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

[extrapenguin]

DaVinci Resolve unfortunately didn't install, so I'm now using kdenlive. It's a bit clunky, but idk if that's just me not knowing how half the shit works, or the program itself being clunky. I have 9 out of 10 6-second slots all slotted (and a few backup candidates for the 10th one), so Pechakucha 1 is almost there! (It's to a section of this song ~0:41-1:41, using Guardian as the video source. Then it's time to search for a second song...)

[lola]

That song is so beautiful!! I can totally see it working wonderfully with Guardian! Can't wait to see it! :)
kdenlive looks like a pretty full service video editing software! I can't try it out cause it's just for windows, but I'll be interested to hear how you get along with it!

[bonibaru]

*raises hand* I have a question!

When I watched the Twin Peaks example I was a little confused because I thought there were more than ten 6-second clips used, but after seeing an example with a source I am more familiar with I think I understand better now: a clip may be a continuous scene, yes? With inter-scene jump or other cuts? You do not have to have 6 seconds with no internal cuts, times ten. Yes?

[lola]

Ah yes yes, totally--any six second clip is going to have edits within it, unless you're like, using a movie that uses super long takes or is all in one take or something. The clip is just six seconds of your source footage; it's bound to have all sorts of internal cuts in it. And then the trick is, I've found, making those internal cuts work for you!

[lola]

So I've decided to mess around with BTS videos for these exercises. I'm only just getting into the fandom, and I haven't worked with music video or concert footage that much before, so it's somewhat new ground for me in multiple ways. But I figured this was a good way to experiment!
My pikachus so far are light and upbeat, because I needed a mood boost.
Version 1: Dance to This
Version 2: Love Yourself

[bonibaru]

OK! All done and uploaded: HIStory3: Trapped, Jack & Zhao Zi. I limited myself to episodes 9 and 10 (the last two). It made it harder in some ways but easier in others. And I'm still really itching for transitions AND it's making me CRAZY not to adjust the timing on beats lol ..... but ... I will survive!

Version 1: Take on Me
Version 2: Armor

[lola]

Ah, I love both of these!! I didn't even know this pairing existed and in this one minute two ways you totally sold me on them! It's funny but I feel like seeing the same footage with different music gives me a more of a sense of the range of the characters and relationships etc. If that makes sense!

[hexenmeister]

I didn't read the fine print about confining yourself to two episodes, whoops.

This challenge was so fun and generative! I'd been feeling stuck on clipping for another vid, and this helped make that feel more doable.

My Sad Dad Lan Wangji vidlets for The Untamed:
Version 1: These Days
Version 2: Should Have Known Better

[lola]

I've just watched the first one and OH MY HEART!! That "my failures" moment physically hurt WOW.
And yay for getting unstuck via this exercise!
Off to watch version two :)

[wyomingnot]

Question! Do the clips need to be in the same order?

[bonibaru]

To stick to the particulars of the exercise, yes; part of the exercise is to see how the two different pieces of music impact against the choices you made.

But as Lola mentioned: 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 if you really have a strong desire for creative purposes, to rearrange the clips for some particular reason - there's no grade, you won't fail :D You will just have a different experience of the challenge.

[brokenmnemonic]

This looks like fun and a great idea - when I've finished work for the day, I'm going to have to start poking the vid sources I've got on my PC and see if I can join in :D

[lola]

Yay!! Come join the fun!!

[gwenfrankenstien]

The strict rules helped me break through a monster of a vidding block, so thank you!

Here are my two pikachus https://archiveofourown.org/works/23216593

[lola]

Oh, I love these!! They're so evocative!! And they really have such different feels... it's crazy it doesn't even feel like the same footage!

I really need to watch that movie :)

and yay for breaking through vidding block!!!

[bonibaru]

I ... did some more.

[Fanvid] Dirty and Clean / Bad Intentions (8 words) by bonibaru
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trapped
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tang Yi, Chen Wen Hao, Tang Guo Dong
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Vexercises, Pechakucha, Daddy Issues

[lola]

Okay, wow, these are both amazing. And like, I totally forgot as I was watching about the restrictions entirely. And both versions worked so well. Your pikachus are making me realize there's much more to this show than I thought and I should really watch it!!

[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.

[jinkyo]

Ok. I'd done a writeup about how hard this project was and how I was unhappy with my first results. I scrapped those and started fresh.
Then promptly ran into the same roadblock.
That's when the lightbulb went off that the 6 second clip would never yield the results I was aiming for. So, I reset my target and went back to the originals, swapped out one of the songs, tweaked the 6 sec. clips and came out with two pechakuchas that fulfilled my original goal - which was to play with this new source on a timeline.

tw: blood, guns

The Professionals | Gunpowder - Wyclef Jean and the Refugee Allstars https://youtu.be/Odd0QA9yOCE
The Professionals | Gouge Away - The Pixies https://youtu.be/yPcSEOnl1ow

[lola]

So first of all I love that your new source is The Professionals! I've been thinking about trying the Professionals too and your vexercises are inspiring me further :)
I love the music that you chose for both of these, and I find them really compelling actually! Because I only know the source through vids, and mostly older vids, I don't really know that much about it... and these gave me a sense of the themes in a way that I'm not used to seeing.
Did you write up more about your process somewhere? If so I'd love to see it!

[naye]

I made an attempt! - both vids in one AO3 post.

[lola]

Yay!! You joined us!! And you're vidding Guardian! And oh my Shen Wei feels!!

[caramarie]

I vidded Ateez for this exercise – both versions are here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23251462

I found the restraints quite relaxing!

