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Post by buffyann on Jan 31, 2012 17:20:12 GMT -5
Hello ! I've been thinking about this recently. Everytime I show a vid to a new to vids person, they always think it's too fast and that it jumps in their face so much their brain can't process what's going on. and everytime that assessment is made, I'm stuck between 2 lines of thinking : - On one hand, it is natural for someone who's never seen a vid to react that way, as he/she is not familiar with this form of video work, therefore can't process the information as much. Sometimes they're not even familiar with the subject addressed. and oh well, they just don't get it. - On the other hand, I hate to think that I'm vidding for a selected number of people who "get" it. It's always awesome to be recognized by your peers, but I still think vids should be layered enough that it could be accessible to anyone who watches them, even if some things would only be noticed by fellow vidders (which is fine). This is true for a number of things on vids (narrative depth is another example) but I've been struggling with this one in particular. Cause the thing is, as you evolve as a vidder or simply a video editor, your landmarks change. What was fast a long time ago is now OMG so slow ! I've noticed that I've been cutting clips more and more to a point where some were just a few frames long now, and I think sometimes it came to a point of doing a disservice to the vid and what it was trying to do. I think movement is a way to counter that effect somehow, as you eyes follow the movement clip to clip so that it doesn't flash in your face as much. I find it hard to ignore what my eyes are now able to see but where do you draw the line between what you see and what will be acceptable to see for any kind of audience ? Do you guys think about that ? do you use any tricks or do you ever beta audience that are not vidders ? I'd think it's a rather instinctive process, but I've been getting that comment enough now that it got me thinking if the search of "perfection" in cutting hasn't been creating side effects. What do you guys think ?  |
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Post by obsessive24 on Jan 31, 2012 18:27:56 GMT -5
This is very interesting! I've definitely found that I seem to be able to process images in vids faster than non-vidders... or, at least my husband. ;D You raised a lot of really interesting points, but I think for me, the main one is about audience, and who you want the vid to appeal to. And I think unlike you, I'm pretty okay with it if my vids only appeal to vidders and people who are used to watching vids. I always say vidding is a language and it's something that has to be gradually learned, and in the same way you would instinctively slow down (and speak louder  ) when you're talking to someone who isn't familiar with your language, maybe the same is true for vidding. And it can get really frustrating to be speaking slowly and loudly all the time and that's not the way I want to speak; I'd rather be talking with someone who's fluent in my language, especially when that means I can talk about more complex topics and interesting concepts because both of us possess the vocabulary to allow us to do so successfully. So that's pretty much how I approach my audience for vidding. If someone who isn't familiar with my language wants to listen to the conversation and try and pick up bits and pieces and maybe learn to become more fluent in that language, they are very welcome to, but they're not my primary audience target. But they may well be for you, in which case your approach would (and should) be completely different. So I think that circles back to your point about "coming to a point of doing a disservice to the vid and what it was trying to do." It seems to me that "What do you want the vid to achieve?" question may be the most important of all. |
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Post by franzeska on Feb 1, 2012 18:08:22 GMT -5
One thing that put me off of vids for a long time was that all of the "general interest" vids I was shown did not work for me. It wasn't because they were cut fast: it was because they were produced by large fandoms with large bodies of not only fanon I wasn't that familiar with but also vidding tropes I didn't know anything about. Any fandom that is vidded constantly starts to have scenes everyone uses, and fans will begin to recognize them from shorter and shorter clips. It's just like movies and tv using all kinds of visual tropes as shorthand. Why should a fade to black be someone losing consciousness or a dissolve be a flashback? There are always lots of conventions that are sometimes adhered to and sometimes broken. It's great if a vid works on multiple levels for multiple audiences, but I think it's a trap to imagine that multiple audiences = all audiences or even most audiences. I find it hard to ignore what my eyes are now able to see but where do you draw the line between what you see and what will be acceptable to see for any kind of audience ? Do you guys think about that ? do you use any tricks or do you ever beta audience that are not vidders ? I think this implies that there is only one aesthetic for cutting and that every vidder likes to cut faster and faster as they mature artistically. If a cut looks awkward to me, I think I should trust myself that something is wrong. If I'm using longer clips in response to slow music or a source that is hard to parse visually and unfamiliar to my target audience, I am not ignoring what my eyes are now able to see: I'm using what I see in the service of some particular aesthetic that involves slower cutting. I did have non vidders and people who hadn't seen the source beta one of my vids for Escapade. It's quite long, and it retells a rather complicated plotline. It's somewhere between a recruiter vid, an alternative to actually watching that arc, and a mockery of how utterly melodramatic that plot is. I wanted to be sure that the plot came across to someone who had no idea what they were looking at. I felt the responses said a lot about people's backgrounds and about the futility of vidding for a general audience: Some people thought it was hysterical and got why I find certain cliches funny and