Previously on kuwdora's witcher vid album: Albatross of Love, I made a babbling album announcement, I nattered about album concept/genre and song choices.
And now:
Have you ever started working on a fic, get into a good groove with it, and then the wheels come off, or you write yourself in circles? Or lose the thread of what scene you were trying to pull together?
Or have you ever had that time you were writing a fic and then it seemed like, maybe there was some kind of novel actually in the fic and you didn’t understand why it wanted to get bigger and bigger when you wanted to write this one story—not a series, not a novel. A single fic.
I had that experience while working on my witcher vid album this month.
I started working on what would be the first song on Albatross of Love. I had a strong concept of how this Yen/women ensemble piece would go, and it would be a banger of an opening.
I started laying clips and had a great opening, truly outstanding, I’m so happy and even want to make gifs of it.
And then. And then...
And then I started adding more clips and women as I made some visual connections between the way women have been treated in Aretuza, at home, everywhere from the beginning of the show. The more I added, the less it was … it was falling on the beat just fine, but it didn’t… feel right. It wasn’t bad, but… It wasn’t what I thought the vid would be about when I started working on it (a whole 2 days earlier).
So I stopped what I was doing. I created a new project and added all these clips there, and then tried to figure out what was going on. There was a greater arc and message about the women in the show here. And it was not as flashy and surface level as the BAMF Sorceresses. I had a whole other fucking vid here that I did not plan for in this album.
Now I’m going through my checklist of: is this actually a vid for the album? Or something I’ll make and share separately? What fucking song….is going make sense with this mess of clips? I spent 3 entire days between work and burnout, hunting for songs and rummaging through song recs in reddit, prodding my dusty forgotten playlists of abandoned songs. I knew… I could feel what kind of song it needed, something darker and more intense.
I was able to narrow down my choices and find something that I think could have worked. I bought the song and placed it under the jumble of clips and it absolutely turned into The Vid I Needed to Make for this album. I added more clips to this new project and I feel like my third eye opened. I shuffled 4 vid ideas around in the track listing and it feels like it was meant to be, omg.
I am tacitly calling this new vid WIP: Metamorphosis.
Let me put my journey another way with gifs. How it started —> how it’s going.
Anyway. If you ever had that time in which you wrote like a 65,000 word fic in 7 days or less, that's kind of what's happened to me over the last two weeks and this +6:00 minute vid.
Vid Farr[1] is that state of total obsession with a song or vid concept where nothing can stand between a vidder and her editing software...and live.
Sisabet on Vid Farr: "I'm actually pondering this mental shutdown thing fairly hard cause that is how I know I am going into Vid Farr: I stop thinking and it just happens."[2]
Pre Vividcon vidding can become an unstoppable Con Farr/Vid Farr hybrid madness.[3] Fear it.
Sisabet in her 2005 livejournal entry really summing up all the pre-work, pre-vidding that happens in your head before you ever open up the software:
Pre-Vid I am nothing but think. The song is on repeat for forever. I don't get tired of a song as long as I am still figuring it out and it is still telling me something. So listening to one song for weeks at a time is a joy. Like a brain teaser. And I'll read fic. I'll search for something that resonates with me - that bounces off the source and the song. There is a lot of thinking going on here. Too much, if you are misfortunate to end up with me in chat when I am on a roll in a Pre-Vid state. But they aren't all my thoughts. They are this mish-mosh of other people's insights and fic and possibly something else that I haven't even considered. But when you get to the timeline, everything is fair game.
Too real. I need to dig up that Ben Wyatt meme for this album (swap out 'depressed' with 'burnt out.')
I spent most of November having one vid playing in my head in the background while I worked on Metamorphosis, which is a completely different witcher vid, heh.
I finally got Metamorphosis done enough that I spent Sunday-Tuesday night clipping season 4 scenes for the next vid, Working Class Heroes. Three days clipping, then I started laying clips after work on Wednesday night after dinner.
Day 1 of editing. By 10pm Wednesday my timeline looked like this:
Only a few blank spots but I had the bulk of the vid fully existing in my head already.
Day 2. Then Thursday evening after work I'm zooming through the timeline some more:
I took Friday off. On Saturday I got the rest of the vid pretty much smoothed out, with a few exceptions I need to go back and poke into shape:
Looking closely enough, one may find that I actually made the song a little longer because I needed juuust a little more to fit in everything I needed.
So when I get excited, I get a ton of vid ideas and easily overwhelmed about what I actually want to commit to doing. Especially when I already have a Festivid assignment I need to get done before January. And some other WIPs I’ve been wanting to tackle….Yet when it comes to the witcher, all my other fic and vid vid WIPs get placed on a back burner.