[lola]

These are both mesmerizing! And I love that you're working with kpop MVs too! Glad I'm not the only one :)

[lola]

So I made another pikachu set... still really feeling my way around the BTS footage and what it means to vid music videos. I think I like the first one quite a bit... or at least the visual/song match, I sort of want to make the whole video! Not so sure about the second one....

v1: Only the Good
v2: Hello Earth

Both on a03

[jinkyo]

Very nice!
The footage is so visually striking and strong and works with such a striking and strong song like Hello Earth - that all looked and sounded beautiful together.

[sarashina_nikki]

This was fun! Two Nirvana in Fire vids, starring Mei Changsu and his twenty caravans of baggage.

Version 1 - World on Fire by Sarah McLachlan
Version 2 - My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up) by Fall Out Boy

Choosing clips that would work for both songs at the exact same moment was really interesting! Letting each clip play for 6 whole seconds made me want to scream lol. I think I'm too used to fast cuts.

[bonibaru]

Letting each clip play for 6 whole seconds made me want to scream

Me too! It made me start looking for scenes with enough internal cuts that I could tweak on either side to make myself feel better lol

These are great!!

[seekingferret]

Two Pikachus on the first episode of Grey's, since I am trying to figure out how to vid the whole damn 16 seasons and this seems like a nice way to dip my toes in gently. I was trying for a pretty sharp contrast in the music, but I think I only got half there- the two vidlets feel very different in mood, but not in message.

Song to the Moon from Rusalka by Dvorak, performed by Joshua Bell

Make Them Gold by CHVRCHES

[lola]

I love both of these!! I actually think the different music choices offer different messages -- in the first one I got more of a sense of medicine as art, the art of a collective (like an orchestra), where in the CHVRCHES one it was more about the moral and emotional demands and journey of being a doctor. I think they're both very effective!

[sholio]

This was fun and also SO challenging! :D I decided to do a Nakia/T'Challa vid since I already have all of Black Panther imported into Final Cut and there are a relatively limited number of scenes featuring both of them, so I wouldn't have too many clips to choose from, but STILL. omg. I did cheat a little and let the last clip play out for an extra second or two so I could fit all of the Survivor chorus without losing the first few words of the lyrics.

Version 1: High On You (Survivor)

Version 2: Amacala (Siphokazi)

[lola]

okay, this pair is FASCINATING!! From how I experienced them, the music shifted the POV, and so I read each vid from a different perspective (T'Challa in v1, Nakia in v2), and that meant that my eyed stayed with different parts of the footage in different ways, with the music linking the visuals completely differently, so different parts of the frame were important in each version. Amazing! And I loved them both!

[valoise]

For several years I've been thinking about vidding the 1985 movie Tampopo, so I've decided to use it for my source. I wanted to make one pechakucha upbeat and the other more downbeat using the same clips. Both are on one AO3 post.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23284078

[jinkyo]

Oh, these were fun to watch!

I love the jaunty pace of "Di-Gue-Ding-Ding". The clips at around :30 seconds, the heroine left to watch the pot and her peeking at the master as he cooks the meal was funny!


"Can't Get it Right Today" made me root for the heroine to get the dish right. The musical shift at :43 is really strong. It's like the training montage in a Rocky movie. the shot at :56, finishing the dish - that is so perfectly placed!

[thatyourefuse]

This was so much fun. Oh my God.

I might or might not have chosen to go Twin Peaks regardless -- it is, shall we say, a remarkably conducive source for experimental video editing -- but in fact I'd been vaguely bunnied for a Donna-vid to the first song for ages, despite the fact that the beat (if you can call it that) is really not suited to my usual style of editing. I chose a song from The Return for my second version, which ended up working really well...

v.1: Chopsticks
v.2: American Woman

... and then I was so fascinated by the examples on the Videographic Essay site that I decided to give the original source-audio version a try, and -- I can have little a overachievement. As a treat.

v.3: Faster and Faster
v.4: Nowhere Fast

I'm pretty sure "Nowhere Fast" is just straight-up the best one (and I want it on the record that I edited this to "Chopsticks" and then literally did not adjust the clip order or timing at all when selecting and switching out the audio tracks).

I am so, so tempted to immediately do a second set using completely different source, because I so want to try something with more internal cuts.

[bonibaru]

Hi! Did you add to the AO3 collection and then did they disappear? I'm trying to figure out if I'm glitching or if somewhere else is or if you did something on purpose, LOL.

[lola]

So I'm loving everyone's vid-pechakuchas so much that I decided to do a different batch with The Untamed... I wanted to play with something more vidlike, because vidding with music videos and concert footage is very different than vidding with a show! But I decided for this second set all the music will be BTS, just to keep with the theme :)

So here's my pechakuchas, My First Death/My Last Dance

I found pechakucha-ing (is that a verb?) to Black Swan very hard with the six second rule. It *killed* me not to cut at particular moments. BUT I totally intend to make this vid (I was planning on it already) and so thankfully I'll be able to rectify that in the actual, which will be very satisfying. But working on this helped me so much in thinking through what the vid will look like and be about!

[actiaslunaris]

Posted here on Archive of Our Own: [Fanvid] Blanket of Clouds // Calling Me Back.

I feel a little like I did back when I started making fanvids, but it was fun. I used two episodes (six and eight) from the first season of Galileo (TV Japan). I'll be sticking with that source for the rest of the exercises. :D

[melannen]

I have set clips to music! Two different music. I'm calling that victory.

The original Lois/Clark OTP to:

Straighten Up and Fly Right by Natalie Cole

Somethin' Stupid by Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman