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VVC report part 5: Saturday morning, Critique panel
(I started today's post by saying I'd had a lazy day when I got almost nothing done but sitting in front of the computer reading 2-week-old threads about Worldcon, The Greying Of. Which I was going to post, then work a bit on the Critique panel writeup, to finish tomorrow. ... Hours later, here I am. Amazing what happens when you actually start working on something.)
After Club Vivid is a haze -- maybe people came back to our room for a little while? Or maybe we just went to bed? Man, I should take notes on what I do outside of panels and shows, my brain is just mush.
Anyway, the next morning there were WAFFLES! \o/ And this year, they had the regular waffle maker, plus one where you could make up to four tiny waffles, instead of just one big one. So I did. ... After toasting a bagel for myself, because somehow between getting up and thinking "yay waffles today!" and getting in line, I'd forgotten about the waffles. So it was kind of a bread-heavy morning.
Then it was off upstairs to the first panel of the day:
Critique: Talking About the Hard Stuff
Mods: killa & Melina (& here's luck)
Description: It's fairly easy to critique a vid on its technical merits. But how do we talk about the harder stuff -- issues of aesthetics and taste? How do we address these issues at all, and how do we maintain the focus on critiquing the vid and not the vidder? Is there anything that can or should be said about a vid by a newbie vidder, when she seems to have a good eye and technical promise, but, well, bad taste? Are we doing the vidder any favors by avoiding such issues, or should we just decide that taste is inherently subjective and shut up?
(Killa was originally a co-mod, but had taken![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kerithwyn to the hospital to get a broken ankle looked at, so heresluck stepped in at the last minute.)
Critique is an integral part of VVC for me; it used to be an integral part of my general fannish experience, and I miss that, but it's held on longest at VVC. But it's been slipping away there, as well, as people -- including me! -- get more and more hesitant to say anything critical. And bluntly, we lost our strongest proponent of impersonal, friendly, honest crit when we lost Sandy. She had a rare and marvelous gift for it. (Yes, impersonal and friendly -- she always managed to make it clear that she was talking entirely about the vid and not the vidder, while at the same time making it clear that she truly thought the vidder could improve their ability to communicate what they wanted, and that she wanted to help them do that.)
So I was all over this panel. I wanted to know if critique really had died, and how people thought it should be approached these days. I know Melina had expected it to be sparsely attended, as the first panel of the day after Club Vivid, but I expected it would get a good turnout, and it was indeed. I think this is something that really runs through the heart of VVC, and it's something lots of people want to get a better handle on.
The panel was set up more like an Escapade panel, of mods who mostly keep an audience-participation conversation moving, rather than what has become the more traditional VVC panel of mods giving an instructive presentation with room for audience response. So Melina and h.l set the groundwork by describing some of the impetus behind the panel -- basically, how many of us have been in that situation of seeing a vid with a lot of potential and thinking sort of "... oh, honey" and wondering if we should actually say something, or just let it go. Because this stuff can be really hard to talk about.
Then they turned it over to the audience, and the room talked nonstop for the next 45 minutes. *g* We can talk about it in the abstract! Just. It's harder in the specific.
One of the things they wanted to talk about was what sorts of things can be critiqued, and/or what sort of things people respond to in terms of wanting to give critique but not really knowing if it's appropriate or how to approach it, so we generated a list (some of the followup comments here are things that got discussed at the panel; some are me just rambling on as I type this up):
Then we talked a bit about the different contexts that critique can happen:
Which, hm, is not the three I'm used to: beta (direct crit solicited by the vidder in advance); feedback (any commentary left for or sent directly to the vidder); and review (public commentary intended to discuss the vid with other viewers or introduce it to new viewers, but not meant as 'for the vidder' in any way).
But -- okay, looking at another post about this panel, I think what this means is more "if you have critique to give, what are the contexts", and they're boiling down to pre-vid-release beta, and post-vid-release critique, split between whether you know the vidder or not.