TWN Season 4. Omg. I just had vid idea after vid idea, or desires to vid things without knowing what songs, or wanted to use ALL the songs, because I just had too many thoughts and little idea how to prioritize.
Then I realized what I could do and what I should do. I’m making a Witcher vid album. I was definitely inspired by Jagged Little Slayer the Buffy vid album by @periru3 and @tafadhali. That vid album was so fucking good from the use of the songs, to the character and lyrical associations, and matching mood and tone to different emotional arcs and plots. (I still have the album open in a tab for future commenting!) (Vid fans and Buffy fans should go and watch it!)
I realized I could, and SHOULD, make a witcher vid album like two days after the season dropped. So this was all just coming in fast and hot and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind along the way, but in the good way. I spent that first weekend thinking about songs and album sequencing—creating it like a vidshow of sorts, with pacing and variety of characters so that it’s actually like a 25 minute vidshow, instead of only 8 or 9 stand-alone vids (that will all be posted separately).
The possibilities just… become so much bigger and unique when thinking about how to make the song choices and character associations relate to one another and as a collective/series.
In my creative frenzy, after a few days of thinking what I most liked about the show, what I’m taking away from the characters portrayals, getting high on season 4….and my feelings about the show as an adaptation of the books…aaaaand how I could try to pull things together for a thematic story.
I realized I wanted to make this a rock album.
So it’s going to be all rock music. Rock and rock sub-genres. A Witcher rock vid album. It’s a mouthful.
But also: what about the album name? Well my brain went hog wild workshopping ideas and thoughts for that too. What can speak about the collective of songs, and the things I want to vid about the show and characters?
I’m pretty settled on the following name for the album:
Albatross of Love.
I’m 99% settled on about 9 songs for the album. And @supercupcakecollector-love the song you sent me last year is absolutely getting the place of honor on album.
....And @dancingwiththefae mused aloud several weeks (..months??) ago about some music for A Character, which absolutely is inspired. And has inspired me. And is happening. (It’s already in progress.)
So I’m making a witcher vid album. I’m bursting with incoherent glee and that creative mania. I’m going to Post about it, omg. Commentary and maybe snippets, and process notes as I become more unhinged and excited.
Going to use the tag witcher vid album: albatross of love.
It’s going to be a project that I’m going to ride that dopamine wave through this fucking burnout and seasonal grief.
I’m half-convinced I want to make album booklet, too. That might be too ambitious but my god my soul is just burning with excitement at the thought.
Not sure if I will share the track listing before I release each vid, cause I kind of like holding onto the song choice for the surprise factor. But omg I’m already a month into this project and need to babble about everything I’m experiencing.. so we’ll see if I spill my own beans about all of the songs, nyahhhah.
This album is going to feature all of the awesomeness of the women, Ciri’s Journey, yenralt feelings, the Jaskier song that has been on loop for me while writing him since 2021 (and I didn't think I'd ever get enough canon source to make this Jaskier vid, omg but I did), aaaand more.
I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster of squee. I’m so, so fucking excited. I love vidding the Witcher Netflix so much.
witcher vid album: Albatross of Love - genre and vidsong choices
Vidder’s log: first month of the project. An obsessive 4 week campaign in which I lose my mind in the possibilities.
A common question that vidders trade back and forth with each other is, “do you have the song idea first or the character/ship/story idea first?”
There’s a lot of variability in answers for that. Each vidder hears and sees music and their blorbos, obsessions, and shows in their own way. And projects can be similar and different from another for the same vidder, too. Just like the way a person might run with a fic prompt or lyric inspiration for their writing.
For many years I always started with a song that I heard and thought it would be great for X, Y or Z. A lyric that made me immediately think of a character or their feelings or something that happened in their story. That method of vidsong choice served me well.
I also have numerous playlists full of songs that Feel Like a Vidsong, but I don’t quite know what show or character it’s for. Like… it hasn’t been reveled to me. Hasn’t found it’s home yet. I have 2-3 witcher vidsong playlists (things I’ve collected over the years, other song inspo from group chats) and that’s also a matter of just… getting around to doing it.
I’ve since gravitated towards Idea First. I start with the idea and try to find the right genre, lyrics, and mood of a song that can help make the vid idea come to life.
Multiple songs could work for a certain vid concept or character. Sometimes it’s a matter of trying to use one song and see how it works. But more often than not I don’t even get to that stage, since I do a lot of mentally breaking down why I like the song, how it aligns with the idea. I end up making a bunch of creative decisions before I even open my video editing software:
1a) will this song help me make the vid idea?
1b) is this the vid idea I actually want to make? (Or what I think I’m making?)
2a) will this song help scratch that creative itch?
2b) will this song help scratch that fannish itch?
3) do I care if the song doesn’t completely align with the character’s journey, or vice versa?
