Many, many thoughts here. First: downloading your vid now. Hope to have something useful to say about it, but it's going to be a busy day at work, so it may take me a while.
Second, it should be noted that "Connecting With Audiences" was not my panel alone; wickedwords co-modded and, IIRC, came up with the original idea for it. And she'd be a great person to rope into this discussion, because her vids seem to appeal to a very broad audience but sometimes are treated dismissively by your so-called Living Room Vidders. Rache vids are fun and sexy and funny and charming and you get it all in the first go. I think this is a wonderful skill, and one I wish I had.
Thirdly, and I think this is important: your post sets up what I believe to be a false binary, that there are only two vidding aesthetics. While I certainly see the division you are making (and, in my conversation with morgandawn, I may have reinforced this idea), I think there are many, many different vidding aesthetics. One of the things Rache and I talked about in our panel was that you don't just connect with *the* audience, you connect with *audienCES*, of which there are many. And they bleed over into one another.
As I emphasized in the panel, I think it's up to the vidder to decide which audience(s) each of her vids is targeting, and then to pursue that audience with all energy -- both in creation and in distribution. And I think it's perfectly fine to say "This vid is only meant for obsesso-fans of Fandom X, and nobody else will really enjoy it" or "This vid is meant to play well at this particular con's premiere vid show, and it probably won't grab the general public" or "This is for fun and squee and shininess and I want as many people as possible to groove on it, but it's not all that deep and might miss the super-intellectual types". Any of these strategies is perfectly okay, just as their target audiences' tastes are perfectly okay. The difficulty comes with, as Morgan always says, unclear or faulty expectations, which is why communication between vidder and viewer is so important, and why (IMO) the Escapade vid show in particular is so often fraught with emotional tension: lots of different types of audiences within that audience, lots of different types of vidders submitting lots of different types of vids, and nobody is going to wind up with a vid show that fulfills all, or even most, of their expectations.
Vids shouldn't have to be all things to all people, and vidders shoot themselves in the foot when they try to vid with that goal. The most likable vid in the world is going to go unliked by *someone* -- probably many someones. Why angst over it? Figure out what your style is, what kind of art *you* want to make. Then find a way to show it to the kind of viewers who will appreciate it.
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Second, it should be noted that "Connecting With Audiences" was not my panel alone;
Thirdly, and I think this is important: your post sets up what I believe to be a false binary, that there are only two vidding aesthetics. While I certainly see the division you are making (and, in my conversation with
As I emphasized in the panel, I think it's up to the vidder to decide which audience(s) each of her vids is targeting, and then to pursue that audience with all energy -- both in creation and in distribution. And I think it's perfectly fine to say "This vid is only meant for obsesso-fans of Fandom X, and nobody else will really enjoy it" or "This vid is meant to play well at this particular con's premiere vid show, and it probably won't grab the general public" or "This is for fun and squee and shininess and I want as many people as possible to groove on it, but it's not all that deep and might miss the super-intellectual types". Any of these strategies is perfectly okay, just as their target audiences' tastes are perfectly okay. The difficulty comes with, as Morgan always says, unclear or faulty expectations, which is why communication between vidder and viewer is so important, and why (IMO) the Escapade vid show in particular is so often fraught with emotional tension: lots of different types of audiences within that audience, lots of different types of vidders submitting lots of different types of vids, and nobody is going to wind up with a vid show that fulfills all, or even most, of their expectations.
Vids shouldn't have to be all things to all people, and vidders shoot themselves in the foot when they try to vid with that goal. The most likable vid in the world is going to go unliked by *someone* -- probably many someones. Why angst over it? Figure out what your style is, what kind of art *you* want to make. Then find a way to show it to the kind of viewers who will appreciate it.