Vidding Exercises for Creative Distraction

Hi everyone!

Tomorrow is the official due date, such as it is, for Vexercise 1. But I'll be traveling (NYC here I come!) so I thought I'd post now.

How'd your haikus and pechakuchas go? I know folks have already written some thoughts about the differences between the two. 

I found for myself that haikus are almost good breeding ground for full vids, where pechakuchas are perhaps better for learning or just experimenting with a source. (And it sounded like others felt the same). But I really enjoy for both of them the set rules to follow--having those sort of frees me up to play more with less anxiety about whether I'm doing it perfectly, and then (paradoxically?) I feel more creative.

Curious to hear how they work for others! Are you eager to have less rules for upcoming vexercises? More time to work with (timeline wise, that is)?

Vex 2 drops on Sunday! (I'll try my best to steal some time in our travels to post it...) 

Hi all! Today is the official beginning of the summer vexercises! We're excited to get going!

Welcome to new folks and to familiar vexercisers! We've got a new set of vexercises planned for the summer, but you can always choose to do one of the earlier versions of any particular vexercise (whether you've done them before or not), or to do all of the OG vexercises, if you'd like! We'll link to the earlier versions each time a new vexercise posts as well.

Logistics: Generally, the way this works is: We drop a vexercise, with some explanation and examples. Feel free to ask questions or to share examples of vids that are in the vein of a particular challenge, or relevant resources in that post. A week later we'll make a check in post to see how everyone is doing. And the following week (on Saturday), the vexercise will be "due." Then, on the next day (Sunday) we'll drop the next vexercise, and follow the same two-week cycle. It's pretty simple!

Quick note on due dates and rules: Due dates are always as firm or as flexible as you need them to be for your creative process or RL schedule. And that goes for pretty much anything re: the vexercises, including the "rules" of each vexercise, even the minute length. You can take them as iron clad if that helps you, or you can approach them as more flexible guidelines if you'd rather.

So, without further ado, here's summer school vexercise one!

This came out of a suggestion at vidukon which we thought was a really cool concept--what would the poetry structure of a Haiku look like if reimagined for a vid? Let's find out! What we know so far: they're a bit faster paced than the pechakuchas, which is refreshing, but also a bit potentially challenging rhythmically. Using a song that's 120 beats per minute might help make it simpler, but you can always use the internal edits of the source itself to add a cut if you feel like it needs one. Or you can absolutely do the OG pechakuchas, details linked here!

I've made a couple of haikus. For the first one, I followed the "rules" very closely, and for the other I made a double haiku, for which I took some more liberties. Because this is the first time we've done this haiku thing, these are the only two examples we have right now! I can't wait to see what folks come up with so we can expand this list. But for now:


Post any initial questions you have here, as well as any pechakuchas or comments that you make! Also stay tuned in the very near future for a post on technology questions & possibilities.