Escapade Sidebar 1: Vid Reading Levels or Beware the Cheese

[wickedwords]

melina123 is the person who originally brought this up, and it made sense to me, so I'm gonna put out a half-baked version of the concept so it can be discussed and refined a bit. Several years ago, the Highlander Media Cannibals created a vid to "Hear that Voice Again." It was a pretty complicated vid, attempting to show how guilt and Duncan's past history and insecurities have fucked up his life. The first person we showed it to, who was a Methos fan without any real interest in Duncan, was very confused by it. "What is this, a graduate exam?"

At that point, all the energy went out of us. If you didn't have a strong background in the character and his history, you couldn't get the vid. It was a confusion of images and sounds that just didn't make sense. The vid seemed to work fine for those who knew Duncan's history and his character, but as that was only about a third of the Highlander slashers at the time, it was a little disheartening. It meant that the audience for the vid would never be that big, as it required too much detailed knowledge of characters and canon to be truly accessible.

So, when Melina made a statement about how sherrold's and my Smallville vid "So Damn Hot" was at her 'reading level' in the fandom, it made a ton of sense to me. You don't have to know a lot about the fandom to access the vid, but you have to know some to get the biggest joke.

And that seemed to be about the level of most of the Escapade audience: a passing familiarity with a lot of fandoms, but wide-spread, detailed knowledge of only a few. Graduate level vids are gonna be a hard sell in that environment, for more than a handful of fans with the specialized education required, and if there's a mismatch between what a first grade/literal interpretation of a scene would be in comparison to a graduate level/metaphorical interpretation -- well, the audience is likely to react to it en masse at grade level one. I think that graduate level vids can and should be shown at cons, but if you want to prevent misunderstood viewings, they should be reviewed by a fan who is somewhat unfamiliar with the fandom prior to the showing to make sure that there's no grade one level joke or perception that would interfere with the more "educated" reading.

An example of this: we used the occasional shot of fire or heat vision on some of our lyric lines, so the grade one read has the audience going "Oh! Fire. Hot. I get it." If you're saying anything more complicated along with that, it may be completely missed. The literal interpretation is the grade one interpretation, and if there is nothing else that the grade one reader can tie into, then they will spend the whole vid reacting to that.

For us, it worked great. For someone else trying to say something complex about the fandom or the relationship or character, it might not.

So beware the cheese.

Comments

[tanacawyr.livejournal.com]

It's not so bad as long as the vidder is aware of it. You just can't make a terribly complex vid and expect everyone to get it. and as an audienc emember, you've got to be prepared to turn your a-ha filter up or down, or just go with the flow and understand that just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not gettable.

It's strange -- these issues just aren't as present for fic. Vids are unique in that it's expected that (as for Escapade) we'll all sit in a room and watch whatever we're shown, whether we are in that fandom or not. I don't expect anyone outside of "Hornblower" to read my H/A fic, though.