into the alternate universe being associated with them/the Olivias from each universe.

It's one of the more technically fiddly vids I've done, but I did it when I had way less know-how than I do now. It was one of my learning curve vids.

Shoutout to Hands Away because the parts of that which I was responsible for were mega complicated, but I was covidding and basically creating source for someone else, so I had less to do and more liberties in terms of timing/what parts of the footage I could use.

12. What's the best vidding advice you've ever come across?

It's a cliche, but basically to just...jump in and do it. You need to work out what kind of vidding you enjoy, what works for you, all these things, but you can't if you don't just start doing it. And getting that buzz of "10 seconds of footage! Oh my god, let me rewatch them endlessly!"

19. How many times do you usually revise your vid before posting?

Not many but that's partly because of how I vid. I go linearly but I revise endlessly as I'm going. So like, I'll be vidding and readjusting and revidding a ten second segment before I'm happy with it and I move on. By the time I have a full draft, I've been rewatching and building on it as I go for a long time.

I do sometimes rejig things in a major way after getting that first draft, but to be honest not as often as I used to. Partly I think that I developed the style and approach I did because I spent so long working with editors where it was REALLY hard to go back and fix things I just hated having to do it. I'd like to say that I developed vidding skillz to compensate but I'm sure I haven't and sometimes my vids would benefit from more revision.

I do make minor changes quite frequently after I've got a full draft, but I view it all as part of the same ongoing process so it's hard to say like, how many times I do it.

I guess I approach vidding more like sculpting rather than writing. You dig the vid out of the source, but carefully, because once you lay a clip down, going back on that choice isn't a decision to be made lightly. Like, to be pompous and artistically pretentious about my own impatience. :p

[goodbyebird]

oooh, you know Festivids allows for those sources this year, right? I would loooove to see what you'd do with a comics vid :D

I def agree with 12. *pointed glance at self*

And 19 makes a lot of sense. If you're constantly reworking as you go, there's never really a first/second/etc draft.

[muladhara]

9 and 3 :)

[beccatoria]

9. Which vid was the easiest to make?

Hmmm, probably a tossup between Interplanet Janet (Doctor Who) and i say fever (Farscape). Both are vids where someone else gave me a song and it just made SO MUCH SENSE I vidded them in a day or two. I think Interplanet Janet was probably slightly easier, but I think i say fever is more impressive in what it achieves. Not that I'm trying to insult Interplanet Janet which I really love for how perfectly it captures what it needs to say, but I just think the other one managed a more complicated message and is better edited. It needed some fancier editing while Janet let me get away with being simpler.

3. Is there a genre or style you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?

Huh, you know, I don't know? I don't like to rule things out, but I do know that horror isn't my thing so I don't know that I'd want to make a vid that is deliberately shock-horrorish. I mean, I made an episodic about the Silence in Doctor Who so maybe that seems weird, but that's more...creepy than actual full-on horror, you know?

I'm not a huge fan of bombastic, cheesy romance, either. But again, how do you define that? I suspect some of the romance stuff I have done would be cheesy to others.

I'm not super into slashing white boys? I mean, there have been occasional exceptions - so again I don't want to rule anything out permanently? But as, like, a social construct, I'm not an enormous fan of that genre so I suspect it'd fall down my list of priorities even if I had a vidbunny, unless it was one I felt was at least slightly subversive?

[muladhara]

This is interesting! Thank you for answering :)

[chaila]

7 & 14! Also 21! And maybe 33. :) all the questions!

[beccatoria]

ALL THE QUESTIONS. ACTUALLY ALL OF THEM. :p

7. Point to a section from one of your favorite vids you've made and explain why you're proud of it.

Hmmm, okay I'd probably give a different answer on any given day, but today let's talk about i say fever - my Farscape vid. From about 1:20 to about 1:55, because there are a whole lot of things in that section that I'm quite proud of but goes - by design - unnoticed. And usually I'm more flashy in my effects. So now I will brag. Firstly I just love how well I feel I managed to capture the tone of the coin toss scene. In some ways this feels like cheating; one of the things I like is that it really just feels like that scene set to music and in that sense, maybe I should praise the original cinematography, not my butchering of it. And I do - the actors are so fantastic. But sue me, I really love that I managed to let that entire 5+ second shot of them ~negotiating not kissing~ play out without it - in my opinion - feeling lazy, poorly timed, boring...

So yeah, the first part I just love how I managed to work with the beats of that scene - to bring out the captivating physicality of the actors. To highlight their acting choices (Aeryn stares at the coin; John stares at Aeryn; I flail). Just...to let it be.

