on warning at Vividcon
So, like many people on all sides of this issue, I've been frustrated by the recent discussion on warnings at Vividcon. Part of it for me is because I look at the list of things people want specific trigger warnings for, and I think about Premieres, and all I can think is: "warn for ALL the vids?"
I keep seeing what seem to me to be assumptions that of course many (or at least several) vids will be marked "no warnings apply," while some vids will have specific warnings and some will have "choose not to warn," and the end result will be that people with triggers will be able to enjoy a large portion of the show. And that just doesn't match my memory of what Premieres is like.
So I popped in my VVC 2009 DVDs today, and got out a notebook. I put columns for everything asked for in![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thuviaptarth's post on the subject, which seems to be the baseline people are now talking about.
This is the relevant part of her post, with the specific triggers she wants people to warn for:
Common physical triggers for migraine or epilepsy
No warnings apply
I checked off each PTSD and physical trigger for each vid as I watched the Premieres show, so I could get a feel for what sort of things actually show up, and just how safe the show could be if properly warned for.
There were 38 vids in the Premieres show, including the intro vid. (This is purely a collation of numbers; I'm not naming any vids.)
Vids with PTSD triggers
Vids with physical triggers
Vids with no triggers
The breakdown
146 total trigger warnings on 38 total vids
So here are the caveats:
This is my personal take these vids. I don't have any of those triggers, so some things probably slipped right past me, particularly things like fast cuts (I honestly don't know how fast "quick flashing microcuts" need to be to count, here, and cutting in general gets faster every year).
Someone else going through and doing this will come up with different numbers, because different people judge things differently.
"Shaky cam" is under-represented in my numbers, I believe, because there was very little actual source shaky cam like someone running, and I was going with that as my baseline as that seems to be what's being asked for in the above list.
But there were several vids where it looked like the vidder shook the footage in an effect that I wasn't sure should count, so I didn't. There were also several vids where the vidder accidentally exported the file with the wrong field order, so some or all of the vid was jerky. So while technically I think I reported an accurate number of source-shaky-cam, or vidder-shaky-cam if it looked sufficiently like that type of shaky cam, assume anywhere from 5-10 more vids that include jerky footage that could be similarly triggery.
For "strobe lighting", I may have counted things other people wouldn't, as it's my understanding that the sort of strobes that affect people can vary wildly (color, intensity, speed, etc.), and I wanted to cover as wide a field as possible. For what it's worth, in most vids, any strobey light is of very short duration, a few seconds at most.
"Abrupt changes in sound volume" was really dicey, because the sound volume changes throughout Premieres; each vid has its own volume, and there's silence between each vid on the DVD, but during the con the audience applauds at varying intensity and for varying durations. If a given vid has a lower gain than the surrounding vids, the VJ generally tries to increase it once the vid starts so as to even things out, but that means that there's an abrupt change within that vid even if the song itself stays relatively even.
Anyone attending with audio-change issues should be aware that really, the sound levels go up and down all night, and there's almost always a brief silence before a vid starts; sometimes a song fades up slowly, but it's equally likely to come in very abruptly, very loudly.
For the sake of this, I went with what a vidder would be able to warn for, and assumed the switch from silence to sound at the opening to a vid didn't count, even if the credits were over silence so the audience would also be silent; nor the switch from sound to silence at the end of a vid, likewise even if it included credits that the audience would be quiet for. If those things count, basically every single vid is affected.
This vidshow felt like a standard VVC Premieres vidshow to me -- not overly bright or flashy (in fact a little less flashy than some years), not overly violent (again, less violent than some years).
The weighting also feels accurate/standard to me according to past Vividcons.
On the PTSD side, there's generally a lot of violence, but fighting and such is much more common than rape or noncon, andI don't think I've ever heard a gunshot in a vid (doesn't mean there hasn't been one, but usually the audio is a musical source) (ETA per this comment ETA 2 per this thread) gunshots are vanishingly rare, with possibly only one two vids in eight years having one.
On the physical trigger side, vids are made with lots of flashing/flickering lights and fast cuts (faster every year), and lots of vidders want a song that has audio "motion" to it, which often means changing audio levels. I'm really not surprised that only 2 vids out of all 38 had no physical triggers, given the nature of vids.
I was going to wrap up with a comment about my own take on all of this, and my take on warnings on vids, but I think I'll leave it at this. I think this is information that a lot of people are lacking, and that might help. So here it is.
Anon and openID commenting are on, but I reserve the right to turn off anon commenting if needed.
I keep seeing what seem to me to be assumptions that of course many (or at least several) vids will be marked "no warnings apply," while some vids will have specific warnings and some will have "choose not to warn," and the end result will be that people with triggers will be able to enjoy a large portion of the show. And that just doesn't match my memory of what Premieres is like.
