VVC09 Panel: In-Depth Vid Review
In-Depth Vid Review
Moderated by absolutedestiny and millylicious
hollywoodgrrlhollywoodgrrl, Marble House
Milly and AD asked what non-DW watchers got out of the vid: the emotional effect of human connections on the Doctor. The vid is based around a two-parter, "Human Nature," in which the Doctor doesn't appear much, or rather appears without the memory of being the Doctor, under the illusion he's a human named John Smith. The vid mostly gives us a human POV, or a human imagining or reimagining the Timelord POV, connecting to history and eternity. During online discussion of the episode, some fans suggested the Doctor or the Tardis selected this time and place for the Doctor's "vacation" (?) because most of the people (boys) he interacted with would shortly die in WWI.
The vid has additional resonance with "Children of Earth" (not specified for spoilery reasons).
The tank with "Britannia" across it calls up a certain nostalgia for pre-WWI Britain, which is countered by the images of Martha's powerlessness as a black woman in WWI, forced into the role of maid. (The original book also had the Doctor's companion forced to be a maid, but the character was a white woman from a privileged background. [ See correction.])
The vid opens with eternity, then narrows down to a particular historical era/warfare, then narrows down to individual characters. The starfield opening is quotes from previous Doctors or from the Doctor's dream journal when he's remembering being the Doctor. We discussed the text a lot -- was it necessary? Did it work better for people unfamiliar with the show than fans? -- including the aesthetics of the layout and typeface; AD and Milly showed clips from another vid by hollywoodgrrl with slightly different use of text, which worked better. During the panel, I had some issues with the text layout: the vertical positioning worked really well for me, except for one clip where your eye is forced to jump from the bottom of the screen to the top, but I really wanted bigger horizontal margins (either smaller text or text broken into multiple lines) because the text came so close to the screen edge that it was uncomfortable for me to try to absorb the entire image. I thought at the time that this had probably happened because the vidder was used to vidding for digital distribution rather than film projector display, only I assumed that she hadn't taken border cropping into account and had expected larger borders; now that I've seen the vid on the DVDs on my TV, I still think the problem is digital vs. film expectations, only now I think the vidder expected the words to cut off at the monitor guidelines border, and WOW, that works so much better. When the lines come so close to the end that parts of words and letters get cut off, it's a mental/visual signal to the viewer to back off and recalibrate to a distance shot, and it makes that one shift from a line at the bottom of the screen to a line at the top of the screen much smoother.
So I retract my comments about this from vid review, although I do still wonder about whether it might have been a good idea to try audio editing any of the text that was spoken dialogue into the instrumental sections. Also, astolat thought that the font wasn't quite suitable and would have looked better anti-aliased. I wonder about using handwriting, if it was diary entries?
There was a lot of care in the image composition and the placement of the text -- I don't know if hollywoodgrrl reads comics or manga, but that's definitely something that I thought about when watching it, how the text was placed to emphasize certain aspects of the image.
The text references previous lives of the Doctor, not just the tenth incarnation.
Instead of using color correction to match the external, archival footage to the contemporary footage, the vidder uses pacing, timing, and time-toggling (although she also desaturates some of the contemporary footage to make it look archival). The transition of the flag from black and white to color is brilliant, one of those transitions you have to pay attention to.
After Premieres, I was talking with a bunch of other non-Doctor-Who watchers and the conversation pretty much went like this:
"Oh, and 'Marble House'--"
"Wasn't it gorgeous?"
"Yeah, can you explain it to me?"
"I have no idea, but it's really pretty."
I'm glad to have more context for this from the Vid Review, because I really liked it and was already planning to watch it again just because of the visual beauty and the evocative clips. What I get out of it -- which may be entirely a misreading due to not knowing the canon -- is the terrible difficult struggle of humans to imagine eternity, when trapped in the day-to-day, the oppressive, the horror of both war and more daily oppression and difficulty. And that there's something the Doctor misses, too, by taking too long a view; that eternity's in a grain of sand, I guess, in love, in a kiss, in the glory of visions of stars and aliens, in the unseen friendship and loyalty of companions, in lives that are lost too soon.