Then the next section, only Farscape-vidding dorks probably noticed, but several times those drug-flashbacks John had to earlier seasons? WERE IN THE WRONG ASPECT RATIO. Like in the official broadcast version of the show. Because they were using shots from seasons 1 - 3 which were in 4:3, while the fourth season was in 16:9 and they just fucking STRETCHED THEM because, I guess, they figured no one would notice because they were going by so fast. So the first thing I did was fix that. Then I constructed an entirely new drug-hallucination-sequence because none of them were longer and there were snatches of image I wanted to use. Complete with opaque-pale-overlay-filter thing so it looked the same as the one before.

THEN I had to cut the audio from a really loud bit to a really quiet bit, which fortunately there was precedent for in the song itself, but it was still dicey and I'm glad I managed it as well as I did.

But I also added some blur/lack of focus to the shots of John snorting drugs that came immediately on that moment both to subliminally distract from (or maybe fit with) the sudden audio shift (if you really listen closely it's not perfect) and also to like...add a sense of bleariness to the whole thing. The image needed something other than just staring at John but not cutting away from him because we'd just quieted/slowed down. Since the intention of those blurs is not to be flashy but to like...smooth a transition, I have always sort of wondered if people notice that I did it or if it just sails by as part of the ambiance?

Anyway, essay over. There is a list of many small, intentionally low key things. ;)

14. If you only could vid one show/movie for the rest of your life, which show/movie would it be?

Ugh, I don't know and that makes me kind of sad. I miss having a primary show. Once upon a time, no questions, it would have been BSG, but...that's not true anymore. At the moment my favourite show is probably Sleepy Hollow, but with one season, am I willing to pick it as my one and only? I think I'm likely to have a serious fannish relationship with Mass Effect for a long time, so that's another contender, but it's limiting in terms of the way its source is organised/visualised/how much of it there is as compared to the wider story. I just watched Avatar: the Last Airbender and I haven't vidded it at all but it's gorgeous visuals makes me want to like crazy and I'm sure there are a ton of vids I could get out of it...

It's probably due in large part to having chosen the vid I did for the last question, but I actually think I'd pick Farscape. Because it fostered my original pre-vidding love of vids. Because it's huge and versatile and I know the show really well and I always meant to make a million vids, I just never did because BSG stole me away and then TSCC did, and then, well, I guess I'd moved on. But...if I had to pick one thing, I think Farscape is one of the shows I could keep going back to, even if I think, without being stuck in some draconian "one vidding show only!" reality, I'm unlikely to do so in any serious way.

21. If you were to revise one of your older vids from start to finish, which would it be and why?

Aaaah, wow, difficult question. I think the boring answer is that I wouldn't. I think when I'm done with something, I'm done with it. I'm not sure I'd ever want to re-vid something, but better, even if I knew I could, for the same reason I can't bring myself to lock all the vids I don't like so much anymore. I just...I did it. It's out there now. It's done with. I need to keep moving forwards.

Of course I also don't believe in absolutes, so I'm sure some day I'll be sat here retooling all my favourite vids being like I SAID WHAT NOW when you bring this up.

But that's my instinct.

In terms of remastering, though - I do have vague intentions, when/if I ever get better source, to remaster Machine (Mass Effect) with HD footage just because it frustrated me I couldn't do it at the time. I've never remastered a vid, though, so who knows if I'll give up in frustration. And I do just intend to remaster, not rework sections.

33. Talk about a comment or review that made your day.

NO DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE AMONGST MY CHILDREN!

Okay, well, let's choose then. At least in general terms. I think what really moves me and makes me feel grateful is some sense of connection. Sometimes that's easier with vids that have rare sources because when someone who's SEEN IT and GETS THE VID shows up, it's just great. But also, I think the vid where I got the most gratification out of the feedback I received was probably my first Mass Effect vid. Not the crowdpleasing every-Shepard vid (much though I love that, and much though I was touched by the emotional feedback I received), but the cyborg-messiah Shepard-is-a-Machine vid. I released it fairly soon after the backlash against the ending, and man, that was something I was emotionally invested in. Seeing people understand what I was saying, and a few of them even understanding it better than they had before, like...feeling as though I had managed to communicate this thing I loved, that I felt was misunderstood... And that people heard and went, OH, you mean that? Wow. Yeah. Yeah I get it now...