And at this point my notes vanish, because we'd moved on to actually talking more about all of this, so it's down to my kind of hazy memory and my skimming of other people's posts to remind me about stuff.
We talked about how critique is scary to give - writing things up and hovering over the send or submit button for ages until you finally just shut your eyes and smash it down, then sit there freaking out for a while with no idea how it'll be received. And sometimes it's not received well, but sometimes it really is, and can form the basis of lasting friendships with a lot of honest back and forth about things.
The bad reactions can be really bad, though, and have convinced a lot of people to stop offering critique, or even betaing -- which just makes things harder for everyone.
This led into people talking about making sure everyone involved knew what was going on in a beta situation: the vidder needs to be clear about what kinds of beta response they want (cheerleading, narrative flow, technical issues...), and the beta needs to ask about all that, if the vidder doesn't offer it. (All stuff that's equally true on the fanfic side of things.) There's also the problem that some people will only offer beta or critique for people they know well, which can leave newbie vidders flailing for help.
And here I'm going to interject into this writeup a bit to say: see how this turned into mostly a beta discussion? *g* It wasn't 100%, but things kept drifting into beta-land because betaing is the easiest form of critique to deal with on all sides. The vidder gets to ask for exactly what they're looking for, and the critiquer has at least a solid hope that the vidder won't flip out on them for providing commentary.
It was fascinating to me, because for me, beta and critique are different -- similar, but different. Helping a vidder and having a discussion about a fanwork; they're grounded in different things, for me, even if I may wind up saying more or less the same thing.
But I do get why we kept circling around to betaing; lord knows that's where I do most of my intensive looking at vids these days, when I do at all. One thing that we didn't mention but possibly should have is that giving public critique can also run the risk of having the vidder's friends descend on you in very unpleasant ways, whether deliberately or not. (It doesn't have to be mean; it can be a sincere onslaught of fervent friend-defending.) This is all the more true in a climate where public critique is unusual, and could more easily be perceived as an attack.
Anyway, we did also talk about public critique, and how it's fading more and more at Vividcon and online. There was a general sense that people wanted more of it; we like digging into vids and seeing what they're saying and how they're saying it, and whether they're saying it effectively. But also a general sense that it's less welcome.
I had wanted to add something to the conversation here, but we were out of time; I wanted to bring upsdwolfpup's Great Vidding Truth Memes of yore (latest version, with links to earlier ones), which I think did a lot to keep the idea of critique being something that everyone could do alive. It was a safe way to handle it; vidders had to opt in (and a lot did. A lot.), and all the crit was mandated to be anonymous, so people didn't have to worry about their friends being mad at them, or setting themselves up to be the one person to tell a BNF vidder that her work was great in fandom X but in fandom Y it is... not. *g* It also allowed for people to address a vidder's entire body of work in general terms, or pick a specific vid and critique it in more detail.
I miss those, although I was often frustrated when I participated by vidders who turned out not to want the critique they'd asked for. (Which - I don't understand why they put their names in. This was opt-in! Argh.)
But even with that frustration, the sheer having of a space where that sort of critique was specifically encouraged gave me a reason to buckle down and really look at vids hard, and think about them hard, and right up until the point where I hit a wall of "don't actually care", I was having a lot of fun.
I would love to get something like that going again;sdwolfpup has a couple of far more important things to focus on at the moment (<3), but this panel had me thinking hard enough about all of this that I'm almost considering setting something similar up myself.
Anyway, back to the panel:
A few specifics I do remember (with names mostly not attached, because I am unlikely to get them right at this point):
* Partway through the discussion, a first-year attendee asked the room at large how many people would take someone at their word if they said they welcomed critique; I think a good portion of us put our hands up, and I think it was more than this person expected - she seemed pleased by the response. For myself, I may not give critique even if it's asked for (it can take a long time, which I often don't have), but if someone asks, then yes, I will absolutely believe them.
