Veni Vidi Vids! - Katharina Freund

“Veni, Vidi, Vids!” Fan video editors and the strategic remix of popular cultureKatharina Freund. PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong.

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“It starts with a story.” – Vidder interviewee.

Fan vidders are a little-known subculture with media fandom. Without formal training,

these people craft remix videos on their personal computers, appropriating pre-existing television

and film footage and editing it to music to create what has variously been called songvids, fan vids,

or fan music vids by outsiders. To this group, though, they are a dynamic and engaging

demonstration of their passion for the media that they consume. However, these vids often convey

meanings not intended by their original creators but rather are manipulated to carry the desires of

this unique and highly media literate audience of editors. They are shared and downloaded on

streaming video and file-sharing sites, and discussed and critiqued in the Livejournal communities

where the vidders congregate online.

Contrary to the popular image of the remix artist as a white teenage boy, the vidders occupy

a rather different demographic. Over ninety percent of this group is female, and the majority are

ages 18 – 35, although many are into their 40s and 50s. They are students, nurses, clerks, small-

business owners, housewives, and IT professionals. And they are media fans: they write fanfiction,

attend conventions, hold viewing parties, and socialize with other fans on Livejournal.com. But

firstly, they are avid television viewers. This female audience of fans is extremely media-savvy, but

they have a conflicted relationship to the texts they love, as media products are mostly created by

men. Fans desire certain outcomes, certain storylines, even certain character types from their

favourite shows, and the shows frequently do not conform to the aspirations of this audience. But

as one vidder told me, though, “The best stories come out of frustration.”

“Because popular narratives often fail to satisfy,” writes Henry Jenkins, “fans must struggle

with them, to try to articulate to themselves and others unrealized possibilities within the original

works. Because the texts continue to fascinate, fans cannot dismiss them from their attention but

rather must try to find ways to salvage them for their interests.” (1992, p. 23) Along with fanfiction

writers, vidders chose to re-write the text to suit their unique interpretations and interests. They

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engage in an “ongoing struggle for discursive dominance” with the media producers (Johnson 2007,

p. 291), which often leads to two separate versions of the text: the canon, or original source, and the

fanon, “a fantasy based on the needs of individual writers rather than the reality established by

shared source text” (Driscoll 2009, p. 88).

The canon text is taken up by fans, and reworked in a postmodern, multivocal, and

intertextual fashion (Statsi 2006). According to Hellekson and Busse (2006), serial television

production is “...the ultimate writerly text. It invites the viewer to enter, interpret, and expand the

text. In doing so, the open-source text in particular invites fan fiction as an expansion to the source

universe and as interpretive fan engagement where the fan not only analyzes the text but must

constantly negotiate her analyses.” (p. 6) The vidders take great advantage of the nature of serial

television, then, and use their tech savvy and extensive pop culture literacy in order to alter, shift,

restructure, and engage in critical commentary on the television series they love.

Unlike fanfic authors, vidders utilize new media remix forms in order to tell their stories.

Speaking of DJ culture, Lev Manovich (2004) argues that “the true art lies in the mix”. (p. 135) In

these new media forms, authorship is no longer creation but selection, where “the essence of the [...]

art is the ability to mix selected elements in rich and sophisticated ways.” (ibid) I argue that vidders

semiotically deconstruct the source material in very specific ways through a reorganization of the

paradigmatic (thematic) elements into a new syntax (narrative).

To create a vid, similar “paradigmatic” or thematic/categorical elements are extracted from

the original syntax/narrative of the source material. These elements are then re-arranged into a

new syntax, the narrative of the vid rather than the source narrative. Vids utilize the genre and

cinematography conventions of television in order to manipulate the source material into a clear

narrative. Drawing on Claudia Gorbman’s 1987 study of film music, I argue that the music of the vid

acts as a backbone for the story being told through semiotic anchorage. Gorbman describes how

music is able to cement the narrative in film by taking advantage of the subconscious emotional

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impact of music, known as suture theory, where the music “inflects the narrative with emotive

values via [shared] cultural musical codes.” (p. 4)

For the purposes of this paper, I will draw on vidding examples using a single source, the

CW’s Supernatural (2005 – present), in order to highlight how this community is able to make a

variety of interpretations from the same source material as it is manipulated in different ways

depending on the individual vidders’ needs and desires for the text. Currently in its fourth season,

Supernatural is a horror-action-thriller series created by Eric Kripke. It stars Jensen Ackles and

Jared Padalecki as brothers Dean and Sam Winchester, who are raised to kill supernatural monsters

and demons by their father after their mother is killed in mysterious circumstances. The show

combines a “monster-of-the-week” format with season-long overarching plotlines, such as the boys’

quest to find their father (Season One), or Sam’s efforts to stop his brother from going to hell after

he sells his soul (Season Three). Current episodes deal with the boys becoming caught up in a

greater battle between angels and demons.

