Interview Series 2011: Astarte - Part 2
Moving on to a new topic, is there a music genre you won't use for your vids?
I think song searching for all vidders is about finding the general tone for a vid. When the lyrics fit, but the composition doesn't, we won't take it. Same for the other way around. Why we decide against a song, or take one, is a very intimate choice, which says a lot about our views of the characters. I don't think necessarily about us vidders as persons. I'm not even an emotional person, and yet moods are the first thing I latch onto when I have a inspiration.
Recently I tried to be a lot more open on what music genres I vid, and even go so far as to vid songs I wouldn't normally listen to on repeat, just to try if I can. I'm not brave enough to try pop music yet, but maybe one day I will - hopefully it doesn't involve things like the sun setting in the east. I have a problem with upbeat songs or comedy vids, because my sense of humor is not physical and I'm drawn to the darker aspects of the shows I watch.
Is there a particular type of music or type of song you find yourself gravitating toward? Why/why not?
First of all I gravitate toward English, because I have a hard time vidding in German. Understanding every nuance is not always a blessing. 'Buenos Dias Messias' was perfect for Deadwood, Die Fantastischen Vier are brilliant with word plays and this song had a Western metaphor going on. I did cut the first verse featuring the actual meaning that they don't give a fuck about what their critics think. I still hesitated, because the song describes a duel at dawn and I didn't get that gun showdown between Bullock and Hearst, only a lot of murderous intent. So I can work around a lot of song intentions while vidding in English, not so much in German, because I know damn well what artists are hinting at and the double or triple meaning.
I do listen to more acoustic guitar/indie folk stuff then I let on. And as a rule I like smart lyrics and I love to make them work for my purpose. I'm drawn to certain artists and could vid pretty much every song in their collection. Examples would be Imogen Heap, Poe, Ani DiFranco, Dessa or David Usher. I should mention Linkin Park, Sarah McLachlan or Matchbox 20 on this list, even when they are overvidded and I know it. This didn't stop me in the past and won't stop me in the future; if I want to vid something badly enough nothing will derail me. Not even the fact that my vid will be the 1254th vid to this song.
Do you have a 'To-Vid' list of songs? If so, what is one song you've had on your list forever but can never seem to find something that fits it?
One example is 'Checking my pulse' by Alix Olson for a femme slash pairing, but I haven't found one that appeals to me for that song, and I'm searching for eight years or so. I have two playlists for vidding: my favorite songs and my 'To vid or not to vid'-playlist. For the second one I obviously have ideas, but for the first one? Not really. This is a practice in patience. I don't want to waste a superb song on something less than ideal just because I'm desperate to vid it. I wanna do right by a song I love, and do it justice. This won't necessary mean new fandoms, sometimes it comes down to connecting the dots.
How does your editing style reflect the music style that you choose for vids? Parallel, contrast, or is your editing style consistent to you and independant of the music used?
My basic vidding style stays the same, it is consistent and it's an effort to break out of it. I tried not to work too many tells into 'Angels would fall' and I only succeeded because I had a deadline looming so close that I could feel it breathe down my neck. Strangely Xandra pointed out that I do adapt to her style when we do our collaborations. I don't modify it on a conscious level, but I'm well acquainted with Xandra's personal approach and I have picked up enough of her tells to blend into our Multifandom vids and lampshade my style a bit, especially in the changeover parts.
Do you feel there are length limits for vid songs? If so, is it a limit you set in place only for yourself, or do you feel most vids should stick to a time frame?
No, I don't think there is an unbreakable rule concerning the time frame. A solid vid can punch in anywhere between 2 minutes and 4 minutes, a vidlet over a minute is long enough; a minute and half is usually better. Five minutes is epic in vidding, but I did go over that mark enough times to know that it can feel like a very short time as a vidder. You still have so much to add, and hey, there are another 35 minutes of extra footage on the timeline at the end of the vid. But you should consider if the extra minute or two is crucial to your story.
Sometimes I wanted to linger even when the answer was No. I took the two extra minutes in 'My Skin' or 'Hey Pretty'. The videos would have been tighter edited otherwise, but hey, I was in charge and I wanted to broadcast my love for Cordelia/Angel and the Impala.
Do you have any tricks when editing audio?
I always think about cutting a song down; it's a possibility I have to deliberately remind myself of. It depends on the narrative I want to use, but the main reason for song editing is either lyrics that plainly don't fit with the story I want to tell, or too little footage. Again this might change while vidding, so I undo around 50% of my audio edits. Because I find additional meaning for lyrics that didn't make much sense for me at first. I'm not confident with song editing, plus I don't think I'm very good at it to begin with, so I tend to go for the simple solution: get rid of a repeated chorus or cut a bridge. Maybe lose a line, keep the cuts very clean, maybe cheat with an audio fade.
