Vidding

Disambiguation: This article is about the fan activity. For the 2008 short documentary series, see Vidding (2008).
Vidding is the act or process of creating a fan-oriented video or "fanvid" using live-action TV or movie footage set to music (or other audio). The people who make these vids are called vidders. 
Vids often tell some sort of story, and often highlight one reading, sometimes subversive, of the canon.
Fan-video makers in anime fandoms create anime music videos, and are known as AMV editors. 
==See Also==
* VCR Vidding
* Digital Vidding
* Anime Music Video
* Machinima
* MEP
* Game Music Video
* :Category:Vids
* Slideshows
* Vid
* Songtape Collection
* Shuffle Vidding
* Song Choice
==History of Vidding: In the Beginning==
=== The Slideshow Era===
The first fanvids were made in 1975 by Kandy Fong using a slide projector and a cassette tape player. These were played at cons and were very popular.
In recent years, digital slideshows have made a comeback as fans new to video editing try their hands using screencaps or in case of comic vids panel scans instead of moving footage.
See Slideshows for more. 
=== The VCR Era ===
With the exception of Star Trek, where Gene Roddenberry's Lincoln Enterprises actually sold film clips, slides and other materials, very few fans had access to these. While the Sony Portapak, the first portable and affordable half-inch video recording device, became available in 1968 and was used by counterculture artists to create alternative video productions outside the "big three" network channelsAniko Bodroghkozy, The Groove Tube: 60s Television and the Youth Rebellion. Duke University, 2001., vidding in terms of media fandom didn't really open up until the invention and commercial availability of the VCRThe first home VCRs appeared in 1972 and began to gain popularity in 1975. 1976 saw the introduction of the VHS format., which gave fans a way to copy their source material from television, and a way for them to linearly edit their source to create music videos. That said, the technology was expensive, and as a result it became common for groups of fans to share technology and access to source materials (in particular, hard-to-find TV shows). Vidding was occasionally done at conventions as fun group behavior, as a way to teach new vidders, and probably a bit as a way to show off. 
In spite of the huge number of fanzines being published at that time, Vidders had a difficult time communicating with each other. In the early 1990s, Tashery Shannon started a letterzine for vidders named Rainbow Noise, but the difficulty of explaining in text issues that were happening on video may have doomed it. Even after web pages and email made stories easier to pass back and forth, vids were still very rare on the web. Digital recording made the creation and sharing of these loving amateur productions much easier, and they are common today.
=== Early Songvids ===
While vidding started in Star Trek fandom, some fans believe that the first non-slideshow vids were produced in Starsky & Hutch fandom. The SHareCon 2010 panel on vidding history advanced this view, for example. These first songvids were very simple. There is an early Starsky & Hutch vid by Kendra Hunter and Diana Barbour that is nothing more than a still frame of Hutch's face behind an entire song. Many others were only two or three clips set to music. See Starsky & Hutch Vidding Booklets by Flamingo for more information.
This isn't to say they were necessarily easy to make. Fans learned a great deal about film editing in creating these videos. You had to find a clip that was emotionally correct for the point you were trying to make, but that also had movements and actions on all of the important beats of a minute-long piece of music. Then you had to insert the clip at exactly the place in that music to make those actions and beats line up. See Fan History Vid Panel 2008, Vividcon, a pdf copy of the panel notes can be found here . One example of such a vid is Barbour and Hunter's vid The Rose, which sets an entire scene from Starsky & Hutch to the song of the same name. Despite the limited technology of the time, the scene matches each line of the lyrics to an eerie degree, and the vid still works well today. For another example of perfectly timed clip editing, see Nerd Fest UK's Old Movie Stars Dance to 'Uptown Funk'.
As the quality of commercial VCRs improved, so did the complexity of fan vids. By the end of the VCR era, most of the vidding vocabulary we use today had already been explored. Vidders such as Tashery Shannon (known for her use of unconventional music and command of the color palette), Deejay (known for her cutting precision, and willingness to step outside the clips available in a show to make a point), and many others were turning out amazingly tight and complex vids back in the early '90s.
