The Story of a Fan: An Interview with @ncismelanie_

For those of you who don't know, Mélanie D'Anna aka @ncismelanie_ is a French graphic designer who is a huge House MD fan. She is well know among fans for her extremely high calibre fanvideos. They capture that deep dramatic or humorous Housian essence we crave to see in each episode. Recently she undertook a project for House MD after her incredible talent caught the attention of Executive Producer Greg Yaitanes and the leading man himself, Hugh Laurie. She was asked to create four short videos according to very different themes. Below is a link to her page which explains more about what took place, including a letter from Greg Yaitanes referring to the project, a picture of Hugh Laurie watching Mélanie's videos and the videos themselves:

http://www.melanie-d.com/housemd-project.html

Mélanie agreed to an interview when I asked if she could share a bit about her vidding experience both in general and for the [H] project, and she agreed. So here it is:

Q: What made you become such a huge House MD fan to the point of
creating fan videos of the show?

A: I always loved editing. House became a passion years after years. It's such an interesting show to edit thanks to its different themes : humor and drama. The character of House is very complex and has a lot of layers to "work" on. And why I'm a fan of House ? Simply the best of quality, interesting, entertaining, funny and powerful show on television in my opinion.

Q: Where did you learn to edit?

A: By myself :) I wish I could study it in school !

Q: You have an incredible talent for matching clips to music. Can you
share your vidding process?

A: Thank you Steph ! First of all I choose the theme : what do I want to tell in the video ? The second step is choosing the music. Without a good one I can't start anything. Then I scan the episodes to find the clips I need. And at the end of all of this, I finally start editing everything together.

Q: This project for House MD was a wonderful opportunity. What did you
learn from making these videos?

A: It was a really amazing opportunity ! For a fan of show, literally a
dream come true. I learnt to work with specific themes that I did not chose. It was a challenge. The biggest challenge was, I think, to edit on a song that I didn't
choose. That was the case for the Dick Van Dyke video.

Q: What went through your mind when you were making these videos?

A: I had so much fun making them, each of them was so special. I tried not to think for who I was making them and tried to do the same as I do for any video I make. But of course I was stressed to create them because I knew they were for the House crew but I was relieved when I've been told they liked all of them.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who admires your work and would
like to follow in your footsteps?

A: I think luck had a lot to do with what happened to me. There are a lot of talented "vidders" in this fandom and on the web. I would say you have to love editing cause it asks for a lot of patience. You have to be passionate about what you do :)Oh and "Be yourself and never let go" could be a great motto, don't you think ? ;)

Me: *Laughing* I really do! Thanks so much for agreeing to do this. Congratulations once again and good luck for future projects.

Mélanie will be visiting the House MD set next year.

Check out her other videos!
You can follow Mélanie on Twitter and subscribe to her Youtube page:
@ncismelanie_
http://www.youtube.com/user/NCISmelanie