1st exercises drops! vidding pechakuchas

[lola]

Hello all! Today's the day we kick off our first exercise. This exercise is designed to be reasonably accessible to all... if you're new to editing, then it's a doable way in, and if you already know your way around editing software, then it's addictively fun to make these pechakuchas and surprising how well they turn out! 

Here's the description: 

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!]

Then, when you're done, come back here to this post, and post a link in the comments to your completed exercise(s) when they're finished! 

[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 videographic pechakucha’s here: http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/videographic-pechakuchas?path=videographic-exercises and a more vidlike one Lola made here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls9x7shBjDY.]

For all of these exercises, the rules are hard and fast, unless you don't want them to be :D Some people work best with really specific restrictions, others work best as rule breakers <3

So edit, share, question, mess around, and experiment! Have fun!

Stay tuned for posts & discussions on various video-editing softwares & on choosing your source.

Comments

[brokenmnemonic]

I'm a bit late, but I've completed the exercise. I wasn't sure about how to fade the audio in and out (I've been using Premiere Pro 1.5 since about 2005/6, so naturally I decided to start learning Vegas Pro 14 a couple of months ago, and it's proving a rocky experience). To make up for the lack of fading, I decided to make it more difficult by only using the first 60 seconds of each song, rather than any sixty-second segment.

The video source is a DVD rip of the movie "Ever After", which is one of my favourite movies; to go for a big contrast between audio tracks, I chose two tracks more or less randomly, and ended up with two rather different audio sources.

Vid 1: https://youtu.be/DP9B-NoFeuo (Disturbed - The Sound of Silence)

Vid 2: https://youtu.be/LC1SXuUOLDE (The House of Pain - Jump around)

[bonibaru]

Oh my GOD I love them both.

The first one is so dark fairy tale dreamy and then in a complete flip of tone the second one is so young and rebellious and fun. And they both WORK.

I wish you'd make the second song a whole Sparkle Motion dance party vid, if we ever get to have vid cons again, lol.

I haven't watched this movie in an age but now I really want to go back and watch it.

[brokenmnemonic]

I'm a huge fan of Ever After, for various reasons - and it was handily available on my PC, because it's one of the sources used for the group vidding workshop at the moment ;)

A part of me wants to go back and tweak all of the clips to make the visual and audio beats align more closely, but I was surprised at how many kind of line up already. I'm not sure I've ever made a Sparkle Motion dance party vid, though - what are the requirements? I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of getting to pelt the prince with more apples...

[bonibaru]

The requirements are: you can dance to it :D

[brokenmnemonic]

You've got me wondering now if I've ever made anything that might qualify, that I could use as an example to work from. Would something like this be suitable for dancing to? (I really, really have never danced, and when I worked events it was in the headbanger section, so I have very little sense of judgement on these things.)

[bonibaru]

Yes, this 100% qualifies as a dance party vid if I was putting one together!

Fanworks has their 2019 show programming online & streaming for free right now, so if you want to see what other people have done, you only need to create a free membership. There's an example here too by Sparkle Motion https://fanworkscon.com/events/

This is one I did for a recent con https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841431

[jinkyo]

I loved both of these and these two are, for viewer me, the most extreme change of interpretation with different audio.

The Sound of Silence is a sombre song. I've not seen Ever After, but I'm guessing there's some Cinderella-ish themes, with the Angelica Houston character as the evil godmother. A sad song about waiting for your prince to come.

Jump Around - Holy heck! Drew Barrymore's character is transformed into a super badass. I absolutely loved all the swashbuckling, her defiant tromping out of the castle, her wink as she shoulder carries the "prince". This was all so good!

The shot at :39 sums up what I'm hoping I've said. In "The Sound of Silence" The Drew Barrymore character seems frightened at being apprehended by the henchmen.
In "Jump Around", that same expression reads to me like an affront, like "Oh no she didn't call the Sherrif on me!"

[brokenmnemonic]

Ever After is very dear to my heart :) It is a Cinderella remake, you're right - Angelica Houston does a marvellous job as the evil stepmother. Drew Barrymore makes a great Cinderella, and gets to injure someone with a knife, pelt the Dauphin with apples, make friends with Leonardo da Vinci and basically go around throwing gender roles out of the window. I think it's delightful :)

I was surprised at just how sombre the Sound of Silence as, when I was putting the pechakucha together - I remembered it as being a very still song, but I wasn't expecting it to feel as melancholy as it did.

I think Jump Around is closer to how I feel about the film than Sound of Silence, but it was more fun than I expected to do this exercise :) It did make my brain itch a bit, because I kept wanting to tweak things to make the beats fall closer together...

Thank you for the lovely comment! :)

[caramarie]

That certainly is a contrast! It's cool how different they are. Jump Around is really fun, but I like the tone of the Sound of Silence one a lot too.

[brokenmnemonic]

After I'd put the first together and was working on rendering the second, my first thought was "this could be terrible", but I'm surprised at how the kind of ... work? It makes me a bit wary of going for such random songs again, though - can you imagine trying to make this with an 80s thrash metal track, and the theme tune to the Howard the Duck movie? :)

This has definitely made me think I should try and vid Jump Around to something though...

[goodbyebird]

The first one made me go "awwwww", and the second put a big smile on my face before also making me go "awwwwww" :DD

[brokenmnemonic]

Drew Barrymore should get to play with swords and punch princes more often, y/y? :)