Vexercise 1 Drops! (2021 Edition)

[lola]

Hi all!!! Here we go, the first vexercise of the 2021 edition! We're so excited to play in this sandbox again, and hope you are all as well!

For this first vexercise, we decided to keep it simple and stay with the original version of the vexercise. We've found that this vidding pechakucha variation has been a terrific exercises for people new to vidding to learn the ropes of editing, and for old timers to try out new media sources, new ideas, or to embrace the limitations and to see what you can do within them. So many amazing and inspiring videos came out of these vexercises last year. You can see them on this YouTube playlist that bonibaru  put together, plus others that were not posted to YouTube at the Vexercise collection on A03. 

Here are the instructions/guidelines for this first vexercise: 


1) Pechakucha 2 ways

Create a video edit of exactly 60 seconds consisting of precisely 10 video clips from your chosen source text, each lasting precisely 6 seconds, assembled with straight cuts. Make two versions of your pechakucha, with 1 minute excerpts from two different songs as audio. Fade in and out on your audio at the beginning and end of the audio clip.

[Word to the wise: Most six second clips that you use are bound to have in-clip cuts--you don't have to go looking only for clips that have no internal cuts. But you can make those internal cuts work for you rhythmically or thematically etc!]

[This exercise is inspired directly by the first of the videographic criticism exercises, but modified here to be vid/fanedit focused with the inclusion of music from an outside source. You can see some examples of the original videographic pechakucha’s here and a more vidlike one Lola made here. !!And now you can see way more wonderful vidding pikachus on this YouTube Playlist (as well as examples of the other O.G. vexercises at the vexercises collection on a03! 

If you have any questions about this vexercise, either before you start or as you get going, feel free to post them here!

Stay tuned for a post about technology, resources, etc., and a check in next saturday. This vexercise will be "due" in two weeks, so March 27

Comments

[airawyn]

I actually started doing the OG Vexercise #1 a couple of days ago just to get started, and finished it this morning!

Vexercise #1: Defying Gravity/Don't Stop Me Now - C-drama multifandom vid with the deep and introspective theme of "spinny action".

This was really fun. I haven't used Premiere Pro before so this has already given me a lot of confidence with the software. I loved working with the action clips. One thing I could see being a complication in future vids is the way the fight scenes in c-dramas will frequently drop into slow-mo or speed up. I mean, I love it, but it could be a challenge in pacing.

Anyway, I am very pumped up for vidding again and I need to decide what to do next!

[actiaslunaris]

So entertaining! I love the way you drew everything you could out of that theme and the second song was a delight.

I am doing WandaVision this year and I honestly hand to god have no idea what constitutes spoilers

[thatyourefuse]

... no, you really desperately wanted to beat your last year's record by doing five versions this time except suddenly it turned out to be 4:30 AM.

/rubs eyes

/regrets choices

/firmly believe no one has ever been more beautiful than that one shot of Kathryn Hahn in the ep 3 credits sequence

People Are Strange | Better Things | This Is Better | Listener

("Better Things" was actually the first one I did, as I think will probably be evident, but... once I figured out "People Are Strange," that was just the order they had to be in.)

Re: I am doing WandaVision this year and I honestly hand to god have no idea what constitutes spoile

[actiaslunaris]

Well, those all hurt, in very specific and undefinable ways. *heavy sigh*

[nu_breed]

I didn't intend on finishing this today but I was having so much fun! I actually did three but couldn't decide which one to drop so I just uploaded them all anyway.

I inadvertantly went with a theme as soon as I picked Heart's Alone and I call this Wangxian does the 80s

Alone| Summer Rain| All the Things She Said.

[actiaslunaris]

Beautiful choices of clips and the theme is very suited to them.

Vidding Gravity Falls this year.

[actiaslunaris]

On the theme of possession: unzip my body // nothing to hide.

Re: Vidding Gravity Falls this year.

[scytale]

These are beautiful and were a lot of fun to watch!

I did the thing!

[hardboiledbaby]

Started early! (hopefully this is me beginning as I mean to go on *fingers crossed*)

Blinding Lights | Cold Turkey

Tried really hard not to let perfectionism/imposter syndrome bog me down. I stuck with one episode only and didn't cry when the cuts wouldn't land exactly where I wanted (well, not much, anyway 🙄).

If I were to do it over, I'd tweak the opening clip (I meant it to be jarring but it doesn't work quite the way I wanted). But overall I'm happy—I made a vid!

Re: I did the thing!

