Vexercise 2 Drops! Visual Continuity &/or Lightbuilding

[lola]

Hi everyone!! We are on to Vexercise 2! So for this round, there are two options:

Vex 2: The OG Version:

Visual Continuity: Produce a 1 minute video edit on your selected source using match-on-action and graphic matches as your primary editing logics. The motion of each shot should seem to continue into motion in the following shot. Audio should be music of your own choosing.

Here's a really helpful video on different types of match cuts (bonus with lots of helpful Sherlock examples!) This video is about match cuts in cinema and TV, but I think it's really cool how we can adapt these techniques to vidding/fan video editing.

Some vids that use visual continuity, match on action, and graphic matching (feel free to rec others in the comments!)

Yuris in Love(starting at about 1.41)
Motionography 2012
Multifandom Mashup 2019 (for All the Graphic Matches)

Vex 2: Follow the light. (aka Lightbuilding)

Lim talks about this in Demystifying Vidding. Produce a 1 minute vid where your guiding logic is lightbuilding. Try letting the flow and build of light guide your editing choices throughout. (You can still incorporate match-on-action as well, so this sort of builds on the OG version)

 

Wunderland (Ghibli, by Traf)
Flow (Elementary, (Bones), House, The Mentalist, Person of Interest, Sherlock, The X-Files 1, by Lim)

【水龙吟】Epic Fighting Scene Mix Cut of Word of Honor (Word of Honor, by AvenueX)

Please suggest more examples for either version, or ask any questions in the comment, and have fun! It's been amazing seeing all the Vex 1s come in, can't wait to see what folks create for this one!

ETA Thanks to nu_breed  for these additional excellent examples!

Graphic/motion matching:
Nothing is Safe by Thuvia Ptarth (Watchmen)
Starships by Bironic (Multifandom)
Juice by Sisabet (Disney villainesses) - the opening is a perfect example
Move Your Body by ohvienna (Xena)

Light Building and graphic/motion matching:
Monsters of the Cosmos - by Cherry (MCU)
Expo by Lim (MCU) - there's a snippet linked in their post but the entire vid is perfection tbh
Overcome by Sweetestdrain (SW:Rogue One)
Happy Now by pollyrepeat and jonesandashes (SW:Clone Wars)

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

Roundtable Rival

... Yes I maybe got drunk and threw most of this together, like, a week ago. sssh. This one DEFINITELY has spoilers through WandaVision episode 8; I was actually planning to move through to the finale! but episode 8 gave me, uh, a lot to work with, there.

This was fun. It may or may not end up being a test sketch for my final vid, but it was so much fun.

[scytale]

Wow, this was absolutely stunning. (And I think I may just have to watch the show now.)

[naye]

Oh I LOVE this! Super stunning! I am unfamiliar with the source but I adore how many emotions it threaded through with the visual matches.

[bonibaru]

HOLY WOW

[actiaslunaris]

Gorgeous! I love the theme a lot and the music is so energetic at tying it all together.

[lola]

ahhhh I loved this! I love the color work in this and the light building (and by build, I mean, wow, was there build... what on earth is going on in this show lol? :D)

[alba17]

Fantastic. There sure is a lot of color and light to work with in this show! The last shot is perfect.

[seasaltmemories_14]

So I am already deviating from my original source material, but when I saw this challenge I knew the exact audio/video match I had in mind, so I went over to Revolutionary Girl Utena

Hand in Unlovable Hand

It was hard pushing myself outside of the lyrical match mindset but I think I found a lot of fun parallels/mirroring going on and so mostly focused on graphic matches (though a bit of lightbuilding def also wormed its way in)

[bonibaru]

WOW! I really like this. The audio/video synergy is really spot on :D excellent graphics matching!

