#endless critical vid essays are exhausting

[beatriceeagle]

For the get to know the vidder ask game:

Hardest vid to edit?

When and why did you get started?

Bonus kuwdora questions:

Does the music you use for fanvids overlap with the music you listen to casually? Why or why not?

Is there a vid that you have watched/rewatched that has inspired you or informed the way you make vids?

Hardest vid to edit?

Every vid is hard to edit in its own way :) I feel like the effects-heavy vids or the comics vids that require endless preprocessing always stick out in my mind, but at the moment I think my answer is "A Kind of Brother," my Critical Role Beau + Caleb vid. The actual process of putting the vid together wasn't that hard, but I worked and reworked it a lot to make a vid work that was 90% the same two people in the same static shot. (There was also a lot of boring technical work that went into making that same static shot not look like it was jumping around the screen, since the camera and players aren't exactly in the same spot between episodes.)

Why and when did you get started?

I've always loved fanvids, and I'd had fanvid ideas for years and years, and even tried to make a few, but never got very far, mostly because of the technical barrier. Then, in 2016, two things happened at the same time: I got Camtasia on my computer for work, and I got extremely into a web series (Lovely Little Losers) that was freely available on YouTube. The combination of having software readily available that I knew how to use and having ideas for a source that was very easy to procure made vidding a lot more achievable for me, and so I made my first vid! Later I started making my own web series, which meant that I got better editing software and learned a lot about the technical side of things, so the entire process started to feel a lot less overwhelming, and that's when I started vidding in earnest.

Does the music you use for fanvids overlap with the music you listen to casually? Why or why not?

Sometimes but not always. My most used artists are Kesha, Taylor Swift, Metric, and Arcade Fire, and I do listen to those people casually, and often get ideas for vids from songs that I've heard a lot. But sometimes I have a source or vid that I want to make, and I go in search of a song for it, which usually results in a vid to a song I would probably never listen to independently. See the above Critical Role vid—that came from a long and exhaustive search for a song that captured the extremely specific dynamic that Beau and Caleb have with each other. I eventually settled on "Blood Brothers" by The Tyde, a song and band I'd never heard of before. I think it's a good song, and I listen to it casually now (because it's on my Beau & Caleb playlist) but I've checked out the band's other music and it mostly doesn't click for me.

Is there a vid that you have watched/rewatched that has inspired you or informed the way you make vids?

So, so many. Raven's TNG/DS9 vid "disappear" was hugely influential when I first started vidding in earnest, and really helped to shape my idea of the kind of vidder that I wanted to be. "Women's Work" by luminosity and sisabet was one of the first vids I ever saw, and gave me the idea of fanvids as critical essays that can say something about their sources. @monkeyswithjetpacks' "The Ballad of Wesley Crusher" is a tour de force of side character study, and I basically outright stole the sequence of Wesley looking at the different view screens from behind for my Good Place vid. Bironic's "Starships" introduced me to the concept of massively multifandom vids (and her notes helped me figure out that adjusting the speed of certain clips might make my vids flow better). "Gasoline" by garrideb was my introduction to comics vidding, and I'm still trying to capture the fluidity she gives to the medium in it. I probably watch "Seven Years" by CherryIce every other month, both because it's gorgeous and I love it, and because I want to figure out how she did it so that I can do it myself. I'm probably forgetting a dozen more.

[citrusandbergamot]

do people ever get tired of being critical?

like, it’s so endless. so needless. take the bad with the good, I mean, come on. like, type in RWBY into the youtube search bar and half the videos are reaction ones about why RWBY sucks now, ‘why I stopped watching’ blah blah blah. 

like, I get being frustrated and being annoyed that your expectations are not met but seriously

no piece of media is perfect to all people. it just isn’t. it’s really easy for something to feel awesome when it’s new. few things end stronger than they begin. Few things have a strong ending, period. But being so goddamn down on stuff makes the creators feel like shit. It makes people not want to finish things. 

You know what’s worse than a character death you hate? A show/series never, ever having a conclusion, something just...drifting away. Like, I don’t super love the ending of Naruto. I actually really dislike it and what’s happened in the sequel. I don’t like most of what JKR has come out and said since the ending of HP. And I fucking hated the epilogue. Words cannot express how much I disliked it. 

Can you imagine the agony if those stories had never actually ended? If they had given up, halfway through? Good god, it’d be awful, just awful. The what if, the endless what if. Do you think people are going to love the end of Rebuild? Do you think it can possibly match the expectations that have been building all this time? Eva fans want it to be perfect; they want it to be exactly as good as they imagine. Is it any wonder why it’s been delayed so long? The whole damn thing is probably torture for Anno. Do you think the ending of One Piece is going to satisfy its millions of fans? Maybe, maybe not. And that world is so rich, so complex, so consistent, so deep. It still has to end, eventually. If it’s not everything you want it to be, will that sour all the joy it brought to you before? 

