2022-03-05

mdlbear: portrait of me holding a guitar, by Kelly Freas (freas)

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.

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