So many examples

[nu_breed]

This gave me an excuse to go on a bit of a binge oops

Graphic/motion matching:
Nothing is Safe by Thuvia Ptarth (Watchmen)
Starships by Bironic (Multifandom)
Juice by Sisabet (Disney villainesses) - the opening is a perfect example
Move Your Body by ohvienna (Xena)

Light Building and graphic/motion matching:
Monsters of the Cosmos - by Cherry (MCU)
Expo by Lim (MCU) - there's a snippet linked in their post but the entire vid is perfection tbh
Overcome by Sweetestdrain (SW:Rogue One)
Happy Now by pollyrepeat and jonesandashes (SW:Clone Wars)

(I could go on and on and add all my favourites but I should probably stop lol)

Re: So many examples

[lola]

Thank you so much for all these examples! Would you be okay with my putting them in the post itself?

Clarification about the time constraint

[avawatson]

Just wondering about this before I start cutting up the clips and music, but uh, is there a consensus on the one minute limit of the exercise? As in, is it considered part of the challenge to make the thing one minute exactly, or could I choose a 90 second song for this and it be considered fine (maybe encouraged)?

Re: Clarification about the time constraint

[lola]

Hi hi!! So all the guidelines are totally just guidelines. For some people the one minute limit is really helpful and they’ll try strictly to stick to it always, other people will make some that are a bit longer if the song demands it... some will make a minute version and then a longer version. It’s really totally up to you, and what works for you.
We do officially say that all the vexercises until the last free one are meant to be a minute, but we also say rules are made to be broken :) so go with your muse!

[actiaslunaris]

Graphics matching on the basis of color and light value, attempting to go from dark to light: "Who Are You" (Gravity Falls), on AO3. Might be triggering because of fast cuts.

[seasaltmemories_14]

Ah I love the tension! I feel like matching the light value added a lot to the build-up at the end!

[avawatson]

Speaking of continuity, heh...I did mine based on Xiao Zhan, so it's multifandom. One minute version for this exercise comes first in the video but I edited and attached the whole song (a measly 31 seconds more!) in the same vid, just to avoid multiple uploads.

Pretty Soldier Xiao Zhan [multifandom]

Clips from: The Untamed, Douluo Continent, Oh! My Emperor, The Wolf, and just tiny tiny bit of Joy of Life. But it's definitely mostly CQL.

[actiaslunaris]

Cheeky and completely brilliant! *applauds*

Sanctuary (TV)

[shopfront]

This is an ode to Helen/Will under pressure. One my favourite things about this ship is the contradiction between their intensely deep mutual respect and chill vs. when adrenaline and creature possession and etc. bubbles up all sorts of feelings and actions that are sometimes cathartic and sometimes just a whole lot of stuff they wish they could take back. Somehow they still always come out the other side together though (yet rarely before Will gets turned into the resident damsel.) Contains violence (mostly against Will) and flashing lights.

Things We Couldn’t Say (or post with embed), password: revelations

Re: Sanctuary (TV)

[actiaslunaris]

Ooo, bouncy song! Their connection definitely comes through, and I liked the attention to the way many clips have light shining on their faces.

[naye]

This was fascinating. I went for an attempt at lightbuilding, and I don't think I've tried anything before that's helped me snap out of the linear/chronological kind of vidding I keep feeling compelled to do. While this isn't completely out of order, it's - more so than I usually feel comfortable with, which feels really cool!

Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity - Long-Serving on AO3.

[lola]

oh gosh, this was gorgeous!! I love how you interwove the light building and the match on action. And this source looks *so* pretty!!!

[nu_breed]

I had a really tough time with this one! My first attempt I tried the Lightbuilding/visual continuity and I completed it but it was super boring and meh so I changed it up and started again from scratch using different episodes (sorry Lola and Boni for rulebreaking!)

Much happier with this one!

The Untamed: A Dark Machine on AO3.

[lola]

I absolutely adored this. It felt like poetry. And so moody and immersive too. I felt pulled through by the motion matching and like I was physically *inside* this vid, moving with it. So cool!

[airawyn]

Three Duels (Motion), The Untamed, WangXian. I may attempt a lightbuilding exercise as well.