Yeah, that made my day. Probably because I felt it was part of a genuine meta conversation in a way I don't think my vids have gotten to be all that often since the um, unfortunate BSG situation.

[chaila]

Ugh i say fever is so beautiful, even though your Farscape vids also make me wish I knew/remembered Farscape better!

I think Farscape is one of the shows I could keep going back to, even if I think, without being stuck in some draconian "one vidding show only!" reality, I'm unlikely to do so in any serious way.

Interesting how this works! I feel similarly, like I feel done with TSCC finally, but also if I had to vid only one thing forever, I'd still pick it. It's rare to have something that you *could* stick with forever, if you wanted to. Though for the record, I'd always love more Farscape vids from you if you ever felt moved in that direction. :)

I felt it was part of a genuine meta conversation

Ugh I miss this too, a lot. But that ME vid was gorgeous, and I didn't even grasp all the nuances of the meta and fandom meta/conversation, etc. Vids > words so often for me now, which is interesting. Partly I think it feels safer, and partly it actually feels more *effective*.

[fahrbotdrusilla]

1, 20,32

[beccatoria]

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-vid.

Huh, this should be easy but kind of like hearing your own voice, I'm suddenly at a loss. I'm not sure I have a good grasp on my own aesthetic. I think that I tend to either go for something intricately lyrical, or I fall back on tech wizardry to make up for the lack of direction the lyrics could provide? I think that I'm most comfortable vidding things that are at least partially rooted in the wider context of a show. Like...I think everything I do is a little bit gen and a little bit about wider themes? Even when I'm trying to focus down?

I feel you deserve a better answer but I'm not sure I have one.

20. Choose a section from one of your earlier vids and talk about whether and how you'd do it differently now.

Again, you pick tough ones! :p I tend to try not to second guess my older vids because I know I'd never let it go? I think I'm pretty good at letting them sail out into the wind and then making peace with their imperfections.

That said, if I were revidding Here We Come, On The Run (Star Wars), I think I would have tried to rely less on jump cuts in the beginning. I don't think they were a bad decision, but at the start I feel they're painfully attempting to spruce up footage that might not have needed it, and that the jump cuts worked best in conjunction with the overlays. I think I'd remind myself the vid doesn't have to attack the viewer's eyes in the first two seconds or lose them. It can start slow, and that might be better than wasting a valid style on what looks, at that particular moment, like a bit of an attention-seeking cheap shot.

(Note: not a general attack on jump cuts, just...this place+time, you know?)

32. Talk about your current vids in progress.

Well one is a SEKRIT COLLABORATION PROJECT that might have something to do with comics, but it's a secret because I am...genuinely not sure when/if I'll have the staying power to actually pull it off and get some serious work done on it and I really hate to promise things I can't guarantee will appear.

I'm also actively working on a pair of Aang and Korra vids from the Avatar universe. But I only just started and these days I vid slow.

Finally I have a pipe dream of vidding Gargoyles which I was gonna try and prod myself into doing soonish but now other things have taken their place.

And lastly I would like it very much if at some point I could vid live action again. I'm really starting to miss the way non-animated people move; so many of my recent vids have been either animated or to game footage. I'm hoping the new season of Sleepy Hollow will inspire me, but I have no specific plans yet.

[cosmic_llin]

25, 15!

[beccatoria]

25. How do you feel about collaborations?

Love them. When they work well, with people you like, they're just the best. I honestly think that Hands Away is one of the best vids I've been a part of. It let me play with the technically intensive AU-creation stuff I wanted to experiment with while letting chaila edit in her beautiful, associative style while still having me yelling things like NO NO DO A SECTION ABOUT XYZ and I think/hope it was better for both influences.

Some of my formative vidding was vidding with a bunch of other vidders in a much looser coalition of BSG-type people who loosely self-identified as The Cylon Vidding Machine; a lot of my vids during that era were prompted directly or indirectly by those people and beta'd very thoroughly, which is collaboration of a different sort.

All my BSG-as-propaganda stuff (The Enemy Within and the Tomorrow Project) was done in a more directed collaboration with cyborganize acting as, well, director and writer, I guess? But definitely as a creative collaboration. On the other hand, I also got a real kick out of making Ladies' Choice with asta77 which was much more me vidding-to-order because she didn't have the know-how to do it herself and I really felt like I had gotten to do a cool thing for her, as well as making a vid I never would have had the idea for myself/different styles, etc?

