Questions, questions, questions

[hazelk]

It seems about half the posts linked to on metafandom are about the legitimacy or otherwise of fanfic, something which seems to have been sparked off by a certain published author’s disparaging remarks about the form. There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent amount of interest about other types of fanart like vids, although the underlying issues would seem to be the same. Is it that vidders basically accept that what they do isn’t entirely legit? Or that vids are a qualitatively different art form to the source material? The complaints about fanfiction mostly seem to come from published authors about fics based on their own work, direct competition in a sense. Then again I’m sure there’ve been authors who refuse to allow their books to be made into movies so it’s certainly possible to feel proprietal about one’s work across those sorts of boundaries. Are there film directors who won’t let people write tie-in novels though? Making movies or TV is a much more collaborative process than writing a novel so maybe even would-be auteurs learn not to be too possessive about their art early on. But is such possessiveness innate or learned? Would Homer have felt he owned the Odyssey? Or more to the point when do children start feeling that the stories they make up are theirs and theirs alone?

And now for something not entirely different:


1. Alexis Denisof is the god of facial expression.

2. He gives good body language too.

3. Camerawork is very different on Buffy and Angel. AtS pans where BtVS would cut.

4. Especially when Joss directs.

5. iMovie is an entry level piece of almost-freeware that’s no better than it should be but if you spend most of your free time alternately kicking and cajoling it into submission it will do some funky things.

6. It helps to be numerate.

7. There’s a difference between tempo and beat. I’m not sure which is which but while I get one of them, the other I think I’d need to learn to play an instrument to have any hope of grasping.

8. Aspect ratios are scary (see point 6 above).

9. Even if you’ve spent 3 days getting a particular effect to work and it finally looks absolutely, completely, perfectly as you imagined it, if it doesn’t fit in the storyline as a whole IT HAS TO DIE.

10. I think I need a beta.

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Alexis is terrific in comical scenes. I loved him in "Spin the Bottle" and he was great again in "Life of the Party", you know the elevator scene, it's priceless!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Oh God yes! And watching him closely in BtVS S3 he's just so funny even when he's not saying a word.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that icons, vids, and fan art (with the exception of manipulations) are more celebrations of the original work, while fan fic is, quite often, attempts to re-write the original work with "AU" scenarios, or allows the fic authors to write characters out of character or in non-canonical relationships, or do cross-overs with other fictional universes, in short, there is more alterations of the original work in fan fiction than in other forms of fan work.

[yourlibrarian]

This is more or less what I was thinking too, at least as regards the majority of vids. They have to work with the visual material available so most tend to reproduce the original text in some way even when they devise their own storylines. I do think though that there are vids, (slash ones spring to mind) that alter the work in distinct ways, and manage to promote alternate views of the text. However I'm betting there are far fewer of these as a percentage than there are slash fanfics.

I also wonder if length has anything to do with it as well as the specific medium involved. To some degree show visuals are worked with and edited all the time for things like network promotion, special features, "previously on" and so on. On the whole fan vids work as a fairly nifty promotional item for the original text. Moreover, they exist in the same medium as the original text since most fandoms revolve around visual rather than written texts (the HP fandom coule be a huge exception but it also has its visual component and, I'd argue, that visual aspect has a strong influence on the fan material produced).

The other interesting aspect is the gender bias that seems inherent in this. A good example is the attitude of creators such as George Lucas that actively encourage fan films (even more ambitious and potentially "threatening" than vids) yet have had a negative attitude towards fan fiction for some time. There was a discussion on fanthropology about this a while back.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

The biggest example I can think of an original writer who dislikes fan fic is Anne Rice. While someone like Joss Whedon openly encourages it, even especially when it reads into the subtext.

There might be a gender element in this, then, although I don't have a sample size any larger than that to base this on (I don't know, for example, JK Rowling's feelings on HP stuff).

Speaking personally, if someone were to start fanficing my own original work, I'd be torn between my insistence on my own authority as original author, and feeling really, really flattered someone liked my work enough to take the time to enter/expand on that world themselves. I think I'd be of the opinion that if I don't like what they're doing to my story, I don't have to read it, or acknowledge it in any way.


What I do know is that given the current level of video/computer technology, fiction and words on a page is still the most flexible medium there is, and therefore the most likely to deviate from the original.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Very true, vids can be very selective with their material but ultimately they're as bound to it as if one were writing an essay. I can't imagine there's any author who'd object to someone writing an essay on their work even though they might violently disagree with the result. Although one thing you notice with vids is how important the background music is in setting the tone. If they chose the right song could someone made a vid of 'The Body' that was all glutenous sentiment. Or maybe you could set it to 'The Funeral March' and make a joke of the whole thing.

I'd also agree the shortness of a vid does makes it a qualitatively different art form from movies or TV the way haikus are really very different from epic poems. I should check the fanthropology link but I'm not sure about the gender element. Jane Espenson is if anything even more supportive of fanfiction than Joss. I think JK Rowling has expressed concern about some fanfic, either the porny stuff or the Draco redemptionist tendency. And I've read that Christopher Golden has passed less than flattering remarks about fic authors. Then again he writes tie-in novels so that could be more the competitive than the mama bear tendency. More 'mine's bigger" than 'nobody touches my babies.'

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Fan fic eats into Golden's livelihood by providing for free (and oftentime, *better*) what he's trying to sell.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Vids can be very AU. There's a hilarious vid that Rahael showed me set to Marc Almond's "Tainted Love" which uses snips of BtVS1-3 to tell a story in which Xander and Angel are in a committed relationship until Angel starts cheating with Buffy. (You should see what the vidder did with the flower scene in Killed By Death).

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Snerk. I can only imagine. Still I bet there's fanfic out there that tells the same story absolutely dead seriously. Well if some of the Spander stuff is anything to go by.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

We saw that one at the Chicago meet. I remember it was quite funny, but I haven't seen it since, so my memory of it is mud.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Tempo is the speed of the music. Beat is the frequency with which the musician makes a stress. That is what 'bars' are all about. So say the music was 'in four' that means there is a beat of four regular pulses throughout the music, each one is stressed slightly and the first one of each four is stressed a lot.

Dah-dah-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah-dah

That could obviously happen at any tempo the musician considers appropriate.

In classical music at least it should always be possible to hear the beat and to hear when the start of every bar is - because it gives the whole thing structure. If you can't hear it then the musician isn't doing their job. Or something clever is going on. Or something modern ;)

So beat obviously follows tempo but not vice-versa.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense.

I think I would have to learn an instrument to really get beat, I always have to do stuff to properly understand it. Or listen to classical music more, although I never feel musical enough to appreciate it and tend to default back to moaning that "yer can't dance to it" (imagine said in flat Liverpudlian). Ballet music is good. Not that I can dance to that either except in my head.