* As the conversation moved to a point where we were talking about VVC in particular being made up largely of people who know each other, and therefore it being sometimes dicey and scary to speak critically, someone added that they're not a part of the VVC community (to which a good portion of the room instantly responded "you are now!", which -- yes! if you show up, you're part of it, there's no test you have to pass *g*), and that their language around vidding is different, so they feel like the can't contribute at Vid Review. Which I had to respond to, to tell her that new language and terminology is totally welcome at Vid Review (or anywhere else at VVC); I don't know how well I articulated this in the moment, but the only reason we have a shared language is that a lot of people started talking to each other and adopting each other's terminology and methods. New blood, new approaches, new everything is always welcome! It's the only way to keep from stagnating.
* The panel ended with someone (I'm pretty sure this one wasthe_shoshanna) reminding everyone that critique doesn't have to mean "negative" vs noncritical squee. It just means talking about specifics, doing analysis of any sort; "I loved this, because of these reasons" is critique every bit as much as "this didn't work for me, because of these reasons".
There wasn't really a single specific takeaway here, I don't think, other than that critique is something that a lot of us really value highly, and would like to find a way to start incorporating it more again. And there were no real answers about how to go about that, other than to just start doing it: take people on faith when they say they want crit; take it on faith that people at VVC, in particular, value crit; be upfront as the vidder or beta in a beta situation about expectations (and stick to them); take a risk, sometimes, that someone will respond well to your pointing out problems in their work.
FWIW, this was a single-hour panel that takes up a big part of my memory of Saturday; there was a lot of talking, a lot of ideas floating around, a lot of energy. Definitely a highlight for me.
I do feel like the panel paid off on Sunday; while Vid Review felt more sparsely populated than usual, the conversation also seemed more on target overall, with people chiming in to talk about what did and didn't work for them, and with almost every vid having a combination of both kinds of remarks made. It just felt like people were more confident that their "this didn't work" comments would be received well than has been the case in previous years, and it made for a better discussion, IMO.
After Club Vivid is a haze -- maybe people came back to our room for a little while? Or maybe we just went to bed? Man, I should take notes on what I do outside of panels and shows, my brain is just mush.
Anyway, the next morning there were WAFFLES! \o/ And this year, they had the regular waffle maker, plus one where you could make up to four tiny waffles, instead of just one big one. So I did. ... After toasting a bagel for myself, because somehow between getting up and thinking "yay waffles today!" and getting in line, I'd forgotten about the waffles. So it was kind of a bread-heavy morning.
Then it was off upstairs to the first panel of the day:
Critique: Talking About the Hard Stuff
Mods: killa & Melina (& here's luck)
Description: It's fairly easy to critique a vid on its technical merits. But how do we talk about the harder stuff -- issues of aesthetics and taste? How do we address these issues at all, and how do we maintain the focus on critiquing the vid and not the vidder? Is there anything that can or should be said about a vid by a newbie vidder, when she seems to have a good eye and technical promise, but, well, bad taste? Are we doing the vidder any favors by avoiding such issues, or should we just decide that taste is inherently subjective and shut up?
(Killa was originally a co-mod, but had taken
kerithwyn to the hospital to get a broken ankle looked at, so heresluck stepped in at the last minute.)Critique is an integral part of VVC for me; it used to be an integral part of my general fannish experience, and I miss that, but it's held on longest at VVC. But it's been slipping away there, as well, as people -- including me! -- get more and more hesitant to say anything critical. And bluntly, we lost our strongest proponent of impersonal, friendly, honest crit when we lost Sandy. She had a rare and marvelous gift for it. (Yes, impersonal and friendly -- she always managed to make it clear that she was talking entirely about the vid and not the vidder, while at the same time making it clear that she truly thought the vidder could improve their ability to communicate what they wanted, and that she wanted to help them do that.)
