enchantedsleeper

Le gasp, it's that time of year again already!

Thank you so much for being my gifter, for considering making a treat for me (I have gifts enabled and treats are so welcome!), or for otherwise taking an interest in this letter ^^

In general, I'm open to most things in a vid/gift - while I'll put a few preferences below, they're not that strongly held, because I find a wide variety of things interesting and cool. So, feel free to be unorthodox; feel free to get creative; feel free to make whatever you're inspired to by the fandom material 😄

General likes

• Lyrics that match well with the visuals of a vid, especially those moments where it’s really bang on with what’s happening in the clip – love that
• Pretty much any genre of music – though I admit that death metal would be an unusual choice for my requested fandoms, but otherwise, my preferences with genre are generally “yes”. Whatever you’d like to use for the material, I’m on board with. That includes instrumentals with no lyrics if you’re so minded (I’m a fan of classical music, and there are many epic orchestral pieces that I think can make great fanvids!)
• Upbeat or hopeful vids/visuals, although I’m on board with angst – I’d just prefer to stay on the “bittersweet” end of the spectrum rather than “tragic”
• Shippy vids or vids that focus on any kind of relationship between characters (friendship, queerplatonic, mutually obsessed enemies)
• Vids that tell a story
• Very open to non-traditional vids with creative combinations of visuals/audio/sound (which for some, non-visual, fandoms is needed of course, but even if it’s not, go for it!)

General dislikes

• Dialogue in vids is not a hard 'no' for me, but I prefer it to be used more subtly – rather than to be audible all the time – so that the focus can be on the lyrics/music and visuals. I enjoy some good sound effect inclusion, though!
• Hopeless or bleak vids (i.e. "hurt no comfort") – as I mentioned, I’d prefer them to be hopeful in some way, and bittersweet if not outright upbeat (not every fandom is a ray of sunshine!)

Specific fandoms

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Above everything, I hope you have a great Festivids, and thank you again for vidding for me! <3

This weekend, I finally finished my Festivid, which is my fourth fanvid in total since I started vidding in 2019. It took nine (almost consecutive - I had one day 'off') days of pretty hard editing to complete, and I'm really pleased with the result. (I've also been pretty "head down" in vidding mode all weekend, so apologies to the people still waiting on replies to comments they left me! I also have Snowflake challenges I want to catch up on).

Having said that I'm really pleased with my vid, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the quote by Ira Glass, which is much-circulated on Tumblr, about the gap between taste and creative output. From a transcript I found on The Marginalian (sidenote: the accompanying short film is really cool!):

"All of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? [...] But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you"

(That's not the whole quote, which is much longer, but it's the relevant part).

The song that I chose for my vid (I have to be a bit coy about what it is because the exchange is anonymous for now) is very snappy and upbeat, and I have this version of my vid in my head that's so crisply on the beat, where every visual and every audio beat combined is killer and the result just blows the viewer away. And the actual vid I've put together is good work, I think, but it does fall short of the version in my head, and I've worried that I'm not doing the material justice - the potential of the vid justice - with what I'm making.

But, of course, the only way to get to where I want to be as a vidder is to keep making fanvids. It's literally the only way. And so of course the vids that I produce as I go will have things that I need to improve on. There's no scenario in which I become a better fanvidder by never making vids or by giving up on them because they don't match my imagined ideal. I also have to love the idea of what I'm making enough to keep trying to create it - so if I didn't have a super cool version of the vid in my head, what would I be trying to make?

Another thing I've been telling myself is that when I'm writing fic (which is my main type of fanwork and the one I feel most confident in), not every single line that I pen is supposed to be killer. There'll be some that really hit home, but others are just there to move the story along or lead up to the killer moments. So, it follows that not every moment of my fanvids can possibly be The Amazing Golden Moment - some of them are just there to suit the flow or pacing, or because they looked kinda cool.

Vidding to a deadline also requires some sacrifices, in that I can't spend an infinite amount of time familiarising myself with the material or trawling for the perfect clip and experimenting with the best combinations. But I also like that I'm motivated to push past my doubts to some extent and just finish the thing. As it happens, in his full quote, Ira Glass also says to give yourself deadlines, so I'm doing that bit! And when I look back later at parts of my fanvids that made me wince at the time, I often think, 'What was so bad about that section? It looks fine'.

It'll be interesting to see how I manage when I'm not vidding to a deadline from an exchange or event, but hopefully I'll remember to focus on the end goal of accomplishing a finished fanvid rather than obsessing over an ideal version in my head.