Vexercise 1 Check In (2021 edition!)

[lola]

Hi all! Here we are, it's been one week in--how are your pechakuchas going?

So many have been posted already, I'm kind of amazed!! For those of you that have already dived (dove?) in, what was the experience like? How did you go through the process of narrowing down your visual source, choosing your clips, choosing your music? Any tech issues or other challenges you ran into?

For those of you who haven't yet started (um, this includes me) where are you at with it? Do you have some things you're still trying to decide on--like focus, etc? I'm working with a new source and haven't yet decided on which eps I'm going to use, I might just mess around and see what feels interesting!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I have a clear notion of what the visuals should be and I'm pretty sure I know my musics, but I have to sort out if those actually line up like I want

[naye]

It was super fun to dive back into the Vexercises! I did two different vids in a day and posted my favorite. I had just watched Qing Ya Ji (The Yin-Yang Master), and thought it would be fun to use it as my source as it's visually stunning, and I enjoyed the emotions in it a lot. Thank you for organizing this again! ♥

[amedia]

I've picked a fandom (Rat Patrol) and got instructions on how to download from YouTube, where there are beautiful crisp copies. That's all so far! RL is kicking my butt, but I'm determined to give the vexercises a shot.

[thatyourefuse]

I didn't really have a direction in mind before diving into mine, and I ended up being surprised by where it went!

"Better Things" was kind of the first song I could pull from my music library that gave me a nice 60-second chunk of lyrics to work with; obviously starting on "here's wishing you the bluest skies" meant I HAD to open with the colorization, and staying in color until the very last clip meant that dropping into the b/w rewind effect was like extra jarring. Then I made a decision about the POV on that song, and... I just stopped dead in this laundromat and realized I think I accidentally picked up and used something REALLY CLEVER from the opening credits of ep 6, which I absolutely cannot go into without megaspoilers.

I wasn't expecting it to be so much about the twins, but once I'd decided to use mostly the color eps + Agnes onscreen for every "I" in the lyrics + how could I not have the shot I did for "hoping all the verses rhyme," the pechakucha format put some REALLY interesting constraints on the clips I could use.

"People Are Strange" was the second version I did, but I decided to put it first because I really liked seeing the clip sequence that looked disjointed and eerie with that music turn into something fast and upbeat and artificial with the song it was vidded to. I don't know if that came across as much as I wanted, but I like it.

[nu_breed]

So I made 2 sets and the reason for that is a) they're addictive and b) I've chosen 4 episodes of The Untamed to work with so I did one pechakucha with clips from 25 and 26 and another with 42 and 43.

I had this idea to use Alone by Heart, because I wanted to use some elemental clips (snow, rain) and the LWJ seclusion flashback sequence from 43 and that just makes me think of epic emotions! And then I was like - hey, why not do an 80s theme! I had immense fun choosing my power ballads (and couldn't choose so I did 3 instead of 2).

The other one I was working with was a selection of more dynamic clips - I wanted to use the archery sequence (because I am shameless) and the slow pan on the Jinlintai steps and WWX's energy is much snappier and darker and rhythmic to me as opposed to LWJ's much more grounded, slow burn energy. I had the song Rattlesnake Smile by Kane in my head immediately because that dangerous smile and the tension of knowing he is going to snap any second now is what I always think of when I think of both these episodes (25 and 26) and lyrically it works. And then I wanted to play around a bit so I chucked in Go by The Chemical Brothers to try something more dancey with a good build. I also chose a third one again - Fire Woman by The Cult, which is just super sexy to me and also thematically appropriate.

And gee, I wonder which new source, Lola?:D

[shopfront]

I downloaded Resolve last night and blew through two sets of pechakuchas this morning. It's been a literal decade since I dabbled with vidding if my Vimeo account informs me correctly, so I was pretty rusty but it was a lot of fun to get back to it again. This was a great exercise for me to start off with actually, both to learn new software and without getting too fiddly and exact about juggling loads of clips. I picked a single favourite episode from an old fandom that I could quickly rip from a video site to also keep it casual, and I think narrowing my focus made the relearning curve more enjoyable (way less clip searching!) for sure.

[bonibaru]

I am late getting started but hope to work on mine this week :)

[allheadybooks]

Messing around, having fun! I’m vidding a new source, Atomic Blonde, for the first time, so mostly clipping systematically right now while also looking out for good six-second sequences. Last year I misunderstood the prompt and ended up doing two separate pechakuchas with contrasting vibes (instead of one vid with two different soundtracks), and that was very inspiring so I think I’ll do the same this year!