But mostly I like it because it's really pretty.
jarrow, Give It Up
katie_m: Oh my God, the vidder killed John Hughes!
This year Club Vivid had more premieres than the Premieres show. Why are people opting for CV over (in addition to) Premieres?
More fun. Less pressure. Usually the vid won't be subject to vid review.
What makes a good Club Vivid vid?
In "Give It Up":
The sources have different tones but meld seamlessly in the vid; the clips used all have the same energy level. Paralleled internal motion, focus on feet moving, links the sources as well as the unifying theme.
The "You're holding yourself back" subplot: Not just rebellion against authority figures, but internalization of strictures, represented by other teenagers (best friends, love interests, sort-of-enemies).
The vid moves from the individual to the collective: sisabet saw the protagonists as moving from rebel to leader (the air guitar in the opening becomes the group dance of the conclusion) whereas I saw the story of the vid being the movement from individual acts of resistance to collective acts of social re-envisioning (complementary readings, I think). absolutedestiny saw it as part of a trilogy of vids by Jarrow ("Paul McCartney" and "Good" being the first two parts) that also acted as an autobiography of encountering Vividcon. It's important that the vid ends with public dance, celebration, change. The air guitar is an invitation to the audience, something you can do at home, alone, as an amateur, that still links you to a larger group, other people.
For one generation of VVC attendees, the vid has a great nostalgia factor because they saw the movies as they came out, the movies represent their own teen years; another generation connects to the movies as depictions of an imaginary time, but with resonance for their own adolescent limitations and rebellions. And there's a clip of a baby dancing in a stroller, the next generation.
Moderated by absolutedestiny and millylicious
hollywoodgrrlhollywoodgrrl, Marble House
Milly and AD asked what non-DW watchers got out of the vid: the emotional effect of human connections on the Doctor. The vid is based around a two-parter, "Human Nature," in which the Doctor doesn't appear much, or rather appears without the memory of being the Doctor, under the illusion he's a human named John Smith. The vid mostly gives us a human POV, or a human imagining or reimagining the Timelord POV, connecting to history and eternity. During online discussion of the episode, some fans suggested the Doctor or the Tardis selected this time and place for the Doctor's "vacation" (?) because most of the people (boys) he interacted with would shortly die in WWI.
The vid has additional resonance with "Children of Earth" (not specified for spoilery reasons).
The tank with "Britannia" across it calls up a certain nostalgia for pre-WWI Britain, which is countered by the images of Martha's powerlessness as a black woman in WWI, forced into the role of maid. (The original book also had the Doctor's companion forced to be a maid, but the character was a white woman from a privileged background. [ See correction.])
The vid opens with eternity, then narrows down to a particular historical era/warfare, then narrows down to individual characters. The starfield opening is quotes from previous Doctors or from the Doctor's dream journal when he's remembering being the Doctor. We discussed the text a lot -- was it necessary? Did it work better for people unfamiliar with the show than fans? -- including the aesthetics of the layout and typeface; AD and Milly showed clips from another vid by hollywoodgrrl with slightly different use of text, which worked better. During the panel, I had some issues with the text layout: the vertical positioning worked really well for me, except for one clip where your eye is forced to jump from the bottom of the screen to the top, but I really wanted bigger horizontal margins (either smaller text or text broken into multiple lines) because the text came so close to the screen edge that it was uncomfortable for me to try to absorb the entire image. I thought at the time that this had probably happened because the vidder was used to vidding for digital distribution rather than film projector display, only I assumed that she hadn't taken border cropping into account and had expected larger borders; now that I've seen the vid on the DVDs on my TV, I still think the problem is digital vs. film expectations, only now I think the vidder expected the words to cut off at the monitor guidelines border, and WOW, that works so much better. When the lines come so close to the end that parts of words and letters get cut off, it's a mental/visual signal to the viewer to back off and recalibrate to a distance shot, and it makes that one shift from a line at the bottom of the screen to a line at the top of the screen much smoother.