I HAVE to mention VIDWAR: ROBOT APOCALYPSE when chaila and I declared VIDWAR on each other and made a series of challenges and responses and it was just the best ever and the most fun. Both the parts we told each other about and the parts we kept secret.

In that vein, I also feel like the crazy vidlet making month thing I did years ago counts too because vidding from prompts, in a short period of time...it's not quite a collaboration but I still feel it fits under that umbrella of co-creating; of accepting outside input.

tl;dr - group projects generally suck because you get assigned to idiots and can't do what you want. Group projects that develop naturally because of mutual excitement are the BEST THINGS IN THE WORLD and I think that vidding - something that fundamentally about reaching out and taking someone else's creative thing and making something new with it, is a wonderful medium in which to do it.

Collaborations are awesome. I should do them more.

15. Do you work mostly from start to finish, or do you vid sections out of order?

I work from start to finish almost always. I'm sure it's not the best way to go about it and is partly a legacy of using editors that made non-linear editing a nightmare (and I still have a program that doesn't make it as easy as it could be) but also I think it's just...me. I just...I go from start to finish. That's what makes sense to me. I keep meaning to try and do it in other ways, but nope. I can never get myself to do it.

I think part of it is also that I'm obsessive about timing as I go through. I CAN'T just fix it later. I can't. And that means that if I do bits later, I'm worried that by the time I get there I'll have settled into a different beat or cutting style at that point and I'll have to rejig everything ANYWAY and ARGH PANIC NOPE.

But also I think it's just because that's how my brain works.

You're one of the few other vidders I know who also does it that way (I mean I'm sure there are also others whom I haven't happened to hear talk about it, but you know). So. Fistbump of linearity.

[cosmic_llin]

Slowest reply ever but *returns fistbump*

Like, I think it's partly to do with having started in a program where I HAD to, but it just makes way more sense to me that way!

[thuviaptarth]

15, 16, please.

[thuviaptarth]

Okay, apparently I asked this twice and COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT IT. Sorry!

[beccatoria]

Ha! I just notice that too, but it's no problem at all. I'll answer here though, since I'm going through replies here at the moment.

I just answered #15 in the comment above, actually! So I'll let that answer stand and move on to the next one.

16. Do you use any tools, like clip notes or storyboards?

Honestly not much anymore. When I started I used to roughly storyboard with a spreadsheet just so I knew where I was going. Slowly that developed into a mental storyboard where I'd obsessively listen to the song and mentally lay down clips, repeating and repeating until I really had them fairly stuck in my head. I'd have the song on repeat in my headphones while doing other things.

Eventually that dropped off and I just started vidding with a much more bare-bones checklist of events I needed to cover at certain points, and an overall structure I needed to cover. Like...finding the details of the vid as I went.

I think this worked for me because I was originally vidding mostly in shows I knew really well (Farscape and BSG) where I had such clip-recognition I could mentally do things like this. Then by the time I was doing it with other shows, I was also more comfortable winging it.

Though in general I do think that I would be a better vidder if I had better familiarity with my sources. I think that's something that directed clipping could help me with, but I just...lack the focus and patience to do it that way. I get stressed out and even kind of panicky trying to work out what I should clip or not. The only time I've ever come close to getting clipping to work was when I was working with video game source and I literally had to in order to extract the viddable stuff from the hours of captured gameplay. It makes me miss having a primary fandom in the way I used to. But I'm not sure I'll ever find that again so my vidding...adapts to cope with a lower level of familiarity with the source and an impatient streak that means I JUST START ALREADY.

Or at least, I hope it does. ;)

[frayadjacent]

I totally missed that you were doing this EVEN THOUGH YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE DOING THIS. Since other folks have already asked the ones I've been asking, here are some more:

18 & 31!

[beccatoria]

Ha - no worries at all! I only just saw that you answered my questions and EEEE, what excellent motivation to catch up on some of your vidding, but I probably won't have the time to sit down and watch those vids til tomorrow. But in the meantime, I shall babble about myself! :p

18. Describe your perfect vidding conditions.

Hmm, interesting question since my vidding habits have changed somewhat since I started. I no longer vid in quite the focused hours-at-a-time-for-a-whole-evening way I used to and now tend to vid in half-hour bursts over the course of a free day. So yeah, I guess...a free day, comfort, and a LOT of Pepsi Max. Seriously. Like this much Pepsi Max.

And like...not a lot of people hovering around my screen. Even when they know I'm a vidder, I just find it distracting and weird.

