Vidding: Connecting With Audiences

Fanwork
Title:	Vidding: Connecting With Audiences
Creator:	permetaform, laura shapiro and rache
Date(s):	2004-2005
Medium:	convention panel, online
Fandom:	meta, vidding
External Links:
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In 2004, laura shapiro and rache held a panel at Vividcon about vidder's "Connecting With Their Audiences." Portions of the panel explored the different types of vid viewing audiences, the differences between con vids and living room vids, the differences between a slash and gen audience, what type of audience might respond to a meta vid, and whether vidders were trending towards only vidding to an audience that shared "our opinions about the source text and our aesthetic sensibilities?" See panel notes.

A year after the convention, vidder permetaform posted a follow-on essay to her LJ (archive link) asking herself (and other vidders) whether it is possible, as a vidder, to communicate with multiple audiences who share wildly divergent aesthetics. Among the questions she posed:

• How do I, as a vidder, communicate with you, as a viewer?
• And specifically [how do I communicate with] a viewer that is not part of the echo-chamber...how do I communicate with the Other, that does not already see eye-to-eye with me?
• Is this communication even *possible*? (I'd like to believe that it is.)
• Question is: is it possible to vid to both aesthetics simultaneously?
• Also: *should* it be a goal to vid to both aesthetics simultaneously?

The panel notes and subsequent essay stirred a vigorous debate among both vidders and vid audiences. Discussion threads have been broken out below into rough thematic categories. Note that there may be overlap in some of these threads/discussions. Click on the links to read further.

Discussion threads

• I don't think there's anything wrong with not connecting with part - note, part - of an audience.
• I wonder whether vidding is like reading poetry...poems that seem to go for the emotions and the pretty images and language and they make sense on first or second reading.
• I started to encounter a lot of people who said they didn't understand vids at all. And started to wonder about why a TV show (visual medium) could generate so many millions of pieces of fanfiction (and readers), but only a handful of vids (and viewers).
• What I have trouble with isn't as much the speed of the edits as it is the overlapping and color palette "shocks" that happen sometimes with a lot of effects.
• Is this a question of linear narrative versus circular narrative? ie. the linear narrative grabs your gut more 'cause the circular one is too repetitious?.
• If it becomes possible to capture the heart and the mind simutaneously, does it become, then, a question of *which* heart and *which* mind?
• I've been thinking that my vids were too transparent and narratively simple, and making them harder as a result.
• Perhaps you could call me one of the "disenfranchised viewers" because my brain is not equipped to deal with most of what is out there in the vidding world.
• Not Only Are There Multiple Audiences - They Change.
• It's possible for vidders to allow too much outside influence (like audience reaction, etc.) to creep in.
• There are a number of factors working against vidders and a number of reasons why vidders may not be able to reach a certain audience.
• The best way to connect with the audience is to convince them that you're having fun with your vid, even if it kept you up nights and you wanted to send your monitor out the window, which is continued here and here.
• About the audience. I wonder if worrying too much about the audience isn't kind of a mistake.