Songs for Saturday: Vidding: a rabbit hole

[mdlbear]

So I recently fell down a rabbit hole: Vidding: A History by Francesca Coppa (with a tip of the hat to jesse_the_k). I am still digging my way out -- the online open access version includes 137 videos, and I'm a little short of half-way through.

You have been warned.

The following definition is taken from Chapter 1:

A vid (sometimes called a fan vid, song vid, or song tape) is a fan-made music video in which preexisting footage (usually from television or movies) is edited to music (usually, but not always, a pop song). The result is a new multimedia object that tells a story, creates an interpretation, stages an argument, and/or produces a feeling. Fans who make such vids are first and foremost fans of the visual source. As such, a vid is properly labeled a Star Wars vid or a Game of Thrones vid (or sometimes a multimedia vid or a metavid), rather than a vid by such-and-such a recording artist. The music serves as the vid’s blueprint, its road map, its code and key. The vidder uses all the information in a song—lyrics, melody, beat, tempo, instrumentation—as scaffolding upon which to build a montage that reveals (which is to say, creates) aesthetic and narrative patterns in the footage. In a vid, the ear tells the eye what to see.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Congratulations on discovering a new thing!

[madfilkentist]

You mean something like [Boggle warning] this?

[mdlbear]

That's good, but actually less boggling than many of the ones I've seen so far.

Like this. Or this. Or this.

[azurelunatic]

Oh-ho-ho-ho.

I'm chuffed

[jesse_the_k]

...to learn I help nudge you near the delightful dragon-hole that is vidding. There's a lot to see. Chasing down vids has been a soothing pastime when daily life isn't so swell.

I've been especially fortunate to have local vidmakers! My niece sasha_feather has shown beta versions in my living room. garrideb does most excellent things combining static comics and music. And both of them are part of the giddy camaraderie that is wiscon_vidparty.

Seeing how it's done makes me appreciate vid creators even more. Mining the source -- ripping the video files, watching it through two or seven or forty times, listening to music in one's head -- is challenging enough. My jaw dropped when I understood that both music and video are edited for the final version.