Us (multifandom vid)

Us is a multifandom metavid by lim. It was releasedUs announcement post on vidding, March 01, 2007. to great acclaim, discussion, and some controversy. Many who loved the vid felt that it was about them, as fans and as a fannish community, and illustrated the experience and mindset of fandom. Others felt that any "us" that the vid illustrated implied an opposing or excluded "them."
The vid has remained popular both with fans,Us received an honorary award from The Fourth Wall in 2007, a fan-run vid award site. acafans, and critics and scholars outside of fandom. Alexis Lothian's essay "Living in a Den of Thieves" is a close reading of the vid. Michael Wesch included it in his Anthropological History of YouTube. It was part of an exhibition called "Mediated" which ran January 24, 2009 - April 4, 2009 at the California Museum of Photography.
==Lim's Production Notes==
Lim posted her production notes here.
Some excerpts: 
==Contents==
Techniques:
The vid makes use of frame-by-frame editing in a graphics program, which is fairly rare in Western media fandom vids. For an AMV using a similar technique and referring to multiple fandoms, see Elvis vs. Anime. More details of this technique are described in lim's production notes, linked in the discussion section above.
One of the non-fandom sources the vid uses is footage from Converge Culture Consortium's Future of Entertainment Conference, held November 17, 2006. The footage of Henry Jenkins, professor and influential acafan, speaking at the conference's Introductory Talk.
==Reception==
Many who loved the vid felt that it was about them, as fans and as a fannish community, and illustrated the experience and mindset of fandom. Others felt that any "us" that the vid illustrated implied an opposing or excluded "them." Some fans did not believe they were represented by the vid and thus felt that they were of the "them."
Many loved the vid's use of effects, which turned the mass media footage of fannish TV shows and films into something that looked drawn in pencil and thus felt handmade; others felt that the effect was distancing or otherwise hard to see, that it stood between them and the footage. Those who loved the vid felt it staged a fannish way of seeing in its use of color to highlight particular things in a frame a fan might focus on; those who didn't like it felt it was hard to process, that the effects blurred the underlying images.
===Fan Comments===
=== Discussions of "Us" ===
* Lim's production notes: WebCite on "Us."
* Fannish discussions in comments at 
* Fannish discussions in comments at 
* Fannish discussions in comments at 
* Kristina Busse, at In Media Res, February 1, 2008.
* Michael Wesch, , presentation at the Library of Congress
* Remixing Television: Francesca Coppa on the vidding underground; WebCite, Reason Magazine, August/September 2008
* , Robert Jones and Louisa Stein at fandebate
* Alexis Lothian, [http://www.queergeektheory.org/docs/Lothian_DenThieves_nocover.pdf Living in a Den of Thieves: Fan Video and Digital
Challenges to Ownership] Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009)
* "Mediated", exhibition at the California Museum of Photography. (January 24, 2009 - April 4, 2009)
* to their petition for a DMCA exemption, Docket No. RM 2008-08
* of the Organization for Transformative Works to the EFF's petition for a DMCA exemption
* by Alexis Lothian
* by Neda Ulaby for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
===Exhibitions of "Us" ===
* "Vidshow" at Millicon 2.0, July 19–22, 2007
* "Newbies Rock" at Vividcon, August 13, 2007
* "Video Art Track" at Anime Weekend Atlanta, September 21–23, 2007
* "24/7" DIY Video Summit at USC School of Cinematic Arts, February 8–10, 2008
* "Vids As Meta" at VidUKon, Oct 24 2008
* "Video Show" at Bascon8, Nov 8 2008
* Catalog for exhibition, "Mediated"; at the California Museum of Photography. (January 24, 2009 - April 4, 2009)
* Spitting Video at Workspace, Mar 13 2009.
==References ==
Category:Multifandom Vids
Category:Meta Vids
Category:2007 Vids
Category:2019 Featured Articles