Vids were watched either at convention vidshows or bought/traded on tape collections (which were often contapes, collections of vids shown at a specific convention). In the VCR era, clips were dubbed down sometimes four or five times from the original videotaped episode until the time it was copied to a contape master, and then to each person's individual purchased copy. Even with the best original-quality source, songtapes from this era were always a little fuzzy.
See List of Early Songvids.
== Digital Vidding ==
The first digital or computer video in media fandom was a Star Trek/Blake's 7 vid set to In the Air Tonight by T'Rhys and shown at Virgule convention (2?) in 1994?. Considering the technical limitations, it was amazingly ambitious, including matte work that made it look like the Enterprise crew could see the Liberator (the space ship in Blake's 7) on their view screen. The following year T'Rhys submitted a Jurassic Park/Blake's 7 constructed reality vid which morphed the face of the villain Servalan into a velocoraptor. However the next digital vid did not appear until Escapade 1998 with Cultural Revolution's Sleep To Dream, a La Femme Nikita vid.
The ability to do non-linear editing and the end of dubbing quality loss were powerful incentives to go digital. With the bundling of basic video editing software such as Microsoft Windows Movie Maker and iMovie on new computers, the trickle of Digital Vidding became a torrent. In 2002, a computer vidder submitting to Escapade or Vividcon would have copied her vid from digital to a VHS or Beta tape to submit it to the convention. Then the convention transferred the tape back to the convention master DVD to show at the vid show. Then they would have made VHS copies of the show to sell to the congoers. Only in 2003 did broadband become common enough for vidders to start to upload digital copies of their vids directly to conventions. 
=== Digital Vid Aesthetics: Feral Vidders, Vividcon and AMV ===
With vidding software easily available and source video now coming out in droves on near-flawless commercial DVDs, vidding changed again. While there had always been fans who came up independently with the idea to make music videos -- having seen movie trailers, MTV, or indie films -- and had taught themselves to do it, fan vidding had largely evolved under the supervision and control of gatekeepers. This is described in Rachael Sabotini's The Genealogy of Vidding. The new technology allowed many more fans to experiment with video creation outside the box. They were sometimes called feral vidders -- with more or less affection by the old guard. 
As web hosting space became cheap enough to make it possible to post vids to the web, media vidders and AMV vidders (who refer to themselves as editors) have had a chance to see and be influenced by each others' work. Vidding was growing exponentially, while editing cohesion and stylistic norms seemed to be disappearing, although there were attempts to collectively improve basic and advanced vidding skills, for example the vidding bootcamp at We Band of Buggered. Into this potential chaos came Vividcon (VVC), a convention just for vidders and fans of vids, held in Chicago each year.
==Vidding as a Fandom of Its Own==
== Modern Vidding Genres ==
Vids may be described as belonging to the fannish genres gen, het or slash; however, beyond shipper vids, there are many subgenres specific to vidding.
* Constructed Reality
* Fic Trailers
* Garbage Can Vid
* Living Room Vid
* Lord King Bad Vid
* Metavid
* Recruiter Vid
* Story Vid
* Vidlet
== Song Choice and Re-use ==
See Song Choice.
==Controversies and Challenges==
===Legal ===
===Visibility Concerns===
Traditionally, because of fears of copyright infringement for both our music and video, most vidders have preferred to stay out of the press or Hollywood eye, but this has begun to shift with the recognition that the sheer numbers of fanvids and the cultural shift to remixing or re-appropriating and transforming popular culture has made vidding more visible and more socially acceptable. Recently, Luminosity's vids were showcased in New York MagazineNew York Magazine, and Reason Magazine published an article on vidding as wellRemixing Television: Francesca Coppa on the vidding underground. Reason Magazine, August/September 2008. 
In early November 2008, the OTW releasedOrganisation for Transformative Works, November 2008 Newsletter, vol. 21 Vidding (2008), a series of short documentaries on vidding for MIT's New Media Literacy projectOTW videos at MIT TechTV. Made by Francesca Coppa and Laura Shapiro, the videos feature interviews with many prominent vidders on subjects ranging from their personal motivation to vid, to the hardware and software they use, to the vidding communities they belong to. Excerpts from several well-known vids are also included.
In February, 2009, National Public Radio's Neda Ulabi did a segment on vidding for All Things Considered called Vidders Talk Back To Their Pop-Culture Muses. Vidders Rachael Sabotini and Lim were interviewed, as were OTW board members Francesca Coppa and Rebecca Tushnet.