So I retract my comments about this from vid review, although I do still wonder about whether it might have been a good idea to try audio editing any of the text that was spoken dialogue into the instrumental sections. Also, astolat thought that the font wasn't quite suitable and would have looked better anti-aliased. I wonder about using handwriting, if it was diary entries?
There was a lot of care in the image composition and the placement of the text -- I don't know if hollywoodgrrl reads comics or manga, but that's definitely something that I thought about when watching it, how the text was placed to emphasize certain aspects of the image.
The text references previous lives of the Doctor, not just the tenth incarnation.
Instead of using color correction to match the external, archival footage to the contemporary footage, the vidder uses pacing, timing, and time-toggling (although she also desaturates some of the contemporary footage to make it look archival). The transition of the flag from black and white to color is brilliant, one of those transitions you have to pay attention to.
After Premieres, I was talking with a bunch of other non-Doctor-Who watchers and the conversation pretty much went like this:
"Oh, and 'Marble House'--"
"Wasn't it gorgeous?"
"Yeah, can you explain it to me?"
"I have no idea, but it's really pretty."
I'm glad to have more context for this from the Vid Review, because I really liked it and was already planning to watch it again just because of the visual beauty and the evocative clips. What I get out of it -- which may be entirely a misreading due to not knowing the canon -- is the terrible difficult struggle of humans to imagine eternity, when trapped in the day-to-day, the oppressive, the horror of both war and more daily oppression and difficulty. And that there's something the Doctor misses, too, by taking too long a view; that eternity's in a grain of sand, I guess, in love, in a kiss, in the glory of visions of stars and aliens, in the unseen friendship and loyalty of companions, in lives that are lost too soon.
But mostly I like it because it's really pretty.
jarrow, Give It Up
katie_m: Oh my God, the vidder killed John Hughes!
This year Club Vivid had more premieres than the Premieres show. Why are people opting for CV over (in addition to) Premieres?
More fun. Less pressure. Usually the vid won't be subject to vid review.
What makes a good Club Vivid vid?
- laurashapiro: The song choice makes it; the audio has to move, the visuals have to be kinetic.
- Theme
- Structure and content
- Fandom
- Certain types of visuals
- Layering and structure: a rewatchable CV vid will have depths, content for analysis, but will also have a clear structure or narrative that people can grasp even while dancing and/or drunk
In "Give It Up":
- Visuals: They're dancing! People dancing on the screen always work in CV
- The theme is clear: The teenagers are fighting the Man through the power of DANCE
- The structure is clearly set up: The choruses celebrate the dance. In the first chorus, we see the characters we already "know" dancing; in the second chorus, we see more people dancing, we see plot being related
The sources have different tones but meld seamlessly in the vid; the clips used all have the same energy level. Paralleled internal motion, focus on feet moving, links the sources as well as the unifying theme.
The "You're holding yourself back" subplot: Not just rebellion against authority figures, but internalization of strictures, represented by other teenagers (best friends, love interests, sort-of-enemies).
The vid moves from the individual to the collective: sisabet saw the protagonists as moving from rebel to leader (the air guitar in the opening becomes the group dance of the conclusion) whereas I saw the story of the vid being the movement from individual acts of resistance to collective acts of social re-envisioning (complementary readings, I think). absolutedestiny saw it as part of a trilogy of vids by Jarrow ("Paul McCartney" and "Good" being the first two parts) that also acted as an autobiography of encountering Vividcon. It's important that the vid ends with public dance, celebration, change. The air guitar is an invitation to the audience, something you can do at home, alone, as an amateur, that still links you to a larger group, other people.
For one generation of VVC attendees, the vid has a great nostalgia factor because they saw the movies as they came out, the movies represent their own teen years; another generation connects to the movies as depictions of an imaginary time, but with resonance for their own adolescent limitations and rebellions. And there's a clip of a baby dancing in a stroller, the next generation.