Ask the Vidder: Gianduja Kiss

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Ask the Vidder: Gianduja Kiss
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Gianduja Kiss
Date(s):	October 21, 2010
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	vidding, Supernatural
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Gianduja Kiss was interviewed in 2010 for Supernatural Roundtable.

Some Excerpts

A friend of mine introduced me to the concept of vids in about 2005, and I finally cracked and started doing it for myself in 2006. At the time, my fannish obsessions were Highlander and Starsky & Hutch, so I made several vids in those fandoms before branching out to others. I've now worked in several different fandoms, including (but not limited to) the Buffyverse, Merlin, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Dollhouse, X-Files, Dark Angel, Sherlock Holmes 2009, and, of course, Supernatural. You can see all of my vids at my general vids tag here. I started watching Supernatural in the middle of the second season, fell deeply in love, and started vidding. I've made ten Supernatural vids so far, and three multifandom vids that include Supernatural.

I do use a storyboard for a lot of my vids, at least partially. I have the lyrics printed out or in a file somewhere, and I make notes in the margin about clip ideas for each line. As for how an idea starts, usually, a song will inspire me. Sometimes, it's just a song that I think would make a good vid, and I try to find an idea for it (usually because the song has a lot of emotion, or an interesting beat, or different moving "parts" that I think could be used for a good narrative). A lot of the time - particularly when I'm in the throes of a fandom obsession - various songs will just strike me as perfect for a particular character or pairing. Sometimes I'll be in the mood to vid a character or pairing and I'll try to find a song that works, but that's a lot rarer.

I don't keep notes or anything - that sort of thing I work from memory. As for clips, I don't exactly "clip" in the ordinary way - I convert entire episodes into viddable form and then import the entire episode into Adobe Premiere for editing. But when I start on a vid, I review each episode in Adobe and create "scrap" timelines. On each of those timelines, I put in clips from the episode along particular themes that I might need for the vid - like, action sequences, or Dean and Sam looking extremely manly (for Blaze of Glory), or Starsky & Hutch smiling (for Joy to the World) etc. So the project ends up with these scrap timelines filled with clips of particular themes. And sometimes when I work in the same fandom again, I'll import over an old scrap timeline if I think I'll need similar shots - although usually the vids are different enough that one scrap timeline isn't necessarily all that helpful for another vid.