Finally I think I do need some distraction as well, for when it gets too much - as I said, I now tend to vid in shorter bursts. So a stack of comics, or a TV show I'm half-watching that I start/stop, or a really INTERESTING but long article I want to get my teeth into but feel like reading a few paragraphs then drifting back to vidding, then back to reading, etc. Something to facilitate my brain's ability to feel stimulated rather than bored all day, but also not like it's being forced into a single continuous task.

I'M PICKY. ;)

31. Which is your favorite site for posting vids?

Aaaah, sad question. I don't really have one I'm totally happy with anymore. But basically DW/LJ combo as the primary release and then it at least was Vimeo for streaming. With its new policies, I guess...YouTube? But I really don't have a strategy if streaming gets copyblocked on both sites (which does sometimes happen on YouTube).

I also announce on twitter and tend to release on tumblr too, which is increasingly where I see vidders. Like over this last year, especially, and partially I think in grudging reaction to the exodus to that platform. But it's a TERRIBLE platform for vidding. A reblog never feels worth as much as a comment, even a short one, even if it means it's technically more like a rec (which I generally think of as > a comment?) I think because I just get the sense that reblogging on tumblr doesn't even MEAN you watched it. It could just mean you liked the look of it. Or wanted someone else to see it. WHO EVEN KNOWS. Plus tumblr is where vids go to die. :(

So yeah, here I guess, though mostly because I don't think our community has a better alternative. Which is probably why so many of us still ARE here. Which: Yay for this vidding meme for reminding us all?

Finally, it's probably worth noting that I am grateful to have my own hosting courtesy of cyborganize. Even though I don't stream directly from it (and am not sure if I could), it is useful to me to know that I at least have fairly stable hosting for the physical files. It's nice and organised which appeals to me, serves as a good comprehensive archive, and means if someone desperately wants to watch my vids but can't access the streaming for whatever reason (like sometimes YouTube blocks it in specific countries) at least there is an option for them, even if it's not as convenient.

[frayadjacent]

Huh, that's interesting that you need distractions while vidding! I definitely like to have something to entertain me while clipping. This isn't difficult because Mr Adjacent likes to play music or have streaming sitcoms going, and that's about the right level of distraction/entertainment for me. But when I'm editing I strongly prefer to be alone or at least, like you, not have someone near my screen. Preferably for hours! This doesn't happen much, though I might be able to set up an office of sorts in our new apartment.

What about vidding has changed for you so that you do it in short chunks? Is it necessity or is it a preference?

I still very much prefer to download vids, so I'm always glad when vidders give me that option. In fact I don't watch "YouTube vidders" much not for aesthetic reasons but because I rarely want to stream my vids. This is partly because WiFi in Australia is slow but also because I tend to accumulate vids to watch at a time when I'll have the opportunity to not be disturbed. Plus it's easier to find them for rewatching. :D

[beccatoria]

WOW late reply - it's partly because, well, that's a really interesting question and one I didn't have an immediate answer for. But it's four days later now and I still don't have an answer that completely satisfies me, so instead I will list the things that I have considered as contributory to the change in my style.

- I plan less meticulously, which means I more often reach places in the vid where I don't have a strong precise idea for what clip I'm using next. Even when I did plan meticulously, plans shifted, but at least if I just wanted to get some more progress done I had something I could put down. Now I more often go, "Okay and then I'm not 100% sure what needs to go next. I should let this sit in my brain a while and mull over the lyric for a ten minutes while I do xyz..."

- I use higher quality source which means that playback isn't as smooth so I render chunks to check timing more frequently. Sometimes sort of obsessively... Again that necessitates breaks in vidding.

- I make more technically demanding vids. Not always, but more often I have complex effects requiring multiple tracks. It's just more fiddly and time-consuming than it used to be and can bog down the vidding process so again, breaks help.

- Somewhat sadly, it's been a long time since I've had one major, primarly fandom in the way I used to have with BSG or Farscape. As a result, even when I feel I know the source pretty well, I don't know it that well. I don't know it as well as "I've already vidded this eighteen times..." well. Because I don't clip, that means more time scrubbing through source looking for clips I might want to use.

- I vid in physically different spaces than I used to. My set up used to be more physically isolated from the people I lived with. Like I was in a corner and they couldn't easily see what I was doing. Now I'm more often in spaces where someone could glance over at my laptop, etc. I feel MASSIVELY self-conscious about that and tend to go get on with something else in those situations. I should add that's not a reflection on my husband (the only person I currently share a living space with). He knows I vid and thinks it's cool and would never like, poke his head over my shoulder all, "Whatcha doing...?" because while he thinks I shouldn't be self-conscious, he'd never try to make me feel more so. But...doesn't matter. I'm shy. I don't like vidding when people can see unless they're also vidders.