So I was all over this panel. I wanted to know if critique really had died, and how people thought it should be approached these days. I know Melina had expected it to be sparsely attended, as the first panel of the day after Club Vivid, but I expected it would get a good turnout, and it was indeed. I think this is something that really runs through the heart of VVC, and it's something lots of people want to get a better handle on.
The panel was set up more like an Escapade panel, of mods who mostly keep an audience-participation conversation moving, rather than what has become the more traditional VVC panel of mods giving an instructive presentation with room for audience response. So Melina and h.l set the groundwork by describing some of the impetus behind the panel -- basically, how many of us have been in that situation of seeing a vid with a lot of potential and thinking sort of "... oh, honey" and wondering if we should actually say something, or just let it go. Because this stuff can be really hard to talk about.
Then they turned it over to the audience, and the room talked nonstop for the next 45 minutes. *g* We can talk about it in the abstract! Just. It's harder in the specific.
One of the things they wanted to talk about was what sorts of things can be critiqued, and/or what sort of things people respond to in terms of wanting to give critique but not really knowing if it's appropriate or how to approach it, so we generated a list (some of the followup comments here are things that got discussed at the panel; some are me just rambling on as I type this up):
- unexpected outside source that doesn't blend well with the original source
- We talked about some specific examples at the panel, but I don't want to get into critiquing specific vids here. So I'll say that for me, often adding clips of a particular actor in other roles to a fandom-specific vid can be very jarring (because I see the characters first, and the actors as a far second); but otoh adding something like outside news source to a vid can be seamless for me, if it matches the overall tone of the rest of the vid.
- song choice
- There was general agreement that this is one of the default things people fall back on critiquing, because it's one of the most objective aspects of vidding once you get past "I (dis)like that song". And also maybe because it's one of the things we all talk about a lot, so we all get exposure to why things do and don't work as vidsongs more than other aspects of vidding?
- song interpretation/comprehension
- Huh. I'm blanking now on whether we were talking about the vidder or the viewer/critiquer misinterpreting the song. Either way, though, really; this ties in to the song choice panel's mention that the most obvious lyrics are going to be the ones most people hear and respond to, I think. (But also wow, it's painful if a vidder has missed the mark on their own song.) Also, there's a level here of some people knowing the story behind a song, and not being able to get past that, where the vidder and other viewers may be responding simply to the song on its own merits. Is it reasonable to critique a vidder for not knowing or adhering to the artist's underlying intent?
- venue choice/audience mismatch
- For instance, sending a het vid to a slash con like Escapade can be a mistake, where that vid might go over great online or at a different con.
- "OMG I love my song (more than my fandom)"
- Too much focus on the song can lead to some really odd visual matches, where the visuals seem to have nothing to do with the song, really - or where someone with context for a show may be jarred by things that go against context too much (to pull an example out of a hat, a lyric about happy fireworks matched with a visual of a 21-gun salute at a military funeral)
- context-dependent clips
- this ties in to the venue/audience bit. If you're making a vid that's meant just for people inside the fandom, you can trust them to get the context and can use those clips to do some of your work for you to deepen the vid. But if, say, you're vidding a tiny fandom and releasing to the wild, or vidding for a con with a broader audience, context-dependent clips can badly weaken your vid because your audience will have no idea what's going on.
- it's just boring
- ... yeah. Sadly, sometimes it really is just boring. But how to say that, if the vidder doesn't recognize it? Is a puzzlement.
- problem articulating what is working
- There was a lot of nodding at this one, IIRC; it's so hard sometimes to tell what is working, and so much easier to tell what isn't. But vidders need to know what they're getting right, too (plus it makes it a lot easier to take the "... sorry, but this bit here is really boring and um I think you misheard the lyric")
- effects use
- Pretty straightforward, I think, although there's always a level of some effects working better for some people than others.
- pretentious vids, which led to the followup mention of "deliberately obscure so the shallow will look deeper"
- This got a good chuckle, because man, who hasn't seen pretentious vids - but it also raises the very valid point of how and when do you critique that? Is the vidder an earnest kid who really thinks they're being deep and meaningful who'll outgrow it on their own in time, or someone who should know better and is just full of themselves? This also ties back to Song Choice, and the assertion that every vidder will at some point make that pretentious "violence to classical music" vid, heh. No one's inherently safe from pretension.
