Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Critical Contexts: Television Studies, Fandom Studies, and the Vid
- 2 Approach: How to Study a Vid
- 3 Proximate Forms and Sites of Encounter : Music Video and Experimental Tradition
- 4 Textures of Fascination: Archives, Vids, and Vernacular Historiography
- 5 Critical Spectatorship and Spectacle: Multifandom Vids
- 6 Adapting Starbuck: Dualbunny’s Battlestar Galactica Trilogy
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
4 - Textures of Fascination: Archives, Vids, and Vernacular Historiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Critical Contexts: Television Studies, Fandom Studies, and the Vid
- 2 Approach: How to Study a Vid
- 3 Proximate Forms and Sites of Encounter : Music Video and Experimental Tradition
- 4 Textures of Fascination: Archives, Vids, and Vernacular Historiography
- 5 Critical Spectatorship and Spectacle: Multifandom Vids
- 6 Adapting Starbuck: Dualbunny’s Battlestar Galactica Trilogy
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Abstract
What does the analysis of vids reveal about histories, memories, and practices of watching television? This chapter compares contrasting theoretical understandings of collections and archives to contextualize the archival work done by vidders and watched by vids’ audiences. Videotape-era vids (then called ‘songtapes’) bear traces of their archival origins as selective use of clips, and the wear evident on the copies strongly indicate a viewer’s favourite moments, telling a story of practices of re-viewing, interpretation, and memorialization of texts. These archival traces are visible on the vids themselves and chronicle the unofficial distribution networks of videotape and the returning to favourite scenes that cause wear on the tape itself. These personal historiographies are presented in the content and texture of a vid.
Keywords: fanvids, television, fan studies, archives, videotape, Star Trek
This chapter is concerned with the practical and material dimensions of vids. Central to this are the following assertions: vids originate in personal archives; they describe a history of home video; and they themselves act as an archive in collating, organizing, and memorializing a body of work. My concern is the vid's place within the context of changing home video technology, specifically the creation and maintenance of home video collections that provide vidders with their raw material. The materiality of the vid form exists beyond the transformation that occurs when video clips are re-edited into new works. This chapter explores the traces of that materiality.
Throughout this book, I use home video to encompass television episodes recorded off broadcast television (onto videotape, DVD, or hard drive), films obtained in the same manner, as well as film and television sold in pre-recorded formats, obtained directly or duplicated from existing recordings. This duplication may be through tape-to-tape dubbing, format-shifting, or downloading a copy of a file. Home video collections will often include recordings of both television and film, and there is no useful reason to separate film from television in instances when their distribution and storage is so similar. Vids are made from both film and television sources—often separately, but vids will mix media—and therefore vids embody this technical parity. What matters is the availability (and quality) of clips necessary to make vids. As will be shown in this chapter's Star Trek examples, to make vids of a franchise with narrative continuity across television and film will require the use of both kinds of source material.
- Type
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- Information
- FanvidsTelevision, Women, and Home Media Re-Use, pp. 97 - 136Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020