VfXercise 1 drops!

[nu_breed]

Hi again all! So here’s the extra bonus challenge for this round, VfXercise 1.

We’ll keep these pretty simple and relatively open, so people can do them on different software platforms/with different tools. The challenge for this round is as follows:

VfXercise 1: 30 second edit comprised of 10 x 3-second shots, with at least one effect (like an LUT) applied throughout (on AE, through an adjustment layer)

Lola and I both tried this one out in advance, and it was fun! (Though we did discover that AE can be even more obsessive than Premiere, a dangerous realization :)

Here’s my example.

And here’s Lola's

Stay tuned for a separate post about VfX tech, tutorials, etc. which we can build as a resource list as we go. I’m imagining these VfXercises will be a lot about experimentation and exploration, and we can share what we discover with each one.

Comments

[justanorthernlight]

I played around a little bit in Davinci Resolve and figured out grayscale (and a couple of other effects, but grayscale fit the best).

Sound the Bells (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith): https://vimeo.com/715701210

[nu_breed]

Oh this looks great!

[justanorthernlight]

Thanks!

[lola]

this is gorgeous!! chills at 10s, seriously!

[alba17]

So I wasn't paying enough attention and applied an effect to my one minute vid. Are we supposed to make a new shorter vid?

[nu_breed]

That’s the idea! These are in addition to the regular Vexercises and geared towards short form edits (30 seconds in After Effects is about ideal) personally but I see no reason why you can’t modify an existing one if that’s what interests you.

[naye]

10 x 3 seconds sure is a challenge! I went with Premiere's Duotone LUT (or possibly this is one I've gotten elsewhere?) for this:

Moon Knight - New Tradition

[nu_breed]

Ooooh love this! I think this source will be great for playing around with VFX!

[lola]

first of all, I have added Moon Knight to the list of things I must watch.

This was great! Love the LUT. the music/motion matching at 22/23 is sooooo good. i felt it!

[seekingferret]

Honestly I half-assed this, doing the effects with the DVR presets rather than even going into Fusion, and it was still world-changing in terms of how I see my vidding practice. Here's my thirty second vidlet with and without the overlaid effects and it's amazing how different they are and how narrative and emotional things that don't work at all in the original suddenly come to life with the change in coloring. I need to do more of this!

A surprising hard part for me was the straight three second clips. It almost felt like it fell in a no-man's land between pechakuchas where you know you're going to be working with the internal cuts of the source and you know you're going to be a little limited in the expressive range and that's just baked into the kind of results you'll get, vs. normal vidding where you have total control over the pacing of the clips. It was hard to do as much with internal cuts in only 3 seconds, but it felt too long to just use single shots in some places. If we keep up the same rules going forward, I expect to bend slightly rather than sticking to rigidly cutting every three seconds.


FX version: https://youtu.be/KFjUwBN5iM8

No FX version: https://youtu.be/Mp4TLw4OC1M

[absternr]

Really cool to see both versions, it does make a huge difference!

[lola]

Wow, they're so different! It's a strong edit to begin with, but the FX makes it an experience!!

and I'm sorry, I was unclear in my initial wording of the VfXercises; only the first one really needs to have the 3 second limit; after that, they're just short edits, 20-30 seconds (although people are of course free to keep the original limits if they want :D)

[unavee]

Wow, it's so helpful to see the difference. The color changes are really striking.

[absternr]

Here's my Ultimate Note one! https://youtu.be/-_cPYQqNzII

I found this kind of tricky bc the shots I picked already had some fairly different coloring going on so it was hard to make a single LUT work for all of them, especially the darker ones. I think it did end up making them look more cohesive, though. I've never color-graded anything in Resolve before so I learned a ton!

btw I thought the 10 3-second shots thing worked quite well, but then I went completely rogue on the timings for fun anyway.

[lola]

Ooh, i love this, it has such a stylish vibe!! It is tricky to just apply one LUT, but yes, I think it creates such a cohesive feel at the same time. I often do that, and then go in and just lighten/adjust the clips that need it.
I do feel the 3 second shot sets a good base, but yeah, it's hard to stick too, and can always benefit from a bit of tweaking.
I think I need to watch Ultimate Note.

[unavee]

I ventured into using some of the other tabs in Davinci Resolve. I applied a LUT to the whole timeline and tried adding some color adjustment nodes to clips but didn't really know what I was doing. I also tried adding a preset effect and figured out how to resize clips in Fusion.

https://youtu.be/_rgWYGifBr8

[lola]

oooh this is so pretty! I feel like if you put this on tiktok, ppl would really like it <3 It's cool to see edits on fusion like this -- this makes me really want to try fusion to see what it can do!

[unavee]

Oh, thank you! I still have no idea how tiktok works but that's really nice. The resources posted have been so helpful for me to get started with fusion!

[trickybonmot]

~creaks the door open~ Hello I had covid and fell behind but I wanted to try out this exercise, so I made a quick and dirty edit using my pechakucha and I applied a film noise overlay and lowered the color saturation to create an old-timey effect. Song is Some Things Cosmic by Angel Olsen.

https://youtu.be/l2x6dr3juF4

[nu_breed]

Ahhh the overlay is perfect! Love this!