(Last) Year in Vid Review - 2018
Feb. 11th, 2019 08:20 pmJanuary (Festivids)
Relativism (Arrival)
August (VividCon)
Seven Years (Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra)
Shut Up and Drift (Pacific Rim)
Small Bill$ (Supernatural
October (Equinox Vids)
Work This Body (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle)
Overall thoughts:
Holy forking shirtballs, I made a lot of vids! For me, this is a lot of vids. Despite my general tendency to be dissatisfied with my own work, I am overall very pleased with my output. One of these is the most ambitious vid I've made, one is the most experimental, and at least two of them are amongst my favourites of my own vids.
Favorite vid of my own:
Seven Years or Small Bill$.
Hardest to make:
Seven Years. It's a vid I've been wanting to make for years. It's incredibly narratively dense. In addition, I made it in an extremely compressed timeframe, because VVC premieres were due shortly after I defended my PhD thesis. Which I did with ruptured eardrums. I lost a lot of my vid notes in a cross-country move, but I really want to write up some meta about just how many layers I put into this thing
Most underappreciated:
Small Bill$. It also has some chewy layers to it, but it features a non-major pairing. I started my headfirst dive into Supernatural in January 2018, and I got stuck on Benny. And how good Benny/Dean was. This was in S8 of a 14 season show, so most people who initially gave a fork have moved past it. It was also vidded shortly after I wrote a 25k Dean/Benny fic, and was weirdly influenced by that process. The vid played up a lot of the toxic behaviours and parallels I was using in the fic.
I was also hoping for more of a response on Seven Years, but the differential isn't as high.
Most successful:
The most successful in terms of 'did what I wanted it to do' was probably Seven Years. Most successful in terms of 'people actually watching it' was probably Shut Up and Drift. Most successful in terms of 'experimentation with vid form and also in comments' was Relativism.
My best vid:
Seven Years.
Most fun:
Work This Body has singing hippos. Enough said.
Things I learned this year:
A Good Thing: I am capable of doing better emotional work than I thought I was. Bonus: I need to trust my instincts about motion and flow, instead of second-guessing myself.
A Thing To Work On: I need to get better at killing my darlings - just because a section of a vid LOOKS shiny and moves well, it doesn't mean it serves the narrative purpose. Narrative can be more important.
A Thing That Just Is: FCPX is something I just have to deal with now. It exists. It's what is on my computer. FCP isn't coming back. I just have to live with it.
In 2019:
I hope I continue to vid! I have some concerns that the end of VividCon (rest in peace, my dear sweet friend) will lead to accidental vidding retirement. Maybe I'll try to collaborate with someone on something? I've never done a vid collaboration, and I wonder if being forced to externalize why I'm making the decisions I'm making will lead me to construct more coherent narratives.
After many years in writing retirement, I also wrote two fics!
Words of fiction that I wrote!
Wayfinding (Supernatural, Dean/Benny)
put color in your cheeks (Supernatural, Dean/Benny/Cas, NSFW)
Thoughts/Learning/Etc
I learned that I can still write non-scientific words! Also, that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sweetestdrain is a really fantastic beta.
I am actually quite happy with these! Wayfinding came about as my thesis-stress release binge-watching of Supernatural also included live-tweeting. Once upon a time, a handful of my friends encouraged me to spend my day off writing a little Dean/Benny fic. It spiralled, and I spend the next couple of weeks alternating between thesis edits and feverishly writing Wayfinding. It turned out to be much longer, and have far more museums and rabbits than I had initially planned. It's a story that also means a lot more to me than I'd initially anticipated.
With regards to put colour in your cheeks, you know the thing where every single fic I've ever written has a smut-o-meter that tops out at 'forehead kiss' or 'holding hands?' (You probably don't. It's been a very long time since I wrote anything, and I doubt anyone has ever had an encyclopedic knowledge of my fic output.) That is no longer true! put colour in your cheeks is pretty much just porn and feelings.
Relativism (Arrival)
August (VividCon)
Seven Years (Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra)
Shut Up and Drift (Pacific Rim)
Small Bill$ (Supernatural
October (Equinox Vids)
Work This Body (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle)
Overall thoughts:
Holy forking shirtballs, I made a lot of vids! For me, this is a lot of vids. Despite my general tendency to be dissatisfied with my own work, I am overall very pleased with my output. One of these is the most ambitious vid I've made, one is the most experimental, and at least two of them are amongst my favourites of my own vids.
Favorite vid of my own:
Seven Years or Small Bill$.
Hardest to make:
Seven Years. It's a vid I've been wanting to make for years. It's incredibly narratively dense. In addition, I made it in an extremely compressed timeframe, because VVC premieres were due shortly after I defended my PhD thesis. Which I did with ruptured eardrums. I lost a lot of my vid notes in a cross-country move, but I really want to write up some meta about just how many layers I put into this thing
Most underappreciated:
Small Bill$. It also has some chewy layers to it, but it features a non-major pairing. I started my headfirst dive into Supernatural in January 2018, and I got stuck on Benny. And how good Benny/Dean was. This was in S8 of a 14 season show, so most people who initially gave a fork have moved past it. It was also vidded shortly after I wrote a 25k Dean/Benny fic, and was weirdly influenced by that process. The vid played up a lot of the toxic behaviours and parallels I was using in the fic.
I was also hoping for more of a response on Seven Years, but the differential isn't as high.
Most successful:
The most successful in terms of 'did what I wanted it to do' was probably Seven Years. Most successful in terms of 'people actually watching it' was probably Shut Up and Drift. Most successful in terms of 'experimentation with vid form and also in comments' was Relativism.
My best vid:
Seven Years.
Most fun:
Work This Body has singing hippos. Enough said.
Things I learned this year:
A Good Thing: I am capable of doing better emotional work than I thought I was. Bonus: I need to trust my instincts about motion and flow, instead of second-guessing myself.
A Thing To Work On: I need to get better at killing my darlings - just because a section of a vid LOOKS shiny and moves well, it doesn't mean it serves the narrative purpose. Narrative can be more important.
A Thing That Just Is: FCPX is something I just have to deal with now. It exists. It's what is on my computer. FCP isn't coming back. I just have to live with it.
In 2019:
I hope I continue to vid! I have some concerns that the end of VividCon (rest in peace, my dear sweet friend) will lead to accidental vidding retirement. Maybe I'll try to collaborate with someone on something? I've never done a vid collaboration, and I wonder if being forced to externalize why I'm making the decisions I'm making will lead me to construct more coherent narratives.
After many years in writing retirement, I also wrote two fics!
Words of fiction that I wrote!
Wayfinding (Supernatural, Dean/Benny)
put color in your cheeks (Supernatural, Dean/Benny/Cas, NSFW)
Thoughts/Learning/Etc
I learned that I can still write non-scientific words! Also, that
sweetestdrain is a really fantastic beta.I am actually quite happy with these! Wayfinding came about as my thesis-stress release binge-watching of Supernatural also included live-tweeting. Once upon a time, a handful of my friends encouraged me to spend my day off writing a little Dean/Benny fic. It spiralled, and I spend the next couple of weeks alternating between thesis edits and feverishly writing Wayfinding. It turned out to be much longer, and have far more museums and rabbits than I had initially planned. It's a story that also means a lot more to me than I'd initially anticipated.
With regards to put colour in your cheeks, you know the thing where every single fic I've ever written has a smut-o-meter that tops out at 'forehead kiss' or 'holding hands?' (You probably don't. It's been a very long time since I wrote anything, and I doubt anyone has ever had an encyclopedic knowledge of my fic output.) That is no longer true! put colour in your cheeks is pretty much just porn and feelings.
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