Fan videos on a topic where one shares that fandom are kind of addictive. But while I can spend an hour here or there watching a montage of cute scenes featuring my favorite romantic pairings on television (The Doctor and Rose, Mulder and Scully, Starbuck and Apollo, Veronica and Logan...), it is on a more rare occasion when the craftsmanship of the fan video is noticeably exceptional.
A few factors that I feel go into excellent fan video craftsmanship:
- choice of music
- timing, as in the editing of the visuals works in tandem with the music
- smooth transitions
- cohesive mood
I also enjoy a well-placed piece of dialogue allowed to play over the music. Frequently fan videos do not contain the actual dialogue from the scenes used.
I submit for your consideration, some of my favorites:
Cowboy Bebop - Stress
song by Jim's Big Ego
*spoiler alert: I was tackled the first time I went to watch this because I hadn't seen all of Cowboy Bebop yet, so be warned there are scenes from the last episode. But seriously, you haven't seen all of Cowboy Bebop yet? You should be watching that instead of reading this*
This might be the first fan video I ever watched, a few years ago in college. The song, which is about stress in an office type setting, goes so well with the plight of the anime's bounty hunting heroes. The whole video has a great sense of flow. I think the section involving conversation with a trumpet as the music behind a fight scene is especially strong.
10,000 Miles - Mulder/Scully
song by Mary Chapin Carpenter
I think this video takes the emotions of the characters seriously and conveys this by using a pretty melancholy ballad rather than the typical pop song. The song is also an interesting juxtaposition with the science fiction element of the story- this video focuses on both characters' alien abductions, drawing from the whole range of the show's nine seasons. But then, I always feel that scifi and fantasy use strangeness and intensity to convey emotions more openly than reality is able. I also enjoy the use of black and white to convey memories of times when the characters are together, and color to convey what seems to be the present for this story, times when they are apart.
Veronica Mars "Somewhere A Clock is Ticking"
song by Snow Patrol
This video has some great visual tricks. I love the use of a white flare between some of these early scenes, it feels like blinking. And a few times other bits of video are inserted into the background of scenes, notice the pictures in Veronica's apartment, sometimes they are moving with other images from the show. The way the song varies in intensity going from quiet to chaotic echoes Logan's unpredictable hostile intensity, as well as the volatile nature (of all teen romance) of his relationship with Veronica- a relationship he says he believes is "epic." Veronica is both drawn to this, as well as afraid of it. In general I just love this song, and it looks like fan video creators do too, if you search you'll find videos for Sylar from Heroes and Six from Battlestar Galactica, as well as several other videos set to this song.
I understand that fan videos raise issues about copyright. Frequently the people who make them understand this as well and add disclaimers to the end of their videos or in the sidebar information. I feel that this is one of the parts of copyright that is going to have to stretch a bit to accomodate the new kinds of creating people are doing on the Internet. Fan videos are expressing a love for someone else's creation, not trying to steal it or make money from it. I feel like that should go under a heading of attribution rather than make the creators of the original work cranky, but all of that is a discussion for another time.
For right now, I'll just say that the recombining of the media we consume is becoming a new way to tell stories, to appreciate that media, and also to say a bit about ourselves. The more of these fan videos I watch, the more I want to make one, but also, the more daunted that seems when I look at how much goes into the process of doing that well.
