Vidshow Discussion Post: 2009 Retrospective

[cosmic_llin]

 

Welcome to the discussion post for the 2009 Retrospective vidshow, curated by such heights!

This is a new thing we’re trying - we love talking about the vidshows at the con itself, but we think there’s scope for further discussion here on Dreamwidth, where folks who weren’t able to attend the con can get involved too. Anyone who’s interested is welcome to watch the show and join in! We’ll be running these posts roughly once a month, initially featuring shows from VidUKon 2019.

You can see the list of vids and their descriptions here - scroll down and click on the show title in blue. If you’re struggling to find any vids from the show, please drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do to help!

Comments

[cosmic_llin]

This show was such a fascinating snapshot of a very particular fannish moment. It honestly felt simultaneously like we'd stepped into a time machine, and also like it couldn't possibly have been ten years since some of those vids!

It's also kind of fascinating to look at the names of the vidders and note how many of them are people who are still active in vidding now - having become a part of the vidding community at around that time, it's nice to feel that sense of continuity and connection when vidding fandom can sometimes feel so ephemeral. The fact that so many of these vids are no longer readily available to stream just drives home the point that, on the internet, ten years is long enough for something to disappear, or to become visible only through metadata and commentary left behind. Vidshows like this feel like a really important way to keep in touch with our own history.

[soupytwist]

This rings so true for me! I remembered a bunch of those vids, and the idea of them being ten years old definitely hit me in a "oh, wow, time moves SO FAST" way.

Also, I think they do a great job of showing the sort of thing great vidders were doing in this section of fandom at that time!

[cosmic_llin]

Yeah, it's interesting because a 10-year gap is long enough for trends and priorities to have evolved, but not SO long that the vids look super-retro style-wise like they might from 15 or 20 years ago. I'm kind of fascinated to see how we feel about this in another five, ten, fifteen years - vidding as an art form is so comparatively young and digital vidding even more so, I feel like we're only just getting to a point with digital vidding that different eras are becoming identifiably visible.

[brokenmnemonic]

One of the things that struck me when I was watching the show is that if you went back to maybe 2006, it was still really common to see vids at 480p, but by 2009 I think 720p - DVD quality footage (or the NTSC equivalent... I prefer PAL, myself ;) ) - was maybe the most common format and there were a lot of people ripping from DVD to avoid downloaded footage with watermarks. It's ten years later now, and while I don't watch a lot of vids, I saw a lot at the convention that were made using 1080p or equivalent download footage. They're so pretty! But it did make me think of how there hasn't been a move across so much to ripping blurays for footagee, which I think says a lot about the accessability of source and the quality of source now.

And it's kind of a painful reminder that I'll never get 720p/1080p footage of things like the really important Syfy channel adverts for BSG that had footage that never made it into the aired episodes, the DVDs or the deleted scenes. The horror!

[colls]

I remember watching 'Hard Sun' when I was a newbie vidder and it had such an impact on me. I still love how it shows fannish interaction with source.

[brokenmnemonic]

I'd never seen Hard Sun before the showing at the convention, and it made me remarkably nostalgic for the days when people thought Firefly would be a sure-fire hit that would get multiple seasons...

[cosmic_llin]

YES! I think this is one of those vids I saw back before I was really in the vidding community, and I didn't understand at all what it was trying to say. It was nice to rewatch it with a fuller understanding and more emotional investment!

[brokenmnemonic]

I wasn't really a part of the mainstream vidding fandom around this time, so I missed a lot of these when they first appeared, although I've seen a fair number through VidUKon shows since. It seems like a really long time ago now - back when I was still part of an excited fandom.

I remember when bop-radar was making DLZ - we were both baby vidders at the same time, and good friends, and there was a lot of agonising about how to vid and how to learn and so much fandom stuff. I think it was around then that she had me watching Smallville and having all the Lois and Clark feelings while we were either waiting for or angrily recovering from the BSG finale. One of the things I love about her vids is that she combines such a great sense of timing and imagery with feelings; there are only a small number of TSCC vids I keep rewatching, and this is definitely one.

Break Teen Spirit in Four Minutes is one of those quintessential dragonchic vids I've watched hundreds or maybe even thousands of times since someone first showed me her vids (probably boppy again). It's been more than ten years, and I'm still amazed at how she uses motion and cutting to make these glorious, flowing vids that look absolutely amazing. I remember dragonchic made a number of these vids with remixed audio that I've watched a lot - this one is a particular favourite, but also Wonderwall and Intergalactic Friends, which I think all came out within a few months of each other.

One of the things I'm always struck by whenever I go back to the VidUKon 2008 vids is how difficult it is to find live copies of them, streaming or otherwise. It looks like it's the same with these vids from 2009. Rememebr when the BAM vid vault was going to be the next big thing? Youtube's still around from that period, but I think everything else has gone. I wonder how many vidders who were around at the time have vanished almost completely from the internet, along with their vids?

[cosmic_llin]

One of the things I'm always struck by whenever I go back to the VidUKon 2008 vids is how difficult it is to find live copies of them, streaming or otherwise. It looks like it's the same with these vids from 2009. Rememebr when the BAM vid vault was going to be the next big thing? Youtube's still around from that period, but I think everything else has gone. I wonder how many vidders who were around at the time have vanished almost completely from the internet, along with their vids?

YES! It's ironic that as a community we've been so (rightly in a lot of cases!) wary of YouTube when it's one of the places that older vids have stayed online, just because of the sheer number of vids uploaded there meaning that some of them were bound to survive.

I've also noticed that fewer people these days offer downloads of their vids. I think the reasons are understandable - streaming is better than it used to be, and so many places take our downloads down - but I think it's dangerous to rely on streaming platforms to keep our stuff for us, even if sometimes it does work out!

[brokenmnemonic]

I also noticed that if you look at a lot of the older vids where things like the LJ posts have never been updated, the download links were often sendspace/megaupload, neither of which seem to be used much at all. Vidding feels really transient in some ways...

[cosmic_llin]

Yeah, Megaupload was THE place to keep your vids for a while but IIRC that all dramatically collapsed when they had a huge copyright crackdown right in the middle of Festivids, meaning that there was a mad scramble to get all the vids back up so that their recipients could see them. And then the site was shut down entirely shortly afterwards.

I think one reason a lot of people turn to YouTube these days is that there's SO much on there that if your vid doesn't immediately get copyright flagged, there's a higher chance that it'll just fly under the radar due to the sheer volume of stuff.

That said, I think there's also a much greater openness towards vids generally now than there was ten years ago. Showrunners and cast members share them approvingly, and most record companies are much more relaxed about folks using their music as long as they can get appropriate credit (and in some cases monetisation.)