(no subject)

[fan_eunice]

Signing up for the planned parenthood auction and coming off of Festivids, I am pondering the difference between making a vid and making a vid for someone else. I actually really like making vids for other people, and I think I'm pretty good at it? Please feel free to contradict that if I've ever made a vid for you, I won't be insulted and I want any future vid recipients to be happy so knowing where I missed in the past is always helpful.

Anyhoo, for me, what I like about it is...okay, I have mentioned before that I am a horribly indecisive vidder. Nine times out of ten if I am stalled on a project or it is going sloooooooowly, it's because I can't narrow focus enough to make decisions. But the thing about making vids for someone else is that decision making process is narrowed automatically. 'Cause, okay, I can't vid stuff I don't feel/think myself. So, when making a vid for someone else the process is all about finding the common intersection between what they want/what I feel. Find that point and expand on it. And there's always some point of intersection.

I'm still doing me, so it doesn't feel forced or unnatural, but the range of directions/options comes pre-limited which makes it easier to get down to business and discard lines of thought instead of wandering down every tangent but refusing to commit to any.

So anyway, yeah. That's what I like/find different about vidding for other people. What about y'all? Fic too.

Comments

[chagrined]

It makes it a lot easier for me to create things with constraints/direction. Generally the more open-ended something is, the less likely I am to even get started on it, let alone finish it.

[fan_eunice]

*nodnod*

Nothing sets off my anxiety more than having to make open ended choices...what if I make the wrong one.

What do I want to say? That has a hundred answers. What does x want? That has a hundred answers. What do I want to say that fits what x wants narrows that down from a hundred to a far more managable number of choices. :)

[chagrined]

Yessssss, anxiety about options. And not very helpfully, my response to the ~thought~ that oh my gawds I could possibly fail miserably due to my choices/actions is to run away and avoid and not try at all. This ensures I will not try and fail, but it also ensures I can't succeed, and often that pretty much amounts to failure anyway. :-/

[jackiekjono]

My 'Retha Franklin Doctor/Master vid still rocks my world.

[fan_eunice]

\o/ I learned to vid in 3/4 time for that one, so it was EDUCATIONAL too. :D

[thingswithwings]

I was talking about this just the other day! here. Basically, making stuff for other people is fun because a) you get to get inside someone else's head, and b) constraints are fun!

[dorinda]

I suspect this is one of the reasons that I tend to write/finish things for Yuletide more often than at other times of the year. Even when it's not Yuletide-time, I notice that some of my other stories still began as something intended for another person, even just casually.

Your observations feel spot-on: writing for someone else helps me make decisions, helps me narrow things down without wearing myself out. Which is so awesome, because I can be the QUEEN of second-guessing-myself.

[laurashapiro]

I love making things for my friends, because my feelings for them color the whole experience for me. Even if it's someone I don't know that well, the fond feelings and understanding of the kinds of things they're into both inform my creative choices and make me gleeful while I'm putting the vid together. I just think of them all the time, imagine how they'll feel getting the present, grin my head off...it's all good.

Possibly I am a big bowl of mush.

[littleheaven]

I agree. I think that's what paralyses me most when vidding. Which clip works best here, what does it say? Though I think my issue is not choosing what to say, so much as working out a coherent way to say it with the clips I have. I'm not good at structuring a narrative and often I feel like I'm just throwing a bunch of clips together randomly. I want to have more control over that but my brain won't co-operate.

Back in the early days it was easy, when I thought you just had to match the clip with the lyric, because a clip either matched or it didn't. Suddenly the reasons for choosing one clip or another become very much more nebulous.

[jetpack_monkey]

I think that's largely why I signed up for fandom_helps, beyond the awesome helping Planned Parenthood thing. I finished as many vids in January as I made in the whole of 2011. I notice a lot of my favorite vidders have "for X" on the vids or in the notes for a good number of their vids.

For me, it also about the interaction and sense of community it creates. You're not vidding in a void, but vidding as part of something even just a little bigger than you.

Best example I have on hand: my Jigoku vid. Been poking at it for years, but until I knew there was somebody else who wanted to see the vid, who I *knew* would benefit from having the vid exist, it became so much easier.

[settiai]

I'm very much the same way. I have a ton of fic and vid WIPs that I want to finish (and, theoretically, will finish at some point), but it's the ones that are actually for other people that I actually get done. Most of the time, I need some type of constraints or I can never narrow anything down enough to actually get work done.

Also, completely off-topic, but I just wanted to check and see if you got a (somewhat rambling) PM from me.

[cee_m]

Me too me too! I have the hardest time deciding what to actually work on and with an auction or a fest I'm forced to finish something by an appointed time. :)

Thank you so much for signing up. I'm just... overwhelmed by how this is being received. Who knows how well bidding is going to go but the actual sign up time has just brought me so much joy. :)