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

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!

Re: Guardian

[shopfront]

I don't know the fandom but I really like your clip choices with the music. They look like a cute couple!

[shopfront]

I'm only passingly familiar with this source but I love how you've evoked such a strong vibe with each of these. It's very pretty-Charlize-action-movie in a very good way, even without knowing the movie well. That first sequence for off with their heads is also particularly well done, it has a fun almost disorienting effect and the lyric match really pulls it through.

[shopfront]

Thank you! I'm so pleased to know I got the POVs across.

[shopfront]

That's definitely what I was going for, I'm thrilled to hear the POVs came across so clearly :D

Re: 陈情令 | The Untamed Episodes 19-20

[shopfront]

I really, really love what you've done with the music choices here. I think the last song fits the clips best, it really makes them pop (as much as anything slow can pop, but I can't think of a better way to express it. They work beautifully with it though), but then Bad Romance gives it a very different intense almost uniquely fannish vibe and Pay Your Way makes it feel trippy almost to the point of comedic absurdity. I was really impressed by how radically different a feel each song gives the vid, and I really enjoyed the contrast.

Resolve Tutorials

[jinkyo]

Dropping a Resolve tutorial playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtcvTwleZlZGdxEuHBkTPs3eHAmCGs4L3

PeeJ is an AMV Editor, but his tutorials are well made, short, and might be of use. There's also a Resolve AMV discord linked in his AMVs for Beginners vid: https://youtu.be/FMyyfMByq18 (I'm a live-action vidder, but they've been very welcoming)

Re: Guardian

[salamandras]

Thank you! I have all these responses about them that I keep deleting since I don't want to spoil you. :)

Re: Guardian

[salamandras]

Thank you! I'm so glad it worked for you.

And thank you for the proxy suggestion. I looked it up and it seems that DaVinci Resolve has an automatic proxy file generation process/optimization that I'll have to play with (I know almost nothing about this, so I'm probably using incorrect language here). It took an hour to do a full episode, so I maybe should be doing clips instead, or changing the settings, or creating proxy files separately... time to experiment!

Re: I did the thing!

[lola]

Wow, these were both so good and so intense! I can't decide which one I like better! Maybe Blinding Lights, which felt so damn modern, but Cold Turkey had this delicious edge to it. Love these!

[lola]

These were so good! They have such terrific internal motion, flow, and build. And I'm getting kind of invested in the source now even though I've seen none of it and know nothing about it! (Or at least didn't before watching your vexercises...)

[teyla]

Thank you so much! I'm happy these worked for you. I only used a small segment of the show (which has 52 episodes in total, and the two characters pictured are not the protagonists), which I picked because it has such great visuals and a really good, tense atmosphere between the two actors. I'm glad I managed to get these aspects across!

[teyla]

Thank you! <3

I want to watch yours, too, but I'm afraid of spoilers as I haven't seen WoH yet :[. I'll come back to them!

[teyla]

Thank you so much! The source is really about completely different people in completely different locations xD But I really like this segment for its epic visuals and tense atmosphere, so I picked it for this exercise.

[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*)

[alba17]

Hello! This was an interesting experiment. I'm glad the Awful one worked! I had no idea. I picked the clips for the other song and just hoped it would work for the 2nd one, lol, and then I couldn't really tell if it did or not. I can see I'm going to be very behind on this the whole time. Exercise 2 looks a lot harder. I only just started trying to find clips, argh, and also have no idea what song to use. I'm so happy to be vidding again though!

[inkjunket]

This was so fun! I saw the Vexercises panel at VidUKon this weekend and decided to try the first exercise. It was so interesting to try working within this constraint. Thank you for a great panel and an inspiring challenge!

Lip Gloss/Just The Two Of Us - The Untamed, Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui.