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

[lola]

These were wonderful!! I especially loved Go; it had such amazing build!! That's so hard to do for a pechakucha! And Fire Woman was super interesting too--I wanted to just keep going on that ride, I feel like that fully vid would be a kind of amazing experience.

[bonibaru]

Oh no I was actually disappointed when each of them cut off - I hope you will carry at least one into a full vid in the future; so fun!

[bonibaru]

GREAT now I'm gonna have to watch this aren't I lol

[bonibaru]

love these song choices~

[bonibaru]

this made me feel super nostalgic for my AMV days. I liked how you pulled everything together!

[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

[seasaltmemories_14]

Ahahaha glad to get more people interested in the show, some of the details are hard to communicate in an elevator pitch, but it really is a touching exploration about all the pains and joys of family.

I actually struggled a bit with this at first as I am someone who loves lyrical matching/editing and the six seconds just can feel like a life time, so I focused more on trying to find clips that had a lot of interesting visuals I could fall back on, ended up much more abstract and surprisingly fun!

Re: Vidding Gravity Falls this year.

[actiaslunaris]

There were a lot of existing cuts in the clips I chose, which I was happy with, because it made it more fun to work with. I love the art and energy of the show so much. Thank you for your comments!

[seasaltmemories_14]

Thank you ^^ For the longest times AMVs were my guilty pleasures, eventually I just decided eventually embrace them as my interest in vidding grew

Re: Vidding Gravity Falls this year.

[seasaltmemories_14]

Wow these were really fun music and source choices, I like how even though you went for the same theme with both of them, I still felt like they had very different perspectives on possession, they both really worked in different ways

[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.

[nu_breed]

Yay thank you! I have to admit that I kind of wanted to keep going with both of those songs and actually i initially used a minute later in Go that was also really good but it didn’t quite nail that shot on the Jinlintai steps. Maybe I will have a play and see if I can shake out a longer vid at some point - I think some of the fight scenes would work with both of those tracks quite nicely.

[thatyourefuse]

Thank you! There's SO much going on in this show, I honestly don't know if I'll even be able to cover half of it by the end of the challenge, but I do think I got a nice window on it to start with.

(I'm thinking about doing a second set, because I uh possibly roughed out a lot of exercise 2 last night. What can I say it's a really good one for the material.)

[extrapenguin]

I think that, since Another One Bites the Dust is 60 BPM and the clips are 6s long, I got a uniform 6 beats per clip and could sort of stretch the pechakucha into something it isn't by default? At least, that's my working theory. Someone else should test this by pechakucha-ing songs at 120 BPM!

The Sankaritar song is Tiktak - Sankaritar. IDK if these links will work better: one, two. It's Finnish rock/pop from 2005.

[scytale]

Thank you! :D

[avawatson]

Ahh, thanks! I've been doing some more vidding since I did these, so that might be a fun thing to continue. I'll post again if I manage it.

[avawatson]

Thank you!! I didn't know what people commonly did, so I put them in the same video, not realizing most people just uploaded them separately, ha.

[avawatson]

Thank you!! I'm so happy to hear it. XD

[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

[naye]

Oh wow, Naye, do these ever demonstrate how different music can create a completely different interpretation of the text!
Right?! Bad Romance isn't a song I would've picked for a full vid, simply because of how it's not how the ship really is at all - but for this exercise it was so perfect!

There are two movies on Netflix right now called "The Yin-Yang Master" (based on the Japanese "Onmyouji" books in various ways) - this is the one with the subtile "Dream of Eternity" and it is so gorgeous. Also fun and with a great ship! But yeah, the visuals are sumptuous.

[naye]

Put it on your list! You'll like it! :D

Re: Vidding Gravity Falls this year.

[actiaslunaris]

Thank you! I'm glad that worked because they seemed very similar to me, but just that tiny bit of difference was very interesting to me.

[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!