Meta thoughts
Jul. 8th, 2005 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaPOV in Vidding
From this post and this post. I left essays in the comment thread of both, and thought I'd transfer some of the thoughts to here.
[Edit: Rewritten, hopefully in English, this time.]
Not all vids have a single character's point of view. May are omniscient. Not all vidders vid with a specific point of view in mind. It often goes unregistered that vids are in the first person if for some reason there is a voice/character disconnect (i.e. female singer, male view) or if the point of view is complex in some way (alternating between characters or not lyric based) or if it is inconsistent.
All of my vids are in the first person. Conceptulally, anyway. That's how they look to me in my head. They are in the viewpoint of a specific character at all times. More then that, I am putting myself in the place of that specific character and watching the vid as if I were that character. The viewer might not always register who the speaker is in my vids, and that is perfectly fine with me, but I always have a speaker in mind when I'm making them, and I'm always putting myself in the place of that speaker.
The same goes for writing. I write either in the first person or the third person limited (the latter which I generally think of as first person, but using third person pronouns). I tried to write third person omniscient once and my beta came back to me saying, "It's like you're writing in one character's point of view, then switching randomly to another character's point of view without warning." My fic ended up in the third person limited in spite of me.
One of the biggest surprises I ever had in terms of vid feedback was the response to my Superman vid -- the last QaF vid I made. A fairly large portion of my audience assumed the vid was about my view of Brian Kinney. My intention for the vid was that it be about Brian Kinney's view of himself.
Assume everyone thinks like me. Find out they don't. Be surprised. Assimilate the specific situation, but not the general assumption, and continue to think that in every other way, people think like me. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Epiphany! I relate to characters by internalizing their viewpoint. By putting myself in a character's place. This is why I write and vid the way I do. How a character sees the world around them affects how I see a character. This is part of why I have never really related well to characters like Angel from AtS or Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. Their personalities are so wholly different from mine that it's very difficult for me to put myself in their place. Perhaps I could vid such a character if I were to choose another character on the show and vid him/her from the way that other character sees him/her.
Or, alternately, make a vid with no plot. I can remember certain sections of my 3rd? 4th? vid that were not in the point of view of any particular character (QaF to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme song: comedy) -- sections which also had no discernable narrative and involved only line by line literalisms. I think my ability to tell a story about a character depends greatly on my understanding of that character depends greatly on my ability to put myself in that character's shoes.
I've written meta about characters omnisciently and managed to do so by addressing them in strictly descriptive terms, without telling any kind of story about them. My vidding style is narrative, but it would be interesting to create something outside of that style. An experiment for another time, perhaps?
I'm remembering![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astolat's vid of Ray Kowalski and how I watched it by putting myself in the main character's place and didn't realize I was doing so until I sisabet noted that she didn't. Only then did it occur to me that the vidder may have, perhaps, not put herself in the main character's place while making it. I know plenty of writers who can write in first person without actually putting themselves in the character's place. I'm not one of them.
I have often said what the point of view is in my vid summaries assuming 1) that it would help people decide if they wanted to watch it and 2) that the specific point of view would be as clear to the viewer when watching my vid as it was to me when making it.
I'm considering not doing this in the future. It feels wrong to be telling people how they should be watching my vids, and I'm conflicted as to whether such information is helpful or hurtful. Again, not being able to tell what the vidder's intended point of view is often has no effect on the viewer's liking of the vid.
How much should a vid speak for itself?
How much does the viewer appreciate insights into the maker's thought process? Before they watch the vid vs. after they watch it?
Which is more valid? The author's intention or the viewer's interpretation? When I am the one producing, I like to think that both are equally valid. When I am consuming, I generally assume that the producer's intension is more valid than my interpretation.
Constructive Criticism
From various sources, on and off LJ.
The problem with the term constructive criticism is that it implies praise is not constructive.
Specifically, I'm thinking of a fic I read recently. I gave the author a happy, squeeful reply. I think that perhaps something in my comment was percieved as a backwards compliment, and the author went on to describe what she percieved as a failing in her writing.
I looked at the other comments in the story's thread, also squeeful, some detailed, some not. I noticed that mine had been given a lot more attention than the other comments in the thread, even the more specific and developed comments. I assumed this was *because* my comment was percieved as a backwards compliment.
After I read the author's reply, I briefly thought of other people I'd come across who reacted similarly, and debated trying to word my praise to them in the form of backwards compliments to get them to take it seriously. That would be quick fix at best, though, and in the long run probably do more harm than good.
A good beta knows, and anyone who has ever taken a writing workshop will tell you to balance praise with criticsm. Ideally, what comes out is a well rounded review. Only I've met people who seemed to assume that the praise was simply there to soften the blow of the criticism.
It it because women in our culture are bred to play down praise? To not accept compliments? Trained throughout youth to be insecure?
Am I making too many generalizations? Yes, I think I am. I'm trying to find a balance where where I can discuss specifics without putting anyone on the spot.
It's not really working.