Can you name for me things that have met your expectations and exceeded them? things that ended as strong as their original promise, their beginning? 

endings are weird, always. Even great endings, there’s often something that feels unfinished. There’s always a let down, it’s just the way that stories are shaped. Eventually the plot twists and the motivations and the consequences have to end, the camera has to stop rolling. Things that feel flat or disappointing sometimes just feel that way because we don’t want things to end, or because we want things to go the way we’ve expected them to. Like, I remember being so disappointed in Revenge of the Sith. And yeah, some of that comes from I think valid criticism of the pacing and emotional depth of the story, but in the end, I’m glad to have had that story, I’m glad to have the prequels. Shitting on them endlessly, needlessly, doesn’t do a damn thing to change it. It only generates more negativity and shitty, reactionary behaviour and stifles creativity, and makes the people involved in the project feel like shit. It doesn’t feel great inside either, all that negativity. Like, what’s the fucking point?

And sometimes endings take a while to settle. Sometimes, it takes awhile to really understand that it was the only way a story could end. I loved the way Life on Mars ended, but I know my brother absolutely hated it. I didn’t like the way Fight Club ended when I first saw it, but it grew on me and now I cite it as a brilliant, brilliant ending. I hate the depressive way Rogue One ends, but that last sequence with Darth Vader is one of my favourite scenes in the Star Wars universe. I actually think Return of the King has a terrible ending, but I understand why Peter Jackson chose it and it still makes me cry. I don’t think having the scouring of the shire would elicited the same emotional reaction. Trainspotting has always been perfect though. I think Supernatural should have ended in season 5, but if it did, we wouldn’t have had the bunker, or Abaddon, or Charlie, or season 8, or the way Jared looks right now, or Sam’s like, complete mental torture since season 6. ...season 4?? And all that shit has been awesome, to varying degrees. All that shit has brought some enjoyment, even if mostly (for me) as fuel for fanfiction. ((It’s brought about other things, more negative and terrible as well. Supernatural fandom would not be this way had it ended in season 5 and the fandom is so goddamn abusive and toxic it’s hard to talk about the good points of the show without bringing that up. But that’s not the show itself per se.))

And yeah, things sometimes live way past their expiration date. I really hate when Sam and Dean have the same old conversation - I want my characters to change. But i also know that other people don’t feel the same way - they want Sam and Dean to always be SamandDean. Take FMA. I think Brotherhood is tighter, more cohesive story. I think the 2003 version is darker, less simplistic, but with a lot more strife between the characters. Which has better growth? The one with the deeper plot/conspiracy and triumphant, satisfying ending? Or the one with the heavier consequences for the individual characters and more ambiguous ending? I love me some Brotherhood, I love it a lot. But remember what happens to Scar and Liore in 2003? Remember who killed Winry’s parents? Remember the final fight with Sloth? Do you remember the final fight with Sloth? Holy shit, holy shit. So I thought Dante was kinda a weak villain. Is that the only thing that matters? 

Like....I’m pretty glad I live in a world with both versions. And I really cannot say which one is better, as each has their faults. Being needlessly critical of creative choices is just so exhausting and....well, childish.  

Youtube tried to recommend a vid about why Captain Marvel is going to cause the downfall of the MCU. And I’m like....????? it hasn’t even come out yet???? To be that critical before even seeing it?? It’s just plain misogyny  entitlement packaged up as ‘intellect’. 

No show is going to stay exactly the same. What RWBY was pre-volume 3 is impossible to return to: the world is different post-fall of Beacon. The structure of the characters world, their expecations, their security, their drives...it’s all different now. The show is bigger, has a bigger budget, has better animation. The story, with the world building and the multiple factions and a clearer look at the end game, is so beyond what it was at the start, where everything was new, where Cinder was still mystery and seemingly all-powerful, where we didn’t know what was possible in the world. Where a goddamn Nevermore was the biggest Grimm they’d ever seen. Where Monty was still alive. 

The show is going to be different. Different is not bad. Maybe they lost some of the potential but of course it’s going to, because it had to choose a path forward, it couldn’t stay exactly the same...! How could it have? I miss things about the early seasons a lot, but it worked because they could move the plot at a snail’s pace. Remember all those eps about Jaune being bullied? Remember all that shit with the dog and going to class and becoming friends. It was light-hearted and happy-go lucky and that made the action scenes pop and our favourite villain was campy and charismatic and not actually the one in control at all. Now we have darkness on all sides and the mysteries have been revealed for the dangers they actually are, and the emotional scenes and the connection between the characters and their resolve is the only thing that can push back against that darkness. Do I wish it was a little darker at times? Yes, yes I do. But it was always going to be a little simplistic. 

It’s a web-series about teenagers. Chill the fuck out, you aren’t entitled to shit. 

yes this is about Adam Taurus can you tell, if people couldn’t see it coming I don’t know what to tell you. If you couldn’t see it coming, we haven’t been watching the same show.