===Differing Cultures===
Vidding is a multicultural art form, with vidders from all over the world able to post their work - unlike many archives, YouTube caters for a global auidence.
==== Non-English Speaking Vidders ====
* Le-mousquetaire - Stargate Atlantis
===Platform ===
Vidders often struggle with visibility on YouTube. To combat this, vidders Ilovehertjes and stillhotterthanyours developed the #fanvidfeed hashtag in February 2018.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s84HpPDTS4 #fanvidfeed by SunnyVids As of January 28th, 2023, the hashtag has been used in over 139,000 videos and by over 12,000 channels.https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/fanvidfeed #fanvidfeed hashtag page (Accessed Jaunary 28th, 2023)
===Archiving===
===Content===
===Accessibility and Audience===
From a fan in 2007: 
===Warnings and Labels on Vids===
From a fan in 1995: 
===Feedback===
Early fanvids were very difficult to circulate - paper fanzines could be copied without too much data loss. But every copy of a videocassette degraded the image and sound until by the 9th copy of a copy of a copy, the images were fuzzy and the sound faint. Tape was harder to ship safely and more fragile than paper. And in the early years many fans lacked the funds for VCRs which were expensive to obtain. And then there were the format wars" (VHS vs Betamax tapes and VCRs) - where different videotape formats could only be played on certain types of machines. So for most vidders, feedback only came from immediate live viewings either at small local "bashes" or at larger conventions sitting in the room with a live audience. Because not every fan could afford the cost of a plane ride or the gas to drive to a convention and pay the hotel and convention fees, vidders were starved of meaningful connections with their viewing audience.
Even if the vidder was fortunate to hear other fans talk about her fanvids - the community (like the wider popular culture) lacked a common vocabulary about the structuring of fanvids to be able to talk meaningfully about vids. Fanvids were (and still are) an 'amateur' or undergound production. Up until the latter 2010s, fanvids were not studied or taught as part of our cultural heritage, not recognized by the music or media industry except as copyright violations (at worst) and free marketing (at best). And unlike writing, where the reader interacts in isolation outside of the author's presence, the in-person feedback that a vidder obtains from a live audience is closer to a stage performance. This was true whether the 'feedback' came in the form of the audience responding to the vid (cheering, crying, bored silence) or in the form of a vid review panel held later. Or even casual commentary from the next stall over in the rest room or at dinner. 
In 1998, Morgan Dawn and Flamingo exchanged their experiences receiving feedback on the Vidder mailing list. It is quoted here with permission:
===Further Reading: Warnings and Labels on Vids===
*, by fan eunice (2010)
*, by ranalore (2010)
*, by hazelk (2010)
*, arduinna (2010)
==Vidding Awards==
See Category:Vidding Awards
*Skaro Awards
*Tainted Wishes
*Vidding Documentary (2011)
*EZawards (2005-2006)
==Meta About Vidding==
See Timeline of Vidding Meta.
==Mainstream Articles==
* Why Do Fan-Made Trailers Rule the Internet?, by Cat Zhang, New York Times (October 25, 2023)
==Resources==
* Don't Touch the 3rd Rail! a guide to stylistic vidding choices (1999)
* ETV (Expanding the Verse - discussion forum and hosting service) (2010)
* Vidding discussion, LiveJournal created on October 18, 2002-
* LiveJournal Vidding Memories
* Tea at the Ford, discussion (2003)
* Tea at the Ford, discussion (2003) 
* The Vidder Weekly (created on 26 November 2005, last updated on 9 April 2006)
* - Vidding Forum 2005
* A bit of vidding meta -- cutting and synching (2005) 
* Buttmonkey Awards (2006-2007)
* Metafandom's Delicious tags, 5032 posts (2006-2011)
* Meta Vidding Newsletter (2007-2012)
* Making Music Videos ... some tips, and musings vidding tutorial (2002)
* Recs tagged Fanvids at Fancake
* Works tagged Fanvids at AO3
* Works tagged #fanvidfeed at YouTube
* Vidding - A History by Francesca Coppa, University of Michigan Press. Ann Arbor (2022)
== References ==
 
Category:Vidding Glossary
Category:Media Fandom