hexenmeister

"you are my baby, but it's not up to me / what you become, that is up to you."
Song by the wonderful Kimya Dawson!

here on AO3
here on tumblr

I signed up for C6D Big Bang! Ahhh! It's my first time signing up for any kind of fandom challenge thing.

Inspired by vidbigbang, I've decided to vid Fraser to a song that's 5 and a half minutes long. Is this a bit much for a novice? Maybe so! But the song/concept has sunk its teeth into my brain and it's the only thing I'm excited about making right now. So here we go. It's a big undertaking, but I think I can do it. I'm happy to have, through the big bang, a group of people also working on labor-intensive projects who will encourage me to actually finish the thing. Hopefully someone out there will be willing to beta the vid as well, and I'll start finding a revisions/feedback process that works. (Right now that process seems totally shrouded in mystery to me!)

In the interest of understanding the form better, I've been watching a lot of vids lately, including ones from fandoms I'm not actively in and source material I haven't watched. Some of my favorites from this week's (ish) round of vid discovery:

I Think I'm by ClawR (All the Star Trek series. "What does it mean to be whatever you are?")
Hymn by theletterelle (Black Swan. "A hymn to the glory of becoming.")
Blood//Water by maristu (Black Panther. "What's your alibi?")
Blank by Lim ("a Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes vid to Neopolitan Dreams by Lisa Mitchell")

The Long-Form Ones:
Horse also by Lim (Peaky Blinders vid about Tommy Selby. Almost 10 minutes long)
Live Through This: A Supernatural Vid Album by sisabet and sweetestdrain ("fuck you, make me real." Twelve vids about the women of Supernatural. Almost 40 minutes long!!)

I'm also reading some from this Fanlore Timeline of Vidding Meta. I'm trying to think critically about what makes the vids I love work especially well, and pay close attention to the structure of the longer ones. It's hard to stay in an analytic mindset though, even on a rewatch, and not get lost in all the !!!!!feeelings!!!! they give me!

nonetheless, here are a few reflections on what I've learned (phrased as reminders to myself for this big bang project):

• don't get too literal-minded about the lyrics
• you can redefine almost any word by associating it repeatedly with an image
• where you can, choose an image that is visually striking; something that speaks for itself even with no plot context
• the cut wants to happen a bit before the associated sound or lyric
• it's OK to let the footage breathe
• relatedly: brains need time to process a shot and its meaning.
• I'm still trying to wrap my head around why some images seem to take a lot more time for my brain to process than others, and whether there are handy rules that apply across the board. (Like... maybe I need less time to understand what I'm seeing when there are bright colors and motion? Or when it's scary or exciting? Or, possibly, I'm making that up.)

I have Made a Thing! Behold, my attempt at vidding:

a very silly Fraser/Kowalski vidlet to about 20 seconds of Countdown by Beyoncé

(it's hosted on peertube, and DW doesn't want to let me embed it here. There's nothing for it, you'll just have to click a link.)

I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring out as much as I did! In addition to the super basic key commands, I learned how to use a transition, adjust speed and brightness, and slip-edit a clip. *pats self on back*