Vidding Chatter

[colls]

Hello vidders!!
Welcome to the monthly(-ish) chatter post. Feel free to talk about any vidding topic at all, it doesn't need to be related to your bingo card - although it can be!

Recently a lot of my DW and twitter feed have been discussing the Plotters vs. Pantsers approach to writing and it made me think about how I approach vidding. Sometimes I plan things out and sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants.

There are some discussion and examples of storyboards on this LJ post (from 2010... wow) Workshop: I Make Images Move With The Music

Are you a vidding plotter or a pantser?
If you use storyboards, how do you approach them? Are they vague or detailed, handwritten or a google doc?

Comments

[lilly_the_kid]

For me it varies. I mostly have a rough outline in my head with a few clips being definitely planned out. Though it's always possible that I will change my mind while vidding. Sometimes I stumble across a new perfect clip while clipping and sometimes my original choice does not really work after all.

There are also some vids that I want to make for years and it takes me forever to get started and then there are those where I suddenly have an idea and a day later I have a first draft.

Sometimes I just want a certain vid to exist but I have no idea how to do it and in these cases I have to start putting stuff on the timeline and see if it leads anywhere.

[colls]

I do the "rough outline in my head" thing, too. I've mapped out in the past, but the finished product never wound up the same.

[dirty_diana]

Ha, I linked to a panster/plotter alignment chart this week. I vid the same way I write, which is to say I begin at the narrative beginning, work linearly until I've reached the narrative end, and get stressed by the mere mention of outlines/storyboards. Who needs that kind of pressure.

[colls]

That's a great graphic!

So do you consider yourself a "Lawful Planster" or a "Neutral Plotter"?

According to that chart, I'm mostly a "True Planster", but have been somewhere between a "Chaotic Planster" and "Chaotic Pantser" before.

[dirty_diana]

Neither, mostly Lawful Pantser! Apparently I'd been doing the flashlight method without having actually heard of it, lol. I will ocassionaly put together something I'd call a beat sheet but mostly as I go, and it's more for thematic notes than anything recognisable as plot details. Vidding is sorta great for how I work because music has all the built-in thematic cues.

[lilly_the_kid]

I'm a mix of True Plantser and Chaotic Plantser :)

[dirty_diana]

Living on the edge!

[maristu]

Ha! I love that! I'm a mix of True Plantser and Chaotic Plotter. I want SO MUCH to be organized but it never works, and I end up vidding in a frenzy as the deadline approaches.

[dirty_diana]

Deadlines are very motivating!

[seekingferret]

Right now I am mostly sitting in a vidding limbo where I've started three MCU vids- a Wakanda vid, a Tesseract vid, and a SHIELD vid- and all three of them I am waiting for useable source from either Captain Marvel or Endgame or both to become available so I can finish them. Grah, so frustrating.

[colls]

waiting for useable source
This is a horribly vidding place to be and I sympathize. I'm somewhat doing that with some The Expanse vids now and am not sure if I want to wait for season 4 footage or not.

[aurumcalendula]

It depends on the vid, tbh. Like I plotted stuff out for God’s Gonna Cut You Down, but Get Free mostly involved me throwing stuff on the timeline and seeking what worked.

I tend to mainly do storyboard stuff when I’ve got a bunch of episodes to keep track of.

[colls]

I can relate with the bunch of episodes thing. With movies I can usually to the pantser thing and throw stuff on the timeline and play around with it. When there's a lot of source material, I try to organize it just a bit so I don't get overwhelmed. I tend to have this irrational fear of missing some good footage or something (IDK) if I'm not somewhat methodical about it.

[caramarie]

I am a pantser all the way! Part of it is just my creative temperament, because I am the same with writing, but also I am useless at visualising things, so I have to actually work with the footage to know what I'm doing. Trying to storyboard would make the process way more difficult for me.

I have not done any vidding since finishing my Equinox vid ... I blame video games ...

[colls]

There's definitely something to be said for diving right in. :)

I've not actually vidded since then either, but am clipping a 4 season TV show which I suppose can count. What video games are distracting you? doesn't really need game recs but can't resist

[caramarie]

Clipping 4 seasons of TV definitely counts! That's a lot of source to go through.

I am currently playing Zanki Zero, which is like a survival adventure game involving human clones, the end of the world, and many many sleepovers with your friends. I like it a lot but it is a timesuck!

[maristu]

I'm currently vidding my FanWorks Auction vid, and am thinking of stopping and just outlining what I want to do, because it's a 6:30 song and I'm all over the place. But generally I start off with a pretty clear idea in my head and don't really write things down at all. I've taken notes in my Bullet Journal but that's about it planning-wise.

Oh yeah, and I have a Google Sheet of all MCU movies, with each scene, a scene description and who's in it. I'm now wondering if I should start a new sheet for the new phase, considering this sheet currently has... 644 lines, and that's just to Ant-Man & the Wasp (I still need to Captain Marvel and Endgame). If anyone would like to have read access let me know, although my definition of scenes changes according to how tired I am when I'm clipping the movie. It's been really helpful, especially for the vid I'm working on. It's a Cap vid and I'm not as familiar with Cap scenes as I am with, say, Iron Man scenes. So sometimes I just go through the scene descriptions to try and find what I want.

I love spreadsheets.