Sometimes I’ve worked on a vid and it’s gone in a completely different direction and I have to ask myself:
4) do I want to let the vid become what it’s trying to be? Or do I redirect towards my original vision? Or do I start over, or get tired and abandon the project from decision fatigue? Or do I make a new project and do Both? It can really depend on the project and how I’m gnawing on the creative process.
Sometimes I just don’t care and I want to vid it because of the beat, or because a character expression or something, and I just run with it and don’t look backwards.
This is all coming around to say: the witcher vid album absolutely was a result of Song First, (thank you @supercupcakecollector and @dancingwiththefae). Yet I was teething on the songs and quickly realized there was so much more to dig into if I took the song first—the genre—and completely ran with it to a whole album direction for the Witcher Netflix. I
Which meant the next series of questions: what kind of album, what kind of genre, how many songs?? Track synchronization. Same artist or a compilation of artists?
Since rock is a very broad genre there’s a lot of flexibility in the way I could do with that idea and definitely going with a variety of rock artists from subgenres. Step into the sandbox and play. And let me tell you, I discovered vidsong ideas for the witcher that I would never have thought of if I didn’t start from the original song inspiration from @supercupcakecollector-love and @dancingwiththefae and teased it out into an album concept.
Then comes the next series of choices: (again) how many songs? What character and relationships do I vid? So much inspiration coming out of my first season 4 viewing, I like to immediately jump on a seasonal theme, but there was more to the idea than just a single season. There was a lot of character work that I could expand upon and connect to other characters and songs and overlay the show’s narrative context with the rock genre from the beginning of the show.
Okay what the fuck do I mean? I mean, The sorceresses are BAMFs and covered in blood and ichor, magic power is cool, and that needs a certain kind of song to showcase that awesomeness. Then next: Ciri let go and became feral and did drugs and murder and kissing women. Need the right kind of song for her journey an the guitar riff to match. (And my god, I found the Ciri and I’m going to cry when I start working on it because it’s so epic. And also very long BUT hopefully worth it.)
So on and so forth. The Hansa and their journey is also got their flavor of rock—as do The Rats—different musical counterpoints in their quests and placement on the album.
Who and what do I choose to include in the album? What do I leave out for the album specifically? Is it because I can’t find a song for them, or is it because I want to try and maintain the musical and narrative feel of the album. I can find songs for just about everyone, but I’m still not sure if I want to make a 12 or 15 song album because of length and my own attention span for the project, but also I don’t want to lose sight of what I think I’m setting out to do with this project.
Every song I have reviewed and meditated on with the thought of: will this specific vidsong support the concept and theme of the album?
So I might not have a vid dedicated to every single character that showed up in one or two seasons, but I told myself I can always come back later and make another vid for them—since I’ve certainly been vidding the witcher every year and don’t lack for motivation and inspiration.
I also have a few songs that I have in ‘placeholder’ stage for the album—things that could reasonably be bonus tracks, which I think is a fun concept to play with as well.
I’m also contemplating on making polls to have people vote for the bonus tracks that I make for the album. Maybe I run a few polls after I finish releasing the album and let people vote on the bonus tracks once folks have seen the other vids. I would poll with the songs that I already had picked out for the album.
But maybe if I get a third or 4th wind and finish my festivid assignment, maybe I’ll do another non-album poll and take some witcher netflix vid prompt-requests so people can have some more choice and see what I could make of their song/character ideas. There is a specific kind of journey in playing with your own song choice for a vid, and then also taking a vidprompt, like a fic, and figuring out: how do I make this idea for this person? And/or do I show them how I would do their idea? It’s like tailoring your yuletide fic for your recipient and all. But also you want to have fun and have that come across in whatever ends up on the screen. There is a huge fountain of inspiration in the fandom, even as sleepy as the fandom is these days.
Right now I went from 8 songs to 9 on the album. But I’ve only been working on this project for a month and I have a lot more work ahead of me, so things might change.
It's going to be quite the journey from where I start in the album, musically, to where it ends. I'm so fucking excited.
god I have another, like, 30,000 words I could say about song choices. I'll have to break it up into smaller posts!
Hello Dear! I see you've gotten quite a few asks on the vidders ask, and I can't keep track of what's still available to ask.
So please answer the one you'd like to answer, that you haven't been asked yet ha.
(Does that work, or is that cheating?)
omg hi you! this is the perfect opportunity and asker for what i want to share!
Right. So. There are those of us who like much or all of the witcher canons for various things and reasons. I am one of those people. In 2021 I started playing around with the idea of making a pan-canon witcher vid.
What is one thing that all the witcher canons have in common? Geralt wishes he wasn't the main character. He would rather not have to deal with anybody or anything. Also everyone seems to want a piece of him at some point.