Adding voiceovers on the other hand is something I totally enjoy, and to blend them into the song is always exciting for me. I keep to the basic rules: don't overlay over lyrics, make sure the volume is leveled with the music, and cut pauses if necessary. What I love about audio overlays is how it forges the music together with the source and sets the mood in a powerful way, if done right.
Do you have any tricks for making multiple sources meld visually?
Actually I find it harder to even out the age difference in shows like Buffy or The X Files, than working with multiple recent sources. Xandra is too impatient to let me truly play around with fixing that problem. All I was allowed to do was some after the fact filtering, slapped on top of the actual file to even out some of the differences. I used a very basic filter with a gradient overlay on softlight, adding some contrast and saturation and then narrow the levels to adjust the different sources. It's far from perfect, but still makes the vids look more cohesive without going into avisynth overdrive:
AVISource("D:\...\thosedays.avi")
ConvertToYUY2
Crop(8, 4, -8, -4)
LanczosResize(720,400)
farbe2 = ImageReader("D:\...\farboverlay001.jpg")
Overlay(farbe2, opacity=0.05, mode="softlight")
tweak(sat=1.15, bright=-5, cont=1.15)
Levels(15, 1, 235, 0, 255, coring=false)
MSharpen(strength=45)
Do you feel that your body of work up until this point is an accurate reflection of you as a person, or only a reflection of your viewing habits and musical collection?
No, vidding is first and foremost a hobby for me. It reflects certain aspects of my personality, but certainly not me as a person. Leaving aside actually doing stuff, I watch a lot of news and documentaries, plus shows that never ping my vidder instinct, and yet I read fics for some of them. So it's perhaps an accurate portrayal of the shows that made me think and ignited my imagination. The ones I wanted to add my voice to the creative outpouring, because I felt that I have something to say about them. It's a outlet for my creativity. I love the way it can make me exited and push me to learn new things. There are seemingly unrelated things connected to it: learning a bit of html, css coding, or trying to understand php and do a website.
I love that vidding is demanding. I don't want to just consume media, I want to create something out of the thoughts it gives me. A reflection of shows and fandoms in a distorting or sometimes shattered mirror. But vidding is also something that comes and goes. I tend to swing between writing, photoshopping and vidding phases. When I see sparks I move toward that shiny object in my mind that peaked my interest. If I am bored by doing something, I look for other ways to entertain myself. And then sometimes you just want to read one epic slash fic after another.
Are there certain symbols, colours, metaphors or themes that you naturally gravitate towards and repeatedly use? Does your vidding catalogue contain a little black dress?
Not that I'm aware of one. I love to vid strong characters, and what defines their strength for me is usually something I work into a vid. Personalizing these emotions into something that can be used as a symbol or stand-in for the character's beliefs is thrilling, and I search for shots that emphasize what I see as their armor or Achilles' heel. I like to deconstruct characters, strip them of their cool and build them up again. To find that quiet resolve or untamed rage, and tap into that when I vid.
The thing is, I admire mythology and religion from a philosophical point of view. What these handed down stories say about human nature. A heroes journey is a trope I approve of; it's about overcoming circumstances and fighting for the right thing, so these tales resonate with me. I did mention that I love things that make me think? And Xandra keeps accusing me of overthinking vidding.
How about vidding techniques that you feel are uniquely your own? Like a certain signature style that you find yourself defaulting to? If so, what would that be?
I'm drawn to cool transitions, even when they're only eight frames long, I can't resist them and I want to make them look good. Blending two scenes together is something I default to, if I'm left alone long enough with a project. Overlays, in moderation, are something I thrive on. I use a lot of fast cuts even in slow songs, perhaps to a fault, but I don't care. It makes it more interesting for me as vidder, so I'm sticking to my guns.
How does your relationship with your vids change over time? Do you generally love your vids more after some time has passed or do you start focusing more on the flaws? Are there early days vids you're embarrassed by now or do you love them as much as when you first posted them?
I start to focus on the flaws two days after I released a vid, until the next project occupies my mind. Actually, if it takes that long for me to reach the 'OMG! Why didn't I fix that!'-phase I'm lucky. But that doesn't take away from the 'This is it' that makes the vid finished for me in the first place. I'm never ashamed or embarrassed by old vids, though I do cringe. But I know what I learned by making mistakes and how they educated me further as vidder. Those early days vids are milestones in laying down the ground work. I can still recite what skill each of my first ten vids taught me. It gets murkier the further along I go, and subtleties are harder to remember. But yeah, every flaw they possess is balanced by something I learned for life as a vidder. So I don't feel like I need to hide them in the basement and forget about them. They are part of my history as vidder.
