VVC: Multisource panel write-up

[corbae]

What We've Learned: Multisource

There was a series of What We've Learned panels this year, which I eagerly attended! This one was modded by bironic, fiercynn, and scribe.
At the beginning of the panel our mods told us they were going to focus on massively multifandom vids, not vids with just a few fandoms.

Finding and Choosing Sources

Is there a pressure to be comprehensive?

Short answer: Yes

• Ask yourself, what is the scope of this vid?
• It may help to explain to the audience what the scope is, and perhaps why you chose that scope. Prepare to get comments like "this vid is invalid because X is not included" no matter what
• Choosing sources can devolve into philosophical debate about what your scope is; as seekingferret said, you'll be asking yourself, "Is Jesus Jewish?"
• Remember that you get to choose your sources because it's your vid

How do you identify sources?

• Crowdsourcing
  • Consider how important it is for you to know the context of a clip. For bironic, it was very important to know context for The Greatest but not for Feels So Electric.
  • People like to help! For some people, identifying sources is their own type of fannish participation
  • Ask other people to help you clip! Some people (e.g. jetpack_monkey), enjoy it. They may also be able to give you timestamps to make your clipping easier.
• Try TV Tropes, Fanlore, Wikipedia, etc

How do you know when to stop?

• Difficult for everyone!
• Try using acquiring source and clipping as methods to procrastinate from the other? (covered in more detail under Staying Motivated)
• You may acquire more sources than you actually use

Managing Information

Spreadsheets! All three mods use spreadsheets. I believe bironic said she got her spreadsheet, which helps her track how much progress she's made, from jetpack_monkey. Many people in the audience were spreadsheet aficionados (including bessyboo); consider reaching out for help setting one up.

Other people don't use spreadsheets at all! Ultimately, use whatever works best for you.

Structure and Flow

Structure is important! In Wake Me Up, fiercynn and scribe used the clip of Fry going into cryo and waking up throughout their vid as a tentpole structure. It didn't come up in the panel, but I would also consider the starships-doing-things choruses of Starships! to be an example of this.

Pull out parallels in action, color, etc to move between sources or clips; this can suggest a structure. Consider Blue by kuwdora or The Greatest. bironic did an excellent and hilarious narration of a section from The Greatest illustrating how she went from clip to clip. It went something like "wings; wings; more wings; hands in the air; more hands," etc.

Front-load your well-known fandoms and scatter them throughout to keep people with you; this can also work as a tentpole structure.

Staying Motivated

• Co-vid! (this advice from fiercynn and scribe, of course)
• Go ahead and do the part you're excited about and then you can re-watch it over and over when you need motivation.
• Use different parts to procrastinate, e.g. watch and clip source to procrastinate from acquiring source or putting things on the timeline until you get bored with that and then switch.
• Go to your community!
  • Twitter and other online communities
  • If you have a local fan or creative community, gather and work together

Integrating Different Formats

Some examples:

• Still and motion
  • Around the Bend by danegen
  • Many comics vids
• Live and animated
• Color and black & white

For all of these, try to have at least 2 sources of the minority type so that they mesh better.

For color correction, try DaVinci Resolve or a Premiere effect in the newest (August 2018) edition. Or lean into it! Chunk your sources so all the super blue-and-orange ones are in a section and the more sepia ones are in another section.

For size, what's is the most common size in your source? Use that for everything (e.g. with forced letter box on the other clips). Also consider that moving from widescreen to letterboxed is less distracting than vice-versa.

Remember that frame rate changes can be a migraine trigger! Use a program (e.g. Handbrake, ffmpeg, AviSynth) to change the frame rate.

Comments

[bironic]

Yay, thank you! Will link to this when we post our own notes on the VVC comm this weekend.

[corbae]

Oh hey, thanks! I look forward to seeing your notes.

[bironic]

I look forward to the notes becoming actual sentences. :)

This was neat to read because it showed what you heard and how you grouped the observations and tips. Very cool.