With in mind, I present to you about ~0:30 seconds of Hey, Witcher:
music: No Doubt's "Hey Baby"
source: The Witcher Netflix, Hexer, Witcher Wild Hunt.
I haven't worked on this in over 2 years. But I might just be inspired to get back to it again..season 4..another Geralt to add to this, and Regis and the things that happened in season 3, mwaha.
Thank you for the ask!!
also here is my complete list of witcher fanvids I've finished so far
Witcher Wip time! Would anyone like some horny Yennefer? Here's a snippet from the Yen/Freya thing. It's trying to be more angsty and convoluted before they even take off their clothes and get to the goddess sex magic part. Post book/game canon.
The Great Mondren sits down next to Yennefer and her golden-eyed gaze drifts to Yennefer's neck.
"Your pendant," the goddess says. Her words are swathed in husky tenor that many women of the isle share. She says nothing further.
Yennefer frowns, her hand drifting to her neck. Self-consciousness was beneath her. But curiosity was not.
"My pendant," Yennefer echoes.
"It is not the same one you wore when you first came to me.
It was such a specific and unusual statement, free of aphorisms and opaque sentiment. Yennefer wasn't expecting that. But she didn't know why the Mondren was drawing attention to it.
"I had been held captive. It was taken from me." Yennefer had little reason to dwell on the memories of her time at Stygga. They had not broken her. Yennefer knew this. The goddess knew this. Yennefer senses, somehow, the goddess wanted to hear this aloud.
The Mondren's fingers brush Yennefer's neck, skating along the strap holding the pendant snug against her skin. "You replaced it. After." The glacial pace of the goddess' touch did more to stoke the fire and impatience between her legs than she's felt in…ages.
"Yes," she confirms, and it wasn't quite telepathy brushing across her mind, but a nudge of intention on the goddess' behalf that she adds, "—it focuses my power. Amplifies it when necessary."
Yennefer aches everywhere. The Mondren does not invite her touch, but she doesn't stop Yennefer's from having an eyeful of her very pregnant stomach and large breasts, of Brisingamen snug in her bosom.
Calloused fingers stroke upward from pendant to chin. It takes all Yennefer's fortitude not close her eyes and drag the goddess hand downward to fucking touch her throbbing cunt.
Breathe — and it's more than a voice inside her head, it's expansive and comes from deep within her body from everywhere at the same time. Yennefer trembles, the air shakily leaving her lungs. She moans as desperate and needy as an indignant kitten fighting her way past her littermates to her mother's milk. Yennefer licks her lips.
She whose mortal-given name feels inadequate on Yennefer's tongue cups Yennefer's cheek, fingers bracketing her chin and ear.
Yennefer nuzzles the Mondren's steady hand, the thundering of her pulse growing loud in her ears. She drifts in the warmth. A thumb gently bops her on the chin. Yennefer blinks slowly and with great effort.
"This pendant was also taken from you, but your mind has been shielded from the memory," the goddess says.
The statement didn't sound like a lie coming from the goddess' mouth and it didn't feel like one. Even though Yennefer knew it wasn't true.
"It's always been in my possession."
"You have been in the possession of the crimson cavalcade that carried you along the nexus of worlds, and so your pendant was in their possession."
The goddess strokes her cheek and Yennefer blinks through the fog of arousal.
"You can't expect me to sit here and," Yennefer takes another deep, steadying breath, "translate your abstract nonsense and poetry when you're touching me like this."
that perennial fic writing experience. where you have the idea and you know the shape of the story you're trying to share. right? right. 😅
a bajillion months ago i had sent @witch-and-her-witcher some of my ciri fic draft. and after some back and forth about what was going on, here was Cee's conclusion:
i gotta tag @xianvar here 'cos i have said the same thing to them once upon a time and their big bang turned into a galactic 100k bang. i can hear them cackling already.
@witch-and-her-witcher you were of course right. 😆
i've managed to write 300 words here and there for the last few weeks. all wrapped up in the ciri book feelings. and. well. here is the current wordcount next to my original wordcount goal:
14k of ciri feelings. and i think i've pretty much reached the part of the story that i had actually intended on writing when i first had the idea.
also i know @sassaffrassa will be pleased to hear that i didn't let myself get lost in all of the other story ideas that sprung up during the drafting process. 'Cause I remembered the core of what I wanted to explore with ciri and ye olde book events that got glossed for game canon. putting all the other ideas in a separate document so I don't get lost again. too many ideas.
i doubt it'll stay at 14k but i think (knock on wood) i have the foundation down by now. gonna try to get it into better shape in the next few weeks if i can keep my momentum going.
writing!!! am so tired. reading!! am so tired. but by god i am going slowly keep doing the things i'm enjoying. ❤️