What is kind of funny, is the way I watch some vids very, very fondly, that didn't involve a lot of conscience on my part, like 'Around the corner', 'My Girl' or 'Move'. It's not like they jumped out from the darkest corners of my mind or anything like that, I just find them pleasantly soothing in their immorality. They don't try to make a point or teach a lesson, and evil is just part of them. I also think that a year or two is a good distance in time to become more objective about a vid, and leave all the subjective flaws behind and focus on a vid as it is and love it for what it is.
What's your view on remaking vids you've already done? Do you think it's okay to go back change a vid significantly? Or do you think what's done is done?
The things I post are done for me; I won’t salvage or go back to them without a complete remaster in mind, and for this at least some time should have passed. You always evolve as an artist and you won’t if you are stuck on one masterpiece you force to utter perfection beyond your means. Sometimes it’s a bit messier than you like and working up the courage to say, ‘This is all I can do at the moment!’ is better than never trying at all, although not the same as being lazy. So when I watch an old vid of mine among all the other faults that are suddenly very clear to me, I still can taste the failed promise of something better in certain scenes, so I do love to remaster old vids. Vidding is built so much on experience, and even something as simple as the instinct to cut I had to learn the hard way. What is now second nature - going for the money shot so to speak, did take hours of careful consideration back then.
I did some straight ones with 'Soldiering' and 'Watch the sky' that were mostly swapping in DVD footage and fix some minor things that bugged me. The big remaster projects like 'Shades of Grey', 'Wild' and 'My Skin' are something else altogether. I'm taking the freedom to redo them in my current style, pack in all the punch I want to add and not hold back. So yeah, I'm all for significant changes in remasters. Firstly because I think it is more fun for the vidder, and you can really see how they did change over time. Secondly, because the ones who did hold the original vid dear still have that version, if they truly dislike the remaster. There is nothing to lose either way, but I prefer the big remasters, because I can see the variation in style and play around with the original idea to my heart's content.
Can you explain your collaboration process with Xandra_ptv? Were you physically in the same place, or did you manage it remotely?
Nope, sadly never in the same place. The Atlantic is between us and that is probably for the best, because otherwise I would leave my significant other of 16 years and make her move in with me and we would never leave the bed, buried beneath cats and dogs. So all our collaborations were happening over IM. The first one was easy to decide - Femme Slash for Charmax' wedding. The song was another easy decision, because we wanted something that screamed empowerment and ass-kicking. Setting up the project so that it would fit both our needs was a short struggle. We decided to go with my PAL settings, because Xandra is obviously more flexible then me in her ways. Dissecting the song into parts was easily done. As was the decision what fandoms to include.
Anyone is spotting a trend so far? We really fall into a neat little order in all that chaos we create when we decide on a theme and song. It's like we share a brain or something. We don't have a lengthy discussion about what we are aiming for or what to vid, we just do it. Listing fandoms is usually all the in-depth discussion we have, and deciding on the go who gets which ones. Xandra is usually faster, so she gives me her part and I react to it if my part needs changing, which rarely happens.
Notes from Xandra: You forget, my love, that the first time we did this we actually made lists. We gathered up Charmax's fandom's and then made lists of what we had in what quality. Then we picked what we wanted, granted that was easy cause we already knew what we wanted, but we did have some kind of system. We just started claiming pairings and we were off... well I was off. But we just meshed, except for that 25fps mishap. NEVER AGAIN! I let you get away with your SPN pairing there, still bugs me you know, you always cheat. I wonder sometimes how we would do meeting in person.... and then I fear for hole that will swallow us up alive for daring to combine our power.
Maybe I should clear the cheating comments up. Xandra accuses me of always breaking theme and yeah, you could see it as a trend. I did include Jo punching Dean; frankly, because it was freaking awesome and I knew she would come around to the other team when she grew up. And those canon pairings were too sweet too resist. The incest hints just needed to be represented in 'Babyskin Tattoo' - it's a kink we indulge along with fandom and they were too delicious to resist. 'Those days' did include non-related couples, but they were either freaking out about it or should consider each other family. I'm kinda hazy, how I broke the theme here to be honest. 'How far we've come' just needed medieval war-fare to complete the scope and they were - fuck it. It's Arthur and Merlin! I needed to balance Cara and Kahlan and they were a foursome made in heaven for each other. Even the hair color did coordinate with their style of ass-kicking.