Figure 1: Promotional Ad for Supernatural

As seen in this advertisement (Fig. 1), the network’s promotion for the series is focused on

the thriller-horror elements of the series and the sex appeal of its lead actors, as the Winchesters

hunt monsters across the United States in the ultimate road trip. The series was immediately

popular with vidders, with the first vids being released online after only the first episodes had been

aired. As the fanon version of the show began to develop, specific themes from the source were

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taken up and reworked by the community. With the kind permission of their editors, I will now turn

to discuss specific examples of these different vidding interpretations.

Following the advertisement as seen in Figure 1, Melissa’s vid “We Will Rock You” set to the

song of the same title by Queen is congruent with the network’s promotion for the series. Using

straight cutting of clips with no effects, the vid focuses on the adventure and heroic elements of the

series, and features the boys investigating murders, fighting monsters, and saving lives. The editing

is exciting and dynamic, highlighting the machismo and manly camaraderie of the series.

Figures 2 – 4: Clips from “We Will Rock You” by Melissa

As seen in the above images (Figs. 2-4), the camera shots chosen are medium long or medium in

distance. In addition to the standard straight-on angle, a number of low-angle shots are included in

this vid which helps the view to see the boys as larger-than-life action heroes. The use of a 1970s

rock anthem further solidifies this interpretation.

The show is designed to be a supernatural thriller, with gross-outs, scares, and chills to

shock the audience, and only contains a minimum of melodramatic elements. In the vid “Forgiven

and Forsaken”, though, the vidder loki has drawn together the melodramatic elements from across

the episodes and connected them in order to shift the focus of the source from action-horror onto

the relationship between the brothers.

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Figures 5 – 7: Clips from “Forgiven and Forsaken” by loki

Opening slowly, the vid lingers on the facial expressions of the characters with the soft piano

introduction of the music. The visuals have been shifted into muted tones and black and white, and

flashes of melodramatic scenes are matched to the rhythm of the music to achieve an emotional

impact in the viewer. The action-based elements of the show are moved into the background, and

the close-up camera shots allow intimacy with the character and their point of view (Figs. 5-7).

Contrast this with the previous video, where the entire bodies of the characters were included in

the shots to draw attention to the physical aspects of the series.

In addition to elaborating on elements already existing in the original text, vids commonly

also invent subtext of their own. In “Here in Your Car” by dalyn03, the nearly invisible homoerotic

subtext of the series is dramatically expanded upon to create a hypothetical sexual relationship

between the brothers. Drawing on the tropes of the well-known genre of fanfiction known as

“slash”, wherein two male characters are cast into a homosexual relationship, this vid uses

advanced video manipulation techniques to insert the two characters into sexual encounters with

each other. Scenes of the brothers touching or smiling at each other are tied together with an

upbeat, romantic pop song to create the narrative of their passionate relationship with each other.

Figures 8 – 10: Clips from “Here in Your Car” by dalyn03

The vid takes advantage of the over-the-shoulder and eye-line matching camera angles (inserted

into the same frame as seen in Fig. 8) commonly used in television cinematography to make it

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appear as though the brothers are staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. The footage itself is also

directly manipulated: as seen in Fig. 9, the women originally kissing each of the Winchesters

separately have been meticulously removed, and the two male characters stitched together.

These three vids take advantage of the codes of well-known genres, and are easy to

understand as long as the viewer is aware of the conventions of the action, the melodrama, and the

romance, as well as those of the music chosen to reinforce those interpretations (70s rock, the

ballad, and the love song respectively). Vidders also utilize many different codes simultaneously, as

they may engage with many separate interpretations of the same source. Melissa, the editor of “We

Will Rock You”, for example, recently released a slash vid for Supernatural which is a darkly erotic

look at incest between the brothers.

Highly skilled editors are also able to craft entirely new narratives using existing source

footage to tell any story they like, which are colloquially known as “Alternate Universe” vids or AUs.

In “Impulse”, vidder NYCalls0909 uses Supernatural to tell her own tale of a serial killer and drug

addict (played by Dean) who is released from custody into the care of his brother (Sam), who is

horrified to discover him killing again. Clips are cleverly taken out of their original context and

given an entirely new interpretation in this vid. Any image that is useful is utilized, regardless of

how it appeared in the canon text. In the montage of images, the dynamic relationship between

shots and the juxtaposition of the elements are able to create ideas not present in either shot by

itself. This is known as the Kuleshov Effect, where the spectator infers a relationship between

separate shots in the absence of an establishing shot (Bordwell and Thompson, 2004).

For example, Dean does not smoke in the series. A close-up shot of a cigarette being lit by

another character (Fig. 11) and then dropped (Fig. 13) is intercut with a well-chosen shot of Dean

(Fig. 12) with his hand positioned in such a way as to make it appear that he is the one performing

these actions.