- I actually have more free time than I used to in some ways. My free time tends to be concentrated in like, whole days where I'm not doing anything and then whole days where I'm busy rather than a few hours in the evening. I think I've slid from three hours of solid vidding in an evening to like, three hours of vidding split across a six hours of idleness?

I think a combination of all those factors is probably why my style changed. But I wouldn't really attribute it to any one over another. Actually, that was pretty comprehensive, wasn't it? :p

ON TO STREAMING:

I feel better about streaming now than I did basically because I finally got decent wifi so it's not a big deal most of the time. And I do find it convenient to watch a vid before I decide if I want to download it for future rewatching. But downloading is definitely my preferred method of vid-watching/keeping for vids I actually want to watch/keep. Also streaming is just so transitory these days. :(

[frayadjacent]

Yeah, that all makes sense! And I totally feel you on the self-consciousness. I'm the same way. I have gotten to the point where I can vid in public (usually more like clipping, though, because I can't focus intently in public) but only if my screen isn't visible to anyone.

Speaking of clipping: I know you don't, but I'm curious what your non-clipping looks like. For my WIP I have the episodes imported directly in the NLE, and so instead of clipping (in the sense that I usually think of it) I scrub through the episodes, select a rough edit of a clip I want, and drop it on the timeline in roughly the area I want it. I'll go through some chunk of episode(s) as time/patience allows, dropping clips on different tracks if need be, until I get to editing that section. Do you do something like that?

I've realized that I can also import my BtVS DVD rips into the NLE once I get back to vidding Buffy. But since I know that footage so well I could probably work more from the idea, I.e., "I want this clip here and I know exactly where to find it". However I tried that briefly and was totally overwhelmed and didn't even know where to start and put the project on hold. Lol.

The first method still relies on looking through the footage. I don't need to know exactly what goes where as long as I know what kind of clips I generally want to go in a given section. Then looking through the episodes is how I find the clips that are of those type (or find they don't exist, or find that there are other cool clips that do something else that I haven't even thought about, etc). But the second method requires a much clearer idea of what to do, which seems really hard? Like it's hard to imagine planning a vid in any kind of detail without looking through the episodes first. Though I might be able to do it to some extent with Buffy. If I don't get totally overwhelmed first. :D

[beccatoria]

It basically looks like your Buffy description. I started vidding shows I knew so well I could just go "well I want this clip and I know where it is." I've always had NLEs that let me drop sections of an imported clip onto the timeline, so I import whole episodes and then scrub through the episodes til I find what I'm looking for and drop it down. The scrubbing through (even though I literally just catch a few frames here and there, or get distracted and start watching for a few minutes) reminds me what's there and also helps me find tonal, incidental clips.

I will be honest I don't always have a game plan going in. I usually have like...a starting clip or two, and then I wing it? Like I genuinely find, having started, ideas present themselves. Editing structures reveal themselves. Ideas feed ideas?

But it can be overwhelming when you don't know the source so well which increasingly is what happens to me and I think it's part of why I've slowed down. I end up reviewing more for inspiration before picking the next clip, etc. I mean, in totality, I suppose that's just time I'd otherwise have to spend clipping but it still feels slower.

Then again, I recently thought, "Shit I should just clip for this, it'd really help me do this faster, because I want it to be real and I can't stand how long it's gonna take me otherwise," and I got so far as opening the first episode in my clipping programme and PANICKED.

Like it suddenly seemed so overwhelming and I couldn't face deciding what I should clip vs what I shouldn't, like what if I need that thing I've decided not to clip! So I gave up and went back to my old style. Which is going slowly, but it's going?

...I have the worst vidding method. *facepalm*

[frayadjacent]

ha ha, we both got overwhelmed and gave up by the opposite things.

I really do want to get back to that BtVS project and use a method more like yours, because I know that show so well and it would just be so much faster than going through all the episodes and clipping. Which I did for all my previous BtVS vids. Clipping for Tightrope took like 3 months or something. That was all I did, vidding wise, and I did it probably 3-6 days per week. /o\ I DON'T NEED TO DO THAT AGAIN.

[goodbyebird]

I don't like vidding when people can see unless they're also vidders.

Phew! I sincerely plan to absorb all your vidding mojo next time I visit, good to know that's a thing I can do ;)