wickedwords | VVC panel: The Genealogy of Vidding

So, for several years now I've been using this metaphor to describe viding in the late eighties and nineties, that of the 'greater' and 'lesser' houses of viding, and toward the end of the timeperiod, the houses being 'beseiged' by either 'barbarians at the gate' or 'feral vidders'. Obviously, I have read far too much political-based Fantasy and SF in my life, but the metaphor felt like it fit to me.

Well, this year I got to do a whole presentation on my theory and how it all worked; unfortunately, it was scheduled against "Scooby Road." I got really good attendance, but man, I didn't get to see Lum's masterpiece, and so was incredibly bummed about that. But as there is never a good time to for anything to be scheduled.

Because I am lazy, all you get is the notes from the panel, but I hope you can see where we were going. There really wasn't time for enough discussion, and I only made it up to the creation of the west coast asthetic via vidding interaction at Escapade, so some year, there will need to be a part two.

Please note: All the asthetics have their strengths. I am coming out of the west coast asthetic, so my preferences are based on that, but everyone has their own preferences. I also need to mention that there's a difference between specifics and generalizations: while each person chooses for themselves what they will do, once you generalize, the individual choices get washed out. Each person within an asthetic chooses to follow some, all, or none of the values that they have been exposed to, yet the trend among all the vidders in that asthetic still holds.

The Genealogy of Vidding

Or How Who You Know Affects What You Do

So, in the west coast tradition, vidding started with Kandy Fong in the 70s. She's the one who first gathered together film clips from star trek and put together slide shows of those clips with music played on cassette tape.

But because the film clips were rare, not that many people had access to them; the invention of the VCR is the first leap in the numbers of people doing vidding. And VCRs were expensive, so people didn't go out and buy their own editing VCRs. Instead, you went to a friend's house -- maybe in new york, maybe in san Francisco, maybe in Chicago, maybe in DC -- and they showed your how it was done. You learned from it, and you learned what made a good vid from them too.

The three 'great houses' (though not the only people viding) from this time period were:

MediaWest (MWC) -- Mediawest was all about accessibility of the vid to the audience. Context was completely secondary to making sure that the audience 'got' what was being said. Simple and straightforward was cool; clarity was what was important. So if something said 'blue eyes', by god, there better be blue eyes on the screen or the vid was just wrong.

Example Vidders: Bunnies from Hell, Central Consortium, Vid Weasels, P.R. Zed

Vid example: Creation of Man (a multi-media vid by cali crew)

Key things to watch for: Song choice (musical), Context-free, Accessibility to large audience, literalness

The descendants of Mary Van Duesen (MVD) - Mary taught many, many, many people how to vid, and they in turn took what they learned and taught others. The important thing here was character and story that was the strongest overarching value in this aesthetic. (Well, that cutting to the beat. I can't stress that enough. Cutting to the beat.)

Example Vidders: MVD, DJ (and then my brain fried.)

Vid example: MVD Due South - ~~This gun for hire.~~ Dancing in the Dark

Key things to watch for: Character focus, living room vid qualities, transition from easily accessible to fandom specific, narrative, song choice matches character voice

San Francisco - the emphasis here was on color, emotion, song choice, cutting to the beat, and context. A clip taken out of context was an abhorrent in this aesthetical choice. This aesthetic started in the late 80s in Chicago with Tashery and Jill, and migrated to the greater SF area over time.

Example Vidders: Tashery, Gayle, Jill, Kay, Kathy, Morgan Dawn

Vid example: Jill & Kay Clean

Key things to watch for: Character focus, song choice, context dependence, use of theme, color palette, limited accessibility to the multiple levels of the vid.

[Discussion of how these 3 differ here]

From Escapade Fusion to the West Coast Aesthetic
These three aesthetics then clashed at a California con called Escapade, which is a slash con, over several years, and the mesh of these three then became the west coast aesthetic. Character focused, themed, yet accessible vids.
[HLOTS] Katherine's So Pure
[Multi-Media] Hair by the Media Cannibals

Other fusion groups of the era include the Chicago Loop, while the 'lesser houses' included Houston: (Katherine, Pam Rose, etc) and East Coast (Martha, Jenn, Judy Chien)

At that point, the technology is such that computer vidding starts to come to the fore, and we see a re-splintering of aesthetics again, as the old-style, in-person mentoring approach fades away along with the two VCR approach. These 'feral vidders' formed their own affinity groups, as the old houses tended to be pretty tight-knit.

The rise of WOAD, and 'feral vidders'. How that changed vidding, as new individuals brought in their own histories and concepts. Individuals such as Jo, which her knowledge of movies and camera work, and Killa, with her designer's eye for color and composition, changed the concept of what a good vid for a lot of people. Now it wasn't only important to tell a good story about characters and universes we liked, but the need for visual interest, increased. More than just talking heads...

WOAD aesthetic
[Discuss, discuss, discuss]
Example vid: Dante's Prayer by Killa

WOAD in turn, had mentor relationships with other vidders, and created their own vidding affinity groups, for example the Buffy Vidding Cabal.

Other Aesthetics:
The Xena aesthetic was an outgrowth of Xena fandom, who created their own version of vidding completely disconnected from the original three houses or the west coast aesthetic. I'm not really qualified to discuss the Xena aesthetic, as I only dabbled there occasionally, but it's typified in my mind by a greater use of special effects, and an emphasis on active clips. To me, they are more similar to professional trailers than the west coast aesthetic

Anime fandom also created their own version of vidding, also disassociated from the west coast aesthetic. Again, this is not something that I have the experience to discuss, but there are a bunch of people who would be happy to talk about it.

There are more, and variations as groups met and split and swore blood oaths against each other; the concept of good vids is vital to us, as we all want to be successful. But each new person entering the craft has he ability to bring into it new and different values, and it's no longer possible to say 'this is how to craft a good vid' from an engineering like perspective, if it ever was. Instead, we are at the realm of art, where we know it when we see it, and everything is subsumed by that.

One final note: even though I set the timeframe for this as the late 80s through the 90s, the asthetics and vidding guidelines they imply are still going strong. In this year's VVC premiere's show, I'd say 'Joker' was a great example of the mediawest asthetic, showcasing accessiblity to a crowd; Morgan Dawn's Dr. Who vid was an excellent example of the use of color in a vid, something prized by the San Fransicso asthetic; and Crush Story (our 'The Tick' vid) was out-and-out pure West Coast asthetic.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

zoerayne

I put this in my memories, as I find this kind of discussion/history endlessly fascinating. I'm assuming my vids probably fall under the West Coast aesthetic, too, since my main influences were the Cannibals and other Escapade folks, though I was also pretty close to being a feral vidder--or at least a hermitlike one. *g*

From:

Just jazzed to be here

VVC panel: The Genealogy of Vidding

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