here's luck

Ten years ago, when I vidded Faith to two different Tegan & Sara songs, I got so many comments (first online and then at VividCon) about how weird and unusual the songs were. And now a song from their latest album has been covered on Glee. It's certainly true that Heartthrob is their most pop-polished album, but still. Tegan & Sara plus Glee: Mix them, my world dissolves.

I'm in the big city having a fannish weekend, which means that I'm thinking about vidding. So I'm stealing the Video Death Match! poll from sisabet, sdwolfpup, and f1renze... and adding one of my own.

[Poll #605827]

[Poll #605828]

laurashapiro asked: What's narrative? What follows are my tentative notes towards a possible answer (or several). Dialogue welcome.

In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines narrative as "a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do." This definition is accurate as far as it goes, but it's a bit misleading because it implies that narrative is only an object or genre. Narrative can certainly designate a genre, or rather what I would call an umbrella genre, but it is also a mode of speaking or writing. By "umbrella genre," I mean that several distinctly different genres can be designated as narratives: novels, short stories, epics, romances, and films are all narratives, as a rule. By "mode," I mean that narrative is also a structural option within several other not-inherently-narrative genres; some nonfiction is written in the narrative mode. (When histories, for example, are described as "readable," it is usually because they are written in a narrative rather than, or in addition to, an argumentative mode: they use conventions of narrative that we are accustomed to in and associate with fiction.)

I make these fine distinctions as a preface to the suggestion that, while most vids can be said to tell a story, sometimes story is the object or genre and sometimes story is the mode — and sometimes the story is merely the side effect of vidding narrative genres like film and series TV. That is, nearly any vid can be understood in terms of a story, but the story may or may not be the *point* of the vid.

In thinking about different vid structures, I've noted three broad types, separable but not mutually exclusive: the narrative, the lyric, and the argument. Each has its own major organizational principle: story (narrative), image (lyric), and what for lack of a better term I'll call thesis statement (argument). I'm interested in these types not as firm categories but as elements that inevitably co-exist to some degree, with different elements predominating in different vids and sometimes at different moments within a single vid.

( more about narrative and its alternatives )

[ETA: It occurs to me that some of what I've said about narrative as genre and mode might map onto the distinction between story and plot. But it's late and I'm tired. Maybe later. Or, um, not.]

As always, vids are at paper cup.

"Atropine" and "Superstar" got remastered (and slightly revised) for VividCon; the revisions to "Come On" were slightly more substantial.

( more about the changes )

And now, to the relief of my long-suffering computer, I can start archiving a lot of this stuff to CD and deleting vast acres of files off my hard drive . . . because until I do, I can't start capturing DVD source for the next vid. And I really want to see this next vid. So let's hope I can get the pictures on the screen to match the pictures in my head. Think happy vidding thoughts at me, people.

And lo, after three months of source-collection nightmares, Premiere crashes, and other vidding irritations too tedious to mention, my Faith/Buffy vid is finally up (at heresluck.net, as usual).

Many thanks to tamarabass for insightful beta comments (I think I fixed the timing glitches!), and most especially, as always, to renenet, who does her level best to keep my vids from being pointless and sloppy.

Feedback's welcome, of course. I'm under no illusions that this'll displace Laura Shapiro's "Tell Me" as bonibaru's favorite Faith/Buffy vid, but I'm hoping for some comments anyway. ;)

Side note: I'm actually working on a second Faith/Buffy vid, currently in storyboard stage, and have set myself the challenge of not using any of the same clips I've already used. (They're sufficiently different in mood and rhythm that this shouldn't be too terribly difficult if I can just overcome my native laziness.) Point being: if you've got helpful critiques, fire away, since I'd rather not make the same mistakes twice.

password: faith