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Figures 11 – 13: A montage sequence from “Impulse” by NYCalls0909

This vid develops this idea throughout, as it uses shots of women

running in fear and blood spatter mixed with images of Dean in

order to solidify this “alternate universe” narrative. An angry alt rock song is combined with grainy

grey visuals, and the video concludes with a list of Dean’s crimes and announces that he was

executed. For the audience of this type of vid, the pleasure lies in recognizing the editor’s skill at

manipulating the source while they are aware of the original context of the footage. Interestingly, a

similar vid has also been made where it is Sam, rather than Dean, who is the murderer.

Not all vidders have such a playful attitude towards the source text. One extremely well-

known vid instead takes an extremely critical and even angry standpoint in regards to Supernatural.

Sisabet and Luminosity’s vid “Women’s Work” deals with an element of the series invisible in all the

previous vids: its (mis)treatment of its female characters. As Sisabet explains in her notes about the

vid: “The shit I deal with every day, the crap we watch every day, the goddamn Captivity

trailers/billboards, the fucking torture-porn-a-thon of a new movie every week this spring, the

woman of the week on EVERY GODDAMN SHOW I love [...] but hell, all of it leads to just sitting down

and wanting to at least point some of it out.” (http://sisabet.livejournal.com/365275.html). Sisabet

also comments on the music she chose from Hole’s album “Live Through This”, which “contains

some truly amazing rage based on feelings of hopeless feministic impotence.” (ibid)

Unlike the previous vids, “Women’s Work” demands a more sophisticated audience, asking

its viewer to move beyond the text and examine it critically from the outside. It confronts the

passive audience and demands that it pay attention to the wider social issues embedded in the

shows they watch every day.

“Women’s Work” extracts the

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five tropes of female characters and brings them together in a revealing and thoughtful

deconstruction, moving to examine the woman as a (often sexualized) victim, the woman as a

sexual object, the woman as a martyr, the “woman of the week” disposable love interest, and finally

the woman as monstrous as they are displayed in this particular source in order to make a

statement about the wider role of female characters in the media (see Figs. 14 – 16 below).

Figures 14 – 16: Shots of female characters from “Women’s Work” by Sisabet and Luminosity.

“Women’s Work” has been extremely influential to the vidders, with many community members

reacting in shock to how effectively the vid problematizes such a beloved show. One interviewee I

spoke to commented that this vid demonstrated the “blatant misogyny” of Supernatural to her so

effectively that she has since stopped watching it altogether.

Similar to “Women’s Work”, Ash’s vid “Channel Hopping” exists beyond any particular

narrative. As the brothers channel surf their television, they find themselves edited into The Odd

Couple, Starsky and Hutch, So You Think You Can Dance, Days of Our Lives, E.R., The Love Boat, Knight

Rider, The Twilight Zone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mission: Impossible, Friends, and Simon and

Simon. Using theme songs from each series set to footage from Supernatural, “Channel Hopping”

crafts an extremely media-literate commentary on both the influences of Supernatural itself and on

genre television as a whole. Each section manipulates the original footage to suit the genre and

cinematography conventions of each new series: for example, the montage set to E.R. is washed in a

blue tone and uses panning close-ups in homage to the opening credits of the original while the

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Twilight Zone section is set in black and white and utilizes occult imagery to match the tone of that

source. A great deal of humour is added as the Winchesters seem rather confused as to how they

have ended up in each of these other shows.

Figures 17 – 19: The E.R. sequence (17-18) and the Twilight Zone sequence (19) from “Channel Hopping” by Ash.

In Television, Technology, and the Cultural Form, Raymond Williams (1975) described the notion of

“flow”: unlike cinema or theatre, television cannot be understood as discrete programming but is

rather always cuing the audience member for the upcoming show, the upcoming episode. As avid

television watchers, vidders engage with the flow of programming and become immersed in the

mediascape, which allows them to make connections between shows and understand how they

influence each other.

Each of the vids described above seeks to demonstrate the thoughtful media observations

occurring in the vidding community. I chose examples which would be easily conveyable to an

audience without any knowledge of the source material, but there are many which draw heavily on

specific plot points from the text to make complex and thoughtful meditations on the themes of

death, resurrection, heaven and hell, incest, and violence, in addition to the many parodies and

tributes to the actors and crew. This is a very thriving interpretative community with unique

reading practices and their own aesthetic style and concerns. Based on their extremely in-depth

knowledge of television standards and traditions, they are able to make creative, critical and above

all playful commentary in the media they consume, and they share these insights with each other.

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Vids provide a dynamic way to examine the ways in which audiences engaged with the media they

consume every day.

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References Cited

Appadurai, Arjun (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy. Public Culture 2(2): 1-24

Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge, 1982.

Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004.

Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. Digital Formations. Ed. Steve Jones. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005.

Driscoll, Catherine. “One True Pairing: The Romance of Pornography and the Pornography of Romance.” in Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Johnson, Derek. “Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom.” in Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

Sisabet. “New Vid! Women’s Work.” Personal Livejournal. 15/8/2007. <http://sisabet.livejournal.com/365275.html > Accessed 2/4/2009.

Stasi, Mafalda. “The Toy Solider from Leeds: The Slash Palimpsest.” in Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

Williams, Raymond. Television, Technology, and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.

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