I read somewhere that LWJ and WWX's fight in the courtyard in the Unclean Realm was the same fight as their first one in Cloud Recesses, so I figured that'd be fun to use for this exercise! It turns out that it is not exactly the same choreography, but the fights in Cloud Recesses, Unclean Realm are shot so similarly that it's easy to swap things in and out, and some shots are nearly identical. That gave me a lot of freedom to move things around.

I also realized while doing this that Wei Wuxian does not fight back until their battle in Nightless City, and he never once fights with a blade. Even though we think of their fight under the moonlight as a sword fight, it's really sword vs. scabbard.

vexercise 2

[bonibaru]

chasing light: for Word of Honor here on AO3

Re: vexercise 2

[seasaltmemories_14]

Ah love the use of colors here!

[lola]

I totally meant to do the light building one for this, but the thing I started as light building mutated into a full vid, and then this is the vexercise that came out. So, for the visual continuity/match on action/graphic matching version of the challenge:

Love Like Mine (Word of Honor)
on youtube
on a03

It features footage through ep 33, but just brief visuals for motion, so not very spoilery really!

[seasaltmemories_14]

Ah this vid was so much fun! Love the little sync with the light chime sound and cracked nut

[snycock]

So I did both graphic matching and match on action (I think?). I was going for graphic matching on the ridiculously giant cell phones used in The Sentinel, but I was also trying to get a conversational flow of calling and answering.

Telephone on AO3

[scytale]

I did match on action and graphic matching for mine, for episodes 19-20 of The Untamed.

Murk and Mire

Content note just in case: There are a couple of motion matches that swap between light and dark backgrounds for a bit -- I think they're slow enough they shouldn't count as flashing, but I don't have a good feel for this.

[actiaslunaris]

Pretty! I really liked the motion match at :43; it worked very well!

[lola]

So under the wire, I did one more, a light building one, because that had been my original intention, and I just couldn't seem to let it go.

Study in Light (images through ep 24 of word of honor, but again, really just images, not plot details, not really spoilery in any kind of plot sense)
on youtube
on a03

Lightbuilding - The Terror

[jinkyo]

The Terror - Dream of Sheep

I had an abundance of light and my initial efforts stalled because what is even lightbuilding? Eventually, I pared everything back and narrowed the focus to Crozier's beautiful face, cool winter light, and warm ship lamplight - and a loose narrative (because it turns out I can't cut without a story).

I also acquired shiny HD source footage! But, the files cut all weird and clunky in Resolve. I hope that's just because I put the files on the wrong drive because the hurky-jerk preview and imprecise blading sucked balls.

In the spirit of "done is better than perfect"...

[hardboiledbaby]

Part Of Me, Part Of You

I started off clipping for action and graphic matches, but when I was putting them in the timeline I fell into trying to match the lyrics, and the visual continuity suffered for it. And frankly, I found it harder to do! Many props to the vidders that do this well. (Am looking forward to viewing other folks' vids!)

I meant for the corridor scenes to be a throughline, but it doesn't quite come off. I did like how the clips with S&H in their cars turned out. There are a couple of glitchy things that I am *not* going to stress about.

I stuck with Starsky and Hutch, and intended to source clips from only four eps, in keeping with the general Vexercise guidelines, but alas, I ended up grabbing from five.

All in all, I think this exercise has made me more aware of how visual continuity is used. I hope to incorporate the technique more in the future 😊

[allheadybooks]

Yes it's done! A day late but hopefully not a dollar short. Another Atomic Blonde vid, focusing on match-on-action for a dance-like feel. Once again set to Edith Piaf (this time Je Ne Regrette Rien) because the marching rhythm of her songs is weirdly perfect for cutting together fight scenes.

Permanent AO3 link for rien de rien
rien de rien on YouTube

[alba17]

Better late than never. I'm pretty much running one behind. This was challenging but fun. I focused on action matching. I also chose clips for light but just couldn't fit them in. There were some really good light-related moments in my source (The Old Guard). Could've worked on this endlessly probably but at a certain point just wanted to finish it. Discovered some cool motion matches in the movie itself.

Catch Hell