[nu_breed]

I really loved the rhythmic choices in both of these - so nice to see a S and H vid too. Blinding Lights really is a wonderful choice from an emotional standpoint too - the clips with the h/c gave me a lot of feels :)

(And I totally hear you on the perfectionism/imposter syndrome btw - I woke up early this morning and started thinking of all the changes I would make to the vids I posted last night - our brains are terrible critics!)

[scytale]

My source was The Untamed, only using episode 20. Content warning for corpses and blood.

The Fog | When the Truth Hunts You Down

And an extra one, just because I had an mp3 of "Banana Phone" lying around: Banana Phone

[nu_breed]

WOW WOW WOWWWWWWW

Okay so Episode 20 is one of my favourite episodes and I have CHILLS from these. So atmospheric and chilling and both The Fog and When the Truth Hunts You Down are such perfect song choices - this makes me want to rewatch the episode IMMEDIATELY.

Also Banana Phone? Sheer brilliance :D

[avawatson]

I just found this comm through a friend, so I did this vexercise tonight!

Wangxian: Call Me Maybe / I've Got You Under My Skin

My aim was to do two POVs through the music, so I hope I did alright. I can't wait to do more. This was fun!

[nu_breed]

I absolutely squealed with delight over the first one - it just gave me all the happy teen!Wei Wuxian feels and then the second one was SO perfectly hornyandmadaboutit Lan Wangji. You really did manage to achieve the different POVs just bu changing the song which is really brilliant :)

[naye]

New year, new source! (I mean, I fully intend to keep switching sources like I did last year, but this is new in every sense of the word.)

For The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020) - Dragonfly Keeper / Bad Romance.

I assembled the clips to the instrumental version, and then played around with Bad Romance until it hit some amazing beats. It's very tongue-in-cheek - I don't think this particular romance is bad in any way! But how was I supposed to resist the opportunity to match Oh la la to a character appearing from behind a swirling sleeve?

[lola]

Oh wow, Naye, do these ever demonstrate how different music can create a completely different interpretation of the text! I hadn't read what you wrote and so after watching Bad Romance, I somehow thought that it must of been the first one that was showing a sweet version of a darker story--Bad Romance totally had me convinced that those two are dangerous for one another lol :D
This made me very curious about The Yin-Yang Master, also--it looks quite beautifully shot!!

[teyla]

I last-second decided to participate! And spent all night on this; long clips are not my forte. It is very late now so I will have to go through everyone else's submissions tomorrow, but wow there are already so many!

For 沙海 (Tomb of the Sea) - The Lonely Shepherd/Bury a Friend

[nu_breed]

I loved both of these so much - the clips you chose were so cinematic and using The Lonely Shepherd made me feel like I was watching an especially epic and tragic film while Bury a Friend felt much more avant garde and sexy. Gorgeous!

[seasaltmemories_14]

Hello, I decided to make a stab at this and vidded one of my more obscure interests: Kyousougiga

The Pain of Coming Home | Generational Mistakes

It took me a while to get in the mindset, but once I allowed myself to make mistakes, I had a lot of fun, it felt very puzzle-like and scratched a different itch than the usual vidding process does

[actiaslunaris]

These are very cool. I feel like I just wandered into a museum, that was showing a multimedia abstract presentation. I like the kaleidoscopic colors and the music was very immersive.

[lithiumdoll]

Another last-minute (ish) participant - this was fun! And so much harder than anticipated. But fun!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30103782

[lola]

Okay, so I don't know this source at all... so how did I get so invested that by the time I finished watching the second one, there were literal tears in my eyes? :0
So good!!

[extrapenguin]

Okay, so this vexercise is always the one where I do the vid to a music, pick another music, and then get stuck in an infinite loop slapping other music on the clips to see what would be the most hilarious result possible. I did spare you from the worst, but I did end up with a pechakucha 4 ways... AO3 link with all 4 embeds. All clips from the 2018 Guardian TV show!

My original idea was "CPR music", since there are exactly two songs that get shared as having the right BPM to do CPR to: Stayin' Alive and Another One Bites the Dust. I wanted to do a bit of an experiment wrt using the same clips for both and seeing if it'd work exactly the same.
Another One Bites the Dust (this one, the music didn't have a 1-minute segment, but rather a 1:01 segment, so I bent the rules a bit and added an 11th clip fading to black to make it look less silly)
Stayin' Alive

Then I went into the weeds of my music library and various nostalgia choices, and eventually settled on Tiktak - Sankaritar ("Heroine"), which fit the contents remarkably well:
Sankaritar (engsub on the video)

And finally, the name of the prior band reminded me of Kesha - TiK ToK, and splatting that on the video made me LOL, so, uh, I decided to subject y'all to that as well:
TiK ToK

[scytale]

I really loved those!