Have you ever changed things in a vid based upon what you thought other people would want to see? Versus what you liked better?
Drive myself crazy trying to figure out what other people might want to see? Hypothetically? This seems like a brilliant way to go insane. I mean, I'm a person and I value my opinion, so I go with what I want to see. The other way is just too complicated; views vary vastly in fandom and I don't vid to be popular. I vid to see the vid I want to see. Besides the transformative part of vidding as art applies right here. I'm aware heading into every vid that with every editing choice I will lose some viewers, because this is how I see a character or pairing.
This is my small corner of the play ground. My sand box to build this dazzling short-term castle of less than five minutes till the tide hits it. Perhaps someone thinks this is the awesomest castle eva or they think, 'What the hell?' And maybe, just maybe I will unexpectedly kick someone in the gut's with something that they haven't previously considered and they reevaluate their opinion. So no, not as far as I can remember. The only changes I did install were to make my vision clearer for anybody outside my head.
Do you utilize a beta? If so, then what do you find most useful in the beta process? How influential is a beta to the final result of a project?
In most cases Xandra is my partner in crime from start to finish. She is there for handholding, screaming, fetal positions in the corner and victory dances. The most useful feature of Xandra is kicking my ass hard and telling me in plain terms when I fail spectacularly. I won't take every piece of advice, but even the ones I dismiss are often worked into other places of a vid, making the build-up clearer or I keep them in mind for the next project. Even when I aim to please Xandra, I have too many reasons to rattle out if I seriously want to keep a sequence.
Her influence is in everything I vid. I can show her a draft with six scenes and she will pretend to get what I'm going at. If I vid in a fandom she is not familiar with, it needs more than six scenes to make it work for her. And if she is seriously confused? It is time to rethink some of my choices.
Notes from Xandra: Sometimes I worry I'm a bully, and sometimes I think you need it. Mostly I just nitpick and vent out my own issues. Sometimes you vid something so good I want to have your baby again.
Have you consistently used the same beta(s) and grown with each other, or have you changed over time to people specific to each project or each stage in your vidding history?
I started out without betas, because c'mon even I knew there were too many things to fix and improve to even contemplating asking another person to take a closer look. By the fifth or seventh vid I knew Trisha from a forum and she offered to beta my work in progress, after I mentioned what I was working on. It felt like letting my pants down and then the fun part of betaing started; the exchanging of ideas I hadn't previously considered. So a few vids later Cassie was in the mix too, and I was dragged into the 'Touch my soul'-awards, which we kept up for one or two years.
Around that time I had an invite from Charmax to 'Midnight Lair' and that became my vidding home. I spend my formative years as vidder there, and I'm so bold to assume that it had a huge influence on all our styles. Everybody had different strengths, and to trade technical knowledge and barter over artistic tricks did catapult me further. We had a blast with the source, and awards, and most importantly effects. But all good times must end, and with the closing of ML I moved with a lot of vidders to livejournal, and here I am.
How do you feel about audience interpretation vs. original intention? Does it bother you if someone enjoys your vid, but while interpreting it in a way that you never intended or even considered? How big of a role should the audience play in defining a vid?
I share the school of thought of postmodernism articulated in 'Death of the Author'. Original intention is a fickle beast. C'mon everybody has different experiences and expectations, so it's intriguing to see mixed reactions when watching the same vid. This is why vidding is an awesome pursuit and why it becomes art, because defining a vid is all in the eyes of the audience. Once it is released I become part of the crowd, and I don't have a bigger say in what this vid is about than anybody else. This is one reason why I did cut on my vid notes. I can only say what for me the vid is about, but the thing is, reading through a thoughtful reply often makes me rethink my own aspirations or remember that instant I felt exactly this particular way.
From all the half-formed ideas I had, I only have time to express a few explicit in each vid, but there are more burning in the background that didn't make the official cut. I find it fascinating to read what people feel when they watch a vid of mine. Unexpected reactions never bother me; they give me a new insight. Some people have a true talent to eerily pick up on issues that I felt I have hidden out of plain sight. For example I read one review for 'Move' that plainly laid out what I did with the vid intentionally and then sabotaged in the notes, because I felt like most people wouldn't get the meta. That the meta wasn't thought out enough to warrant a mention, because it was all about gibberish and blissful emotions. So yeah, actually the PoV in 'Move' was the one of female Scully fans, or mine to be more specific, because You go, girl!
Are there any vids by other vidders that you wish you'd made?
No, because the vids would be completely different. Hence the reason why Xandra and I want to do a 'One song, one fandom'-challenge down the line. Every vidder has a unique approach to vidding and it's impossible to duplicate. What fun would it be to steal someone else's style, instead of working on my own? I love to watch what other people do with a source I adore, or a song I admire; great vids make me feel and then think.
