usuallyhats | Vidding meme! (Reply)

chaila gave me:

12. What’s the best vidding advice you’ve ever come across?
13. What’s the worst vidding advice you’ve ever come across?

and I am going to answer them together, because I can't really identify any bad vidding advice I've come across other than advice that contradicts my answer to #12! For me, the best vidding advice I've come across is just to make the vid you want to make, the way you want to make it. I was thinking that this wouldn't necessarily work for everyone, because some people are more interested in making vids that will challenge them technically or intellectually, or making vids that will get a good response, but then I realised that actually, no, that's all covered by "make the vid you want to make in the way you want to make it". For me, though, it means "make the vid of your heart, even if no-one else will watch it, and make it in a way that will make you happy, whatever rules it breaks". So, for example, I do try and avoid talkyface in my vids unless I'm using it for a specific purpose or there's really no other option, but not because it's wrong but because I personally find it a bit distracting - I automatically try and make the shapes that the characters' mouths are making match the words I'm hearing. (Similarly, I also find it distracting when gifs are subtitled with words that the person in the gif isn't actually saying.) But on the other hand I don't really care that much about source quality or whether it's watermarked or whatever, so I'll happily just use whatever I've got as long as the quality's good enough to actually see what's going on in the clip. And I would never judge someone else for caring about source quality or not caring about talkyface just because the latter bothers me and the former doesn't. I find this a very freeing way to vid, because as a general rule I AM the sort of person who worries a lot about what other people think, so it's really helpful to be able to give myself permission not to do that.

(Whenever I post about vidding the random icon button on Dreamwidth seems to give me "experiencing technical difficulties". IT KNOWS.)