This thought flow has petered out.
Oi.
From this post and this post. I left essays in the comment thread of both, and thought I'd transfer some of the thoughts to here.
[Edit: Rewritten, hopefully in English, this time.]
Not all vids have a single character's point of view. May are omniscient. Not all vidders vid with a specific point of view in mind. It often goes unregistered that vids are in the first person if for some reason there is a voice/character disconnect (i.e. female singer, male view) or if the point of view is complex in some way (alternating between characters or not lyric based) or if it is inconsistent.
All of my vids are in the first person. Conceptulally, anyway. That's how they look to me in my head. They are in the viewpoint of a specific character at all times. More then that, I am putting myself in the place of that specific character and watching the vid as if I were that character. The viewer might not always register who the speaker is in my vids, and that is perfectly fine with me, but I always have a speaker in mind when I'm making them, and I'm always putting myself in the place of that speaker.
The same goes for writing. I write either in the first person or the third person limited (the latter which I generally think of as first person, but using third person pronouns). I tried to write third person omniscient once and my beta came back to me saying, "It's like you're writing in one character's point of view, then switching randomly to another character's point of view without warning." My fic ended up in the third person limited in spite of me.
One of the biggest surprises I ever had in terms of vid feedback was the response to my Superman vid -- the last QaF vid I made. A fairly large portion of my audience assumed the vid was about my view of Brian Kinney. My intention for the vid was that it be about Brian Kinney's view of himself.
Assume everyone thinks like me. Find out they don't. Be surprised. Assimilate the specific situation, but not the general assumption, and continue to think that in every other way, people think like me. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Epiphany! I relate to characters by internalizing their viewpoint. By putting myself in a character's place. This is why I write and vid the way I do. How a character sees the world around them affects how I see a character. This is part of why I have never really related well to characters like Angel from AtS or Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. Their personalities are so wholly different from mine that it's very difficult for me to put myself in their place. Perhaps I could vid such a character if I were to choose another character on the show and vid him/her from the way that other character sees him/her.
Or, alternately, make a vid with no plot. I can remember certain sections of my 3rd? 4th? vid that were not in the point of view of any particular character (QaF to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme song: comedy) -- sections which also had no discernable narrative and involved only line by line literalisms. I think my ability to tell a story about a character depends greatly on my understanding of that character depends greatly on my ability to put myself in that character's shoes.
I've written meta about characters omnisciently and managed to do so by addressing them in strictly descriptive terms, without telling any kind of story about them. My vidding style is narrative, but it would be interesting to create something outside of that style. An experiment for another time, perhaps?
I'm remembering
astolat's vid of Ray Kowalski and how I watched it by putting myself in the main character's place and didn't realize I was doing so until I sisabet noted that she didn't. Only then did it occur to me that the vidder may have, perhaps, not put herself in the main character's place while making it. I know plenty of writers who can write in first person without actually putting themselves in the character's place. I'm not one of them.I have often said what the point of view is in my vid summaries assuming 1) that it would help people decide if they wanted to watch it and 2) that the specific point of view would be as clear to the viewer when watching my vid as it was to me when making it.
I'm considering not doing this in the future. It feels wrong to be telling people how they should be watching my vids, and I'm conflicted as to whether such information is helpful or hurtful. Again, not being able to tell what the vidder's intended point of view is often has no effect on the viewer's liking of the vid.
How much should a vid speak for itself?
How much does the viewer appreciate insights into the maker's thought process? Before they watch the vid vs. after they watch it?
Which is more valid? The author's intention or the viewer's interpretation? When I am the one producing, I like to think that both are equally valid. When I am consuming, I generally assume that the producer's intension is more valid than my interpretation.
Constructive Criticism
From various sources, on and off LJ.
The problem with the term constructive criticism is that it implies praise is not constructive.
Specifically, I'm thinking of a fic I read recently. I gave the author a happy, squeeful reply. I think that perhaps something in my comment was percieved as a backwards compliment, and the author went on to describe what she percieved as a failing in her writing.
I looked at the other comments in the story's thread, also squeeful, some detailed, some not. I noticed that mine had been given a lot more attention than the other comments in the thread, even the more specific and developed comments. I assumed this was *because* my comment was percieved as a backwards compliment.
After I read the author's reply, I briefly thought of other people I'd come across who reacted similarly, and debated trying to word my praise to them in the form of backwards compliments to get them to take it seriously. That would be quick fix at best, though, and in the long run probably do more harm than good.
A good beta knows, and anyone who has ever taken a writing workshop will tell you to balance praise with criticsm. Ideally, what comes out is a well rounded review. Only I've met people who seemed to assume that the praise was simply there to soften the blow of the criticism.
It it because women in our culture are bred to play down praise? To not accept compliments? Trained throughout youth to be insecure?
Am I making too many generalizations? Yes, I think I am. I'm trying to find a balance where where I can discuss specifics without putting anyone on the spot.
It's not really working.
This thought flow has petered out.
Oi.