I enjoy figuring out what blows me away, how they do something marvelous with music or the motion, and how it all results in me swallowing tears or laugh out loud. It's fascinating how other vidders tackle PoVs or narratives and make them work often in startling ways. Or how they create an atmosphere so thick with emotions. Plus some effects are just inconceivable in how seamless they appear to be. Watching vids is food for thought and an opportunity to learn new things.
Please name one vid and/or vidder that's had a formative influence on you as a vidder and tell us why.
Xandra has the biggest influence on everything I do vidding-wise these days. She is my soundboard, nagging voice of reason, enthusiastic cheerleader and biggest pain in the ass. Everything rolled into one and I love her.
Notes from Xandra: You just get me so hot sometimes.
If your last five vids got in a paintball fight, who would reign victorious?
I love this question, seriously. Heh. 'Metal Heart' and 'He lied about death' would probably fuck off and make out instantly. '2 - 1' is too busy analyzing if it was prepared enough and is taken out by a sneaky 'All Star' ninja attack. So it boils down to a match between 'All Star' and 'Matches to Paper Dolls' and sadly there isn't enough Veronica Palmer in 'All Star'. It never had a chance against all-season Scully. She would torch the woods down in which the paint ball match would take place, or the planet.
Is there any advice that you would give to someone entering into this hobbie?
To reconsider? But on a serious note, vidding demands a lot of technical knowledge, in that regard it is harder to start out then writing or painting, and it's less intuitive at first. Remember the first time you opened Photoshop? Yeah, it's exactly like that. You will find your way around the program, but it will take time. So you should be ready, keen and excited about the prospect of googling stuff, reading a lot of guides, and research a lot questions that aren't on your radar when you first thought about vidding that special song.
There will be easy solutions that make you weep in their simplicity after researching obscure shit for days on an end. Oh and you will feel fucking stupid at several points in your vidding career - this is a recurring theme, it never stops completely. And there will be face-palm moments that will bruise your ego with the sheer quantity of inanity and 'How did I not know this five years ago?' Don't expect to reinvent the wheel with your first vid or your second or your third, this isn't how it usually happens. The learning curve is steep, but yeah, there are plenty of bumps and you will need endurance. You will curse your editing program and sometimes it will feel like you have broken your brain trying to figure some effect out. Don't be discouraged, be passionate about what you do and try to improve in your own time. But most of all? Have fun with it.
Do you - or, how do you - keep on top of new technical developments in terms of vidding programs, special effects, or so forth? What new technologies are you embracing?
I try to stay on top of new avisynth developments, especially for filtering my final encode. It improves the quality so much without big effort, once you figured the basics out. I still miss Premiere 6.5, so that tells you a lot about my willingness to embrace new editing programs. I'm currently working with Premiere Pro CS3 and I'm not a happy camper, because it likes to break down like a crying ball of emo when I want to work with more than five season-scripts, which happens always. So two minutes into the timeline it gets wacky and not in a fun way. I always want to get around learning After Effects, but the moment I open the program I feel very lost. Obviously, I wasn't motivated until now to watch and read the ten bookmarked tutorials beyond a curious glance, or let Xandra explain in detail how she does the things she does.
What direction would you like to see the vidding community going in? Are there things you would like to see more of or less of?
Everything goes, as it always has and always will be.
What direction would you like to see your own vidding go in? What new things would you like to attempt in the future?
I'm astonished about some things Vegas can do in the effect department. After Effect intimidates and excites me in equal parts, but again it wasn't something a song called for until now. I'm pretty happy where I am right now with actually vidding stuff and remembering to have fun with it. This is something I had kinda forgotten, that for all the stances we take and thoughts we pour into a vid, it's mostly about interesting characters and ass-kicking in beautiful colors. The ambition to top every vid you release is ill-advised and sucks the fun out of vidding. It doesn't have to be deep, sometimes it's just nice to paddle in the shallow end of the pool and be happy there. Because the next idea will attack you and drag you under soon enough and then there is depth and struggling and forcing a vid to take the shape you want it to take.
Can you share with us what are you working on now, or what are you pondering?
Now that I'm done with the interview questions I want to start on my season 4 Scully vid to K's Choice 'Virgin State of Mind' and I already know that I'll drive Xandra crazy, because I wanted to vid this song for years. So there will be a lot of details and ideas worked into this one. Plus Season 4? Wheee. So much desperation and resolve for me in store.
This was fun and thanks to everybody reading through this.