So I popped in my VVC 2009 DVDs today, and got out a notebook. I put columns for everything asked for in
thuviaptarth's post on the subject, which seems to be the baseline people are now talking about. This is the relevant part of her post, with the specific triggers she wants people to warn for:
- Choose not to warn
- Common PTSD triggers
- Explicit violence (assault, self-harm, suicide, gore, explicit medical procedures)
- Sexual violence (rape, sexual assault, noncon, dubcon)
- Sounds of gunshots
- Explicit violence (assault, self-harm, suicide, gore, explicit medical procedures)
- Bright flash
- Strobe lighting
- Quick flashing microcuts
- First-person "shaky" cam
- Abrupt changes in sound volume
I checked off each PTSD and physical trigger for each vid as I watched the Premieres show, so I could get a feel for what sort of things actually show up, and just how safe the show could be if properly warned for.
There were 38 vids in the Premieres show, including the intro vid. (This is purely a collation of numbers; I'm not naming any vids.)
Vids with PTSD triggers
- Explicit violence: 30 vids
- Sexual violence: 4 vids
- Sounds of gunshot: 0
Vids with physical triggers
- Bright flash: 32 vids
- Strobe lighting: 27 vids
- Quick flashing microcuts: 20 vids
- First-person "shaky" cam: 5 vids (but see caveat below)
- Abrupt changes in sound volume: 28 vids
Vids with no triggers
- No warnings apply: 1 vid.
The breakdown
- 1 vid had no triggers at all that I could see or hear
- 37 vids had triggers, of which:
- 30 vids had PTSD triggers, of which:
- 1 vid had only PTSD triggers
- 1 vid had only PTSD triggers
- 36 vids had physical triggers, of which:
- 7 vids had only physical triggers
- 7 vids had only physical triggers
- 29 vids had both PTSD and physical triggers
- 30 vids had PTSD triggers, of which:
So here are the caveats:
This is my personal take these vids. I don't have any of those triggers, so some things probably slipped right past me, particularly things like fast cuts (I honestly don't know how fast "quick flashing microcuts" need to be to count, here, and cutting in general gets faster every year).
Someone else going through and doing this will come up with different numbers, because different people judge things differently.
"Shaky cam" is under-represented in my numbers, I believe, because there was very little actual source shaky cam like someone running, and I was going with that as my baseline as that seems to be what's being asked for in the above list.
But there were several vids where it looked like the vidder shook the footage in an effect that I wasn't sure should count, so I didn't. There were also several vids where the vidder accidentally exported the file with the wrong field order, so some or all of the vid was jerky. So while technically I think I reported an accurate number of source-shaky-cam, or vidder-shaky-cam if it looked sufficiently like that type of shaky cam, assume anywhere from 5-10 more vids that include jerky footage that could be similarly triggery.
For "strobe lighting", I may have counted things other people wouldn't, as it's my understanding that the sort of strobes that affect people can vary wildly (color, intensity, speed, etc.), and I wanted to cover as wide a field as possible. For what it's worth, in most vids, any strobey light is of very short duration, a few seconds at most.
"Abrupt changes in sound volume" was really dicey, because the sound volume changes throughout Premieres; each vid has its own volume, and there's silence between each vid on the DVD, but during the con the audience applauds at varying intensity and for varying durations. If a given vid has a lower gain than the surrounding vids, the VJ generally tries to increase it once the vid starts so as to even things out, but that means that there's an abrupt change within that vid even if the song itself stays relatively even.
Anyone attending with audio-change issues should be aware that really, the sound levels go up and down all night, and there's almost always a brief silence before a vid starts; sometimes a song fades up slowly, but it's equally likely to come in very abruptly, very loudly.
For the sake of this, I went with what a vidder would be able to warn for, and assumed the switch from silence to sound at the opening to a vid didn't count, even if the credits were over silence so the audience would also be silent; nor the switch from sound to silence at the end of a vid, likewise even if it included credits that the audience would be quiet for. If those things count, basically every single vid is affected.
This vidshow felt like a standard VVC Premieres vidshow to me -- not overly bright or flashy (in fact a little less flashy than some years), not overly violent (again, less violent than some years).
The weighting also feels accurate/standard to me according to past Vividcons.
On the PTSD side, there's generally a lot of violence, but fighting and such is much more common than rape or noncon, and
On the physical trigger side, vids are made with lots of flashing/flickering lights and fast cuts (faster every year), and lots of vidders want a song that has audio "motion" to it, which often means changing audio levels. I'm really not surprised that only 2 vids out of all 38 had no physical triggers, given the nature of vids.
I was going to wrap up with a comment about my own take on all of this, and my take on warnings on vids, but I think I'll leave it at this. I think this is information that a lot of people are lacking, and that might help. So here it is.
Anon and openID commenting are on, but I reserve the right to turn off anon commenting if needed.
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