Fan videos have been of interest to the Organization for Transformative Works for a long time, and last year various video and multimedia projects came to fruition. We have revamped the Fan Video and Multimedia project pages on the official OTW website and expanded our scope beyond the media fandom vidding tradition, to make it clearer that we aim to be inclusive of diverse traditions, and to be useful to a wide range of fan artists, be they vidders or AMV editors or fan film directors or remixers or any other involved creators.
2012 has already been an exciting year for the Fan Video & Multimedia project, with the release of Transformative Works and Cultures’ Fan/Remix Video issue on March 15th. In the wake of this release, we wanted to raise awareness about the embedding option of the Archive of Our Own that allows users to embed videos from a variety of streaming platforms. This option is particularly useful to fan video makers who may be worried about their work being taken down. Embedding your work on the Archive of Our Own means that, regardless of where your video is hosted, you will have a stable URL for your work as well as stable comments and hit counts. A different embed code can be swapped into the AO3 page for your work in case you decide to switch platforms, or face site closures or takedowns.
Initiated by the Fan Video & Multimedia group, this project benefited from the International & Outreach Committee’s collaboration. We have invited fan video makers to our Fan Video Diversity Showcase to declare, loudly and passionately, that all forms of fan video are welcome at the AO3. The OTW is committed to representing and protecting the history and creations of fan video makers from all traditions and nationalities.
This Fan Video Diversity Showcase is but an ‘appetizer’, a ‘trailer’, and we invite others to embed their videos on Archive of Our Own. Other video-related projects will follow as time and technology allow, but we believe that this is an important declaration of our commitment to fan video makers and viewers.
Natacha Guyot
OTW’s Vidding and International & Outreach Committees