The act of setting clips from TV shows to music in order to make a music video has been popular in fandom for ages, but while some of the results are clever and witty spins on pretty much any show you might care to mention, some of the others are not so great. This week MIT professor Henry Jenkins posted the first two parts of a documentary series on the world of fanvidders, inspiring Jill Weinberger and Liz Shannon Miller to hash out, once and for all, what makes a fanvid great. (The answer? Not Olivia Newton-John.)
Liz: Well, Jill, the time has come. After being on the internet for years and years now, I’ve seen a fair amount of fanvids.
Jill: They’re hard to avoid.
Liz: Yeah. So many tv shows, so many compilations of clips set to Sarah McLachlan ballads.
But now, the vidders are making vids about the process of making vids, and the process comes full circle.
Jill: Well, it was inevitable. But we’re soon going to need a new word for when you’re being meta about calling something meta. Ow. Brain hurts.
Liz: I have to admit that there are times when the sheer quantity of fanvids on YouTube get on my nerves. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of really well-edited ones, it’s just that there are a lot of bad ones and they tend to clutter up search results on YouTube when I’m trying to find a particular clip from an old TV show. For purely academic reasons, of course.
Jill: Plus a lot of the well edited ones are by people focused on the same show or couple, so there’s sort of a density of even the good stuff that might be more than what the average person needs.
Liz: The Organization for Transformative Works holds the belief that fanvids are a valid art form, which I, as a transmedia nerd, can totally respect. But I think like all art forms you have to consider the artist’s motivations and intentions in evaluating their success as art.
Jill: I kind of max out on the shipper vids for characters that have never had or even really flirted with having a relationship. I think it’s safe to say when it comes to Harry Potter, Harry and Hermione aren’t going to make it as a couple. Let’s move on.
Liz: Hopelessly Devoted to You? Ugh. They are twelve. And it is weird.
Jill: There’s for sure a certain forcing-the-issue aspect of some of these vids, in that you can set almost anything to a heartfelt ballad and have it end up looking like a love story.
Liz: No kidding. Remember how much mileage people got, back in the day, out of the Brokeback Mountain thing. Brokeback to the Future, we remember you well.
Jill: What I think is interesting about the OTW doc is that from what I’ve seen, people talk about why they like making and watching fanvids, but not many people talk about what makes a GOOD fanvid.
Liz: Yeah. And I think that’s key. I’m totally down with embracing the medium as an art form-
Jill: But how do you judge success?
Liz: I guess the question is — what is the artist trying to say about the subject? And is there any complexity to their argument? I guess they don’t necessarily need to make any sort of statement, but a point other than “I like whatever” is nice.
Oh, and on a shallow level, music choice is important too. I think half of my reaction to most fanvids is the fact that I don’t like the songs selected.
Jill: I think MY favorite fanvid is the most brilliant pairing of topic and music EVER. Whereas other people might find it kind of mean. And yet, this and that damn Hopelessly Devoted Harrmione thing have pretty close to the same amount of views, so how can you say one is more successful than the other?
Liz: What works for me about the Coin-Operated Boy vid is that it has a point-of-view — the music makes a clear statement when paired with the images. This is a video about the character of Riley and how he fits into the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.
Jill: As opposed to just sad face clips set to a random broken hearted love song. So we’ll agree that a fanvid becomes something of artistic merit when it becomes more than a sum of its parts.
Liz: Exactly. And there are some great ones. This video, by iMeem user Absolute Destiny, is why I will always give a recommended fanvid the time of day. What the vidder does here, if you’ll allow me to get overanalytical and nerdy, is juxtapose old female tropes with the emergence of the 21st century action heroine, celebrating the arrival of girl power in sci-fi television. And it’s also really cute and well-edited.
Jill: I’m sorry, I can’t pay attention to what you’re saying because I’m busy watching this really awesome video.
Okay. That was the best thing ever. I do think, though, that it’s the editing that makes that successful way beyond just the potential in the concept. You could have used that song and those shows and come up with something that was fun and fresher than most fanvids and fine, but the editing, making the particular images work with the particular breaks in the music, really is artistically masterful.
In other words, the thing that makes a fanvid really good is the same thing that makes any video really good — a good idea executed well.
Huh. That seems anticlimactic, doesn’t it?
Liz: A little. The important bit, I suppose, is whether or not studios and the RIAA should fuss about the theft of clips and music.
Jill: I think the music is probably more likely to run into problems than the images. Because a fanvid is clearly in support of the show, but maybe an artist doesn’t want their song used to promote someone else’s product.
Liz: A good call. I mean, what if it turns out Olivia Newton-John was a staunch Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley supporter?
Jill: Wow. That is probably the first time anyone has ever posed that particular hypothetical.
Liz: And yet it’s relevant in this case.
Jill: I think the thing is here, while I don’t think anyone would dispute that our favorites are good, the fact is, hundreds of thousands of people really, really love those run-of-the-mill, longing look, sappy ballad shipper videos.
Liz: But the more bad stuff there is, the more chance that good stuff will emerge. If 90% of everything is crap, then the more crap there is, the larger in number that other 10% might be.
Jill: Aren’t you a glass-is-half-full-of-enjoyable-video girl.
Liz: 10% full, actually.
Jill: A shot glass full of enjoyable video, if you will.
Liz: I’ll take it.
