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Vidding Strategy
Vidding strategy is not a thing I usually think about in those terms, but here we are. I entered a youtube vidding contest and the first round was scored and "The Engineer" finished tied for 13th out of 19 entries.
I didn't expect to score particularly highly, even though I am proud of the vid. But I thought I'd do better than 13th, it is kind of bugging me.
The prompt was to use the vid to explain "Why We Vid". Mine was one of the only vids that didn't use any explanatory text to do so. My aesthetic preference was to make a vid that used the combination of music, lyrics, and cutting in a way so telegraphically clear that I didn't need to supplement it with any text. I think I achieved that goal quite well, so well even that I could vid in Welsh and people who don't speak Welsh know exactly what my vid is saying about joyful creativity. The vid is necessarily simple in some ways to achieve those aesthetic goals. I only use source from about five scenes in one movie, I make very limited color adjustment to my source, I use very limited transitions. It is not intended to be a flashy vid, it's intended to be a pretty vid. And it's intended to be an clear and effective vid. I'm happy with the vid, I think it is successful on the terms I made it.
The winners made beautiful vids. The way they use color, the way they use transitions, the way they integrate different kinds of imagery and language together. But they are vids that I personally find a lot less clear; without the support of text, I would find it difficult to understand their relation to the prompt, and even with the text there are parts I find unclear. But they are unquestionably beautiful vidlets, in the way of the Vidding as Poetry concept![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lola defined in a memorable VVC vidshow/panel two years ago.
But there's no technique in the winners that I haven't use at some point, to serve some aesthetic and narrative purpose in my vidding. So there's no reason I couldn't make a vid in that style, if I were willing to sacrifice some of the things that are important in my vidding, this one time. So I am contemplating vidding strategy for round 2.
So what does that strategy look like? Maybe the first step is shifting from Kdenlive to Da Vinci Resolve, for access to better coloring tools, and integration with Fusion, which I've increasingly been using anyway for the last five vids or so as a supplement to Kdenlive for motion graphics, fancier compositing effects, and sometimes even simpler effects when I find the Kdenlive controls too limited. Except it turns out installing Da Vinci Resolve on Linux is a pain and I haven't totally sorted it out yet. I've figured out how to get the splash screen to pop up, at least!
And step two is deciding on what things I want to try to copy from the winners. Do I want to use text to emphasize lyrics (even though I usually don't understand the connections the vidder is making between image and lyric)? Do I want to do weird things with color (even though I have even less understanding how making random shots black and white or skew crazily to red helps make the vid better) Are there things I can do in my music selection to make my vid seem more like the winning style of vids (you know, not a Welsh folk song)?
I didn't expect to score particularly highly, even though I am proud of the vid. But I thought I'd do better than 13th, it is kind of bugging me.
The prompt was to use the vid to explain "Why We Vid". Mine was one of the only vids that didn't use any explanatory text to do so. My aesthetic preference was to make a vid that used the combination of music, lyrics, and cutting in a way so telegraphically clear that I didn't need to supplement it with any text. I think I achieved that goal quite well, so well even that I could vid in Welsh and people who don't speak Welsh know exactly what my vid is saying about joyful creativity. The vid is necessarily simple in some ways to achieve those aesthetic goals. I only use source from about five scenes in one movie, I make very limited color adjustment to my source, I use very limited transitions. It is not intended to be a flashy vid, it's intended to be a pretty vid. And it's intended to be an clear and effective vid. I'm happy with the vid, I think it is successful on the terms I made it.
The winners made beautiful vids. The way they use color, the way they use transitions, the way they integrate different kinds of imagery and language together. But they are vids that I personally find a lot less clear; without the support of text, I would find it difficult to understand their relation to the prompt, and even with the text there are parts I find unclear. But they are unquestionably beautiful vidlets, in the way of the Vidding as Poetry concept
lola defined in a memorable VVC vidshow/panel two years ago.But there's no technique in the winners that I haven't use at some point, to serve some aesthetic and narrative purpose in my vidding. So there's no reason I couldn't make a vid in that style, if I were willing to sacrifice some of the things that are important in my vidding, this one time. So I am contemplating vidding strategy for round 2.
So what does that strategy look like? Maybe the first step is shifting from Kdenlive to Da Vinci Resolve, for access to better coloring tools, and integration with Fusion, which I've increasingly been using anyway for the last five vids or so as a supplement to Kdenlive for motion graphics, fancier compositing effects, and sometimes even simpler effects when I find the Kdenlive controls too limited. Except it turns out installing Da Vinci Resolve on Linux is a pain and I haven't totally sorted it out yet. I've figured out how to get the splash screen to pop up, at least!
And step two is deciding on what things I want to try to copy from the winners. Do I want to use text to emphasize lyrics (even though I usually don't understand the connections the vidder is making between image and lyric)? Do I want to do weird things with color (even though I have even less understanding how making random shots black and white or skew crazily to red helps make the vid better) Are there things I can do in my music selection to make my vid seem more like the winning style of vids (you know, not a Welsh folk song)?