[seasaltmemories_14]

I really love either rhythmic editing that hits what feels like every beat or lyrical editing that captures the source material really well, so for this exercise I just kinda had to let go of those perceptions, I actually ended up specifically picking music sources I wasn't too attached to so I wouldn't feel like I was "missing" out on making this perfect vid I could fantasize about in my head

With that in mind I also looked for songs with a more or less consistent tempo so that I could somewhat follow the changes in the music, for "The Pain of Coming Home," there were still a lot of very prominent music cues I wanted to catch, so I kinda focused on those and then built around it

Ironically I ended up really preferring "Generational Mistakes" usually I struggle with editing repetitive songs, but "Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl," has this six second refrain that is actually perfect for pechakuchas, almost feels like cheating to use it, still I found some really amazing examples of sync purely on accident

Overall I think this exercise helped me loosen up some, I can get caught up in trying to find the perfect clip, from hours of footage, have restrictions really can encourage creativity in ways too many choices sometimes hinder

[scytale]

Making my set ended up easier this year than when I tried this set of exercises last year; last year, I tried vidding with an anime source, and that was really hard to find clips for. In anime, or at least the one I tried last year, thare a lot of pauses and repeated animations (poeple talking, for instance) or still frames -- not great when you need six second clips. Real people, on the other hand, move and there are more fun camera things to play with. :)

My original song was The Crane Wife's "Curses", which was what I actually matched a lot of clips for. "The Fog" was my second choice...except halfway through I got stuck on "Curses", because the song went in a different direction than "The Fog". ("Curses" felt like a shipping song, essentially, whereas "The Fog" never got there).

So I ended up making "The Fog" the primary song and adding "When The Truth Hunts You Down". And then deciding I didn't like "When The Truth Hunts You Down", going through something like five different songs...and then finally giving up and going back to "When The Truth Hunts You Down".

I dragged "Banana Phone" onto the timeline as a joke, but I think it ended up being my favorite. It was the one I took least seriously and had the most fun making.

I started making a second set -- mainly with the goal of comparing two versions of a single melody, to see how changes in instrument and dynamics affect things -- but I think I've stalled on it. I may do more work on it before the due date, but I think I've learned that I need lyrics to guide me.

In general, I feel like I learned a lot from this!

The constraints make it so much easier to finish something (and experimenting with different songs is both educational and fun), and I feel like the constraints are helpful as a learning tool. Using internal cuts means that I'm paying a lot of attention to how the show is doing its own cuts, and sometimes when things just don't work, I find myself thinking, "oh, it would be nice if I could find [this thing that would work better]".

And I think the constraints forced me to compromise in places, so it's good practice at thinking about which things are okay to cut corners at -- and also, which places are important to get right. I still feel far from the point where I can understand how to get those things right, but thinking about them (and getting them wrong in interesting ways) still feels like a good start.

[hardboiledbaby]

When it came down to brass tacks, it took some effort to convince my brain that by its very nature this pechakucha is not supposed to be 'perfect' and so it not being 'perfect' isn't failing. Ugh, my brain is evil. But letting go of that perfectionism mindset might be the single most effective skill the Vexercises will teach me, so I'm glad I joined the comm and I look forward to doing more :)

As for the vidding process itself: Starsky and Hutch; I used one episode only (The Fix, because I lurves teh waaaangst). I chose "Blinding Lights" because I thought the energy and pace of the song fit Hutch's desperate need to get back to Starsky, without feeling like I had to be matchy-matchy to the lyrics. For the second song, I looked for one that more explicitly honed in on the drug addiction aspect. Voila, "Cold Turkey."

Overall, I enjoyed the exercise! Using two different songs was a very illuminating twist. Now, to start thinking about #2...

[gwenfrankenstien]

I have ideas but I haven't had time to sit down and really dive into my source footage!

I've decided that for this round my sources are all going to be terrible B movies that I've been watching with some friends in a private discord server, so this is going to be. An interesting adventure.

[actiaslunaris]

I'm a methodical vidder, who gets inspired by music, which I then pair with visuals. Of course, the visuals come first, so what I tend to do, when I have time, is listen through a long list of possible music and then whittle down based on what sparks any type of connection with the visuals. Mood of music and lyrics are very important to me.

I tend to then scrub through my source, marking times for possible clips in a text file. I'll open my editor and have the list to refer back to and then trim. Unless I'm very familiar with my source, this is my go-to process, but familiarity will have me making drafts and then pulling in different clips that I think will work better.

For the first exercise, I already knew what my theme was, and the best episode of Gravity Falls to work with. I ended up ditching one of my possible songs and going with an alternate, but I didn't do a lot of clipping. I like the tight focus of pechakuchas, and using longer clips lends itself to less choice, and more testing of what works. I always start with a bigger pool of clips than I end up using.

For the second set of pechakuchas, I spent less time choosing music, and went for the first viable options that said what I wanted them to say in mood and lyrics. The film has a certain mood and themes, so I kept those in mind.

Last time I participated, I didn't have a lot of time to make the first exercise, so I was happy to spend more time and thought on it. Otherwise, I don't think I would have made two sets.