funnier the longer they drag on. Other people thought the length made the humor fall flat instead of build. A casual AMV watcher thought it was insufferably slow (as in, the individual clips were too long) and needed way more effects to liven it up. Testing it on all those people told me nothing consistent about whether it was a good vid or how I should revise it, but it was really helpful for making sure the visual logic of the vid communicated the plot clearly. I think an audience of newbies can be very helpful to answering the question of whether people can tell what a shot is of at all. Sometimes, while vidding, you get so familiar with footage that your editing is honestly too fast for anyone to follow, even after multiple viewings. But when I was confused by vids, it was a more meta confusion about why I should care, not an inability to tell what shots were in a particular vid. And there were some vidding styles I warmed to quickly and some I haven't. I realize you have literal, specific feedback, but I didn't have any idea how to explain why vids didn't work for me until I found more that did. If I'd said a vid was "in your face" at that point, I would probably have meant that it wasn't a one-note comedy vid, a clear A loves B and here is my evidence shipper vid, a LKBV, or something else I got instinctively. Flashy dance vids are usually easy to get, but if someone isn't familiar with those, they may feel confused because they're looking for patterns and meta points that aren't there. If they're watching a meta vid and they just do not care about the canon, they may not feel like they get the vid even when they're perfectly capable of identifying the argument it makes. |
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Post by killabeez on Feb 1, 2012 21:35:25 GMT -5
I think this implies that there is only one aesthetic for cutting and that every vidder likes to cut faster and faster as they mature artistically. I didn't read that into buffyann's comment at all. For me, it's more about how the more vids you watch, the easier it is to parse information from ever shorter clips—which I've found to be very much true. I don't think it's because I've matured artistically, but rather that I've trained my eye as a vidwatcher. (Small distinction perhaps, but for me it's about the physical eye training of watching vids, not about making art.) I remember making a vid around 2005 where my beta was astonished by how I kept shortening the clips and putting more in to a given section. "So many clips!" she said. I saw that vid a few year's later and it seemed sloooow. I didn't need half the information in those clips to parse them. So I guess I'm saying that I do think the audience matters, but for me it's about whether the audience is familiar with watching vids, not making them. |
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Post by obsessive24 on Feb 2, 2012 3:36:32 GMT -5
I don't think it's because I've matured artistically, but rather that I've trained my eye as a vidwatcher. (Small distinction perhaps, but for me it's about the physical eye training of watching vids, not about making art.)... So I guess I'm saying that I do think the audience matters, but for me it's about whether the audience is familiar with watching vids, not making them. Agreed. I think someone who is used to watching vids falls into the same category here as someone who has vidded for a while, the issue for me is more about the fact that we apparently are able to gather more visual information from a clip in a shorter period of time than someone who isn't used to doing it. This is certainly anecdotally true when I show vids to my non-fannish AND fannish-but-non-regularly-vid-watching friends. I don't think I actually have a physically faster eye or brain or whatever, but I think as we become more familiar with vids, something must have gradually changed in the way we pay attention to the images. I don't think this particular problem that Buffyann raised is one of fandom except in the way that someone who's really into the fandom may have watched a lot of vids in that fandom, or know the visual details of the source very well. It would be interesting, for example, to test a non-regular-vid-watcher and a regular-vid-watcher/vidder while they're watching the same vid under the same conditions, in terms of how often they blink while watching, the amount of rapid eyeball movement to take in the entire screen's visual information, and so on. I personally think there'd be a marked difference in results. And I can't help but think that maybe such a controlled test would itself distort the fact that, maybe under RL conditions, some non-regular-vid-watchers simply don't pay as much attention to the vid as a regular-vid-watcher because they automatically relegate it to the background while they're doing/thinking other stuff, whereas a regular vid watcher/vidder would make watching their foreground mental activity. Lots of variables here. |
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nos
Pub Regular
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Post by nos on Feb 2, 2012 12:39:45 GMT -5
SCIENCE. I would totally want to see this too. I really, really enjoy finding betas for my videos that are not familiar with the fandom. That way I can tell if my point is coming across in a way that non-fans could understand. When I vid, I vid with my Perfect Viewer (my sister) in mind, but also with that 'virgin viewer' in mind. I don't use as many fast cuts as some people, but I think, even in fandoms I know nothing about, they can be visually stunning just for the sake of themselves. And they can be overdone. I really don't think it depends on the viewer at all. I think the only thing you need to consider before fast cuts is the song  |
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Post by buffyann on Feb 2, 2012 16:35:01 GMT -5
Yes my point was definitely about how you tend to put shorter clips in your vids because you don't notice as much how short they are, because your eye is trained in a way a non-vid-watcher isn't. (Though I guess the point is valid in storytelling and a variety of other things that we don't realize are too fast for anyone to get) I totally think it'd be interesting to have such an experience done (if it hadn't been already). and I do think vidders and vid watchers would have different results. What I was actually wondering is if there is a general consensus that exists somewhere where, possibly based on results of similar experiences you described, video editors don't cut under a specific number of frames for instance. I know vidding and regular editing for trailers or music videos are different medias, but at the same time, I can't help but think the way our eyes receive the cutting information isn't that different in those medias and I have yet to see a music video or a trailer cut as fast as some vids I've seen or made myself. maybe I'm wrong there but that's my feeling. I think this is specific to vids where the information is displayed in a singular way and the building up is very different, but the way that information is displayed to an audience is bound to have an effect on how said audience receives it, if it's displayed so fast that it can't be processed by the person watching. At the same time, I get the point about how you can't vid for all audiences, and that vidding is indeed, a language that has to be learned in order for it to be entirely understood. But I guess I'd also like to live in a world where even the Vidding Language 101 student would be able to enjoy a vid on some level, and where the editing doesn't prevent him to. oh, idealistic I am  and there's also the point where you wonder if even vidders don't find it too fast |
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Post by obsessive24 on Feb 2, 2012 17:00:32 GMT -5
I remember reading somewhere that 5 frames is about the shortest clip length that you can use that will still come across as properly visually meaningful to a viewer, whereas 1 frame is basically subliminal. I forget where I read that, but it feels instinctively true to some level. I think one thing that pro vids often use, and something that a lot of fan vidding also picks up on, is the idea that you can cut fast but still maintain visual meaning if you keep cutting away and back to the same clip (or a little later in the same clip that still looks similar). For me it's also just a good way to fill up timeline space quickly without needing to spend time to look for new clips, haha. I tend to find it visually and mentally easier to parse something that's cut quickly but comes back to the same clip a few times, so you get the fast cuts but as well as the time you need to process the information. (As opposed to cutting fast to all different clips all the time... that seems like more of a recipe for eye fatigue.) |
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Post by killabeez on Feb 2, 2012 19:32:28 GMT -5
I remember reading somewhere that 5 frames is about the shortest clip length that you can use that will still come across as properly visually meaningful to a viewer My vid mentor told me that years ago, so it must be an adage at this point. There's a montage in Highlander that has a bunch of 1-frame images, and I feel like I can recognize them, but it's hard to say. Since there's more than one 1-frame image in the montage, and since they are all similar, am I really parsing them individually? |
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Post by obsessive24 on Feb 3, 2012 3:25:50 GMT -5
Maybe the 1-frame montage is intercut with single frames of subliminal messaging telling you to think that you can recognise all the images! ;D
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Post by franzeska on Feb 3, 2012 12:16:05 GMT -5
What I was actually wondering is if there is a general consensus that exists somewhere where, possibly based on results of similar experiences you described, video editors don't cut under a specific number of frames for instance. Ooh, interesting question! I think I've seen the 5 frames guideline too, and I'm pretty sure somebody suggested ~15 for stuff in isolation that you want the audience to be able to fully grasp (as opposed to consecutive clips that are different parts of the same motion or intercutting two scenes/returning to something the audience has already seen in the vid, times when you don't care if they totally get what they're seeing, etc.). |
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Post by legoline on Feb 10, 2012 4:04:39 GMT -5
I think one thing that pro vids often use, and something that a lot of fan vidding also picks up on, is the idea that you can cut fast but still maintain visual meaning if you keep cutting away and back to the same clip (or a little later in the same clip that still looks similar). I've been trying to do that more often recently. The vid I'm currently working on has that quite a bit. I like that technique because if you have an important clip that you want to use, but it's so long that for example the speed of the vid would slow down you can just do the "cutting away and to" bit and the cutting signals motion even if the clip is on the quieter side. |
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alba
New to the Pub
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Post by alba on Feb 10, 2012 18:12:57 GMT -5
Speaking as someone who's relatively new to vidding, I find a lot of vids are cut too quickly for my taste and have too many effects. But I've also looked back at older vids of mine and found them too slow. And those are also the least popular ones.
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Post by obsessive24 on Feb 11, 2012 4:25:53 GMT -5
alba - out of interest, where are you finding/watching most vids these days? YouTube? Livejournal? Or someplace else?
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alba
New to the Pub
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Post by alba on Feb 11, 2012 19:03:07 GMT -5
obsessive - Mostly from LJ.
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) when you're talking to someone who isn't familiar with your language, maybe the same is true for vidding. And it can get really frustrating to be speaking slowly and loudly all the time and that's not the way I want to speak; I'd rather be talking with someone who's fluent in my language, especially when that means I can talk about more complex topics and interesting concepts because both of us possess the vocabulary to allow us to do so successfully. 