CPR music for the BPM is such a great idea, and I liked how "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Staying Alive" have very opposite subjects. :) I felt like "Another One Bites the Dust" was darker and took you more into the killer's perspective, whereas "Staying Alive" was about, well, trying to stay alive.

"Empty Battlefield" felt the most epic and superhero-ish to me (and it's such a catchy song!).

I actually clicked the Kesha one first, and...I almost spit out my coffee at the first line. After that, I wised up and stopped trying to drink so I could laugh.

[nu_breed]

I had so much fun with my first lot and it was a crappy week so I made another lot. This time I used episode 25 and 26 of The Untamed and made a bamf!WWX pechakucka (including the archery scene that my beta always laughs at me for shamelessly inserting into my vids - because...well... I could. Shameless!)

Again, couldn't choose so I am including all three that I made.

Go | Rattlesnake Smile | Fire Woman

[scytale]

Those are gorgeous and fun! I love the choice of clips, and the archery scene is great. :) It goes well with each of the songs, and it's really illuminating seeing how the different songs change the meanings/emphases within that six seconds.

[shopfront]

I've done two sets exploring different POVs in a single episode of Sanctuary, 3x05 Hero II: Broken Arrow. It is my favourite ridiculous episode, about a telepathic symbiotic bee swarm that just wants to connect with its host(s) and give them a superpowered hero suit and be friends (even though wearing it too long might kill them, oops.) Each pair is meant to have complementary tones, one lighthearted and one a touch more ominous.

Password for all four is pechakucha. Content notes for brief violence, sci-fi style guns, and some flashing lights. Or they're also all embedded in one post here if you prefer.

Summary: Kate's having too much fun // Can't a telepathic bee swarm just want to connect?

Kate POV: Ghost (Upon The Moor) | Taking Over Me
Suit POV: Now It's In Our House | Sense of Control

[actiaslunaris]

These are very interesting! I like the action focus of the first two, where it's all about kicking butt, balanced with the more character-driven focus of the second two, where you can tell its more about connection, not just with the bee swarm but among the people, so good job with hitting those targets.

[actiaslunaris]

I felt ambitious and decided to pick up an alternate source to play with, so here are three (three!) pechakuchas for After the Matinee, a romance film that stars Fukuyama Masaharu and Ishida Yuriko.

On AO3: unable to speak // state of mind // somewhere underneath

My goals this time were to change mood with song choices and create a slower focus. I might use this source again, because it was so interesting to choose clips from something that has a completely different vibe from Gravity Falls.

[bonibaru]

SUCCESS finally! I spent all day clipping and storyboarding a full vid and so I rewarded myself for being disciplined by letting myself make a pechakucha set from a single episode.

I put them together in the same vid because YT copyright kept snagging one when they were separate: 2 for Word of Honor Episode 1

[amedia]

Wow, both gorgeous!!! I like the angst of the first one and the cooler vibe of the second one. Even not knowing anything about the source, I was impressed with the imagery you chose. I gotta remember to come back and watch it again when I've seen WoH!!!

[caramarie]

I was going to use a source I hadn't vidded before, but then I was listening to The Cure like a goth and ended up making these instead!

For Strangers from Hell: Lullaby + Skeleton Tree.

The change of music kind of makes it feel like they're from different POVs to me. And Lullaby definitely feels truer to the source!

[lola]

Always weird to respond to my own prompt. But hey, I'm comment 100 on this thread!! That's so cool!
So I had some trouble getting started on this one... actually this felt like the hardest pechakucha I've done yet, and I'm not entirely sure why (I have some theories...new source, wanting to limit spoilers, something about how the source is edited didn't lend itself to the six second limit thing...) but eventually I got there! Here they are.

Vexercise #1: Long Time No Sea/Black Sea. Word of Honor vid, one leaning more to Wen Kexing character study, the other more murder-husbandy. I used through ep 12, but tried to keep it not too spoilery!

[amedia]

Wow, from pensive reflection to murder-y togetherness, with the same set of clips! I haven't seen WoH yet, but I really enjoyed the color and movement in the clips you chose, and how they fit with two such different narratives.

[snycock]

Okay. *deep breath* I'm just going to apologize right off the bat, because I've never vidded before, and I've never used DaVinci Resolve before, so this was a steep learning curve on both counts, and I'm sure these show it. I think I could do a much better job with cuts, and I didn't really have any theme other than wanting clips of Jim and Blair together (and possibly touching), but I wanted to play with how different music choices changed the feel of the vid.

