Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

[fan_eunice]

I said I was going to talk more about vidding right? Here I go, because this morning I opened up Premiere again to work on the epic season 5 Doctor Who vid that I keep stalling out on and one of the issues I keep having is one that I meant to bring up at the Big Emotion panel that we didn't have time to go into great detail on (I think we did briefly address it, but I kinda don't remember a lot of what was said because public speaking freaks me the hell out).

Basically, as the post title says how do we apply Kenny Rogers advice and know when to hold 'em in a vid? Long clips are bad right? Except when they are good. For drawing out tension (build, motherfucker!), for allowing a particular emotion to settle and wiggle under the skin and stay there (perhaps I should not watch so much Monster Inside Me on Animal Planet because I just freaked myself out), a well placed slow reveal or long clip can utterly wreck your audience or leave them primed and ready to be wrecked in the best way (see sockkpuppet's work for some amazing examples of this).

My issue remains the argument in my own head that happens every time I do this between 'too long, you are boring the shit out of your audience' and 'not long enough! you haven't snared them yet!'
Sometimes it is obvious (the long slow pull back on McMurphy's face in Mother Mary and the slooow pan up to the Elm St. sign with Freddy's shadow on the street in Legends Never Die were gimmes), but most of the time I find myself kinda lost?

And this current vid I'm working on has a lot of spaces where this choice has to be made due to it's structure and I continue to flail all over the timeline trying to decide, changing my mind, deciding again, changing again. I swear to god this first verse alone has had so many reincarnations I think it is approaching enlightenment, I will not be surprised if the next time I look at it all clips are replaced with a single one that simply tells me there is no spoon or some shit.

So. When do you hold 'em? When do you fold 'em? Do you know when to walk away, and when to run? And if you do for the love of the TARDIS share with the class.

Comments

[laurashapiro]

It's all just footage.

Increasingly, this is how I view TV shows!

I have often wished that all viewers would embrace this point of view, especially when making some of my more esoteric or enthusiastically de- and re-contextualized vids. But then I remember that bringing context is a big part of what makes vids fannish to a lot of people, sometimes even to me.

[fan_eunice]

Well, there's context and then there's context. :)

A clip used out of context of the scene it was in isn't necessarily out of context with the show if that makes any sense? If I'm building a narrative about the Doctor being lonely and I use a shot of him being sadface, then the specific context of the scene from which I ganked that shot is less important than tapping into expectation tied to the larger story I'm associating it with. One that might translate to someone who doesn't watch the show (because he looks SAD), but will have more reference to someone who knows the Doctor's backstory. The vidder can make them think of Gallifrey within the context of the vid even if the scene it was removed from really was about cheese.

[laurashapiro]

Totally with you, there. And it's good to make the distinction between show context and scene context -- I think most people can go along with a vidder who attempts to decouple scene context from a clip, as long as the vid is consistent with their understanding of the show context.

That said, I've talked with several people who were not able to follow where a vid is going because they are incapable of separating the clip from the Doctor's feelings about cheese in that scene. It might be a less common thing to encounter nowadays, but it's still out there.