- too subtle
- the better a vidder gets, the more this is a risk, IMO; we don't want to be too obvious, or too slow, or bore our viewers by making them sit through things they probably figured out 2 seconds ago, so things get more subtle and esoteric and we start losing viewers in droves. This also ties in solidly to the "context-dependent" notion; if you're relying too much on context to drive your vid, only people with a knowledge as deep as yours will understand them.
- not funny (but meant to be), which led to the followup mention of "can't tell if it's meant to be funny"
- Comedy is so hard. Hard to do, hard to crit. "Can't tell if it's meant to be funny" is brutal.
- too long
- This can tie in to both "I love my song" (and therefore can't bear to edit it; people have to hear it in all its glory) and "not funny" (because comedy vids that go on too long stop being funny and can start being painful). (In fact, I think this originally went with the "not funny" bit, but it's worth splitting out, IMO.) It's also, strangely, one of the most subjective things on the list; I've sat through 02:30 vids that lasted forEVER, and 06:30 vids that flew by.
Then we talked a bit about the different contexts that critique can happen:
- beta
- public vid review
- This can be either Vid Review at a con, or something like reviews posted to comms or forums. And the implication here is very strongly that this is reviews by strangers, because the next on the list is:
- friend or acquaintance public crit
Which, hm, is not the three I'm used to: beta (direct crit solicited by the vidder in advance); feedback (any commentary left for or sent directly to the vidder); and review (public commentary intended to discuss the vid with other viewers or introduce it to new viewers, but not meant as 'for the vidder' in any way).
But -- okay, looking at another post about this panel, I think what this means is more "if you have critique to give, what are the contexts", and they're boiling down to pre-vid-release beta, and post-vid-release critique, split between whether you know the vidder or not.
And at this point my notes vanish, because we'd moved on to actually talking more about all of this, so it's down to my kind of hazy memory and my skimming of other people's posts to remind me about stuff.
We talked about how critique is scary to give - writing things up and hovering over the send or submit button for ages until you finally just shut your eyes and smash it down, then sit there freaking out for a while with no idea how it'll be received. And sometimes it's not received well, but sometimes it really is, and can form the basis of lasting friendships with a lot of honest back and forth about things.
The bad reactions can be really bad, though, and have convinced a lot of people to stop offering critique, or even betaing -- which just makes things harder for everyone.
This led into people talking about making sure everyone involved knew what was going on in a beta situation: the vidder needs to be clear about what kinds of beta response they want (cheerleading, narrative flow, technical issues...), and the beta needs to ask about all that, if the vidder doesn't offer it. (All stuff that's equally true on the fanfic side of things.) There's also the problem that some people will only offer beta or critique for people they know well, which can leave newbie vidders flailing for help.
And here I'm going to interject into this writeup a bit to say: see how this turned into mostly a beta discussion? *g* It wasn't 100%, but things kept drifting into beta-land because betaing is the easiest form of critique to deal with on all sides. The vidder gets to ask for exactly what they're looking for, and the critiquer has at least a solid hope that the vidder won't flip out on them for providing commentary.
It was fascinating to me, because for me, beta and critique are different -- similar, but different. Helping a vidder and having a discussion about a fanwork; they're grounded in different things, for me, even if I may wind up saying more or less the same thing.
But I do get why we kept circling around to betaing; lord knows that's where I do most of my intensive looking at vids these days, when I do at all. One thing that we didn't mention but possibly should have is that giving public critique can also run the risk of having the vidder's friends descend on you in very unpleasant ways, whether deliberately or not. (It doesn't have to be mean; it can be a sincere onslaught of fervent friend-defending.) This is all the more true in a climate where public critique is unusual, and could more easily be perceived as an attack.
Anyway, we did also talk about public critique, and how it's fading more and more at Vividcon and online. There was a general sense that people wanted more of it; we like digging into vids and seeing what they're saying and how they're saying it, and whether they're saying it effectively. But also a general sense that it's less welcome.
I had wanted to add something to the conversation here, but we were out of time; I wanted to bring up
sdwolfpup's Great Vidding Truth Memes of yore (latest version, with links to earlier ones), which I think did a lot to keep the idea of critique being something that everyone could do alive. It was a safe way to handle it; vidders had to opt in (and a lot did. A lot.), and all the crit was mandated to be anonymous, so people didn't have to worry about their friends being mad at them, or setting themselves up to be the one person to tell a BNF vidder that her work was great in fandom X but in fandom Y it is... not. *g* It also allowed for people to address a vidder's entire body of work in general terms, or pick a specific vid and critique it in more detail.I miss those, although I was often frustrated when I participated by vidders who turned out not to want the critique they'd asked for. (Which - I don't understand why they put their names in. This was opt-in! Argh.)
But even with that frustration, the sheer having of a space where that sort of critique was specifically encouraged gave me a reason to buckle down and really look at vids hard, and think about them hard, and right up until the point where I hit a wall of "don't actually care", I was having a lot of fun.
I would love to get something like that going again;
sdwolfpup has a couple of far more important things to focus on at the moment (<3), but this panel had me thinking hard enough about all of this that I'm almost considering setting something similar up myself.Anyway, back to the panel:
A few specifics I do remember (with names mostly not attached, because I am unlikely to get them right at this point):
* Partway through the discussion, a first-year attendee asked the room at large how many people would take someone at their word if they said they welcomed critique; I think a good portion of us put our hands up, and I think it was more than this person expected - she seemed pleased by the response. For myself, I may not give critique even if it's asked for (it can take a long time, which I often don't have), but if someone asks, then yes, I will absolutely believe them.
* As the conversation moved to a point where we were talking about VVC in particular being made up largely of people who know each other, and therefore it being sometimes dicey and scary to speak critically, someone added that they're not a part of the VVC community (to which a good portion of the room instantly responded "you are now!", which -- yes! if you show up, you're part of it, there's no test you have to pass *g*), and that their language around vidding is different, so they feel like the can't contribute at Vid Review. Which I had to respond to, to tell her that new language and terminology is totally welcome at Vid Review (or anywhere else at VVC); I don't know how well I articulated this in the moment, but the only reason we have a shared language is that a lot of people started talking to each other and adopting each other's terminology and methods. New blood, new approaches, new everything is always welcome! It's the only way to keep from stagnating.
* The panel ended with someone (I'm pretty sure this one was
the_shoshanna) reminding everyone that critique doesn't have to mean "negative" vs noncritical squee. It just means talking about specifics, doing analysis of any sort; "I loved this, because of these reasons" is critique every bit as much as "this didn't work for me, because of these reasons". There wasn't really a single specific takeaway here, I don't think, other than that critique is something that a lot of us really value highly, and would like to find a way to start incorporating it more again. And there were no real answers about how to go about that, other than to just start doing it: take people on faith when they say they want crit; take it on faith that people at VVC, in particular, value crit; be upfront as the vidder or beta in a beta situation about expectations (and stick to them); take a risk, sometimes, that someone will respond well to your pointing out problems in their work.
FWIW, this was a single-hour panel that takes up a big part of my memory of Saturday; there was a lot of talking, a lot of ideas floating around, a lot of energy. Definitely a highlight for me.
I do feel like the panel paid off on Sunday; while Vid Review felt more sparsely populated than usual, the conversation also seemed more on target overall, with people chiming in to talk about what did and didn't work for them, and with almost every vid having a combination of both kinds of remarks made. It just felt like people were more confident that their "this didn't work" comments would be received well than has been the case in previous years, and it made for a better discussion, IMO.