Feel | Following - The Sentinel

If I have time I'm going to play around with Resolve some more and hopefully do a better job with clips (thank you Lola for the link to the tutorial!), so I might end up posting a couple more pechakuchas, but I wanted to get at least something in before Saturday so I wouldn't be behind.

[bonibaru]

Wow! Distinctly different feeling between the two vids. I also liked that the music selection feels right for the time period of the show!

[allheadybooks]

Here we go!! I did two totally different pechakuchas, just like last year, since I initially misunderstood the prompt but it ended up being very fun that way. I'm working with a new-to-me source, Atomic Blonde, and compared to last year's source (mostly the first season of Hannibal) it's been very fun so far: more fight scenes and less talky bits, since they have less run time to fill than TV show would, and--less run time! Clipping is going so fast!

I set one vid to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Heads Will Roll" and the other to Edith Piaf's "Je Sais Comment," and you can find links and embedded video to them both here:

Permanent AO3 link for both vids
off with their heads on YouTube
Je Sais Comment on YouTube

[bonibaru]

Oh I really like these!

[amedia]

Links to my pechakuchas! I decided to use Rat Patrol (a half-hour drama set in the North African theater during World War II), because, to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any all-Rat Patrol fanvids out there. I know of exactly two multi vids that included it, and I've digitized one and can't (yet) get my hands on the other.

Also, I ♥ Rat Patrol. So I did a playful pikachu to a novelty song, and then used a dreamy love song for the second version and was surprised how well it worked in places.

https://vimeo.com/528628433: Convoy

https://vimeo.com/528629273: Snow on the Sahara

[actiaslunaris]

These are delightful! Both worked so well for me, and each song definitely seemed appropriate to the source.

[trickytricky]

I thought this would be interesting, but I underestimated HOW MUCH fun I would have doing this.... it ended up being incredibly fascinating to try to line up the points where the different types of music and lyrics could find points of intersection between the different versions while keeping within the limits of the exercise... anyway, here's four songs because I had fun playing with tons of variants using Guardian as the source! XD

Vid Exercises 1 --- Iris || Toxic || Raining || Mr. Jones

Music:
Song 1 - Iris (cover) by Phoebe Bridgers and Maggie Rogers
Song 2 - Toxic by Britney Spears
Song 3 - Raining by of Verona
Song 4 - Mr. Jones by Counting Crows

[trickytricky]

OK, and, um.... I had so much fun playing around with the same clips/different music challenge the first time, that I decided I wanted to try out another variant.... and then I really did like how they came out so much I couldn't resist sharing this set too!

Vid Exercises 1 (Variant 2!) --- Photograph || Baby One More Time

陈情令 | The Untamed Episodes 19-20

[thuviaptarth]

I was planning to do a difference source and then the Spotify gods gave me "Pay Your Way in Pain", so.

Pay Your Way in Pain/Bad Romance/Another Radio Song

Re: 陈情令 | The Untamed Episodes 19-20

[nu_breed]

*pterodactyl!screeching*

Guardian

[salamandras]

Here are Sha Ya and Lin Jing from Guardian. After a few false starts I figured out what I wanted to do. My computer is not up to the task of running Da Vinci Resolve smoothly, but I'm still pretty happy with how the audio and video lined up. I need to figure out if I can downgrade the video quality in the program's display (not in the actual file) to see if that helps. This was a fun exercise!

Let Me Go
Every Breath You Take

Re: Guardian

[actiaslunaris]

Oh, that first one is adorable and the song is so perfect for the pairing. I loved how the stars clip worked. I imagined that both were from Sha Ya's perspective and that I liked with the second vid. I'm all full of fuzzy happy feelings now.

Tech issues: I wonder if Da Vinci Resolve supports proxy files. That helps tremendously with my vidding of large files. (Basically, it scans your source and makes an alternate lower-quality file that it reads while you edit. You do have to have disc space for the extra files, though.) I wish you luck!

[alba17]

I'm totally late because I only found out about this relatively recently. I haven't vidded for *years* so I had to kind of update and get up to speed. This is a good opportunity for me to get back into it because making a 1 minute vid is a lot less intimidating that a full song and it sounded like fun.

I'm using The Old Guard as my source. My first song was I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie, which I always want to vid for every fandom, but this is the first time I've actually sat down and used it. YouTube blocked it, so I had to use Vimeo. Into the Dark

For my second song, I used a peppy, funny one, Everything is Awful by The Decemberists. Everything is Awful

[nu_breed]

Hey stranger!!! I enjoyed both of these but especially Everything is Awful - it really juxtaposed the clips BEAUTIFULLY so that the clips that were happy felt much more disquieting and built an immense sense of dread for me (and of course it all goes horribly wrong for many of these people *sobs over Quynh*)